This article will be assuming you already have a company website
that you want advertised in Maryland over the Internet. The
techniques described will prove useful if you don't already have
a website.
Search Engine Optimization in Maryland.
The first thing we want to do is get your existing website
optimized for the search engines. What is meant by optimized?
Keywords, search engines operate on keywords, keywords are
search terms. Keywords are what a search engine user types into
a search engine to find what they are looking for.
With that in mind, keywords are what you tell the search engine
you want to be found under. When a person searching for a product
or service types "service they're looking for", they're also
going to type in the Maryland locality they live in.
Where do you put the keywords on your site?
The title. Websites have more than one title. There is the url
itself, that can be considered a title, there is the title of the
page, and there is what shows up at the top of the browser.
So you get 3 opportunities to use the keyword, keyword phrase
and Maryland in the webpage.
If you do not add "Frederick Maryland" to your company website
or company blog, you don't stand much of a chance to being on
the first ten search term results pages if your company serves
Frederick Maryland.
If you want to come up in the top ten Maryland search engine
results,
you had better use the word Maryland more than once on
your webpage. You had better use the entire keyword combined
with the keyword Maryland if you want to come up in the top ten.
Why is that?
Let's say a person needs a to find a printer to get business cards
printed up.
If they type "printers" in a search engine they are
going to see links to where they can buy a printer. So they
get smarter and add something to the search term, for example:
printers in Maryland
Which returns this result:
Printers Directory of Maryland
Printers Directory of Maryland, Find or Locate Printers, toner,
ink, cartridges, printer, cartridge, cards, inkjet, hp, canon,
drives, digital, photo, ...
This is NOT a printing company, it is a printing company
directory. Why does that come up and not a local printing
company? Because the webmaster doing the search engine
optimization is more highly skilled than the local webmasters.
Rather than try to beat the directory webmaster, I suggest
you use the directories existing page rank to help your
little (by comparison) printing company website to rank
higher.
Incoming Links.
How does a search engine determine who gets to be number one
and who gets to come in second and so forth?
The precise answer to that question is a tightly kept secret
within the search engine head quarters, but it's generally
known that link popularity figures prominently in the
rankings.
The term link popularity warrants an article unto itself and
is beyond the scope of this article. Google the term and see
what wikipedia says about link popularity when finished with
this article.
There are two aspects of link popularity:
The total number of other websites that carry your link on it.
The quality of those websites.
If the
Frederick News Post website has your link on it and
the Washington Post has your link on it, which one do you
think is going to carry more weight?
Coming back to the directory being #1 in the search engine.
As a local small business, you're not going to be able to
knock that directory out of his number one spot, but that
also means your competitor isn't going to be able to do so
either.
All you can hope for is to be the only real company listed
in a field of useless links to directories. And how can
you do that?
If you can't beat them, join them. Search for the directories
that are ranking high in the search terms you want to be
found under and list your website with them.
In most cases the directory is likely to have a free listing
option, or offers reciprocal linking.
For now, take all the incoming links you can get, it's not
going to hurt anything, it can only help.
David Bruce Jr is a Maryland Internet Advertising Consultant.
davidbruce@frederickwebpromotions.comhttp://www.frederickwebpromotions.comCall David Bruce Jr at 301 363-8206
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