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 Explained
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.
Search Engine Optimization Explained
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@frederick.com
http://www.frederickwebpromotions.com
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