As a local business, you have the opportunity to make some serious money through search engine optimization. What is SEO? It is the process of creating relevant web pages based on keywords or themes that your customers use to search for products or services like the ones your business provides. If done right you can dominate the rankings in the search engine results.
Why would you want to waste your time on SEO? Because it can bring you a constant flow of FREE targeted traffic. In addition, your customers are going online to look for businesses like yours. In fact, a considerable number of searches on the Internet have a local intent. People letting their fingers do the work before they call or drive to a store or restaurant. Search engine optimization consists of two elements:
- Optimized pages – Pages that are written based on keywords or phrases. These phrases are terms that are commonly searched by your customers and prospects. For an example, a termite control company in Evanston, Illinois would want to optimize pages for terms like “Termite Control Evanston” or “Pest Control Evanston.”
- Linking Strategy – The search engines determine the importance of a web site and the individual pages based on the quality and quantity of links pointing to you by external web sites. The search engines consider links pointing to your web site as a vote of confidence. A fair number of links from reputable sites would suggest a strong vote of confidence, and boost your rankings to the top.
Search engine optimization requires some effort and it takes time, but the results can be immeasurable. I have worked with a number of companies that get the majority of their revenue through search engine optimization. A couple of my clients make millions each year from SEO, while I have made considerable money from my own sites. The traffic on one of my sites doubled overnight from Google search results alone.
The good news is at a local level the competition for top ranking is not that intense. Fortunately, most of your competition does not have a clue on how to get top results. And that is also true for the web designers they hire.
Keep tuned for strategies on search engine ranking, and learn how to generate an endless stream of new customers for free.
