Each year we wait for this report and pour over the recommendations - it’s the best there is. In the report experts have come up with a list of factors that contribute to your local search rankings that will help you get much better exposure online and attract more potential customers and clients.

In a platform where literally millions of volumes of information is generated and produced, it’s easy for small businesses to get lost in the maze we call the World Wide Web. And while there is great potential for catching the attention of prospective clients and customers on the internet, it’s just as easy to become buried in the many obscurities.

Your goal, of course, is to avoid that. Experts have compiled a list of factors that will help you and your business become much more visible in local search rankings, so you can get better exposure and attract more potential customers and clients.

www.davidmihm.com, a website about all things SEO, has published their annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey in which prominent  bloggers, internet marketers, and other big names in the industry identify the most important factors in improving your local search rankings. The survey contains items, ranked from 1 to 58 in terms of importance, with an additional 11 stressing what mistakes you can avoid.

4 Key Takeaways

1. Get your Google and Yahoo local business listings up and keep them up to date.
2. Keep your website and directory listings addresses in sync. One address and phone number everywhere.
3. Enhance your local listing with customer reviews, photos, videos and the right keywords.
4. Get inbound links. Each one is a vote for your site. Find your local directories and add your listing. More is better.

Each point contains short explanations and opinions of the different experts who participated in the survey. First on the list is “General Importance of Claiming Place Page / Local Listing”, followed by “Business Address in City of Search,” and “Associating Place Page with Proper Categories”.

If you want to know more about how these factors can improve your online marketing strategy drop me an email.

See the complete report at: http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

We’ve also compiled a list of Business Listing Resources on the Pronto Marketing Support Forum to help you get going on building those inbound links.

Every business wants to improve the volume and quality of traffic to its web site, so it’s no surprise that many of our clients want to know what they can realistically expect from SEO link building services.

One SEO service, for example, recently promised a client the following daily results for just $1,500 per month:

• Four to five confirmed back links from blog postings, forum posting and relative web sites
• Ten directory postings
• Five social bookmarkings
• Two article or press release submissions

We have our own opinion about this, but we always like to get different perspectives, so we spoke to Jane Copland, an expert in the field. Until 2009, Jane worked at SEOMoz, which provides expert advisory services as well as SEO tools. She now works for Ayima, a London-based SEO consultancy.

Jane told us the aforementioned SEO company pitch isn’t the worst she’s seen, as the numbers are low enough to be somewhat genuine-but that doesn’t mean our client should hire this SEO company.

The real test, says Jane, isn’t in the numbers or even in the price; it’s in the quality of the links and the content. So, if all the links and all this content are of a high standard, this is good deal.

Unfortunately, Jane doesn’t think the SEO company can achieve high-quality of links and content given the amount of daily work required. To explain why, she broke each promise down for us.

Back links

Jane says it’s tough to hit a target such as five high-quality links a day-with the emphasis on “high-quality.”

“It’s always a warning when someone guarantees link numbers,” says Jane, who oversees several large link-building campaigns. “When we do link-building, we have link targets, but we in no way guarantee we’ll hit them every month. Why? Because if we can’t find enough quality links to meet our number, we’re not going to resort to getting poor links to make up the numbers.”

She thus thinks the SEO company, when it refers to “four to five confirmed back links from blog postings, forum posting and relative web sites,” actual means blog comments-and that’s not good. “Many links like this are not followed, and thus contribute nothing to your SEO,” Jane says.

According to Jane, the promised volume, if it were of high quality, would get expensive, with the manpower to follow up on leads alone would requiring a budget of more than $1,500.

As a side note, Jane adds that you shouldn’t be taken in by the idea that 50 links on one blog or site in the sidebar/footer (which is referred to as a site-wide link) is the same as 50 links from completely unrelated sites around the web. “Fifty site-wide links from one site, and thus one IP address, are not 50 separate ‘votes’ for your site,” Jane says. “Site-wide links have their place in a natural backlink profile, but I would not want to see link-building companies passing these all off as unique links that count toward the overall link numbers they’re going for.”

Directory postings

According to Jane, the ten directory listings per day is realistic because the SEO company could submit the site to ten directories a day. But this, she notes, doesn’t take into account the quality of the directories-or even if the site is included. Directories, she notes, have an editorial process whereby sites that are reviewed can take a long time to get through the queue. “You want to be included in directories like this, where a person looks over submissions, to avoid being listed in directories that also link to spam,” she says. “This keeps you from being associated with so-called ‘bad neighborhoods.’

Social bookmarkings

According to Jane, the promise of five social bookmarkings is vague. “This could mean just about anything.,” she says.

Article or press release submissions

According to Jane, the quality of the two articles or press releases promised is a concern.

“Who writes these, and what PR firms do they use?” she asks. “If they submit a piece for syndication, how many good sources actually pick it up? If the piece is good, it should get picked up in a lot of places.”

As a reference point, Jane notes that if you use PRWeb and choose the option friendliest for SEO, it will cost $200 per release.

How to do SEO right

We agree with Jane, as well as her advice when evaluating an SEO company that makes promises like these: Request examples of previous work-i.e., case studies. “Most companies have studies that they can show to prove that their work is good,” says Jane.

Then, once you hire an SEO company, insist on monthly or weekly reporting that shows every link built, every page bookmarked and every article or press release written. “You have a right to see how your site is being marketed and how your money is being spent,” says Jane, who adds that if you request reporting, it will “become immediately obvious if the company is getting no-followed links or is putting out poor content.”

As I discussed in an earlier post, one of the most common questions I get from clients is how to get more referrals. One answer: Set up a referral rewards program. But what happens after you’ve done so?

Once again, to gain some insight, I sat down with an expert in IT services sales and marketing: Kendra Lee of KLA Group, a Denver firm that offers consulting and training services.

According to Kendra, once you’ve set up a referral rewards program, the next step is to get proactive. In other words, you have to make asking for referrals a part of your sales and account management process. That way you aren’t waiting for clients to think of you to offer a referral.

Every staff member who works with clients can be a part of the referral request process. But to get staff involved, you’ll need to the two things that might hold them back: awareness of how important referrals are, and fear of rejection. So, Kendra suggests you let your staff know that referrals can make or break your business-then help them overcome rejection with these steps.

1. Create a profile of who to ask for referrals. Target clients with whom you’re likely to succeed by creating a profile of the characteristics possessed by the ideal client (such as those who clearly appreciate your recommendations).
2. Identify standard contact points. Once you know who to ask, you’ll need to define when to ask. Determine where in your sales and account management processes clients are most happy, and make it part of the process to request referrals then.
3. Consider other contact points. In addition to asking for referrals at the standard contact points, you’ll want to be sure you take advantage of other opportunities as they arise-for example, at quarterly business reviews or project closeout meetings.
4. Provide the words, then train people to use them. The next step is to get your team asking for referrals. To do so, teach staff members how to frame their referral requests, including how to transition from the topic at hand to the request.
5. Measure referrals. Finally, track your success by creating a lead source code in your CRM. Doing so will illustrate you what works and what doesn’t, and show your staff the impact their efforts are having.

These steps are really helpful, and once again I thank Kendra for her input. But there’s plenty more where these steps came from: I encourage you to check out Kendra’s web site.

One of the most common questions I get from clients centers around referrals-how to get more referrals.

That’s not surprising: Referrals are critical to your business, so you’ll want to maximize the number you receive.

To gain some insight, I recently took some time to connect with one of the people I respect most when it comes to IT services sales and marketing: Kendra Lee of KLA Group, a Denver, Colorado firm that offers sales consulting and training services to IT firms to grow their client base.

Over the years, KLA Group has helped hundreds of IT service provides expand their businesses-in part by using referral rewards program.

To set up a good referral rewards program, Kendra told me you’ll need to think about the best way encourage colleagues and clients to send a good referral your way. That will differ from firm to firm, but Kendra offered three comments on common approaches.

1. Paying for referrals with cash.
This isn’t the best choice for a number of reasons, says Kendra-people forget money the quickest, and offering it can create the impression of bribery.

2. Pay for referrals with gifts.
This is a better idea, says Kendra-particularly for your clients’ employees, the people your team works with daily. That’s because a gift keeps you in the recipient’s mind with a memorable experience (such as a nice dinner) or an item used every day (such as a web digital camera for Skype or iPod). Moreover, it can have the same value as cash, but doesn’t have the same negative connotation.

3. Pay for referrals with services.
This may be the best option says Kendra, because your ownership of the service allows you to offer greater value for the money. But there are some no-nos when it comes to paying for referrals with services. Don’t discount a service the client already has and is paying for, such as consulting time or a monthly service fee. Instead, use the opportunity to introduce a new service to an existing client. “Business owners are always looking for things to improve their business,” Kendra says.

Finally, Kendra reminded me to tell you to be sure to follow the gift policies set up by your clients or any other regulatory bodies. In fact, it’s a good idea to have your own gift policy detailed clearly on your web site to increase transparency.

These are great tips, and I thank Kendra for them. But there’s plenty more where they came from: I encourage you to check out Kendra’s web site.

I know, most of us have been there, we’re watching an infomercial or wandering the aisles of Williams-Sonoma and we see all these amazing kitchen gadgets and tools that we know will let us cook like the pros. What you find out soon enough is great cooking takes time to shop for the ingredients, study the recipes, and carefully prepare things - the tools might make it easier, the cookbook tells you what to do but you have to invest the time and energy to make happen; and have the passion to make it delicious.

It’s human nature to love the shiny new object in the room and believe it can transform our lives in three easy steps. We’ve all bought it in one form or another at some point in time. Been there, done that. And if we’ve tasted any success in life or business we know 98% it came the old fashion way: hard work, discipline and tenacity.

This brings me to something I’ve been thinking about lately. Every day I get asked about a new website, blog, social networking or SEO service and tool and what I think about it. Squarespace, Kutenda, Twitter, Social Network distribution widgets-the list is long. Most of the time my answer is the same: “It looks great, very impressive but are you going to do the work to get the value out of it?”

Think about marketing like you do security
Anti-virus software is essential for PC health but without updates it quickly becomes useless. Security isn’t set and forget. It takes constant monitoring and tuning. It takes training and good policy as well. There may be great tools to help with creating a secure network such as a firewall, but without proper set-up, management and attention that tool doesn’t accomplish anything.

Marketing is no different
There are a plethora of amazing tools; for websites, newsletters, SEO, social networking - but if you want them to bring you new clients you have to develop them in a consistent and professional way for a long period of time. You have to do the work day in and day out if you want results. Just like with the Veg-O-Matic, if you’re signed up for Constant Contact, an amazing tool, but you never write the content for the newsletter your marketing is never going to come out of the oven.

When you start on improving your marketing a good tool is helpful but first make sure you’ve got the commitment to stick with it to see results. It’s so much better to do a few things well rather than over-extending yourself. You know your website needs a refresh, you need a newsletter, you want to blog, you need to do a campaign - the list is endless, on top of all the clients you’ve got to take care of. My advice is pick one, do it right until it feels like a habit and you have it in a routine. Then think about the next one. It’s not magic and it takes time but one day you’ll have cooked up a banquet of sizzling MSP marketing.

What to see what we’re up to at Pronto Marketing? Check out the Pronto Client Forums - opened for visitors for a sneak preview who are interested in MSP Marketing.

A recent study by the Kelsey Group reveals that more small and midsized businesses are using digital media, specially the Internet, to promote or advertise their business. Their study, conducted with research partner ConStat, indicates that the penetration of digital/online media increased from 73 percent in August 2008 to 77 percent in August 2009, while that of traditional media such as TV, radio, and print decreased from 74 percent to 69 percent during the same period.

This is a clear indicator that the Internet has become an important source for many businesses to generate and manage their business. Potential business can come from anywhere - their website, queries in search engines, online ads, and lately even social networking sites. According to the study, for businesses that track lead sources, the percentage that does so using the Internet has increased from 22 percent in 2008 to 30 percent in 2009.

Although the Internet can often be a scary place for many SMB’s and their prospects with threats such as spam, malware, phising, and more, this study reveals that it is still a source of tremendous value for those who know how to use it effectively.

Related Information:

• If you’re a Microsoft Partner you can access my 5W50 Webinar “Building Your Online Marketing Engine” If you’d like a copy of the presentation don’t hesitate to drop me an email and request it
• Online Media Ad/Promo Use Eclipses Traditional Among SMBs

While some claim that writing for the web is a snap, the truth is that it’s not as easy as it looks. After all, you’re writing for people who typically only scan web content looking for an elusive nugget of information sometimes known only to them. If you write copy that doesn’t fulfill their needs, they have plenty of other websites to click to. And if you write copy that doesn’t attract the attention of search engines, you’ll have no one to click away from your site in the first place!

In an environment as competitive as the internet and MSP Marketing, it’s important to strike a balance between compelling copywriting and the technical skills needed for effective Search Engine Optimization. Here are a few tips to help you out:

• Give each page a title. This lets readers know what to expect from this page.

• Don’t overload your readers. You can be specific without making your audience feel bombarded. Clear messages use fewer words. On the technical side, brief and specific copy makes your page more searchable by search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

• Pepper copy with keywords… Keywords help your content rank higher in search engines, enabling you to reach a wider audience. If you don’t know what keywords to use, you can either take an educated guess as to what terms people will search for when looking for a specific topic, or you can run Keyword Analysis to learn the most effective keywords.

• …but don’t overdo it. Too many keywords sacrifice your copy’s overall quality. The challenge is to weave in a healthy number of keywords without destroying the essence and readability of your article. If you overdo it, your audience will know.

• Use keywords in hyperlinks. Search engines love this.

• The audience is your priority. First address the needs of your target audience. Talking about yourself or your company comes later. Also with IT Services marketing be careful not to “speak geek”.

• Be casual and friendly. Even though you’re writing for a wide audience, it’s best to write as if you’re talking to just one person - it’s more personal that way.

• Prove it! If your product or service works, give concrete examples of why and how. Use testimonials if possible. People are wary of hollow superlatives and hard-sell statements.

• Include a clear call to action. What is it that you want your reader to do after reading your copy? Invite them to do it!

It’s true that anyone can write, but few can write EFFECTIVELY. Apply these tips to your website copy today, and watch your readership and page clicks grow.

In its infancy, blogging was used primarily as a public “shout out” from a single individual - an online version of a journal or diary. It quickly grew into a means for writers to practice their craft, to be “published” and read by an audience. These days, blogging has evolved into a successful marketing practice that business entities of all sizes are adopting. If you’re not on the blogging bandwagon yet, here’s why should hop on:

1. Blogging Improves Your Company’s Reputation

A good corporate blog presents readers and potential clients with timely solutions to their problems, not just a static statement. This makes it a perfect venue for highlighting and promoting your capabilities as a service provider. For example, if you want to promote a certain service you offer or would like to share positive feedback from previous clients, a blog is the perfect place to do it.

2. Blogging Increases Your Website Traffic

When you regularly update content (as all successful bloggers do), readers have something to look forward to and will visit your site more often. Your readers will begin to comment on your blog and interact with other people. This encourages community activity and generates traffic through links posted by active followers at other websites, blogs, forums, and discussion boards. This is how blogs differ from websites: they feature more interactivity and encourage discussion, and therefore traffic. It’s also easier to integrate media such as video and audio, which also encourages sharing links to increase traffic.

3. Blogging Improves Your Business Insight

As you develop content for your blog, you’ll pay much more attention to what’s going on around you. Great information is exchanged through blogs and their comments, discussion boards, and forums, and you need to know all that - unless you want to be left behind. Through all this interaction you’ll gain access to all sorts of information that you can use to develop new strategies and approaches for your business. And since you’re interacting with real people, you get feedback in a jiffy.

In a nutshell, blogging brings a whole new dimension to business presence in the vast World Wide Web, making you more accessible, searchable, and readable by the average “netizen” who may become your next new client.

A quick fix to dramatically improve your rankings

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a long road that takes a lot of patience. Nobody knows (except the guys at Google) exactly how the search algorithms work – but we can make our best guesses. Amid the myriad of items on your SEO checklist, on-page optimization can prove to be a quick fix to dramatically improve your website’s listing in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Creating appropriate title tags, writing a meta description, and optimizing body content will point your website in the right direction toward achieving the rankings you want.

Title

SERPs weigh keywords in title tags very highly. In fact, title tags can have the biggest effect on rankings. The title tag is displayed in SERPs and at the top of the browser for each page.

Where and how to add title tags:

<head>
<title>Original Title Tag</title>
<head>

Things to consider when creating title tags:

Length

Search engines cut off title tags around 70 characters, while browsers cut off around 95. A longer title tag can squeeze in more keywords, but may not appear as user friendly in a SERP. This is a case-by-case compromise.

Originality

Title tags should be different for each page. Multiple pages containing the same title tag confuse search engines –sometimes causing neither page to be ranked.

Keyword Placement

For basic title tag optimization, focus on the key areas of your website: your home, products, and services pages. Here are some examples:Home:

Computer and Network IT Support for Small Business - Petaluma | Widgets, Inc.

Disaster Recovery Page:

Disaster Recovery Services and Small Business Backup Solutions | Widgets, Inc.

Meta description

The meta description is the short summary you see under the title tag in SERPs. While it has no impact on a search engine ranking, it is still important to entice visitors to click through to your website. If a description is not manually added for a page, the search engine will choose the content it thinks is most relevant to display, based on the user’s search query.For small business websites, it’s a good practice to include an original and compelling meta description for your home page only.

Where and how to add a meta description:

<head>
<meta name="Description" content="Insert meta description here – no more than 155 characters.">
</head>

Body Content

There are several opportunities within body content to optimize your keywords. While including keywords will positively affect search rankings, it’s important to remember that quality and easily readable content is the number one goal. Without quality content, visitors will be less interested in what you have to say and will be less likely to convert.

Header Tags

SERPs especially value keywords in header tags. Be strategic about how you place keywords in header tags.Where and how to add header tags:

<h1>Most Important</h1>
<h2>Second Most Important</h2>
<h3>Third Most Important</h3>

Bold/Strong Tags

This is a good place to insert keywords. SERPs value bold and strong tags equally.Where and how to add bold or strong tags:

<b>Keyword</b>
<strong>Keyword</strong>

Alt Image Text

Alt text can be added for images to further optimize keywords. For example, the alt text for your logo could be “Widgets, Inc. – IT Consultant”.

If you’re confused about any of this information, or want to make sure you’re following industry best practices, don’t be afraid to look at what your competitors are doing. It’s a great place to gain SEO inspiration!

Get to the bottom of keyword research in four easy steps

The first, and possibly the most important, area of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to conduct the proper keyword research. Without doing so, you may be optimizing your website with keywords that aren’t relevant to your business, or ones that people aren’t even searching for.

Here are four steps to selecting the right keywords:

1. Develop a visitor persona

Take the time to create a mini persona for the average user who visits your website – and think about the psychographic and demographic profiles for this person. And most important consider how that person thinks about your business, and try to determine your visitor’s motivation to contact you.

2. Brainstorm keywords

Now that you’ve developed your average visitor’s persona, brainstorm all of the keywords you believe that person would use when searching for your products or services. In a lot of cases, the exact name of one of your services might not be what people are actually searching for. Think about how people outside of your industry would refer to your services in their own vernacular.

3. Research

Once you’ve created a list of possible keywords, create a free account with Google’s AdWords (http://adwords.google.com) and use their Keyword Tool to learn more about your list of brainstormed keywords in detail. This is a great place to get ideas on related terms, and the approximate search volume for the ones you had in mind.

4. Select and analyze

From this list, select the keywords you want to use and try searching for these terms. Take note of what companies are ranking for these keywords and what they’re doing well.

SEO is all about testing and tuning. Quite possibly, the keywords you choose today may not be the best ones for the job – but you have to start somewhere. Properly executing this exercise will put you on the right track to increasing your website’s rankings.

In our next SEO post, we’ll cover best practices for how to implement your chosen keywords in your website to reach maximum potential!