I am continually amazed at how few businesses actually do solid keyword research.  Discovering what people are typing into the search engines when they make a query is like looking into the minds of your prospective customers.  When people do an online search in Google or one of the other search engines, they are looking for answers.  If your product or service will provide them with the answer they are looking for, don’t you think it would be a good thing for your website to show up for their search?

I have run into Dentists that only optimize for keywords like “cosmetic dentist”, “dentist”, “crowns”, “bridges”, and “teeth whitening”.  What about phrases like “my tooth hurts”.    Even better, what about the keyword phrase “find an emergency dentist”.  If I were a dentist,  I would want my website at the top of the page if someone typed “my tooth hurts” into Google.  I certainly would love to have my site show up if people do a search for  any phrase with the words “emergency” and “dentist” in them.  Do you think that someone who types in the word “emergency” might be a potential customer that might spend some money?

So the goal is to figure out what the keywords are for your business that are truly “buyer” keywords.    When the customers enter in the “buyer” keywords, you want your website to show up on the top of page 1 in the search engines.  When they click the link, you want to give them content that is highly relevant to the keywords that they entered, but you also want to engage with your prospective customer and get them to take some form of action.  You want them to buy, call, become a lead and/or become a customer!

Also, local businesses should also use keywords that help the search engines geo target their service areas.  Every city or suburb that a business services should also be part of your keyword research! Some businesses will go as far as to create a separate page for every city, town or area that people may type into a search engine.  This sounds potentially cumbersome, but there are ways to automate and simplify this process.

Keywords are the fuel that powers the search engines and businesses that have embraced the power of the internet will understand the importance of understanding what keywords will bring them more business.  Contact Steve at Seolidify, LLC to learn more about how you can get your business higher in the search engines for many different keyword searches.

Most businesses don’t understand the value and importance of those crazy little “google places” listings that show up in the search engines when people look for local businesses.   Google has created over 40 million “mini” websites for businesses.  All these businesses have to do to maximize their benefits is just claim them.  By the middle of 2010, only about 2% of businesses had “claimed” their Google Places page.

Those two percenter’s have a huge advantage over their competitors because their businesses will often end up with more than one listing on page 1 of the Google results pages.  Getting a Google Place page optimized while also optimizing your corporate website so that they both show up on page 1 of Google is a sure way to let customers know that your business is the best option for the products or services that they are looking for.

While there are some little “ninja” things that can be done to turbo-charge Google Places page optimization, most of the work is very do-it-yourself.  Seolidify has prepared a short series of videos that show exactly how to claim your Google Places page and also how to optimize it so that your page ranks higher than your competitors.  To get access to these videos, simple enter your Name, Email and Phone number in the form on this page.

If you would like your Google Places page prepared and an optimization strategy executed by a professional, simply contact Seolidify at 763 587-3785 or by email at steve@seolidify.com