If you own or operate a local business and are trying to come up with some new local advertising techniques or tips dig through any old commercials or videos you have created for you business that might be lying around dormant. If you do not have any promo videos for your store or business that are ways you can get these made online for a relatively low cost.

An account on YouTube can help drive some much needed foot traffic to your business. Online video has become an explosive marketing tool for any growing or established business in today’s unstable marketplace. By launching a store promo you can use keywords associated around your local business along with addresses and zip codes to allow your video to appear in search results. For example if you a florist in Boston you could create a video and use Boston florist related keywords when filling in your descriptions and titles for your video with the possibility of your video appearing high up in relevant search results. People enjoy watching videos and this could generate some search engine business for your.

There are other ways of promotion and link building efforts that can also be done to your online video to allow it to grow and climb which we can save for another time but for now just getting a video online for your business will be a great first start.

Local SEO or Search engine optimization and local marketing and local advertising are like spaghetti and meatballs. They are a marriage of marketing efforts that should be implemented and utilized for any business large or small. Whether you have a fruit stand or a fifty person tech company local SEO is a must for any growing business.

It doesn’t matter what business you have being visible in your local community is important. It kind shows your business has a soul or even a personality. Search engine optimization is not a white elephant. It is not invisible or an urban myth. Yes it is sometimes difficult to understand and wrap your head around but it all comes down to text. If you are a dentist in Boston then your website should represent “dentist in Boston” and any other forms of text that people use to find you. Diversity is the name of the game. You never know how a website visitor is going to find you so it important to tackle every corner. Social, online PR, article writing, all these efforts add to your branding, website ranking and over all credibility. If someone searches the name of your dental practice and all they see is your website that doesn’t really look good. they want to see press releases and other blogs writing about you to name a few things. People search online before they do anything these days so it is important to have great content surrounding your company name. This content takes out a few birds with one stone. All these various items connecting to your website drive power to your website and allow it to climb in the search engines and just more than local advertising.  If you are targeting a competitive industry it will take some time to be visible for your keywords and the only way to do this is by having a diverse local online marketing and advertising approach.

Stay online for long and you’re sure to get conflicting messages:

“Learn everything you can about search engine optimization,” the experts will say, “because without your website will die.”

“Don’t worry about search engine optimization,” others will tell you. “It’s just a myth to get your money because the search engines will crawl your site anyway and you want to write your copy for your customers, not the search engines.”

The problem with both of these messages is that they are both correct. Yes, I said that’s a problem. Both statements are true.

Search engine optimization is the science of studying the search engines and how they rank web pages so that you can build a website that gets crawled quicker and ranked better for your important keywords. The issue with putting too much stock in it is when you think there is an automatic formula or panacea for all your lack of traffic or sales. Search engine optimization wasn’t designed to cure all of your problems, but it can cure some of them.

The first thing you need to know for excellent search engine optimization is research. You MUST conduct the proper keyword research. That’s a starting point. Then, you need to narrow down your niche. Do this before you build your website. In future posts on this blog we will show how and why this is important and give you all the details in performing the proper search engine optimization without wasting your time on useless activities. Stay tuned in. More to come.

So now that we agree on the reasons why well written, relevant content is the key to Local SEO, we can talk about some of the fastest and simplest ways to get that content on your site. Most people agree that they draw a blank when coming up with relevant text for their site but that’s because they are looking too hard. Think simple, at first.Simple Relevant Local SEO Content Strategy 1:

If your local business site is anything like ours than your email is probably full of questions and requests for help from potential customers. That full inbox is the key to the first leg of your well written textual content expedition. Look closely at the questions that are asked most often. Are they the same basic questions asked over and over from many people? If it isn’t the same questions, are they questions about the same general idea? If your answers are “Yes” than you have the makings of a FAQ section right in your own hands.

Make a list of the questions that are asked most often, and create comprehensive answers to each. While you are doing this, liberally pepper your responses with your relative keywords.

Q.How do I know how many moving boxes I’ll need to move to my new apartment?

A. We have generous pre-planned moving kits that are listed by the square footage of your home, as well as the amount and types of rooms. Once you have entered in your square footage and room numbers, our automated moving kit manager will tell you exactly which moving kit is right for you.

You don’t need to write a dissertation on your company’s behalf. People want information, spiders want key words. A FAQ is a glorious combination of both.

There are a lot of quick SEO tips that are handed and bandied about by marketing companies, but one of the best tips is also one of the most ignored. Well written, text oriented content is a vital piece to any good website’s Local SEO advertising campaign.

Why should I care about Text Content for my website?

You should care about text content for your website because Spiders care about it. The words on your site are sifted through by software programs that send out their little army of virtual spiders. The spiders search through your site’s text for key words to find out what your site is all about. I cannot over estimate the importance of relevant textual content for a Local SEO advertising campaign.

Okay, so Keywords are important. Why can’t I use a keyword listing? Why do I need to worry about well written content?

It’s true that spiders are looking for text, but people are looking for information, descriptions, knowledge. Spiders index you, but people are the ones that read your site and purchase your products or services. You want your text to have real, usable content so that people visiting your site know that your business is professional, knowledgeable, and reliable. If a person only finds a list of keywords on your site without any relevant content, your site will come across as shady, unprofessional, and exactly the kind of business you do not want to be associated with.

When you are looking to increase traffic with some good Local SEO tactics, well written, relevant text is a great way to start.

Local businesses that want to succeed and compete in the modern marketing arena have been forced, sometimes kicking and screaming, to accept online advertising as a necessity. Those companies that were the front runners in this field certainly gained the biggest audiences in a highly key market… namely young adults.

The scenario now isn’t too different. The advertising methods might have altered a bit, but the fact remains that the longer a company takes to build brand awareness in a modern market, the faster they will be overtaken by the competition.

Social media has passed beyond “a growing trend” among companies seeking brand awareness. The smart companies understand that social media isn’t a ‘horizon’ tool, but a marketing necessity.

Facebook, Youtube, Myspace and others contribute to an advertising landscape populated by every age group, but especially young adults. For the tweens growing up, brand awareness is the key to a lifetime of brand loyalty. Who among us isn’t partial to the brand names of our childhood vs. the new thing that is coming out? Building that brand loyalty takes time, and it starts in the young. Do you really think that the last three Star Wars movies would have been a hit if an entire generation who grew up on it didn’t take thier kids to see it?

The way to build brand awareness in the tween and teenage age group is by aggressively targeting the social media marketing arena.

In order to compete in the business product world companies must ensure that they look beyond the playground of Social Media and see it for what it is, the base of a new generation of customers.

The “Big” search engines generally treat Local SEO differently than they treat standard SEO. The question is, if you are a local business, what can you do differently from standard SEO to increase your rankings for Local?In the Local algorithm, links still bring you direct traffic from people who click on them, but the links in question don’t always have to be the standard links to other sites and pages and content. In fact, sometimes they are not links at all. In many cases, Google for instance, is highly ranking Local sites that have many citations from geographically related sites. The citation, in these cases, is usually only the business name, address, and phone number. So in standard definition, these ‘links’ aren’t links or ‘votes’ for your site’s popularity at all, but simply citations or references to the local physical address. While it isn’t a vote for popularity, the link-that-is-not-a-link is actually giving your local website a vote of relevancy. It’s an important distinction for SEO specialists and business owners, because if the Local algorithm thinks it is important for your site, so should you.SEO gurus that are treating Local SEO the same as standard SEO should look into using this citation relevancy as a way to help their Local clients out.

One of the easiest way to increase your Local site’s relevancy is by making sure the site and business name, address, and phone number are included in the Local Government and Town websites.

Google tends to weigh government and town website citations as highly important and *relevant* by reason of their location. And location is what Local SEO is all about.

I would have posted about the new Cuil search engine hours ago, only I was too busy reading all of the tech junkies’ posts on how their first searches went. I alternated between hopeful looks, shaking my head, and laughing out load.

So what’s the scoop on Cuil, the new search engine created by Google alums? In their own words:

Welcome to Cuil—the world’s biggest search engine. The Internet has grown. We think it’s time search did too. Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance.

That sounds, well, cool. Content and relevance are amazingly wonderful things for advertisers wanting to build their business without having to win the page rank competition first. What I really wanted to look at was the Cuil advertising, and see how it is working for them.

What are the effects of Social Media and Online Reputation Management on Cuil’s product brand? First off, the Social Media aspect:

1. Their kick-off got a lot of buzz by both national news media like CNN, MSNBC and NY Times, prompting a lot of look-sees blogs, and vlogs about Cuil.
2. Hundreds of Tech sites from Slashdot to Cnet to Techcrunch jumped on board to look at what could be a promising Google Contender and then posted their results in a Social Media extravaganza.

Honestly, a company couldn’t pay for advertising like this. Not only national online media and news outlets, but hundreds of social media and technial forums were reviwing and discussing their product too. But wait…

The amazing thing about Social media is that it will put your brand/product out there for all to see and talk about, warts and all.

There are definitely a lot of bugs. For example, the first page of a search for “Cambridge University” fails to link to the University of Cambridge’s official site, but “University of Cambridge” has it as the first hit

1. The forums are lit up with users say that their search returned pages and articles not updated since 1998, out dated material to say the least.
2. Users report that the pictures returned often have nothing to do with the site or description.
3. Users report that the site has been down numerous times due to high traffic levels.

Let’s see what kind of Online Reputation management Cuil has, and how they will manage what is looking like a difficult launch.

Whenever you are undertaking a local search engine optimization campaign you should know which engines are the most popular for your customers. Too many local businesses focus on local only search engines while the reality is that they need to focus on the main search engines, too.

Primarily, there are four general categories of sites that online users go to for local information/searches:

Main Search Engines: Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.
Main Local Search Engines: Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, MSN’s Live Local.
Main online Yellow Pages, such as Superpages.com, YellowPages.com, Switchboard.com.

Don’t assume that someone doing a search for you local business will automatically search for you on local engines. The fact is that after many years of online computer searches, most people have a favorite engine and go there first, out of habit. That is the reason why it is imperative that you make sure you local business is listed and ranked in the top search engines, not just the local ones.

Where people go from their initial search should be important to you. Do they pass directly to your site? (If it is listed.) Do they pass from there to a local-centric engine such as Google Maps?

You want to make sure that your local business has the full business address clearly displayed on your site’s homepage for the big search engines to pick up. If you are an owner or a franchise owner of a national business, be sure that you have a page for each of your local outlet sites, with the full address and telephone number listed on it.

To have a professional send your business information to Google Maps, Yahoo! Local and MSN Live Local, please visit the Brick Marketing Local website at:  www.BrickMarketingLocal.com

It’s no secret that Social Media outlets add immense value to any local business. Professionals use social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with other people and market themselves, their business, and their products.

Problems arise, however, when the more social aspects of Social Media take the spotlight away from the business aspects. The ease with which social media outlets let businesses and people connect also lend a certain amount of casualness to the atmosphere. Possibly too casual.

If you are using social media sites to capitalize on business contacts, don’t make the mistake of also using it to plan a three day bender with your buddies to Vegas. If you are going to use social media sites on a personal level, remember that if someone is looking up your name, they will find it:

A. With your business-oriented site (with possibly a well taken professional photo)
B. With your personal site (with possibly a more compromising photo)

In essence, a contact is going to see that the two sites are from the same person.

Many of today’s on-the-go professionals are also young, computer oriented people that have grown up with Social Media sites. If there are pictures of you from 12 years ago, passed out with beer cans tied to your hands, you can bet that those pictures are still out there. Don’t make it any easier for business contacts to find them by placing those “old college memories” on a social media site, no matter how funny they may be now. I can assure you that possible business contacts and clients won’t find the pictorial evidence of your wild days the least bit amusing.

If you wouldn’t want a client to see it, don’t have it out there.

Now that we have ascertained that Links are an important part of your overall Local SEO strategy as it relates to actual people, lets look at how Links affect your site from the perspectives of search engines.

Links provide navigation for people visiting sites, but also for ’spiders.’ (We also use bots, crawlers and other cool creepy-crawly type names for them, but you get the idea.) Basically, a spider is a program that goes out to websites and gathers up information, then gives that data back to a search engine to index your site for their search results.

Your site is mapped, and the Spider is the map-reader. The important thing to remember is that you never, ever, ever want the map-reader to get lost!

When the spiders index your site, they use your links to get to other pages, one by one. Because we want to the spider to get to and from the sites effectively to index your site, you need to use links that are good for not only human visitors, but spiders, too.

So, what links can a spider not follow? Here are some of the basic ones:

Drop Down Menu Links: Spiders are unsophisticated and have a seriously hard time with drop-down menus.

Flash Links: Flash it dynamic and cool, but Spiders just aren’t there yet.

No Follow Links: Um, it means no-follow. Spiders won’t follow.

JavaScript Links: Javascript is wonderful, but it essentially invisible to spiders. Spiders won’t be able to index your site and your links will be worthless. (Most drop-down menus use a Javascript function.)

Now that you know the types of links there are, let’s look at what they do for search engine page rankings, and what they mean to people.

At its basic level, links are the words people click on to surf the Web. To be technical, they are called “hyperlinks,” but most people today just shorten that to “links.” Links make the web work; it is how we find other sites because without them, we would all be sitting on one page forever with no way to get to anywhere else on the web.

From a person’s perspective, links mean that when someone says their site is “listed” in, Yahoo, it means that Yahoo has a link to their site. When you like a site you recommend it by putting a link to that site from yours. When you submit your site to the big search engines like Google and Yahoo, you are requesting that they list a link to your site so that others can find it and visit.

One of the ways that Search engines determine which sites will be listed for which search terms is by considering the site’s rank. The ranking formula is determined by how popular a specific site is on the Web as a whole. That popularity is, in part, determined by how many other sites link to that site. Google has its own vernacular for link popularity; they call it “Page Rank.”

Every link to your site is like a vote for your popularity. The more votes you have, the more popular your site. And you thought High School was over, didn’t you?

Link Me! Link Me! Building links in today’s Local SEO advertising world is a little like jumping up and down waving your arms in gym class hoping the jocks will pick you for their team. (Roll your eyes all you want, but you know you wanted to be picked!)

Every site looking to expand it’s foothold in the search engine optimization world wants to build some link love with other related sites. Good links are as resource that not only bring your more visitors, they can also improve your page rankings and increase your page reputation.

Links are one of those categories that seem so straightforward and simple and yet once a business starts delving into the process, they get overwhelmed and discouraged.

To give you a better understanding of Links and how they work, let’s start from the top and work out way down.

There are four main types of links out there.

1. Text Links: This is the most common type of link. It is a word or phrase that, when clicked, brings you to another page or site. Sometimes these are called Static Links.
2. Image Links: This is an image, a picture, that when clicked on brings you to another page or site.
3. URL Links: This is just a website url that is a link
4. Dynamic Links: These are Javascript links that take you to another page or website, but they have extra codes embedded to perform other functions as well.

Think about the types of links that you have on your site, what type they are, and where they lead.

We’ll talk about the type of links that you want for your Local SEO in another post.

Until now, Local.com has been relying on third parties reviews of local businesses that turn up in its searches. Now that Local.com has launched it’s own review capability, its game on. Personally I always thought a little strange that a site that specializes in local search didn’t have its own review capability. After all, local businesses are highly review-driven, often having neither the name recognition of the big-box retailers or the advertising budget.

What Features are there? What are they offering?

The start up launch of the Local.com’s reviews offers a free basic listing to all businesses, in addition to its PPC ad product. The PPC ads are based on an auction model and are placed on SERPs depending on keyword and category.

As an added feature, they are also offering a “Local Featured Sponsor” option that guarantees your ad will be placed above the organic results. The LocalPromote product will align your add with the mapping section.

Local.com ratings and reviews section will allow users to create an account and enter ratings and reviews for any business listing that appears on the site. (Again, listing your business is free.) The site gives users the ability to enter comments and a rating, and also view past reviews that they have submitted previously.

There are some people who think that reviews are just added clutter for businesses online, but I can’t see myself firmly in that camp. Online reviews cannot and should not take the place of good product description and text, but they are a serious value add for any small business. Local.com did a smart thing by adding that capability to their well trafficked site.

There was a post a while ago on a forum asking for SEO experts to apply for a job. In the body of the post was a terrifyingly beautiful sentence.

“SEOs with ethics need not apply.”

Wow. Simple. Direct. The company really went right for the jugular on that one; they didn’t even bother to conceal their black hat tactics under pretend white hats, instead they just put all their cards out there and asked for the sneakiest Ban-worthy SEO willing to make a buck.

I do not know about any of you, but I’m not sure I would want to work for a company like that. Honestly, do you think they will pay you? On time? Or is that another grey area, too? Being an SEO for an ad campaign like that can quickly ruin your online reputation, thereby discrediting your career in two online advertising realms at once.

But the ad did get me thinking about White Hat verses Black Hat SEO techniques, the good guy verses the bad guys and the grey stuff in between.

One of my favorite Matt Cutts quotes is from an interview given a few years ago:

Truthfully, much of the best SEO is common-sense: making sure that a site’s architecture is crawlable, coming up with useful content or services that has the words that people search for

That is the best SEO advice for any serious, reputable company.

AH Digital FX Studios wrote a post about White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO, and in the end said this:

SEO = Good Website Design. That’s it.

That statement is as simple and direct as the ‘job posting’ from my earlier quote, but the underlying meanings are worlds apart.