Little Bit SEO…

I’m a little bit SEO, a little bit PR.  No, I don’t mean press release. I mean public relations.  I’ve found that an easy way to establish rapport with clients or to convert potential customers into clients is to impart a little SEO education into my interactions.

Most of my clients are local businesses who want and need to improve their visibility and ranking on local search.  The problem is that I don’t want to baffle them with statistics and complicated analyses of their site and their competitors’. But at the same time, I want them to understand that I have carefully considered their situation and planned accordingly.

Engaging them in the process helps win them over and builds their confidence in me and the entire process. And it makes them feel better about the investment they are going to make in your SEO services.

On a local search result page:

  • Show the sites that have maps.google.com as listed urls.  Explain that this means the business only has a Google Places Page listed.
  • Click on the url and show them where to find if the page has been claimed.  If it hasn’t been verified show them where Google is begging the visitor to tell them they are the business owner and so can claim the site.

On analysis of competition:

  • Show them a site with lots of backlinks, all of which have page rank of zero.  Use this to illustrate how not all links are created equal.  Get them to understand that sites with tons of links are not to be feared as unconquerable competition.
  • Show them a site where most of the links have link anchor text that has no value, such as JOE’S. Of course, the business must not be “branded” for this to be a valid observation.  We all know that the word EBAY has little information to pass on in terms of relevancy, but we all know its value!
  • Type CLICK HERE in the Google search box and explain why Adobe comes up number one.  We all know it’s because any document on any page on the internet that needs Adobe Reader to be read is accompanied by a link to the Adobe page with the anchor text, CLICK HERE.  This is a big “aha!” moment for many people when the value of anchor text in a link becomes crystal clear. It helps to hammer home why links need to be built to different keywords and the huge impact that anchor text has.

Use these strategies to involve your customers in your efforts to optimize their business presence for local search and you will find you are a little bit SEO and a little bit PR, too!

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Little Bit SEO…


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