People nowadays are comfortable using the internet to do necessary transactions and business deals simply because it does not require a big budget to do that. Even in modern advertising, the utilization of the World Wide Web has greatly affected the success of large number of online companies and even small businesses. Because there are loads of strategies and techniques that can be used to build the traffic towards sites, there is also a bigger chance of closing a sale with prospective clients. Some of the most common techniques thatonline businesses are using today are website buildingthrough article writing and SEO writing. There is a big difference between article writing and SEO article writing. Know more about this as we go along with the discussion.

SEO article writing deals with facts and not much with personal opinions. The writing process is governed by keywords or phrases which happen to be the most searched terms by internet surfers. Basically, SEO article writing is done in order to improve or secure a high search engine rating. On the other hand, article writing is a strategy which can be used in order to enhance the website content and deliver more information about a certain topic which may be related to what your company is offering.

Guidelines for an effective SEO article writing

source from: articleslash

Google Maps and Local Search Marketing

Google Map is getting a large chunk of the market in local search marketing. Local Google map placement is very important nowadays if you want to increase your website visibility for local information searchers. Dominating the local organic SERPs is through getting more citations in your local area. Citations are likened to votes from other local websites where your business name, address, and other contact details are mentioned with links or without links.

The more citations on your business name and location from your local neighborhood websites, the more Google will give priority and authority for your business name in their listing. When this happens,, your website will likely get higher search visibility to potential local customers. So it’s important to list yourself fully and accurately in as many places across the web as possible, including blogs about your city or industry. By doing these you will help boost your ranking with local Google map directories and will make your local search marketing profitable.

Local Search Marketing is not all about local Google maps

It may be true that Google holds a large chunk of the Internet but it doesn’t own cyberspace. A third of it is dominated by local search engines. Local online marketing is more of a fragmented type than that of traditional organic search engine marketing. One can’t only focus on Google and Yahoo or he/she will be missing a large potential market locally. Here are famous “third party search engines” in Australia that will make your local search marketing get big potential local client leads:

EZILON- this is an Australian and New Zealand search engine.
AU FINDOUTER- it’s everything about Australia.
AUSTRALIAN 1 SEARCH – find everything about Australian maps, photographs, news, and the like.
BEYOND…THE BLACKSTUMP – this is a reference site full of information and located in Melbourne and Victoria
BING – Microsoft’s search engine.
FACT BITES – a hybrid between an encyclopedia and a search engine.
ODP – Open Directory Project’s Australia search.

Get listed with these local search engines to get a bigger market share. One important thing to remember; succeeding in online local marketing means having a strong presence in a strong market share in a particular niche. Your business presence doesn’t have to be always on the top rank but it must constantly show up in most places in the local web.

Local Search Marketing and Social Local Search

This is where a big part of the crowd is. Social media is where the real conversations happen. Local social media is very prominent due to the personal views and reviews of the user’s experiences about anything and it may include your products and services. Word of mouth marketing is very effective in social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

Promoting your products and services is becoming more personalized and targeted rather than a shot in the dark. This local online marketing strategy is now getting the attention of many local small businesses. Consumers want more personal touches and they trust a fellow consumer’s recommendations and reviews. Your business’ success is now in the consumer’s disposal. This is a big paradigm shift on local search marketing.

Source:ezinearticles.com

Competitive research tools can help you find a baseline for what to do, but some companies that focus on the competition too much instead of adding value to their offerings actually end up destroying their own profit margins.

General Competitive Research Tools

• Alexa – shows traffic trends for competing websites. Alexa has a heavy webmaster bias that is nowhere near as noticeable at Compete or Quantcast.
• Compete.com – shows you traffic trends for competing websites. Allows you to compare sites head to head. Also offers a paid search analytics tool which is both exceptionally useful and affordably priced.
• Quantcast – shows site traffic and demographic trends and details. Also allows you to download a list of their top 1,000,000 websites.
• Google Trends for Websites – free tool from Google showing traffic estimates, visitor country location, top 10 related websites, and top 10 related keywords. Only returns data for fairly high traffic websites though.
• Google Search Insights – shows keyword trends, hot keywords by cateogry, and top geographic regions for a keyword.
• Archive.org – see how old a website is and what it looked like in the past
• DomainTools – see Whois data and how many times a domain has changed hands
• SearchStatus – highlights nofollow links, shows PageRank, shows Alexa rank, and provides links to some backlink information
• Xinu – lists some SEO related data plus more general web related data points like Alexa ranking and Del.icio.us bookmarks.

Paid Competitive Research Tools

• Compete.com Search Analytics – low cost competitive tool showing keywords that send competing sites the most traffic.
• HitWise – similar to Compete.com Search Analytics, but costs about $10,000 and up.
• KeyCompete – shows keywords that competitors are buying
• KeywordSpy – similar to KeyCompete, but with more data – including cached ad copy and affiliate data
• SEMPhonic – tracks keyword rankings and provides competitive reporting
• SpyFu – shows terms that competitors are buying or ranking for in the organic search results.
• Trellian Competitive Intelligence – shows keywords that competitors rank for and keywords that send them significant traffic.

SEO Related General Competitive Research Tools

• IndexRank – scores how well your site is getting indexed in Google compared with related sites.
• SearchRascal – shows the top 10 rankings in Google and other major search engines, and tracks how the rankings have changed over the past day, week, or month. RankPulse offers a similar service, but for a smaller set of keywords.
• SEMRush – newer tool from the folks who made SEO Digger. Also adds data like keyword value and keyword volume. Full SEM Rush review here.
• SEOMoz Trifecta – estimates how strong a page is based on inbound links, age, PageRank, etc. Grabs some of the similar datapoints that SEO for Firefox grabs.
• SpyderMate – web based tool that looks for on site SEO issues and returns backlink information.
• URLTrends – shows a sample of keywords that a site ranks for using a database somewhat smaller than SEODigger

Research the Competition’s Keyword Strategy

View our keyword research tools section, or use some of the following free tools to get a view of their keyword strategy.

• Keyword Density Analysis Tool – finds common words and phrases on your site, or competing websites.
• Page Comparison Tool – tool compares the page titles, meta information, and most common two and three word phrases between different pages.