Saturday, August 18, 2012

Importance of Local Search and LinkedIn

Greetings and good morning, my loyal subscribers. I hope this
weekend gives you a chance to be refreshed and renewed. Lord
knows, I need it. I'm trying to make a little time each Saturday
morning to write a little and get reconnected with all my
subscribers around the world. In a few weeks, as the high school
football season starts, my wife and I will be working concessions
to help pay my daughter's Varsity Pom bill. If only I could work
concessions somewhere else to start saving for her auto insurance
which will kick in around December when she turns 16.

Life in the fast lane is, um, fast. It's hard to believe I have
been at my new job for 6 months. Loving it but working 11 hour
days plus evenings and weekends is getting to be a bit much.
Hopefully things will settle down a bit in a month or so. We're
in a busy period, and it's times like this that I tend to hurry
through everything that I forget to stay connected. So my
apologies to those of you who have been with me for over a decade
or more.

Last week I went through my lecture on the importance of search
engine optimization (SEO) and (SEM). This week I want to touch on
local search. When you search for a company on Google, you will
notice a local map that usually appears near the top of the
search results. This map has little red flags signifying local
businesses that match your search criteria.

This used to be controlled through Google Places and is now part
of Google+. If you are not showing up in Google's local search
results, then you need to create a Google+ account and fill out
your profile and business information. Use plenty of keywords and
phrases to make your listing more friendly to Google and to
insure you show up more frequently in the local search results.
You can improve your results by making sure folks review your
services. If you want more info on Google+, check out this
inexpensive product:

http://www.resellerproducts.com/Google-Plus-Exposed.html

Yahoo and Bing also offer their version of local listings. One of
the best ways to insure you are taking advantage of free local
listings here and elsewhere is to use a free service called
GetListed.org. If you visit this site, you can type in your
business name and zip code and the service will show you where you
are already listed and where you are failing to take advantage of
your listings. Clicking the respective links on that site will
take you to the various place you need to go to register your
business with the various local listings that are available to
you including my company's directory, YP.com.

I strongly advise you to take advantage of all of the local
listing services to help give you more visibility in the search
results, but keep in mind these listings do not and should not
ever take the place of a formal SEO strategy. Local listings are
VERY dynamic and change all the time, so here today and gone
tomorrow. For instance, if you search for "magicians tulsa ok"
you will see I am listed at #2 but tomorrow I could be off the
page! That's why it pays to make sure you have a handle on common
SEO strategies to help you get to page one search results and
stay there. I've written a few ebooks on these types of
strategies, and while simple, they can be very effective:

http://www.push-pull-marketing.com/

http://www.rocketsciencerevealed.com/

If you don't know the basics or want to develop a greater
understanding of how I have accomplished good rankings
repeatedly, then you should pick up one or both of these ebooks.
No fluff. All practical advice.

Another area I think more and more folks should be tapping into
is LinkedIn. If you are in business this should be the go to
place for making good connections to expand your business. When
time allows before I visit a new client, I always search for them
on LinkedIn and then look to see if we are connected by any
common friends or acquaintances. This helps build a relationship
faster and helps to establish trust and credibility. There are
several ebooks and courses available on this subject which are
definitely worth exploring. Most people simply ignore LinkedIn or
setup their basic profile once and then forget about it. Learn
more here:

http://2c2e49le3ix8072m39s-4ghl0s.hop.clickbank.net/

So get started using LinkedIn as a strategic marketing tool and
feel free to invite me to get connected with you. With LinkedIn,
my friends are YOUR friends and visa versa!

Until next time,


Steven


Schneiderman Marketing, LLC, 3504 E 99 Street, Tulsa, OK 74137, United States