URLs with Generic Content

This can be really bad for local directory sites. Many of them contain thousands of urls with generic content. Many have geo-specific categories like ”best L.A nightclubs”. Since many of these directory sites have the same content and a stated goal of Panda is to weed out generic content, many of these sites have dropped to catastrophically low rankings.

Website Not User Friendly

The Panda algorithm takes into account the user’s experience on your site. This could refer to many factors: page speed, ad density, user-interface design, average time on site, etc. If your site has a cluttered design, too many ads, and/or a high bounce rates, you will suffer in the rankings unless all of your competitors have the same issues.

Social Media

A social media strategy was a great boost prior to Panda, now it is a necessity. All major search engines now incorporate social media signals into the ranking systems.

Brand Recognition

For over a year now Google has been making a lot of noise about showing preference through its algorithm. The problem with most local companies and resellers is that they don’t have a brand or one that is not well developed. To Google a brand is recognized as links, mentions on third party authoritative sites, regular queries for your brand name, and social activity around your brand name among other factors. If no one is talking about your brand, it is very unlikely to be highly ranked.

Google’s Panda has shaken things up quite a bit in the page rankings. Some sites have dropped from the first page to utter irrelevance. You may need to hire a company that fully understands the algorithms nuances in order to recoup your ranking.

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First, Bing Local provides listings to enabled mobile devices. This will allow any Bing Local listing to be found on a smartphone as easily as a computer. The user can also preview their listing and how it will be formatted on every available medium. This allows a user to tailor their listing for the most effective presentation.

When using the Bing Business Portal to set up a Bing Local listing, you will notice the attention to detail. A wide variety of available categories and sub-categories are available to help you classify a service or business. You can use up to nine images to further customize a listing.

The keyword function is the true value of the service. A user can select as many as five keywords and rank them based on their current business goals. For example, if a contractor would like to be found for their drywall service over painting services, they can assign a higher ranking to the keywords drywall service. The ranking of keywords can be changed as business goals change. This allows effective control, adding a refining element to search engine optimization.

Bing Business Portal seems to be the most innovative an intuitive product right now. No aspect is ignored, including: instant verification. Google and Yahoo both feature lengthy verification procedures, Bing Business Portal immediately verifies the listing and notifies you of inconsistent or missing information. Bing Business Portal may be the wave of the future in local search engine optimization.

The post Increase Your Presence With Bing Business Portal and Bing Local appeared first on LocalGiant.

The key to successful SEO marketing is thinking ahead. Every SEO marketing campaign will take some time before it truly takes hold, so you need to plan every step you want to take at least three months beforehand in order to get the best results. Let’s say you want to take advantage of the increase in the number of hits for the phrase ‘best surfing beaches’, which should peak around the summer months. To really get the most out of this trend, your campaign should be in place and ready to go by the end of February at the latest.

The next step is to figure out exactly when during the year specific SEO campaigns are at their most effective. The year-end holiday season, for example, is when searches for all sorts of items and phrases reach their peak as people rush to purchase gifts for their friends and loved ones. Your website must reflect the hottest trends at any given time, a feat that is not that hard to do with the availability of tools such as Google Trends. It provides a free listing of the most popular keywords, which is updated constantly. Effective use of such powerful tools at your disposal is one of the keys to a successful SEO campaign.

Getting the keywords right is one thing. You need to fulfill the other half of the bargain by making sure that the products that you market are appropriate to the season as well. It should be fairly obvious which products sell well during the winter months of the year, such as ski equipment, and which products are more inclined towards the warmer months, such as surfboards. Updating your site to take advantage of these predictable trends a month or two in advance will ensure that your sales stay at a high and steady rate.

The last thing you need to do is know your customer, because search trends don’t always necessarily translate to high sales. For example, if you’re selling summer holiday packages, then sales should spike in the months prior to the season, as these trips are usually booked a long time in advance. By studying and adapting to similar behavior, you’ll be able to stay ahead of the trends and consistently come up with effective SEO campaigns for all seasons.

The post Using Seasonal Trends to Maximize Your SEO Potential appeared first on LocalGiant.