What is Search Engine Optimization For Local Business?

Local Business SEO is: An Internet marketing strategy of applying the methodology of 4 distinct but inter-related disciplines, in order to accomplish the goal of increasing the volume of demographically and geographically “Targeted” niche traffic to a local businesses website pages. This strategy is driven by search engine organic Local Business Listing” and organic (Not paid) search results.

Local SEO search results goals for both local business listings and general listings are accomplished through natural or un-paid (“organic”) methods. (Not to be confused with Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which is intended to accomplish the same goals but uses “Paid advertising” versus the “Un-paid advertising” methods of building traffic from search engines.)

Using SEO to Target Your Market (Niche): As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work as well as what and how Internet users search for their subjects of interest.

Optimizing a web site’s pages primarily involves creating or editing a web site’s page content, Markup language and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords that a targeted market may search for and to remove barriers (Critical coding errors) to the website indexing activities of search engines.

On Site and Off Site Optimization (Direct and Indirect Control)

There are 4 things a site owner or outsourced SEO expert can control that will have a direct affect on a page’s Search Engine Result Positions (SERPs) for a given page’s primary keywords. Three of the following disciplines can be controlled directly by a site owner or optimizer. The last can only controlled be in part by the site owner.

Direct Control

Effective Search Engine Friendly Coding:

The more streamline the coding of a web page, the easier it is for a SEARCH ENGINE SPIDER to scan/spider and index a web page into a search engines database. Semantically marking up all content the client provides to make it as sensible and accessible to search engines as possible is one of the “Best Practices” fundamentals I always employee.

Measured Keyword Relevance and Distribution:

Page Titles, H1, H2 & H3 Head Lines need to be keyword relevant. The body content not only needs to be well written, interesting to the reader and informative, but laced with keywords and phrases relevant to the pages subject. For local business sites, keywords need to be coded/tagged for Geo-Targeting to the Region, State, City, Town and Zip Code Areas where the business is located.

Usually the client will supply the text copy for their web pages. If they require guidance in developing quality keyword relevant text content with an allowable density for their web pages, I am of course available for consulting as well as able to make available e-courses on the subject that can assist them with their Copy Writing. Obviously if the client prefers I write the text content for their site, Copy Writing fees apply.

Since “Local” business websites can gain additional exposure through search engines through “Local Business Listings”, it is also imperative for local business owners to register their business web sites with the major search engine’s local business listings like Google Maps. These systems offer numerous opportunities to show up higher in the local listings than their competition. These opportunities deserve serious research for each search engine to take advantage of local customers finding their site easily in local listings.

Link Building:

Internal linking is how your site links allow for navigation in your own content from page to page and within pages. The links within a website basically create a hierarchy, which search engines evaluate. The internal link structure of a web site has to make a logical structured sense to a search engine spider.

Internal link structure refers to all the links within your website. Spiders look at which pages are linked together and which are not, keeping track of the link popularity of each page. The internal link algorithm follows some of the same rules that govern Page Rank. Sites that have no clear hierarchy to the link structure typically don’t rank well in the SERPs. Some would argue that internal linking can be as important, and in some cases more important than inbound referral links from popular sites.

Indirect Control

Inbound Referral Links (Sometimes referred to as “Back Links” or “Referral links”):

Inbound links from popular sites, (Also known as referral links to a web site or page), will carry the most weight with search engines for the foreseeable future. Inbound links are something a site owner can have direct control of using certain Inbound linking strategies, but for the most part they have limited control over inbound links. Why? Whether or not Site Owner B of a potentially referring site is willing to link/refer to the site of Site Owner A or not is up to site owner B.

However links can be traded (Called reciprocal linking), or purchased from other websites that specialize in sharing links (Called link farms). However these are usually from low quality, (Unpopular web sites), which do not count heavily toward better page rank in the SERPs. Companies like Google, Yahoo, ASK and BING are aware that this happens and account for it to prevent people from gaming the system. Your site can even be blacklisted if you become associated with these seedy link-sellers. If you want others to link to you then you must provide them with a website based on quality content they will want to link to.

Organic Search Engine Optimization – Local Advertising

The web is currently flooded with millions of websites. If you have a local business website and want people to take note of it, you should certainly go for local search engine optimization. Local SEO will ensure that your website will come up in the top search engine results when people search for something that your website has to offer locally. There are numerous kinds of local search engine optimization available. One such kind of local SEO is organic search engine optimization. In this kind of optimization, you will be able to get traffic to your website naturally.

In an effort to get more traffic to their websites, many people resort to numerous methods. Some of them even pay the search engines so that their websites’ page ranking increases. In organic local search engine optimization, people will not be paying any money but will try to get more traffic to their websites organically or naturally. If you have a website which is genuinely rich in content and has adequate relevance, you will surely not want to pay for something that you have the ability to get even without paying.

In organic local search engine optimization, this is what you will be trying to do. When you have a website which aims to provide advertisement for a local service or product that you are offering which no other company or firm is doing, you can be sure that you will not have to put a lot of effort to get more traffic. You can optimize your website through the organic local SEO approach. The chances of other companies or firms providing the same functions with the same name are very little and hence you can be sure that your page ranking is adequately high.

There are numerous benefits of choosing organic method of local SEO. People understand that if the website is good and the company is genuine, it would not have to pay to get page ranking. Hence people visit websites which are organic. When you choose to go for the organic local SEO, you will also be getting desirable search results for longer periods of time. You will have good content and relevant information which will draw in more prospective customers. This kind of local optimization will also be a lot cheaper and hence it is advisable that you go for organic SEO.

Organic Search Engine Optimization For Local Business Owners

I have been online marketing for over a decade and I have seen first hand the changes that have occurred especially with regards to Google and their algorithm updates and I’m sure that many of you will be running scared of how to optimize your website or blog anymore.
There is a lot of talk about Search Engine Optimization, however not so much about Organic Search Engine Optimization itself. So, I want to tackle that subject first. So, what precisely is Organic Search Engine Optimization?
Organic Search Engine Optimization is much like regular Search Engine Optimization event because it is the procedure of optimizing the design of your website so that search engine results, after paying attention to your content, utilizing your prepared list of keywords. The search engine will rank your website higher in the non-paid or natural listings. You will often see these appear below the paid ads at the top of the page on Google.
Organic Search Engine Optimization often referred to as Natural Search Engine Optimization, has a slight distinction from normal Search Engine Optimization in specific aspects however the focus here, is to work towards getting the best ranking in Natural search engine results.
If you are new to this area of Website Optimization it may be worth your time to invest some money with a Small Business SEO Specialist. They will initially carry out a Website review for you usually Free of Charge then they will create a report detailing the areas that they believe need attention in order to improve your position. You should find the costs reasonable and better yet it gives you the chance to learn a little and focus on your own business rather than trying to learn several new methods at the same time, its just not worth your time, in my opinion.
Your chosen SEO team will assess your website thoroughly to see how best to enhance your website’s capacity. They will then try to determine any technical issues which could pose a problem and stop your website being indexed properly during the Organic Search Engine Optimization process.
One of the methods they will no doubt wish to address is to find the optimum low competition keywords or phrases which you could target and realistically win for yourself in order to rank for and therefore improve your flow of visitors.
Keyword analysis must be genuine however, it must look natural, otherwise you end up with a non sensical sentence. You should work your long-tailed keywords into a paragraph and contain the usual content thereafter. It should include details about the function, services and products provided through your website. It must also remain aligned with your goals for marketing your website (getting extra traffic). This is trying to get the best Organic Search Engine Optimization influence possible from the search engines and end users.
Some Organic Search Engine Optimization experts will offer you a list of target keywords and phrases that have been ranked previously showing you how commonly they have been used by Internet searchers in the past.
Organic SEO starts with picking the right Title and Meta tags, development of on-page text with focus on content and design, and after that is complete you can begin to build your internal links which will go back and forth within your web pages linking Articles with other pages or content so that your visitors can find their way around. If guide is followed by yourself or your team, keyword importance and correct page formatting will increase your natural ranking.
Many SEO companies still like to manually submit websites to the various search engines individually, but this is not an essential step and I don’t believe that manual submission is any more effective than automated submission. I think automation wherever possible can help get the job done more effectively freeing up time to carry out other Organic SEO activities.
Your SEO Firm must rely on creating ethical link structure techniques, not only to safeguard the security of your rankings but to permit your site descriptions to be positioned under the ideal directory site and classifications. Ethical Organic link structure will help your website users to be able to find just the right resource on your website.
Once your SEO Team has got you this far, it would be easy to think that you have finished but unfortunately the optimization of your website and its standing in the search engine rankings does not end there. You or your SEO Team will need to continually check to ensure your website maintains of improves its position in the rankings and that there are no errors that may appear on your website like broken links etc.
One of the key tools that you or your SEO Team will no doubt do is to set up Google Webmaster Tools to ensure that you take advantage of your free Google My Business Listing as well as submit a Sitemap for your website, this will help the search engines to crawl your website to rank it. Using their webmaster tools can also give you some insight to what is happening what pages have been indexed and to see if any problems have occurred.
In business, online and offline, local business must have a website presence, they must also have a social media presence too in order to improve their standing in the community as well as their branding. But the problem most business owners face if that they don’t always have the time or the expertise to properly manage their business website and social media campaigns whether they have one or not presently.
With my background and experience, I decided to set up my own Digital Marketing Agency for this same reason, small business owners need to outsource their SEO requirements and let these digital agencies take over their social media management and then report back every few weeks with reports of what has been done and what has changed.
A typical fee for such management is likely to be anywhere from $300 for a small scale set up to $2,000 for a much larger presence so each set up is likely to be different.
For your ongoing SEO needs, once again it depends really what level of cover you are going to need, it maybe possible to bring everything under one team so the work is properly coordinated and managed effectively allowing you to focus on your main business interests.
What is expected of every SEO Management Team is regular updates and meetings, with clear concise reports on what is happening.
We, ourselves at PixelDigitalAgency.UK only deal with the smaller firms, we can create Fantastic Mobile Friendly Websites which load fast, yet another area of concern for many of the older websites. Then people are accessing the websites using all manner of mobile devices, Smartphones, Tablets, small laptop and desktop PC’s so your website must be able to be seen across the range of devices. We can do this using our new software, so whatever your area of expertise we can accommodate you.
Organic Search Engine Optimization aims to assist you generate more visitors than you were getting previously, so that your prospective sales will be made the most of in the process. You need to avoid illegal practices and favour Organic Search Engine Optimization more because:
1) Unscrupulous Marketing practices (often illegal or at the least dubious) will never last and will not reflect well on you. There are no shortcuts!
2) Organic Search Engine Optimization does work when done in the right way.
3) Organic Search Engine Optimization does not hurt the search engines, so build it correctly and reap the rewards knowing it has been set up properly.
4) Organic SEO is firmly set in the camp of doing things correctly and to using best practices that have been accepted by most of the Internet world.
Organic SEO requires many tools and pieces of software in order to run, manage and monitor what is happening to their campaigns, these all cost substantial amounts of money on a monthly basis for many, which would most likely be prohibitive for most small business owners, so doesn’t it make sense to farm out this activity local digital marketing agency?
How do you select a suitable local digital marketing agency?
Well, I would say just as you would with any other business out there, location is almost irrelevant because the internet is so widespread and the connections via skype help too because you can look and listen to what the agents are saying and how they look. I say this because I’ve had articles in the past from people who were not natural English speakers, but when the articles came back I had to scrap some altogether and re-write the rest it was a total waste of my time and money so, it’s an important point to remember.
Cost. is an important factor too and so is value for money, so think it through, ask yourself if you feel that you are getting what you pay for?
Time. Things do take time in the SEO world, if you are promised overnight rankings, I would be wary and be asking exactly how, in my experience fast rankings are usually short lived.
Contracts. A contract will outline what you can expect what is going to be done and for what price. Plus, it will protect you if things go wrong which they can from time to time, but you need at least some form of get out clause. I would expect an initial contract should be from 3 to 6 months with the option of continuing afterwards if things are going well.
Information.
Obviously, when you meet after agreeing on a contract you are going to be asked for information about yourself and your business, including this like do you have a list of keywords prepared? Together with a run down on your business, dealings services etc, etc.
It will take a while before you get acquainted with your new partnership and like all partnerships honesty and integrity are paramount to its success. Be open to suggestions and outlook and don’t be afraid to ask any questions. If you think that things are not working well for you speak up and find out why, if your SEO company has made an error give them time to correct it but monitor them very closely. You can always renegotiate the fee if you are not satisfied.
But above all, don’t worry, most Local Digital Marketing Agencies maintain a healthy and stable customer base for several years.

Calcium for Good Bone Health

Did you know most of the calcium in your body is found in your bones and teeth?

What is calcium?

Calcium is a mineral vital to health and the most abundant one found in your body. You might recognize this nutrient from dairy milk advertisements. If that’s the case, then you know the mineral is important for building strong, healthy bones. Beyond that, calcium is important for blood clotting, muscle contraction, and heart beating. These are some reasons why getting enough calcium through the food you eat is so important. If your body doesn’t get enough calcium it can lead to weak bones, low bone density, osteoporosis, and broken bones.

How much calcium do I need?

The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for calcium is different depending on your age and sex. The average adult needs about 1,000 mg per day. If you’re pregnant, breastfeeding, or in menopause your needs are a little higher. Choosing foods that are high in calcium is a great way to meet this need. Keep reading to find out some of these calcium-rich foods.

Food Item, Serving Size, Calcium (mg)

Milk

Skim milk, 8 oz, 302

1% milk, 8 oz, 300

Whole, 8 oz, 300

2% milk, 8 oz, 250

Yogurt

Plain fat-free (with added milk solids), 8 oz, 452

Plain low-fat (with added milk solids), 8 oz, 448

Fruit, low-fat, 8 oz, 345

Frozen, vanilla, soft serve, 1/2 cup, 103

Cheese

Ricotta cheese, part skim, 1/2 cup, 300

Cottage cheese, 1% low-fat, 1 cup, 251

Cheddar cheese, 1 oz, 200

American cheese, 1 oz, 200

Ricotta cheese, whole milk, 1/2 cup, 200

Muenster cheese, 1 oz, 150

Mozzarella cheese, part skim, 1 oz, 146

Parmesan cheese, grated, 1 tbsp, 42

Fish and Shellfish

Sardines, canned in oil, drained, including bones, 3.75 oz, 351

Salmon, pink, canned, including bones, 3 oz, 212

Shrimp, canned, 6 oz, 164

Fruit and Vegetables

Orange Juice, fortified with calcium, 8 oz, 347

Collards, cooked, drained without salt, from raw, 1 cup, 268

Turnip greens, cooked, drained, from raw (leaves and stems), 1 cup, 197

Soybeans, mature, boiled, without salt, 1 cup, 175

Sunflower seeds, dried, 1 cup, 109

Almonds, roasted, 1 oz, 82

Tofu*, 100 g, 76

Bok Choy, raw (Chinese cabbage), 1 cup, 73

Broccoli, cooked, drained from raw, without salt, 1 cup, 62

Broccoli, cooked, drained with salt, from frozen, 1 cup, 60

Orange (navel). 1 whole, 52

Dried figs, 3 pieces, 50

Sesame seeds, kernels, toasted, 1 oz, 37

*The calcium content of tofu may vary depending on processing methods. Tofu processed with calcium salts can have as much as 300 mg (milligrams) for every 4 ounces. Often, the label or the manufacturer can provide more specific information. Source: USDA FoodData Central 2020

Try experimenting with different recipes using the calcium-rich foods listed above to keep your meals interesting. For example, one day have a tofu scramble and the next day enjoy shrimp scampi. Your bones and teeth will thank you!

Bonnie R. Giller is a Registered and Certified Dietitian Nutritionist, Certified Diabetes Educator and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. She helps chronic dieters, emotional eaters, and people with medical conditions like diabetes, break the spell that diets have over them and reclaim WholeBody Trustâ„¢ so they can live their life to the fullest. She does thi