Common sense local SEO is what’s needed by most local businesses, not expensive SEO consultants.  Many local business owners have no idea what’s involved in ranking well in local search.

It can be very complicated just like regular SEO, but, like anything, there are a few common sense local SEO things you can do that will help a lot without paying large fees to SEO firms. Here they are:

1. Fix your title tags

Especially the title tag on your home page. A common mistake is to have too many keywords and to be written for search engine robots, not people. Keep it to no more than 3 keywords.

2. Make sure your name, address and phone number is on every page of your site.

This makes it easier for humans to find you and search engines like it too.

3. Make sure your contact info is the same and is on all the local directory sites.

This is the one of the biggest causes for poor rankings other than being delisted by Google. Sites like mybusinesslistingmanager.com or expressupdate.com can help.

4. Make sure to have reviews and have a plan for getting more.  

Since Google has made it much easier for people to post reviews so you need to be asking your customers, clients and patients for them. customers, clients or patients. The most important place to have reviews is on Google + (we’re talking about Google rankings after all . . .)

5. Have a separate page on your site for each product/service you offer.

This will help you in that some of these pages may rank on their own in addition to your home page.

6. Take the time to make your listings on local directory sites more complete.

These are called “citations” and should include info on all your services, not just your name, address and phone.

7. Be careful of duplicate content or too many links on one page using the same keywords.

If your content does not read well or “flow” for human readers, it will not rank well either.

8. Do not try to “trick” Google!

They are a lot smarter than either of us, so how about focusing on giving your visitors what they were looking for when they searched instead?

Google makes their billions on ads, not search. So, in order to make sure people continue to prefer Google over other search engines (so they can sell more ads), it makes sense that Google pays close attention to how relevant a search is for their users.

Two of the ways they do this you can see for yourself in your Google Analytics data. (you do have Google Analytics on your site, don’t you?)

If someone comes to your site, then promptly leaves and goes to another search result, Google rightly figures that means they didn’t find what they were looking for. They measure this with two metrics, “time on site” and “bounce rate”.

If your “time on site” stat is a couple seconds, Google will figure you need to be ranked lower than another site where someone stays for 5 minutes.

Another sign of “engagement” is “bounce rate”. A high percentage on bounce rate (bad) means people did not click to go to other pages on your site, they just left (“bounced”).

A low percentage on bounce rate (good) means they went from the page where they landed on your site to another page on your site.

If you’d like some help with all this common sense local SEO stuff, give me a call at 720-890-8760 or email joemcvoy@gmail.com and let’s talk.

For many businesses, Google AdWords can be their most productive source of new leads and customers.

But how do you know in advance if it has a chance of working for you or not?

It can be expensive to hire someone to do it for you and you then you have their management fee along with your actual ad spend you pay Google.

Facebook vs Google

Before getting into the details of how you can tell, I want to make sure you understand the different types of online advertising.

Facebook is the hot thing these days, but you need to understand people do not go onto Facebook or social media to look for stuff to buy from you!

They go on it to avoid work, not do work . . .

It is the equivalent of having a billboard on a busy highway. There may be lots of people going by, but that doesn’t mean they are prospects.

Even if you use all of Facebook’s targeting capabilities, you may be putting your billboard on a road only your target people drive down, but they are still not there looking for you.

So, you have to “interrupt” them from doing what they are doing with some sort of enticing offer.

Google is totally different.

In the Google search network – called Google AdWords, you are bidding on key words and phrases so your ad shows up when someone is actually searching for what you have.

Big difference.

Trying to interrupt someone who is trying to avoid work vs being found when someone is actively searching for what you offer.

How Google Search Works

I think this is very interesting. Here’s what happens 3.5 Billion times per day when people do a search on Google.

Their algorithm decides which web sites should show up based on your location and prior search history.

Then they figure out which ad should be on top, which one # 2 and which # 3 at the top of the page and then which order should the ads be on the side of the page.

This is essentially an auction held every time someone does a search – 3.5 Billion times per day!

You place your bids on what you re willing to pay for a click and how much you are willing to spend per day and Google combines your bid with your “Quality Score” to determine where your ad shows up – if at all.

Quality score is essentially how likely someone is to click on your ad. If you have a high quality score, you can actually pay less per click than someone else with a low quality score in the same spot.

Google doesn’t explain it this way, but it’s really just a way for Google to maximize their income.

Say you bid $20/click and 10% of the people who see your ad click on it . . .

and you have a competitor whose ad is not as appealing as yours and they are bidding $40/click. Only 1% of the people who see their ad click on it.

Your ad with the $20 bid will be placed above your competitor who bid $40. Here’s why.

For 100 searches, at 10%, that means 10 people click on your ad making Google $200.

Your competitor bidding $40 only gets 1 click (1% of 100) so Google only makes $40.

Now, it becomes pretty obvious why Google puts your ad on top – $200 is more than $40!

Google goes through all these calculations 3.5 Billion times per day – I think that’s absolutely incredible . . .

Will Google AdWords Work For You?

Here’s how you can get a good idea:

1. What is a customer worth to you?

You may sell a variety of products and services, but whether this will work for you is all about the numbers. What will you have to pay for a click? What percent of those people who do click end up buying?

If you are selling a $29 book, and you have no other products and services to sell that customer, there is no chance.

If you had to pay $10/click, and 1/3 people who clicked, bought, you still lose money.

On the other hand, if you do kitchen remodeling with an average ticket of $50,000, you can pay $100/click and do great.

2. Importance of lifetime customer value

Back to the book example. If you had a high end coaching program people pay $10,000/year for, you might be using the book as a loss leader to get prospects.

So, understanding what a customer is really worth is what you need to consider, not just what the initial sale is for.

3. What does Your Competition Do?

If you are in an industry where all your competitors are advertising, that’s a hint that it might work for you too.

But be careful, in the book example, if you didn’t know someone paying for clicks to sell a $29 book, had a “back-end” $10,000 offer, you could end up losing money.

There are online tools that I use for my clients that show me what people are paying for clicks, what keyword phrases they bid on, and how well their ads are working.

You still have to actually try it and do testing to know for sure.

4. Are you a local business?

Google loves local businesses and advertising locally only is much cheaper than advertising nationally.

Google has many targeting options so you can even do things like only advertise to people within 10 miles of your office.

How To Get Help

I do AdWords campaigns for clients and if you are running Google ads now and they are not working well, or if you want to consider doing ads, get in touch.

I will do a free AdWords audit of any existing campaigns or help you set up a totally new campaign.

Call me at 720-890-8760 or email joemcvoy@gmail.com

It can be overwhelming trying to evaluate every online business opportunity that comes your way.

It seems there’s another one each day and of course, they all claim to be the latest and greatest opportunity the world has ever seen.

I have been starting and building businesses online and off for over 30 years now and have made 7 figures in both online and offline businesses.

Here’s my quick guideline that will allow you to evaluate any online business in just a few minutes.

For an online business to make any money, you need three things:

1. product(s) to sell

2. traffic to your offer funnel/landing page

3. a conversion process that converts visitors into customers

Let’e address each one separately.

PRODUCT

You really need to have a product line or group of products to sell, not just one product. Ideally, you have a low end, easy entry product under $10 and then other products of higher costs.

The reason why is you need multiple products in order to have a high enough customer value to justify the marketing expense to get traffic.

This is why selling the typical low priced affiliate offers from clickbank, commission junction, etc will not work for you unless you already have a large list you can promote your offers to for free.

The best combination is a business that has low priced products, medium priced products ($100 – $500) and also high ticket products ($1,000 and up).

Even better is if some of the products are monthly subscriptions so you have ongoing cash flow.

Who do you think will be better able to afford the marketing costs to get visitors to see your offers – someone with a one time sale product for $27 or someone with a product line ranging from $10 to $3,000?

One program I’m in has just this – with monthly subscription products at $25, $47 and $100 and 4 more one time purchase products ranging from $500 to $3,500. I’ve seen customer values as high as $800 in this program. See it here.

Who’s going to win in buying traffic – the person who can’t pay more than $15 to get a customer or someone who can spend $500 to get a customer and still make a $300 profit!

So the bottom line in the product section is to calculate what your customer value is and how much you will be able to spend to get a customer.

If the number is too low, you will not be able to buy traffic and therefore have a hard time expanding your business past your current sphere of influence.

TRAFFIC

You are going to need traffic to your offer to make any money.

If you have a large list now and a lot of followers on social media, you will be able to make some money selling anything, but I’m assuming you don’t.

Buying traffic by the click will typically cost 70 cents to one dollar per click/visitor.

The offers you might see to bring your site one million visitors for $100 are worthless – those programs don’t work and you will lose your $100!

Explaining all the different methods people use to claim to bring you cheap traffic is beyond the scope of this post – all you really need to know is that they don’t work!

So, what about free or “organic” traffic?

That’s the best traffic you can get but it takes time and expertise to get it. Learning SEO, social media marketing and other free methods is definitely a good idea but is not going to get you any immediate sales.

All in all, building your own list of people who know, like and trust you is the absolute best long term plan and you should start doing it, just don’t count on it for short term revenue.

But, that said, having the products and the traffic will do you no good at all without . . .

A CONVERSION FUNNEL THAT WORKS

If you bring people – free or paid – to a landing page that doesn’t get opt ins or to a funnel that gets opt ins but no sales, you’re dead in the water.

So, unless you are an expert in building these funnels, look for a program that has a funnel in place with proven conversion numbers.

When you buy cold traffic (from people who don’t know you) you may get 30% opt in at a landing page but only end up with 1% or less in terms of customers.

That tells you right away – if your visitors cost $1.00 each, 30% opt in and 1% of those buy, your cost per opt in is $3.00 and your cost per sale is $300.

So we’re back to what is a sale worth to you – if it’s $500 or more in this example, you’re good. If it’s $15, you’re toast . . .

Naturally, it’s important to measure the conversions at each step of a process and work to improve them over time. The analytics are critical. There are plenty of programs to set up split testing to find out what works best, but you can get a general idea just from the description here.

I’ve had landing pages getting a 3% opt in that with testing and tracking have gotten all the way up to 40%. That makes the difference between making money and losing money.

click here to see the program I’m currently promoting.

We offer a $7 trial of the system we sell so you can see how it all works and decide if it’s something you might like to do.

If you do decide to get involved, I’m here to help you with it each step of the way. You can reach me by phone at 720-890-8760 or by email at joemcvoy@gmail.com

One of the things you can do to get ranked on Google and get more clicks is to change your “meta description” text.

Your “meta description” text no longer counts for SEO purposes, but it’s what people see under your title in the search results.

What I just learned today, is that after 155 characters, it will get cut off. What you want is a well written description along with a “call to action” that gets the searcher to click on your link, not someone else’s.

In a survey reported in the SEmoz newsletter you can see only 34% of all companies are doing this correctly!  They either don’t even have a “meta description” or it’s too short or too long.

To see the complete article, go here.

Getting ranked high on the search results is only step one – then you need to make people want to click your link!

What you put in your meta description is for that purpose and that purpose only.  It does you no good for SEO, but can do you a lot of good with the real people who see your listing!

So, make sure to include a call to action and give people to click your link.  Offering something free can be good.  Think of it like a classified ad in a newspaper where you only have a set number of characters/spaces.

Write your meta description as though it was an ad, because that’s what it is!

If you have a WordPress blog, it’s easy to fix – just go to your admin login and look for the section called, you guessed it, “meta description”.

Any easy way to count characters is by using Word, Pages or any other editor that does it for you.  That way, you optimize your use of the available space.

It’s amazing to me that only 34% of the listings that show up in search do this right.  If you do, you can leapfrog over your competitors.  This is a lot easier to fix than page authority, quality backlinks or any other issues to get you ranked higher – at the end of the day, it’s all about clicks and leads.

The best training for learning all this stuff is here.  Or, get ranked on Google and get more clicks the easy way by calling me and I’ll do it for you!  720-890-8760.

Please “like” this post on Facebook, Google + or Tweet it if you find this info helpful!  I will stop posting this “geeky” stuff if no one wants it;)

 

The first step to rank better on Google with the free Google keyword tool is to understand how to use it.

to find it, the first tip is to make sure you have a Google AdWords account. Setting up an account is free, you don’t have to spend anything, but doing this allows you to bypass the “captcha”  – that awful test to see if you are human that I usually fail . . .

What’s with that, anyway?

Rank Better On Google – With An Adwords Account

When you have a “Google AdWords” account, you can login to the free keyword tool with your account and avoid those annoying “captcha” forms and also get up to 800 results instead of 100.  Usually your login will just be your gmail login, so if you don’t have a gmail account, get one of those too – they’re free.

Do we have any questions about why Google is dominating the world?  Offering lots of free stuff gets us hooked, and then they get us to spend money for ads that make them billions every month . . . but I digress . . .

There are three kinds of searches you can do using their tool.  A “broad match”, a “phrase match” or an “exact match” search.  Here’s what each of those mean:

Rank Better On Google – “Exact Match”

The “exact match” choice means Google will return only the traffic counts on keywords that have traffic for exactly that phrase. An example we’ll use as our phrase “dog training”.

Rank Better On Google – “Phrase Match”

“Phrase match” will return a larger search volume because Google is looking for any search phrases that include your phrase no matter what comes before or after it in the search string.  So, with this option Google will give you counts that include phrases like “Golden dog training”, “Dog training my terrier”, “Dog training for dummies”, “German Shepherd Dog Training”.

Rank Better On Google – “Broad Match”

“Broad match” is now looking for any search phrase that includes these terms in any order, with any other words before, after or in the middle of the phrase.  Phrases like “training my dog to sit”, “why does my dog pee in my house – I thought I was done with training him?”  Will show up in the search count.

Rank Better On Google – “The Secret”

Normally, SEO experts tell you to focus on the “exact match” searches to define your market.  But, what they are missing is that the difference between the “phrase match” results and the “broad match” results are an indicator of how many “long tail” searches are being done.

“long tail” searches are those with phrases from 3 – 10 words long.  Although the number of searches on any specific “long tail” term may be low, if you target correctly, you can get found for thousands of long tail phrases which will, in total, amount to a lot of traffic.

Rank Better On Google – “How To Use This Secret”

When you see search results for a phrase that has many more “broad match” listings than “phrase match” listings, what you need to do is include many of those lesser trafficked terms in your post.  Make sure they make sense, but by including 10 – 20 other phrases in your post, your post will get ranked for all kinds of obscure phrases.

Hope you found this helpful and, as always, call me anytime at 720-890-8760 or go to my blog at joemcvoy.com for more info

 

 

 

 

 

One of the key things you need to do to rank better on Google is to pay
attention to these 4 things:

1. How long visitors spend on your site
2. How many pages they view while there
3. “Bounce Rate”
4. Speed at which your site loads

Here’s an explanation of each and why it’s important.

Rank Better On Google – Time On Site

Google algorithm that decides how sites get ranked is based on providing a good experience for the searcher.  One way Google measures this is by how long someone stays on your site.  If they arrive and then quickly leave, Google will interpret that as meaning the searcher did not find what they were looking for and therefore rank you lower on that search term.

The solution is obvious – try to provide more content people are looking for at your site.  Another term for this is “engagement”.  One way to help this is to include relevant videos on your site, that will keep them longer.

Rank Better On Google – Page Views

This also directly relates to engagement and is another statistic Google looks at. The more pages a visitor views, the more engaged they are in your content.

Rank Better On Google – Bounce Rate

Your “bounce rate” is a stat Google tracks that measures what percent of your visitors leave your site without viewing any other pages. It relates to the other analytics – they are all trying to measure the same thing really – did the visitor get what they wanted when they went to your site – if they did, you’ll get ranked better, if not, you get ranked lower.

Since the people at Google are so wicked smart, I believe it hopeless to try to trick them – why not just give the visitors what they are looking for and get some “Google Love”?

Rank Better On Google – Site Load Speed

This one is a bit different. It does still relate to the visitor experience but measures it differently. If your site loads too slow, people will give up and leave. People expect your site to load in a couple seconds, and if it doesn’t they are gone. Google knows all – so they know this too.

I just hired a guy on fiverr.com to decrease my image sizes so one of my sites would load faster, and it’s now loading twice as fast as before and the guy did it for me for $5.00.

So, although site load speed depends on many factors, this one is an easy fix. If the fiverr link doesn’t work – who knows how long the people on fiver are available, just search for “WordPress site load speed” or a similar term and you’ll find people who can do it for you.

Google themselves will track this for you if you have the free Google Analytics tool on your site.  Additionally there are many sites to measure site load speed.

A free site load tool I use is at webpagetest.org