Even though we were dog tired after the long drive in from Raleigh yesterday I was glad we got up early to visit, they have a really great group of local business people and a fun but professional meeting.

“We already know that Facebook is the web’s biggest time sink. If you look at the average amount of time (according to Nielsen) users spend on the social network, Facebook is a clear winner over sites such as Google or Yahoo. Now, according to comScore, Facebook is also first when it comes to the total amount of time users are spending on the site.” Read the rest…

Lets say that you are a house painter in Raleigh and you’ve had a website created, but you can’t make it off page 4 of the results. When I look at the meta descriptions in the code of your website I see this in the meta keywords tag:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”house painter”, “raleigh”, “cary”, “apex”, “nc”, “quality”, “professional”, “house painting”, “painting”, “painter”, “house”, “interior”, “exterior”

You might look at that and say, “Hey Mike, that looks fine to me whats the problem?”

You have to think like a search engine to understand why those are not the proper keywords to put in the tags for a house painter in Raleigh. Think about it for a minute… what do the single keywords “quality” or “professional” or “NC” or ‘exterior” or “painting” have to do with House Painting in Raleigh? That’s right, nothing.

Proper search engine optimization (SEO) must start with the right keywords, if you are not using the right keywords your website will have trouble making it to the first page of the search engines.

The more appropriate keywords to use in the example above would be: “house painting raleigh nc”, “house painting cary nc”, “raleigh nc painter”, “raleigh nc house painting”, “residential painter raleigh”.

These keywords are far more focused and relevant to a website for a Raleigh House Painter and help the search engine spiders more easily determine what your site is about.

It’s these little SEO mistakes that are costing you money and causing your website to languish unseen in the search engines on page 4, 5, 6, 7….

That’s why it’s important to work with someone that knows what they are doing, because the little things count big.

Popular sites like YouTube realized the direction things were going and capitalized on it. Now, videos are becoming one of the primary ways sites convey information from news to how-to pieces. In fact, videos will often lead the search engine results page.

With this in mind, a video could be a huge magnet for potential site traffic. For instance, Google has a search specifically for videos. If you know how to properly optimize your video for search engines, you’ll be able to pull in traffic like no amount of text could ever get you. There are three main areas you have to get right in order to get the best ranking for your video.

The Title

It should be fairly obvious that a good title is key to getting traffic. The first goal of a title should be search engine optimization. Some people insist that it should be something grabbing and eye catching, but unless you have people browsing your site locally they may never even come across the video if it doesn’t rank highly in search engine returns.

It should be loaded with your intended keywords. This is also a great opportunity to include your local business name. Most local browsers will be searching for very specific keywords and you want to make sure you utilize that. Since they likely occur less frequently in searches, you have a better chance of showing up on the top if you use them.

The Description

Since search engines are multi-faceted, they do not just pull videos based on the title. An accurate and appropriate description is important as well. Much in the same way you wrote the title, with impetus on the keywords, the description should be brief and to the point. It should not be a transcript of what happens in the video.

Again, your primary concern is relevant keywords in high density so that the search engine ranks you near the top. If you are trying to attract local customers, it would be wise to include a short description of the business if the video does not require its own description.

The Tags

Tags are one of the most important and yet neglected aspects of SEO. They are single keywords, sometimes in a limited number, that search engines use to pull your video during a search. There is no secret to writing good tags, they simply have to be the absolute most popular search terms for the subject your video addresses.

If your business is specific to one area, including that area in the tags means browsers will get returns on your video if they are searching that specific area. For example “house painter in raleigh” or “raleigh collision repair shop”

There are more ways to increase video ranking in search engines, but these top three strategies are the ones you should focus you efforts on. You want to have solid keywords and high keyword density as well as keeping things brief. Most users will only spend a few seconds reading title and description, so don’t pour your efforts into making them. For a local business fighting for visibility, an optimized video can bring plenty of viewers and new traffic to your site.

You might find success with methods like social network marketing, building a fan base among people with similar interests. Or you could get a following via RSS feeds from blogging. But there is one method that many people overlook which has the most potential to get your business some additional traffic: SEO.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a multi-faceted method of optimizing web content in order to draw in traffic from major search engines. Since search engines have become the single most popular way for users to navigate through the countless websites out there, ranking highly can bring you a great deal of visibility.

You can gain web presence through SEO by ranking higher in search engine returns for videos, images or website text. SEO can also be used in article marketing which can link back to the main site. All of these methods work for different kinds of businesses and they should all be taken into consideration when you’re hiring someone for SEO marketing, which we’ll discuss in just a minute.

First, you need to know why SEO works to bring in traffic and what makes it important enough to invest in. It is obvious that SEO can bring you more traffic from search engines, but what isn’t obvious is why. Search engines do not just look for a specific word used over and over and rank that site the highest. They are much smarter than that.

Some of the bigger ones, like Google, are very smart indeed. They use crawlers to search the web for the content of pages and determine relevance. This process is referred to as crawling, spidering and numerous other titles, but they are all the same and impossible to trick for long. This brings us to why you need a professional to do your SEO, and not just any professional.

There are ways of trying to get around crawlers such as spamdexing, keyword stuffing and link farms. These methods are known as black hat and not only are they completely unprofessional, but they are a great way to get blacklisted by search engines. That means that you will certainly not rank higher and you might not even rank at all.

In is important that you hire someone who understands how to properly optimize a website using acceptable methods. You want a Raleigh NC search engine optimization consultant that has proof of having sites ranked well on search engines and not just someone who claims they can optimize your site.

Ranking high in search engine returns has great benefits national businesses, but can be difficult because of the volume of sites out there. For local Raleigh NC businesses, ranking higher in local searches is much easier and can be tremendously beneficial. Having your website content or article marketing content optimized for search engines is one of the best ways to increase your web presence and gain your business even more visibility on the internet.

But keep in mind that there are a large number of companies out there all striving to be at the top of Google returns. That means you need to understand how to maximize your ranking and just what that ranking means for your business.

The Google 7-Pack

You might not have heard of the Google 7-pack, but the odds are that you have had more experience with it than you realize. Google has transcended being just a simple search engine. Now, they have incorporated everything from shopping to global maps and they use these powerful features to return locations, descriptions and reviews of companies to anyone searching for just keywords.

If a search has relevant location information in its return, Google will put up a map like the one below and seven locations that a user might find valuable. These seven listings are what is known as the Google 7-Pack and it is valued by every company who manages to get a spot there.

Tips for Getting Listed

Google probably already has information on your business if you have a website, but getting on the 7-Pack requires that you start up an account with the Google Business Center and fill out some very basic information. Google hasn’t made public what they value in their listings and the odds are that they never will, but there are some general tips that can improve your chances.

1) Get your listing and fill it out appropriately. The listing for Google Business Center comes with several fields that are easy to fill out. Avoid using keywords in the Title so you do not get in trouble. The Categories section should contain the best keywords for your business, so research is recommended. Be sure to fill out every section properly and completely.

2) Get customer feedback. Google wants customer reviews because they know having reviews draws in more viewers. Obviously, your odds are much better if the reviews are positive.

3) Outside site rankings. Directories, especially ones like the Better Business Bureau, can help tremendously with Google rankings. The 7-Pack is reserved for the top businesses within their categories so Google want to be sure you have plenty of solid feedback from reliable sources.

The Google 7-Pack may only seem like a convenience for browsers, but for business owners it is a fantastic boost to advertising. Getting rated highly on a Google search is phenomenal for business, but being listed in the 7-Pack is even more powerful.

But landing in the 7-Pack is a constant battle. It requires that you continuously keep on top of your keywords and reviews to stay in the spot. If you should manage to get into the 7-Pack, you will have to keep up the business in order to stay there, but the benefits can make the extra work worthwhile.

Even if the product is inferior, big companies draw in people with expensive advertisements and professional logos. Regardless of how big and successful these companies have become, though, they likely started out small and found success by making the most out of the money they spent.

What is an Internet Advertising Consultant?

The name alone tells you most of the story, but there are some nuances to internet marketing that an internet consultant handles. Too many small business owners try to tackle online marketing themselves and it has the potential to hurt business if poorly executed. Many local businesses with a good product lose sales because of poor marketing.

An internet advertising consultant covers several areas from attracting customers with professional appearances, optimizing your site to bring in more search engine traffic and increasing visibility through marketing techniques. The internet advertising market is one that is constantly changing and is subject to different fads every year making it nearly impossible for someone who is not completely dedicated to the job to keep up.

What does an Internet Advertising Consultant do?

The internet is so prolific in the modern world that not utilizing it for advertising and sales means your business may never reach its potential. Plenty of local businesses in Raleigh, NC alone have gone from trying to snag walk-in customers to pulling in order all across the country thanks to their websites. Even if you’re only interested in keeping your business concentrated in the local Raleigh, NC market, you can still benefit from hiring a consultant to improve your brand marketing.

They increase traffic by optimizing your site’s keywords so that you achieve better search engine rankings, they take advantage of popular new social media marketing and they can even help to set up a lead capture system so that even casual browsers are more likely to buy. If you don’t know much about those methods of advertising, or if you’ve never heard of them at all, you can already see why an internet consultant can take your business where it hasn’t been before.

How will an Internet Advertising Consultant help my business?

While it is important to know what an internet advertising consultant does, it is just as important to know why you need their services. In today’s world of search engines, most companies with online business pull in customers through search engines. If you want to be ranked high in the results for keywords matching your company’s product, you need to have your site optimized properly.

Some people take this to mean you need to use keywords as often as possible. However, doing that might not get you any business, instead you might get blacklisted by the search engine for spamming. A popular new trend is social marketing and it can pull in a good number of customers, especially in a niche market. Finding people in groups on Facebook or following a product on Twitter can help you locate and attract customers who might not know about you, yet.

A lead capture system is a bit more complicated, but it essentially allows you to use affiliate sites to funnel traffic to your sales site. It’s not something a novice can typically handle, so hiring a consultant can actually save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

Regardless, the nominal cost for these ads will be well worth the monthly fee and I look forward to using it for my business and instructing my clients on it’s use as well. This will really help local businesses that don’t have the proper knowledge to effectively run adwords and don’t want to incur the costs associated with it. Having a set monthly fee for your paid advertising is a plus as well.

Check out the 3 min video over at Google to get an idea of how cool this is going to be.

Of course if you have any questions about local internet advertising for your business I’ll be glad to help, just call Mike at 919-624-6592 or Mike@TriangleLocalSearchSolutions.com

“Internet search engines and print directories are the primary sources for finding local business information and account for 31% and 28%, respectively, of all local searches conducted in the US, according to a study from TMP Directional Marketing (TMPDM) and comScore, Inc.”

“The annual study, which examined the year-over-year growth of local search and the shifts in consumer behavior and media usage, also found that though local search is definitely moving in a digital direction, online and offline media still work together to play differerent roles in the consumer research and purchase process.”

Read the entire article and study conclusions at SeekingAlpha.com