Moving Business Network - Learn from Industry Veterans

In the world of Internet Marketing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most talked about, but what is it? Simply, SEO is about trying to get on the first page of search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, and Google.  The ideal position for a company is in the top three listings. This is challenging it means you will be competing with all other moving companies for those 10 search result positions.

How does it work.

First there are no magic bullets for this it takes time, typically 3-6 months to see results. The key is simply keywords and content. In order to be the top you need to have good relevant content for the keywords you are targeting. Second you need people linking to that content to “validate the usefulness” of the content. There are no guarantees with SEO that you will get on top or stay there long. The way Google and other engines determine whose on top is always changing, so most SEO companies require a monthly fee to maintain your SEO efforts.

Be careful

There are a number of pitfalls in the SEO world to watch out for. First the companies you work with, a lot of people claim to be SEO experts and take your money and provide no results. Don’t fall victim to the random email offering to do SEO for you. Do your own research and find your own company. Locally is preferred. Use the Basic Plan of Attack listed below to help you screen out who is worth using along with their past accomplishments.

The next pitfall is what is called “Black Hat Tactics.” These refer to underhanded tactics such as creating white keyword text blocks on a white background, Keyword Stuffing, cloaking, etc. Following these tactics may get you to the top of Google fast, but as soon as Google finds out, and they will eventually, you will get blacklisted and disappear from the search. So if 30% of your sales were from online searches you would lose 30% of your revenues instantly.

Basic Plan of Attack

Step 1: On Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

1. Make sure your web site passes an HTML Validation test (http://www.w3schools.com/web/web_validate.asp). This will make sure the search engines can read the page correctly.
2. Make sure to have title and Meta Descriptions/Keywords on all pages, make them relevant to your content. Do not “Keyword Stuff”, or just fill the title and description with a lot of keywords. Rather narrow it to the specific keywords you want for that page. Like “Austin Local Moving Company”.
3. Put the target keywords into the H1 Tag for the page. There should only be one H1 tag per page.
4. Put alt tags on all your photos.
5. Make sure the content is relevant and something usefull for your target keywords, high bounce rates might negatively impact your score.
6. Including keywords for the areas you service on your site is a good source of traffic.
7. Optimize for long tail keywords. Your chances of getting on page one for “Moving Company” is pretty low, however it increases with the number of keywords you add. Such as “Austin Texas Residential Moving Company”.

Step 2: External SEO

1. Try to find ways to get people to backlink to your site. For instance if you work with Realtors see if you can trade site links.
2. Participate in online discussions on forums or blogs about moving and storage and include a link to your site preferably using your target keywords.
3. Sign up for directory listings such a dmoz.org, yahoo.com and any others online.
4. Get added to bookmarking sites such as digg, and del.icio.us
5. Participate in Social Media such as Twitter and Facebook.
6. Publish press releases to press release websites.
7. Publish Articles to Article Directories to allow bloggers to publish your article while giving you credit and a backlink.

Step 3: Google Places and Reviews

1. Have your customer’s review you on yelp and other online review sites.
2. Sign up for Google Places.
3. Follow the chart below to improve your placement in Google Places.

Step 4. Track your results.

1. Sign up for google analytics, it’s a free service that will help you see the traffic as it increases.
2. Purchase a copy of Market Samurai and use it to track your search engine placement for your target keywords. This is actually a very powerful tool beyond tracking page result status it can help you find and analyze keywords, places for backlinks, find domains and more. This is recommended for anyone looking into SEO. You can try market samurai free if you like and if you purchase it with the 7 day trial period you can get it 30% off. Click here for Market Samurai.

Summary

SEO takes time and it’s a lot of work, but it pays for itself ten fold. Unlike a newspaper add that it only valuable while it’s printed even if you take your site to the number one slot and coast for a while without changes it will tend to stay well off in SEO overall.