Part 4 of 6 – Reno SEO Expert* Shares Some Phase 1 “Secrets of Local Google Dominance”

It’s Not That Hard If You Understand a Few Basic SEO Ingredients

The 5 Most Important Tips for the Do-It-Yourself SEO-preneur or Small Business Owner

For this mini-article, we will look at 5 areas of basic SEO concepts (Tip 4 below). These are important to business who wants a local, top-performing search engine presence. By faithfully following this approach you will improve your Search Engine Rankings giving you superior Local Search Engine Results.

Tip 4 of 5) Knowledge, Research, Curiosity and patience:

This aspect of Local Search Engine Ranking is partly a thinking exercise and partly a research effort. To get started just ask yourself, “What are the different things people might type in to find my services online.” Then make a list of those terms. Even though Google and Bing are aware of your location it helps if you tell them you are looking for local results so be sure to include “Reno” or “Sparks” or “Truckee Meadows” with your keyword phrases if you are searching in this area for best local search engine results.

Next see what happens when you search using your keywords list you just made. Make lots of tabs and notes and visit the top-ranking sites that came in from your search (just look at the top 3 or so) and see what you can gleen from their site.

Learn from these top performers. If you know how, and I recommend you learn the basics of how, look at the source code of the top-performing websites and get an idea of the keywords, header tags and meta-descriptions they are using. Look at how their information is organized on the page, look at how many words are on the page and what words are at the top middle and bottom. Get curious and take the Sherlock Holmes approach. You will be amazed at what you will learn if you look closely enough. Then take notes that you can use to implement their success tactics.

And if see something you don’t understand… look it up or hire a SEO consultant (Yes, we do that too!) to help you understand what you are up against.

Now this is a simplistic overview but it will yield results for any competitive local market. But you have to invest the necessary time and you have to commit to making incremental progress.

So get started, be patient and watch your results. I guarantee you will make headway if you incorporate this approach.

One note of caution. Older websites and domains have quite a bit of advantage here. All things being equal, Search Engines will give older sites a higher ranking. So in order to overcome this you have to be better on your subjective quality score.

Coming next: “Time and Commitment”. Date for next post will be March 12, 2010

*Reno SEO Expert. A paid professional who can provide measurable results and demonstrate ROI for promised SEO services and also be able to share success stories for past clients they have worked with.