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Citations refer to making available your business name, address and contact information on the internet. The reason why small businesses should obtain citations is that it can help them to easily get ranked in the local search result. When your business has citation, your website will gain trust with Google and have a much more likely chance of ranking in the Google Maps. It can take some time to build your citations so you must be patient.

Usually, citations of small businesses are found in the online yellow pages directory, local chamber of commerce, portals and business association sites. Citation is especially important if you don’t have a website. You should try to get as many citations as possible for your business on well indexed sites that are reputable and have a high volume of traffic. The more citations your business have, the higher your business site will rank on the search result and this impacts your local SEO specific to Google My Business rankings.

It is important that the citations are at the right site that is relevant to your niche. If you have no idea where to obtain the citations, you can do research on your competitor and find out where they obtain their citations. Before you visit sites to submit a request for citation, make sure you have type down the complete business information such as business name, address, ZIP code, hotline number, operation hours, and promotions. You must double check these information and make sure that they are correct before you proceed in building the citations.

You should first submit your business information to local directories that specifically list businesses in your location. After you finish submitting to all the local directories, you can visit general business directory sites to get your business listed there. There are several types of directories including directories based on industry, local area, and national directories.

You can search for your keyword + area where your business is based in the search engine to see what directories come up in the search results. Examples of the top directories where you should be building your citations are Yelp, Thumbtack and Manta. You should place more importance on directories that have traffic as doing so will allow your prospective clients to immediately find you on the search result. Directories that have traffic usually also have high domain authority.

Since the directory is getting lots of traffic, your listing will surely be found by a lot of potential customers. This prevent you from having to rely on the visitors from organic search result. Even though it is better to get listed on directories with traffic, that doesn’t mean that you should ignore directories that do not have a decent amount of traffic at all. The more directories you get your business listed, the more the potential customers will find you.

A good SEO agency will build backlinks to your site slowly over a few months instead of too many links in a single month. There is nothing you should worry about if the links your SEO agency build is from a relevant and high quality site that is not associated with links that may be considered a “bad link neighborhood” (bookmarking websites, un-moderated directory sites, etc).

You should be building high quality authoritative backlinks to your website rather than focusing on getting as many backlinks as possible to your website. You need much lesser authoritative links to outrank a site with 10,000 links from spammy sites. New site must not build the links too fast because the search engine will consider this as spam and drop your ranking. If your site has less than 100 inbound links and you build 1000 links to it suddenly in one month, you will see a significant drop in the search engine ranking. The best way to build backlinks is to do it slowly by adding only 5 links per month. You can increase the number of backlinks gradually over time.

If your site has more than 100 inbound links, there is no problem if you build 50 links in a month. It is hard to build more than 50 links manually unless you are generating them with an automated software or you purchase them. It is not a good practice to build backlinks too fast because you will get penalized by the Penguin algorithm. The penguin algorithm is specifically looking for low quality links in an irrelevant content or use anchor text that are rich with all kinds of keywords.

If you are trying to build the links at a fast rate, the analytics will show that your site is not getting any search traffic from the search result. This will last for a couple of months but everything should recover after 3 months. If you did not see any increase in the search traffic, it is likely that your links are low quality. It is important that you fix these problems quickly once you notice it from your analytics so that you can recover back the traffic in the next search engine update.

Most people will direct the link to the homepage but it will be better to get the backlinks spread out in between the homepage and internal pages. The reason is that it does not look natural if all your backlinks are pointing to the homepage. Usually, people will link to a specific page instead of the homepage so you should focus most of your backlinks on the internal pages. You can direct the backlinks to your homepage in the first couple of 3 – 4 months. After that period, you should focus on getting high quality backlinks to the internal pages.

Working with contractors can be very satisfying, they don’t want to get into the weeds, they want to have results for their business. With the restoration industry experiencing skyrocketing CPC I anticipate more business opportunities, consulting and clients looking for help with generating leads. We have recently started working with clients in Denver and New York, two of the most challenging locations in the whole country.

Google CPC in many markets for water damage is over $80 per click and on the mobile side in many cases it exceeds $100 per click. The dramatic increase in the cost per click is likely going to put a huge demand on lead generation and SEO for local businesses that simply can not afford to advertise through Google adwords. Many pay per call companies are charging up to $500 per phone call, this does not even guarantee that there will be a job won. With skyrocketing prices, its time to get very strategic with your ad dollars. We have been generating leads in this space for over eight years and have one of the most affordable solutions, that offers a win-win option for restoration contractors.

If you are looking to generate leads for water damage, flooding, fire and smoke damage customers, give us a call or drop a quick inquiry online to learn more about how we can work together.

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Choosing the right keywords is not as complicated as it may seem, and it isn’t by pure black magic that SEO consultants choose the best keywords for your campaign. Here are four things we evaluate to determine the value of a keyword.

Are People Using It?

The first step to effective keyword research is finding the terms your audience is using. This is a natural consideration for anyone doing research; you want to use terms that people are actually searching for. It does you no good to target a keyword no one is using.

When evaluating the volume of a keyword term, be sure you’re looking at the “Exact Match” section of Google’s Keyword Tool. It will give you an estimate that’s closer to the actual search volume around a term, whereas the default broad match will tell you everyone that’s searching for that phrase as well as phrases that are closely related. As a rule of thumb, broad match is good for determining the search volume of a topic, and exact match is good for determining the search volume of a phrase.

Is It Relevant?
Is the term relevant to your product, service or content? While “Los Angeles” may get more traffic than “Lawyers in los angeles county”, you’re wasting a lot of time and effort trying to rank your LA law firm for the city name rather than the longer, more relevant, and more specific phrase.
If you spend your time targeting terms that are only tangentially related to your niche, you’re not attracting the right type of traffic. You may end up getting a few hundred more visits per month if—by some incredible off-chance miracle—you succeed in ranking for the city name alone, but the people coming to your site on those terms probably aren’t looking for a lawyer.
Target terms that are relevant to your niche.

Is It Specific?
Next, you’ve got to decide if the phrase is specific enough to attract qualified traffic. “New Jersey social media marketing” might be relevant and highly searched, but what do you offer social media management services? Or are you a blog on social media marketing? Maybe you offer a social media management toolkit specific to New Jersey business owners. The list could go on.
While a term might be relevant to your industry and it might receive a good deal of searches, it still may not fall in line with what your business is focused on. The result of targeting keywords that aren’t specific is much the same as the problem of relevance; you might get more traffic, but they aren’t the kind you want.

Is It Achievable?

Finally, you’ll want to examine the competition around your desired phrase. If it passes all of the above tests, this is the final frontier; if you can make it here, you’ll make it anywhere, kid.
Take a look at the top 10 URLs that are ranking for the terms you want to go after. Use a tool like the Google Keyword Planner or the Ahrefs to examine their backlinks, authority, and page rank. Do the top URLs for your term completely outclass you in these areas? If so, you might want to consider targeting a phrase that is easier to rank for.

So there you go, a basic threshing process for keyword research. Hopefully this will help you when choosing the terms you want to go after.

Have any tips for choosing the right keywords? If you’re a business owner, what else would you want to know about keyword research? If you’re in the SEO industry, what other considerations do you put into your keyword selection?

Stay tuned to the local seo experts from white fire media as we dig deep on all kinds of SEO topics in 2017!

Choosing the right keywords is not as complicated as it may seem, and it isn’t by pure black magic that SEO consultants choose the best keywords for your campaign. Here are four things we evaluate to determine the value of a keyword.

Are People Using It?

The first step to effective keyword research is finding the terms your audience is using. This is a natural consideration for anyone doing research; you want to use terms that people are actually searching for. It does you no good to target a keyword no one is using.

When evaluating the volume of a keyword term, be sure you’re looking at the “Exact Match” section of Google’s Keyword Tool. It will give you an estimate that’s closer to the actual search volume around a term, whereas the default broad match will tell you everyone that’s searching for that phrase as well as phrases that are closely related. As a rule of thumb, broad match is good for determining the search volume of a topic, and exact match is good for determining the search volume of a phrase.

Is It Relevant?

Is the term relevant to your product, service or content? While “Los Angeles” may get more traffic than “Lawyers in los angeles county”, you’re wasting a lot of time and effort trying to rank your LA law firm for the city name rather than the longer, more relevant, and more specific phrase.
If you spend your time targeting terms that are only tangentially related to your niche, you’re not attracting the right type of traffic. You may end up getting a few hundred more visits per month if—by some incredible off-chance miracle—you succeed in ranking for the city name alone, but the people coming to your site on those terms probably aren’t looking for a lawyer.
Target terms that are relevant to your niche.

Is It Specific?

Next, you’ve got to decide if the phrase is specific enough to attract qualified traffic. “New Jersey social media marketing” might be relevant and highly searched, but what do you offer social media management services? Or are you a blog on social media marketing? Maybe you offer a social media management toolkit specific to New Jersey business owners. The list could go on.
While a term might be relevant to your industry and it might receive a good deal of searches, it still may not fall in line with what your business is focused on. The result of targeting keywords that aren’t specific is much the same as the problem of relevance; you might get more traffic, but they aren’t the kind you want.

Is It Achievable?

Finally, you’ll want to examine the competition around your desired phrase. If it passes all of the above tests, this is the final frontier; if you can make it here, you’ll make it anywhere, kid.
Take a look at the top 10 URLs that are ranking for the terms you want to go after. Use a tool like the Google Keyword Planner or the Ahrefs to examine their backlinks, authority, and page rank. Do the top URLs for your term completely outclass you in these areas? If so, you might want to consider targeting a phrase that is easier to rank for.

So there you go, a basic threshing process for keyword research. Hopefully this will help you when choosing the terms you want to go after.

Have any tips for choosing the right keywords? If you’re a business owner, what else would you want to know about keyword research? If you’re in the SEO industry, what other considerations do you put into your keyword selection?

Though Google Adwords can do wonders for a small business, when used improperly it can also be a huge waste of time, money, and resources. It is important that small businesses realize their losses, realize what needs to be changed, and truly figure out how to structure their campaigns and their keywords to get the most out of their Google Adwords advertising budget.

The biggest issue when it comes to wasted money in a Google Adwords budget is of course poor keyword management. Keywords have the power to drive consumers to your product and to your site, to bring in new clients, to improve search engine rankings and more. With the proper utilization and management of keywords, you can make the most of your Adwords campaigns.

The most important thing to remember is that negative keywords can also help to boost your campaign. It is not only keywords that are obvious or that you imagine will help you most that can actually work for you. Using negative keywords can also help your rankings, can help to draw in customers, and can help to focus your clientele which is incredibly helpful. Negative keywords can help you to make sure that your ads are only seen by those that are going to follow the links and those that are going to be interested in what you are selling.

A negative keyword can help businesses to make sure that their ads are seen by those that actually may use them. This means that you can help to cut ad spend waste and find customers that are truly interested in your business and in what you are offering. Adding negative keywords can make sure that your ad is not going to pop up when specific keywords are searched and that your ads are utilized properly.

Another big issue with Google Adwords is the structure of campaigns. It is crucial that every campaign be tailored to the business and to the individual needs of that business. This will help cut down on unnecessary spending and will help focus your content so that the consumers that are interested in what you are selling will see your ads. Structuring your campaign can include things like balancing where your ads show up, working on keywords, and even working on the overall arc of your campaign. You can do a great deal for your campaign by working on the structure and really paying attention to your keywords overall.

WhiteFireSEO specializes in helping business owners achieve 1st page rankings on Google and Yahoo, contact us for a free estimate today!

As a small business owner, if you have a website – that’s not enough to get discovered online. Sure, social media outlets such as Facebook and Google+ are nice, but your website is the “mothership”. Optimization can be applied to your website and even social media properties connected with your business.

At the base of this are keywords, the things that people are typing in to find companies and answers. Keyword research can allow anyone to see real numbers behind those keywords, such as how many times a month it’s searched for and how much competition you would have to go up against.

I’ve put together a little infographic for you to demonstrate this so you can see how getting ranked for a local keyword is much more viable than chasing something big. You’ll also see just how targeted it is and realize that although the search volumes are lower, they aren’t all that bad…and that’s just with one keyword, because you can target other ones related to your niche as well.

Why should this matter to you? because those are your future customers behind those keywords, and positioning is everything.
Get ranked for a couple of good keywords in 1st position in a search engine and you’re going to get that traffic. Get ranked for a keyword that is local to your business and targeted to what your business does, and you’re going to get leads. Tell people why they should absolutely do business with you, and you’re going to get customers.

But just in case you were asking yourself “can this be done for my business”, I wanted to show you that the answer is yes!
First of all, a generic keyword is going to be searched by people from all over the country and globally as well. A targeted keyword that has your town or city in it, well that’s obvious that it’s being searched by people in your community. Couple that with your industry, and it’s even clearer now that there are folks in your area who are looking for what your business offers.

Because there are only going to be so many businesses in your industry in your state, the competition is much lower. You’re not competing against the nation, you’re competing against similar businesses in your territory. Because the population of your state is lower than the national population collectively, of course the searches are going to be lower. However, many businesses will realize that it’s just enough to get new clients every month.

With local based keywords, there are fewer websites and web pages to have to climb past to get to the top of search. This is why it’s the perfect time for any small business to get found online.

An SEO company can get your website and social channels ranked well so that they can actually be found in search. We look at metrics, data, competition analysis, compile lists of related keywords and then go to work. We do this by auditing your site, making critical decisions on how to optimize it and then put those decisions into action. After this is done, off site promotion can begin. Backlinks can be gained, press releases can be written and submitted and ongoing work that gets you real links to your site. Put that together with social marketing services that we offer, and it’s a powerhouse.

In the marketing world content is king, it always will be. My first hand experience has shown this to be very true. Once upon a time my content was lacking on my AF sites (affiliate marketing sites) and my niche sites. I struggled with online marketing. I was putting in the time and effort but the sales were lacking. My content I thought was good, it was not. It took a hard look at the content I was producing or hiring others to do for me. In an attempt to save money I outsourced content creation over seas to India. Big mistake. While my Indian writers has decent enough grammar the tone, focus and over all feel of the content was wrong. The delivery failed. Even the headlines were a mess.

Things began to change for me when I began to make videos and pod casts for my website. I began to make humorous pictures and hired out a concept artist for some niche artwork for my website. I reached out to other blogs and websites in related niches and started to accept guest posts as well as guest posting elsewhere. Over the coming weeks my traffic surged as my quality of content slowly began to improve. Sales that were slow picked up pace. Before I knew it I was making decent income.

Now I could have sat with it and used my income to live on saving only 20 or 30% to grow the business. I would not be where I am today had I done so. I invested back 25% into content and 30% more back into the business such as advertising, better hosting packages and more. This amounted to 55% of what I took in being dumped back into the business. You get out of online marketing what you put into it point blank. It is not easy money for most of us, but we do it because it is in our blood.

Content is unique in the fact you leverage every single piece of content you own in multiple different ways and means to get the highest ROI from each piece. Content that engages people can be utilized on a variety of online platforms to keep buyers engaged with you and your brand. You can create an Infographic for example from content you convert to an Infographic to illustrate data and create a strong call to action. Your videos you can create transcripts of to provide another stream for that content. You can hire a writer to convert your articles into an eBook as well.

The takeaway:
Content is king, you need to spend both time and money on top quality content, and you also need to leverage it to the best possible advantage and make the highest return on investment to succeed in your online marketing. You cannot not should not skimp on your content. Content will not only draw visitors but also increase your sales. If your view giving away content as a waste you do not understand the concept of give a little to get something. Giving away content creates trust and authority online as well as a following if your content is relevant and engaging.