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Google Places Optimization Made Easy

May 19, 2013 by Clarence Divas

Almost any business you can think of has a website. A website is not that hard to build. However, building a website that can attract a lot of visitors takes a little more work. One important component in a great website is how well it is optimized for search engines. When a website is optimized well, it will be ranked well in search engine results when users type in keywords that are relevant to the business. There are many techniques concerning optimizing a website. You can use a combination of them to achieve the results that you want. Continue reading to find out how you can optimize your website in order to attract the traffic that you want.

Google Places Optimization – Advanced Techniques

Google Places Optimization is based on keywords. These are words that you think people will use when they search for a topic relating to your business. So, the first thing you have to do is to come up with a list of keywords that you can use in your website. These can be single words or a group of words for a key phrase. Write these words down, and try to rank them in the order of relevance to your website.

Once you have your list of keywords, you can start to use them in your website. One important place is in the file name of the web page itself. Search engines put a lot weight on file names because they assume that these words represent the page’s content. So, pick the most relevant words for the file names. Do not string several words together without separating them with an underscore.

Another place to put in keywords is in the title tag of every page. The words here appear at the top of the browser. They also appear in search results if that web page is in the results. Again, search engines give the title extra weight, so put in relevant words here.

Along with the title tag, the words in the meta description tag also appear in search results if the page is in the results. Here, you can write a brief description that will give people reason to click on your website. There is a limit to the number characters that you can fit it, so make your description concise and helpful. People scan through search results very quickly, so you window of opportunity to capture a web user’s attention is only a second or two.

Google Places Optimization Tips

In the body of your content, try to include keywords in your discussion of the business. Search engine crawlers are very intelligent. As they crawl through your content, they use a complex algorithm to index your content and rank how relevant it is to the keywords that you are using, in relation to how other websites are using the same keywords. This is how they decide which website to rank ahead of another for certain key words and phrases.

There are many other Google Places Optimization techniques, but these are the major ones. Learn as much as you can about Google Places Optimization, and you can boost your website rank to the top.

Google Places Optimization For Beginners

May 15, 2013 by Clarence Divas

How Much Do You Know About Google Places Optimization?

If you do not have a good Google Places Optimization campaign for your website, you should go over this article to learn how you can get started.

You should not approach Google Places Optimization as something you will have to do only once. You might have to spend a couple of days optimizing all your existing content, but you also need to use these same strategies to optimize the content you add to your site. You will then have to keep your campaign alive by creating new back-links regularly and staying up to date with new techniques since search engines are always looking for ways to improve the methods they use to index and rank web pages.

Avoid unethical Google Places Optimization methods. Some webmasters increase their ranking in search results by hiding keywords on their pages or creating false redirection pages. These methods are known as Black Hat Google Places Optimization, and search engines will ban your web pages from search results if you are caught using these methods. You should focus on using ethical Google Places Optimization methods, and keep in mind that organic Google Places Optimization is the most efficient strategy. Work on developing quality content that people will want to share and your site will rank higher in search results. You should never put Google Places Optimization strategies above creating quality content for your human visitors or you will not be able to convince any of your visitors to purchase your products or services.

Start by adopting a simpler design for your website. Use a CSS sheet to keep your HTML code clean and do not use a picture for your header or for your background. If you have pictures, videos, Java Script or Flash elements, optimize them with strong keywords since search engine spiders cannot read this content. Choose five keyword phrases you can use to describe your content and place them in your title tags, your URLs, your meta tags, meta descriptions and the anchor text of your links. Keywords can appear within your texts, but they will be more noticed if you place them in your different tags.

Improve the organization of your website, so it is easy to find. You should create a descriptive menu for your main pages and add more individual links on each page, so readers and search engine spiders can easily find more related content. Make sure you integrate your new pages and articles into this structure. You should also work on getting some back-links to help visitors and search engine spiders find your website. You can get some quality back-links by posting on message boards, submitting your articles to article directories or getting them published or exchanging links with other webmasters and bloggers. Do not hesitate to feature back-links to other sites on your web pages, as long as these sites are related to your content.

These Google Places Optimization strategies should help you get started with your campaign. You should educate yourself about more advanced strategies and keep track of your results to make sure your Google Places Optimization techniques are efficient.

Seven Causes why the Mom and Pop Shop is now a Franchise

May 11, 2013 by Blog Editor Leave a Comment

Everyone has their own opinion of the “franchise” concept in America. Some argue that franchises are leading to the extinction of mom and pop shops, dissolving the local micro-cultures and communities that make our towns and cities unique. While this idea may have validity, I believe that franchises are the new mom and pop shop. Here are seven reasons why Mom and Pop are increasingly interested in the franchise option:

1) Buy with bargaining power

Independent operators have limited buying power. With an unknown brand and the buying power of one, it is a challenge to negotiate rates for purchasing inventory, supplies, and anything else needed to run the business. Franchisors, who have a well-established brand and tens to thousands of locations, have the ability to negotiate bulk prices and share these reduced rates with franchisees. Moreover, vendors often view franchise customers as dependable long-term clients, making them more inclined to cut deals and extend credit to franchisees.

2) Ease of navigating government regulations

Understanding the laws and regulations that come along with opening a new business can be a tedious process. Depending on your city and state, you are likely required to adhere to different building codes, marketing laws, employment laws, workplace safety laws, environmental regulations, and more. (Some of these can be found on the SBA website.) Acquiring the necessary legal consultation and learning to structure your business to comply with these regulations will eat up time and resources, franchises already offer functional business models, making it faster and easier to open up your doors.

3) Accessibility of peer support

A successful entrepreneur has a strong support system of mentors, consultants, and helpful peers. Independent owners may gain this through friends or membership in the chamber of commerce and other business organizations. But, franchisees inherently amass a huge network of supporters through the franchise system. Whether it be through fellow franchisees, company conventions, or online support groups, the franchise owner has many forums to direct questions toward from people who have likely experienced similar issues and problems.

4) Availability of capital

Knowing that insufficient capital is a recurring reason why small businesses fail, finding adequate financing to build and operate a business is instrumental in the startup process. Entrepreneurs with little experience frequently learn that securing a sizable loan can be difficult without a financial history to ensure profitability. Franchisors, on the other hand, oftentimes have relationships with lenders who perceive a diminished risk of lending to franchisees because of the brand recognition, documented financial history, and proven business model provided to them. Another accelerator in the franchise loaning process, the Franchise Registry was developed in 2012 by the IFA and Consumer’s Bank Association to give loan officers access to detailed financial information, allowing them to make faster, more informed decisions on lending to franchisees. These resources and relationships make the loaning process much more efficient than it is for sole business owners.

5) Design & Marketing Costs

Branding has become an increasingly expensive task in the digital age for two reasons- for initial brand development and for ongoing marketing expenses. For example, in Santa Barbara, every business must submit their storefront logo design to a sign committee, which determines whether or not it is appropriate for public display and is consistent with the city vision. For this process, business owners must allocate a budget for a graphic designer to assist them with developing proper signage and branding. Additionally, with the onset of the “digital age,” business owners aren’t able to simply put out a yellow page ad anymore. You must be seen and found on a myriad of different channels. This means strategic advertisements, social media advertising, publishing on local directories, and building and managing business profiles on review sites like Yelp. Whether this entails hiring a social media marketer or paying for services like reputation monitoring and business listings management, a proactive marketing approach can be costly and time-consuming. Franchisees are able to save on these expenses as their brand is already developed and they are usually supported by regional or national multi-million dollar advertising campaigns. As day-to-day marketing strategy is not a constant worry, the franchisee has more time to focus on running an efficient business.

6) Expandability

The franchise model itself is designed to be easily replicable. Mom and Pop shops do not have this luxury, and owners often have a difficult time maintaining consistency and quality when opening up multiple storefronts. If a franchisee wants to expand and open a new location, the process is streamlined so that the equipment, supplies, and inventory needed to do so are either outlined or provided. This scalability is extremely appealing for entrepreneurs who foresee themselves managing multiple businesses.

7) Ability to resell

Generally, there comes a time where an entrepreneur wants to move on to new opportunities or retire and sell the business. If successfully developed over the years, a mom and pop shop can sell and be extremely profitable. However, the overall demand to buy into a franchise is much higher than it is for purchasing an independent business. The power of names like Wendy’s or Pizza Hut is a major selling point to potential buyers, who value the customer loyalty and familiarity associated with nationally recognized brands. While it is possible to sell a small business, selling a piece of a franchise will likely result in a much larger pool of interested buyers and a faster sale.

I believe that these are just seven of many reasons why the popularity of the franchise model for small businesses is growing exponentially. It seems somewhat of an obvious choice for many aspiring entrepreneurs. It’s not that the mom and pop business model is dead, its just that these small business owners are now buying into the value of a franchise model and see the benefits of building their own business as part of a larger brand.

What do you think, is a franchise the best choice for those who want to start their own local business?

Reasons For Local Google Places Optimization Strategies

May 11, 2013 by Clarence Divas

You know you should be optimizing your site for the search engines, but how much do you know about optimizing for local results? There are different degrees of visibility here to be discussed and many different inner workings of these strategies. Continue reading to understand more about these concepts and reasons for local Google Places Optimization strategies.

Advanced Google Places Optimization Tips

First of all, when talking about optimizing locally, this doesn’t mean just where you are located. This means localizing results for various different places of interest to focus more on their search engine results. If you think about it, that’s how you want to target your audience! What if you’re selling a product that is mainly always used on the beach? Well, you want to market to your targeted audience everywhere in one direction, but you must also hone in on the coastline where you want localized results to make your efforts even more efficient. You see how the idea works?

You are going to have to decide which locations you want to pursue, and you’re going to have to come up with a list of local keywords for those places. This will include specific location, but it will also include keywords tied to your location. Now do you see how after awhile of pursuing Google Places Optimization that you need everything written down? Did you really think you were only going to have one keyword list to work from? You’re going to need a separate extensive keyword list here for multiple options.

This all being said, you must keep your efforts organized. You want to keep up with what keywords are working are how certain markets are responding to your efforts. You can tell this from sales data in those areas through your analytical software, and you can also determine traffic percentages and other statistical data.

You need to court local link backs from relevant sites if you want to network within the area. This will definitely gain you more exposure in general as well as with the different search engines.

You also want to make sure you’re looking at any localized search engines. This can also help you get notoriety. Smaller search engines are used less frequently, but certain search engines can help you target certain areas nonetheless.

When building site pages according to different platforms for your network of sites, you need to consider a few things. When posting on forums or using your own, have a location tag. When posting in other forums, use a location tag for what location you’re targeting. Use different tags and keywords on social media sites when creating content. There are so many options here, so you can take this in plenty of directions.

You can focus your Google Places Optimization efforts locally if you do what has been described in this article. Realize that you must think about Google Places Optimization in a new light if you’re going to expand your efforts like this, so get a plan prepared ahead of time.

Re-learning Google Places Optimization

May 10, 2013 by Clarence Divas

Perhaps you studied Google Places Optimization diligently when you started your online business, kept up with Google analytics, and knew your Google Places Optimization was effective. But in recent years things have changed. Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms. The Internet is in a state of flux. If your Google Places Optimization is static, you will fall behind your competition. Here are some ideas to consider in updating your Google Places Optimization.

Google Places Optimization – What Is A Landing Page And How Is It Used?

Using search engine data on landing pages, find which pages on your website draw the least interest. Focus on revising these pages. Is there outdated information? Are the pages poorly written? Are there confusing or invalid links? Clear up any of these deficiencies. Re-write the page with a new verve. Add links to sites that would interest people drawn to the products or subject matter on the page. Add an image, especially a banner image at the top, to enliven the page.

Use metadata tags to draw customers with a particular interest. If a customer is looking for red Moroccan leather sandals and you sell them, you want them to be able to come directly to the page where these sandals appear. You don’t want them to have to scroll through a lot of other pages and products. A metadata tag added to the URL on each page of your site can do this.

Revise your keywords from time to time. Get information from search engines on which keywords are currently most effective. This may have changed since the last time you checked. Search engines are constantly changing, and so is popular word use. Also, your products may have changed and your keywords need to reflect this. Search engines are looking for clear and specific information. Providing this will bring more customers to your site.

Install buttons on each page of your site that link to popular social media sites. Interested visitors or customers can get to know more about you from these sites and develop a sharing relationship. They can also share what they like about your business and site with their friends. Ultimately, this leads to the creation of valuable back-links.

Adapt your Google Places Optimization to Mobile Devices

Using a QR code, send messages to customers at opportune times. When they are close to your store, offer a special buying opportunity.

Adapt your marketing to mobile phones. Remember that the screen is much smaller than on a desktop, so make your messages easy to read on a small screen.

Use Google Places Optimization data to find whether your advertising messages are actually reaching customers on their smartphones.

Mobile devices include i-pods, i-pads, blackberries, and smartphones. These are all rapidly gaining in popularity. They are a great way to reach customers when they are away from home. Many people now use their mobile device rather than their desktop. Learn how different search engines function on mobile devices, and adapt your Google Places Optimization. Remember that search engine results vary according to the person’s location. As the person moves around, the targeting of your ads should move with them.

These are just a few tips to help you update your Google Places Optimization on the evolving Internet. The Internet is like an ocean always in flux and generating new waves and currents. Internet surfers adapt to these changes, and so should your business.

Raising Your Search Engine Ranking

May 8, 2013 by Clarence Divas

Soon after the Internet and search engine began, people realized the importance of how search engine rank their website. The search engine are like arbiters of success. Either they bring customers to your business site or they do not. People began to figure out ways to try to manipulate search engine in order to raise their rankings. Optimizing Google Places Optimization has become an industry. You can hire an expert to try to raise your ranking. Techniques abound. But meanwhile, the companies that operate the search engines are aware of these techniques, and change their algorithms. While businesses are trying hard to raise their page rank to get more visitors, the search engine people are changing procedures so as to produce rankings that cannot be manipulated, that have to be genuinely earned. This is a continuing tug of war. As an Internet business, you are in the middle. Here are some tips on raising your Google Places Optimization ranking the old-fashioned way, by earning it.

Importance of Search Engine Ranking

Some say backlinks account for as much as 70% if your Google Places Optimization ranking. You can buy them, but that is inadvisable. You can earn them by having rich content on your website. Every need or product or how-to question you address can lead to a backlink. Be active in your field of business. Become an expert in a specific niche market. Be someone others turn to for advice and authentication. Give out free, helpful information on your site. Contribute to forums, comment on other people’s blogs, write guest blog postings for sites related to your business, do article marketing. Add a little humor to engage your readers, or a contest that wins a prize. Put a video on YouTube that demonstrates how to use one of your products. Provide a webinar to your customers. All of these efforts will help generate backlinks because they create interaction with others in your field on the Internet.

Keep revising your keywords. Look for good tips online about what is currently working in Google Places Optimization–but be sure they are legal. Some say “co-occurence” is a new way search engine figure rankings. Instead of actual keywords in your tags or text, they search for places elsewhere on the Internet where your website and a particular function are mentioned together. This is seen as validating a website’s authoritative status.

Search engine optimization

At first people tried to stuff their website with keywords. This soon backfired, as search engines recognized this tactic and did not allow it to raise a website’s ranking. It could, in fact, lower your ranking. How many times should you use each keyword on your website? Some experts say keyword density should only be about 5% for a primary keyword, less than 2% of text for a secondary keyword.

Be sure to use your keyword or phrase in your domain name and URL. Search engine always read these.

Try to link to .edu or .gov sites, as these carry a reputation for authenticity. They are hard to get a link from, but it you do, it adds to your credibility.

When you plan to link to another website, check the Google page rank of the site. A higher ranking indicates a more reputable website–which you will want to link to.

Having a lot of inbound links from other websites related to your business field will raise your Google Places Optimization ranking.

These tips can help you understand Google Places Optimization rankings and how they affect your business. Always return to renewing the content of your sight, aiming toward rich content, clarity, and uniqueness.

Protected: The Local Consumer’s Path to Buy

May 8, 2013 by Blog Editor Leave a Comment

Quick Ways to Drive Up Web Sales

May 7, 2013 by Clarence Divas

Increase Web Sales

The more time and effort you put into Internet marketing and selling products online, the more you’re going to realize that nothing comes easy. Although there are a few great tactics you can use in order to boost your web sales, actually increasing your bottom line can be quite difficult. Read up on the tips below to take some of the hard work out of the process.

One of the most important things you can do in order to increase your web sales is to create a better website. A good-looking, professional website will appeal a lot more to your customers. If your website is very tacky or unprofessional, it’s not going to appeal very much. Also, if you have a cluttered site that’s difficult to navigate, this is just going to drive people away from your brand in general.

Niche marketing is a huge part of Internet marketing. Making sure that you’re targeting the right audience is the only way that you’re going to make any real sales. When you target a general audience, you’ll be lucky to pick up visitors at all, much less customers. So when you place your keywords on your site, make sure that they’re the exact words and terms that your niche are searching.

When dealing with Google, you don’t really need to submit your website to their large directory anymore. Google took care of that inconvenience years ago, and that’s one of the many reasons that they’re number one. But for Yahoo, Bing and other search engines, you’ll want to submit your site to their main directories. You can do this simply by filling out some information about your site and linking the URL.

Tips to Improve Website Sales

Even though engines like Bing and Yahoo have a bigger share than engines like Ask, you’ll want to make sure that you enter your website into every search engine directory out there. In fact, you should even be submitting it to international engines to ensure that people abroad can find your site if they’re in your respective niche.

Setting up a blog and different social networking profiles can really help you to spread your message via word of mouth. Now, you might not want to use these types of sites to directly sell your products, but you can use them to build up a lot of traffic and to send this traffic back to your main business website.

One-time customers can help you pad your bottom line, but repeat customers will ultimately help you to build a successful long-term business. To turn one-time customers into repeat customers, it’s important that you cater to their needs directly by offering special discounts and BOGO offers and free gifts for their loyalty. The more incentives you add for customers, the more likely you are to pick up repeat business.

Earning more customers and making more money from selling products online doesn’t have to be rocket science. It might be more work than what you initially thought, but the right information and the will to achieve can help boost your web sales in a big way.

Quick and Effective Google Places Optimization Tips

May 3, 2013 by Clarence Divas

When you’re attempting to build up the ranking and popularity of your website, it’s all about the Google Places Optimization tactics you’re implementing. Whether you’re going with paid advertising, organic methods, or a mixture of the two, proper Google Places Optimization is what’s going to ultimately earn you a high-ranking site. Without a site that’s ranked well in its respective niche, you’re most likely not going to receive enough traffic to survive in a competitive market.this article to learn how you can get started quick and effective Google Places Optimization.

Google Places Optimization – SEO Tactics

The code of your website (the HTML) needs to be clean, neat and tidy if you want it to be scanned well by the bots! This point is highly emphasized because a lot of start-up web designers do not check that their code is clean. They simply pack things in via a drag-and-drop menu, only occasionally tweaking the actual code. This is a very bad way to go. You need to get in there and clean up your code, making it very neat and fluid if you want the robots to scan it properly.

When you’re tinkering around with the code to clean it up, you should also use this opportunity to add certain keywords inside of your title and header tags. This is something that’s ridiculously easy to do, even if you are a rookie with HTML. The main thing to focus on is that you actually close the end of your tags. Copy and paste your code into a Word doc or Notepad beforehand, save a copy of the code just in case you mess up, and take your time adding the right tags in the main copy.

One of the most underrated ways to build up your site’s rankings is to have a good internal linking structure. For instance, you want to use keywords and links on your homepage to redirect readers to other pages of your site, and vice versa. However, these links have to be clean. They cannot negatively affect the flow of your site’s navigation, and they cannot be jumbled up inside of your HTML. Take your time and create a clean linking structure.

Google Places Optimization – Image Optimizing

Adding related images to your website is great for eye appeal. Users visiting your site will appreciate good-looking, relevant pictures. But search engine bots appreciate different captions and tags inside of your HTML. To do this, simply open up your page, view the HTML, find the photo tags, and add in different keywords and captions. These will not show on the photo itself; instead, they will be robot fodder for the bots crawling over your content to rank it.

Despite the explosion of smaller, more personal social sites on today’s web, content is still king, and all content should still contain a lot of relevant keywords. Just make sure to perform keyword research before posting any content. List your keywords in the proper context and near the top of the content, in the first few sentences, in the headers, etc. This small measure will improve your rankings.

Google Places Optimization is still the best way to go if you want to improve your rankings. Use the methods listed above and you can ensure that your site ranks well in its niche.

Optimizing Your Website In Five Steps

May 1, 2013 by Clarence Divas

Optimizing your website is the best way to improve your ranking in search engine results. Keep reading to learn more about efficient Google Places Optimization strategies you can use to Optimizing your website.

How to Optimizing Your Website for Search

Make a few changes to your design. Your website will be easier for search engine spiders to interpret and index if your HTML is clean. You should go over your code and get rid of anything unnecessary. Create a CSS sheet for your design instead of adding design elements to your HTML code. If you use an image for your background or your header, you need to remove it and use a simple color for your background and a title tag for your header. Java Script and Flash content cannot be read by search engine spiders which means you will have to optimize these elements with strong keywords.

Place strong keywords in your content. You should choose five strong keyword phrases your target audience uses and place these words in your different tags. Search engine spiders will notice the keywords you place in your title tags, meta tags and meta descriptions, the alt tags you use to describe your images and the anchor text of your links. Do not change the way you write to include more keywords in your texts.

Organize your website to make navigation easier. More pages will be indexed in search results if they are properly connected to your homepage. You should create site-wide links to help visitors and search engine spiders find your main pages right away and organize these links in a menu. Integrate your other pages in this structure by sharing individual links on each page to help your readers find more related content. Optimize all your links with strong keywords to describe the content of your pages and test them regularly. Create an archive to organize your old articles in themes and go over them again so you can add individual links to more recent pages and articles.

Quality back-links will help you attract more traffic to your website. Focus on getting back-links that will be noticed and followed by your target audience instead of getting as many back-links as possible in bad locations. Internet users should share your content if it is interesting, valuable or entertaining, but you can share your own back-links by submitting your articles to article directories, participating to online encyclopedias and posting on message boards.

It is important that you stay up to date with new Google Places Optimization techniques. Search engines are always looking for new ways to improve the methods they use to rank and index web pages, which means the Google Places Optimization techniques you use now might become obsolete in a few months from now. You will also have to constantly keep working on getting more back-links and optimize the content you add to your website.

Use these Google Places Optimization strategies to Optimizing your website and get more traffic. Do more research on these strategies and keep track of your results by monitoring your ranking in search results.

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Google Places Optimization Made Easy