Bay Area Inbound Marketing Blog

People have a tendency to emphasize traffic over relevance. You need to make sure the search terms you’re targeting have sufficient traffic, but often you don’t want them to have too much either. More traffic usually correlates with high competition.

Search engines have become a core resource for individuals looking for businesses. Because search engines are a larger source of business referrals than the Yellow Pages, businesses no longer need to spend thousands of dollars on advertising in directorieries.

Here are the top ten ways to sabotage your hard work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

1. Cram keywords – Stuff so many keywords into your text that the writing seems stiff and awkward.
2. Don’t use keywords in your headers, image caption and text.
3. Target the wrong keywords – Use keywords that are not descriptive of your business niche.
4. Pay for inbound links – Buy links from sites whose only purpose is to link back to a main site.
5. Trade links with irrelevant sites – Build hundreds of links with spammy third-party sites that are unrelated to your core business.
6. Copy content – Replicate content within your site and copy content from other sites.
7. Post irrelevant ads – Post ads that are in no way related to your site’s theme or content.
8. Create page content that does not fit your site theme.
9. Forget to create 301 redirects – When you redesign your website don’t create 301 redirects for old pages that will direct search engine spiders to your new pages.
10. List your site with spammy online directories - Submit articles to hundreds of online article directories and list your site with thousands of online site directories.

Search engines will discount your site and rank you lower in search returns if you sabotage your site in these ways. A better strategy would be to create fresh, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the internet community.

To develop valuable content, think about the kinds of questions your potential customers might have about your products or services. If your company manufactures and sells smartphones and tablets, you could blog about how the proliferation of mobile devices is changing marketing. A green building architect would want to blog about the newest net zero energy buildings. An organic foods company that makes kale chips could blog about the latest health benefits of eating more green vegetables.

Once you have some great content to share, list your site with a few key online directories such as:
•    Yahoo Business Directory
•    Business.com
•    DMOZ Directory
•    The Best of the Web Directory

The foundation of a strong inbound marketing strategy involves quality content written around well-chosen keywords, posted on a regular basis and introduced through social media. This will help you earn, not buy, those valuable inbound links that help yield the best search engine returns.

How do I do local marketing on the internet to generate more sales leads? Basically, you make it easy for consumers to find you online, establish authority in your niche, set up a dialogue with site visitors and enable visitors to share information about your business.

Easy internet marketing has replaced old-fashioned trade show and brochure marketing. Internet marketing today means blogging using targeted keywords, giving away a small amount of valuable information, search engine optimization, and social media sharing. We call this new, easier process inbound marketing.

At its core, inbound marketing relies on fresh, interesting written content about your industry. You want to give away just enough of it to establish your credibility and authority. Blog topics, white papers and webinars you offer should answer common questions about your industry.

When people look for information about a product or service they want to buy, many people start with an internet search. Give them a chance to find you by having a business blog on your site.

Part of driving more web traffic to your door has to do with choosing the best keywords for your business. Search engines extract keywords from titles, headers, on-page text and inbound links. Using the right ones is part of the formula that determines how high up you land on search engine results.

A few keywords have high search volume and traffic. They live in the “Hits” part of the keyword graphic above. You want the keywords that live in the long tail. These have less traffic but give you a better chance at a higher search engine rank.