Hey everyone, happy Chocolate Covered Raisin Day!   It’s an awesome day for it here in Texas, sunny, no clouds, and upper 70′s…  enough to melt any raisins left in the car while we’re running around….

How are you planning on spending your Chocolate Covered Raisin Day?  We’ll be working for a few hours, then watching some movies and projects, studying a bit, and spending time with the family.

Check out more about Chocolate Covered Raisin Day:   http://holidayinsights.com/moreholidays/March/chocolateraisinday.htm

Also, for a special of rChocolate Covered Raisin Day, we’re offering a free site analysis to anyone who responds to this within 48 hours.  Just get ahold of my and we’ll hook you up, and give you a complete, comprehensive on page evaluation and analysis.   mike at coolbubba dot com or post your contact information to this post and we’ll contact you.  Just because it’s the weekend and a holiday doesn’t mean that you can slack and lay off of your online marketing efforts.   Local Search Optimization and marketing via Google Places and MANY other mediums, video, etc. as well as on page optimization continue to be some of the best dollars spend and consistently turn out and provide the best ROI for your advertising dollar.  Advertising efforts and dollars spent elsewhere very probably will shrivel up like a chocolate covered raisin because you’re just shooting in the dark…    With working to market online, you can identify with some degree of certainty how many of your potential clients or customers are searching for certain keywords each month.  From this, we can assist you in selecting which terms that are related to your business that produce search volumes that would result with higher numbers of visitors to your site.   You can’t get hit by the bus in the middle of the forrest, you have to jump out in front of it.   Same with search marketing – if you have a “great” idea or catch phrase, or cool idea on how you want to market your business, and then want to show up for that in the search engines, that’s all well and good, BUT, if no one is searching for it, it won’t yield any results.   IF you target the proper keywords and key phrases, with higher volumes of people searching for them, when you rank for those terms, it should in turn result in a percentage of those visitors clicking through to your site….

Thanks much and happy chocolate covered raisin day!!

Mike

There are very limited spots available, and first come, first served – and first to succeed…

So, for simply signing up for my mailing list, you will receive a copy of this comprehensive guide for free, through a very special deal and arraingement with them.  This is an extremely limited time offer, and I will either comment or ammend this post when I’m forced to remove this very special offer, but for now, and as long as I can convince them to allow me to keep giving it away, it’s simply yours for the taking by signing up and confirming your e-mail on my Search Marketing education, news, and information e-mail list.

Hurry and put your name and e-mail in the box to the right on this page today to take advantage of this incredible offer, and get your  $49 Professional SEO’s Guide to Local Search for free….

I also provide comprehensive services related to local search, and am available for consulting, coaching, as well as provide complete, done for you services.  Contact us today to find out how we can help you explode your client base by tapping into one of the biggest marketing shifts in the past 100 years….  Local search and experience Search Marketing by Mike Richey.  Hurry and get your Professional SEO’s Guide for Local Search today while the offer is still available..

In other words, if your business is named My Business, you’ll want to decide if you want to be listed as “My Business” “My Business, Inc.” “My Business, LLC” or “My Business L.L.C. “.  You’ll want your information formatted identically both on your web site and in the local business listings, in the yellow pages, and everywhere that you are listed or identified.

There are MANY factors to consider when trying to rank in and attack the local search market.  One of the first steps is to check to see if you are already listed in Google Business Center, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local.  If you have a current yellow pages listing, or your business is listed on InfoUSA and/or Acxiom, you will most likely get picked up by the three major search engines’ local listings.

If you ARE currently listed, you will want to claim your listing immediately.  You will also want to make sure that your company information is listed as you want it to be, and correct it so that it is in line with how you want to be listed.

Mike

This is from: http://www.seopressreleases.com/seo-specialist-cited-companys-secret-weapon/3018 and says a few things.  It says that online competition is getting stiffer, and it says that more and more brick and mortar businesses are going online to make offline sales online…  Sound familiar?
Get into the local search game now, contact us for more information and we can help you get your site to the top of your local search and business listings today, driving leads, clients, and customers.

If you are involved in a search engine marketing campaign or local search listings, are you tracking your results?

There are a few simple steps you can use to track your results and determine what leads are coming from your web page.

You can publish a coupon code to your website offering a discount or additional services or special.

You could publish a separate phone number on your website that will  enable you to track calls coming from your webpage.  If you don’t have a seperate phone number you can get a virtual one here from RingCentral Online who offer a Free Trial plus 10% Off right now.  They offer virtual and online phone numbers, fax numbers, and a wide variety of business services.

You could put a line on your page offering a free consultation, or special quote, and have them ask for “Kathy” or some name, and then when you get calls to your office, you can say that person isn’t available right now (as they don’t exist) and that you would be glad to help them.
There are many things you can do, but the main thing is that you SHOULD be doing something..  If you are not tracking, you don’t know what your results are, and can’t tell where improvements need to happen.

Did you know that it is possible for you or your business to have a listing in Google’s local business search even if you haven’t submitted it yourself?

Also, that if you DO have a listing, until your listing is claimed, it’s possible that someone else could claim it, edit your business information and be stealing your customers?

It’s far fetched, but entirely possible that some unscrupulous business owner or company could claim your listing, change the phone number and or address to another address, and effectively be stealing YOUR customers or leads.

Google’s Local Search Listings are the listings that are at the top of the search engine results pages when you type in a local search.  For example, if you type in “dallas home inspector” or “dallas movers” you will see a map at the top of the results that says:  local business results for movers near Dallas, Tx.  It then has them listed with a map, and markers on the map for their location.  The Google Local Search Listings also include the business name, address, contact information, and various other information about the business.

As of the time of this writing, if you search Google for  search engine optimization arlington tx  you can see my company as an example as well, we’re ranked number one (as of today).

You can see this here:  http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=search+engine+optimization+arlington+tx&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&fp=JJ2lHziMUzc

Google Local Search listings are pulled and ranked from a very wide variety of sources using a variety of different factors.  InfoUSA, the online yellow pages, physical phone books, local review sites, and many other places.

The Google Local Business Center has been created for you to add, edit, and otherwise your business listings.  You can access the Google Local Business Center here.

I would go ahead and see if you have a Google Local Search Listing right now here and then claim it if you do.

Googles process for claiming it is really simple and quick.  They either call you at a phone number with a PIN, or send you a post card with a PIN that you verify on their site.

Coming up soon, how to CORRECTLY go about listing and editing your business and simple steps you can take to increase your Google local search listings rankings and increase your search engine optimization efforts involving local search.