Get Your Contractor Website to the Top of Search Engines

If you want the website for your contracting company to rank number one in search engines and you're in a large metro area, you may face a lot of competition. But there's more than one way to skin a cat. You may find that it's faster to rank high on search terms like "kitchen update" and "room addition" than for "general contractor." Or for an electrician, the focus might be on "house rewire" rather than "electrician." The electrician may have the longer term goal of ranking high on "electrician," but in the meantime he can gain visibility for his website with less fought-over keywords. The strategy he needs is creating "landing pages."

Creating Landing Pages

Creating landing pages is an excellent way to add useful pages to a website. Here's how it works. Let's say that you're a general contractor who finds bathroom remodels profitable. You can create a special page for bathroom remodels. It can show photos of your jobs or photos of the types of designs customers can choose from.

If the pages include words that people often type into search engines --"keywords" like "bathroom remodel" or "kitchen update" -- this page can become an important landing page for your website. A landing page is the first page of your website that visitors land on.

Usually, of course, the first page that visitors land on is your homepage. This is likely to happen if the searcher types in "general contractor." However, if you create specific pages for keywords that people often search on besides "general contractor," these can also become important landing pages.

General contractors can create special pages devoted to each of a series of topics -- bathroom remodels, kitchen remodels, room additions, and so on. Different pages of the same website can show at the top of Google depending on whether the searcher types in "kitchen remodels," "bathroom remodels," "room additions," or also, of course, "general contractors."

Electricians might want a landing page for "house rewires." Plumbers might want a landing page for "copper re-piping." These are big ticket jobs that customers need a lot of information on before they choose a contractor.

Search engines want to provide the best possible websites for searchers. Many searchers prefer a single website that answers a lot of questions. As the goal of search engines is to please searchers so that they'll search again another day, search engines prefer large, comprehensive sites. Your landing pages will not only each have a shot at a number one ranking, they'll also beef up the content of your site and make it more attractive to search engines.

Landing Page Strategy If Your Website Already Ranks as Number One

Let's say a Boston plumber's website already ranks as number one for the keyword "plumber boston." He can use the landing page strategy to stretch his visibility further. If he creates a landing page for "copper re-pipes," he may be able to push it to rank number one when searchers in the Boston area type in "copper re-pipes." This will give him a second avenue for becoming visible to searchers. When the plumber shows up number one for many additional search terms like "drain cleaning," "emergency plumber," "24 hour plumber," and so on, I call this "Internet Domination." Regardless of how the potential customer searches, he or she will see this plumber's website as number one.

Search Engine Optimization for Contractors

In metro areas with a lot of competition among contractors, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is necessary to push your homepage and any other landing pages to the top of search engines. For example, with SEO you can properly label photos so that search engines understand their value to visitors despite the inability of search engines to decipher the actual content of photos. SEO both makes the website more accessible to visitors and communicates to search engines the value of the website.

However, the first step of both appealing to customers and ranking high in search engines is to create a website with pages that provide helpful and informative information about your trade and designing these to be landing pages for keywords that searchers frequently type into search engines.

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Easy Off-Page SEO Tips

On-page SEO is certainly among the important techniques when a new web marketer wishes to enhance the SERPs of their web page searches. Then again, on-page SEO typically calls for tech ability. How come? Well, very few people are Html code enthusiasts. This is normally what is required to be tweaked to accomplish the proper job in optimizing pages.

Let's say a techie buddy recently performed the on-page optimization and now you would like to know how to get lots of "google love" on your web page? Off-page optimization is the next step, and the "gold" you must "mine" will be one-way back links...Why?.... Well, this is how most of the major search engine listings like Google, Yahoo! and MSN calculate search rank. The greater number of back links from appropriate sites with good page ranking, the better off you'll be.

So how exactly can you develop back links? It's not an easy task but it's definitely much less nerve-wracking than Web coding if you are not the geek sort.

Here's a few off-page Optimization ideas:

1. Article Writing

Top quality article content is the boss. We are all hungry for fresh and high quality info and providing it will bring back links pouring in. It helps a bit to be a willing article writer to ensure success at this effort. Additionally, practice the correct way of writing a resource box. It needs to only offer a web site that contains information related to the articles you post to article submission sites.

2. Discussion board Contribution

Look for forums which might be related to your site's content and keep writing about topics that will be important to the readers of the forums. Your signature space or the tag-along message at the bottom of your posts is important to use for your off-page Optimization effort. Keep it simple and be sure that it communicates information relating to your site. Learn how to insert links to help the people who want to visit your web page.

3. Blogging

Blogs or web logs are now the most popular weapons of SEM pros. Besides being easy-to-update, they are easy to read, which is what many visitors like. Casual discussion which is often done via visitors leaving comments as well as the blog editor replying to the remarks is exactly what keeps blogs fresh and search engine friendly. Maintaining your blog that's relevant to your website's material will keep the various search engines in contact with your site. Be sure to use a hyperlink to the homepage from your blog.

The key to ensure success in executing these off-page optimization practices is being consistent. Publishing informative articles to websites at least two to three times a week and frequently creating material on your personal weblog can be a surefire way to make your site get traffic. Forum participation also need to be something done more on a regular basis since it will not only improve your website's popularity with the search engines but make's you learn new stuff from other readers contributions. Also, if you realise you don't like this stuff, there's always a plan B - hire an SEO expert to do them for you!

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Details On Search Engine Marketing

As it relates to reaching a target audience, among the most low-priced strategies that business owners can adopt is SEM or Search Engine Marketing. SEM can prove to be beneficial to both large scale and small businesses. Search Engine Marketing can be described as a kind of online marketing in which paid and contextual advertisement is utilized as a means of increasing the visibility of sites in the search engines. More often than not, advertisements that are paid for are the ones which show up at the top or placed on the side of results from a search, by the use of a search engine such as Google. There is a foremost distinction between usual marketing sources such as direct mail, catalog mail, radio, TV or trade magazines and SEM and this is the reason why the audience has a tendency to participate passively in the others because they are looking actively for solutions in the search engines.

There are a number of benefits associated with SEM and they include:

Using PPC Advertising To Target Internet Users

When they are searching for any specific keyword, users of the internet frequently come across a variety of Pay Per Click advertisements. As a result, provided that business owners are sufficiently paying per click, the advertisement will be put on show the instant a user of the internet searches for keywords that are relevant to and related to their business. The greatest advantage of Pay Per Click advertising in Search Engine Marketing is that unless and until a user click on the advertisement, owners of businesses are not required to pay anything. Just like the name suggests, owners of businesses just have to pay each time a user of the internet clicks on the advertisement. In other words, owners of businesses will simply pay for those visitors who have been directed to their websites, instead of paying in general for advertisement without having any guarantee that there will be an increase in website traffic.

Perfect for Local Consumer Targeting

The majority of individuals who use the internet have a tendency to restrict the searches that they carry out online to a local level. In so doing, when the site of a local company is found that is relevant to the search and they have had a careful look at the website, more often than not, the very first thing these individuals do is visit the company directly or call them up. For that reason, paying to market their business website on the internet, increase effectively their opportunities to attract local customers who arrive at their company in the flesh with the purpose of buying their services or products.

Cost Efficient Marketing Alternative

In addition to being ideal and quite excellent, Search Engine Marketing is quite a low-priced marketing option as well. When compared to other techniques used in marketing, Search Engine Marketing can prove to be an option that is quite affordable for owners of businesses who would like to effectively market their business site online. Search Engine Marketing is as valuable as other techniques used in marketing; however, owners of businesses will not have to pay out as much money as is customary when they make use of other marketing strategies.

Your website is equipped with the right Search Engine Optimization tool, in order that you will be able to be competitive online and show up on page one in the organic search results.

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Using Google Or The Yellow Pages

Yesterday I was searching for plumber using Google and I had my results within .3 of a second. How can the Yellow Pages possibly compete with this? In most peoples opinion it can't and even if it could, it's still more fun to type it into Google.

Modern companies need to start assessing the viability of their advertising methods and costs to make sure that they are getting the greatest value for money. Should they spend another $5000 on their yearly Telephone Directory add or should they be investing that money to enhance their online presence.

The search directories of old are quickly becoming obsolete. They are large, heavy and cumbersome, and even the most astute among us would not be able to find a plumber within 10 seconds after rummaging through any directory no matter how efficiently it was indexed.

For most people it actually takes a consorted mental effort to accurately remember when they last used a phone directory for something other than a foot stool or doorstop. If you surveyed a group of 100 people each armed with a smart phone, a laptop and the yellow pages, how many people do you actually think would start looking through the yellow pages to locate their local plumber.

When using the Yellow Pages not only are you confronted with every other possible business that starts with 'P' when searching for your local plumber, you are ultimately shown biased results based on a company's willingness to name their company 'Triple A Plumber'. If you don't want biased results you must continue to search through a different section called the 'locality guide', which also tends to omit certain local results and makes some companies nearly impossible to find.

If you combine these inefficient search result parameters with the exorbitant fees Yellow Pages charges to have your company listed amongst their results then Google is clearly a mile in front.

Not only will Google show your website for free in its search results, your website could be 1000 pages long if need be. You site can be visually engaging and even include video, and you can customize the experience to perfectly fit your customer's needs and expectations. This really is an unfair comparison when we remember that the cost of a full-page black and white ad in the Yellow Pages is enough to send a lot of small companies totally broke.

So the question is, 'why do companies still persist in maintaining their listings in the yellow pages?' Perhaps its cognitive dissentience. The average cost of a Yellow Pages listing is at least $1000 and for that kind of money you can build a beautiful website indeed. If you maintained that yearly fee for five years you could build an exceptional website for $5000 and you could create and keep up a web presence that would easily outperform any full-page Yellow Pages listing.

Google also makes it possible to check and decide exactly how many potential customers would be searching for your services via their keyword tool. This information assists you to change your site and market sales pitch so you can snare the largest and most relevant customer base. Your somewhat left in the dark about your market analytics when it comes to a phone directory listing as it's impossible for any directory to accurately forecast how many phone calls you'll receive from your listing.

There's also that urban myth that a Yellow Pages listing somehow makes a company appear legitimate and trustworthy. Can you the reader actually envision a person that is about to do business with a company asking themselves, 'now I just want to see if this company is listed in the Yellow Pages before I do business with them because I don't really trust a company that isn't listed and if they're not listed I'll take my business elsewhere to a company that is listed in the Yellow Pages'? Personally, I've rang many companies listed in the Yellow pages only to find that the number has been disconnected.

Business owners need to be economically efficient and if I was that plumber who wanted more customers I'd hedge all my money on the fact that if customers were looking for me they'd be typing 'plumber' into Google. Then they'd choose a plumber after browsing their website from the search results they were given and not a plumber they found in the Yellow Pages.

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Keywords And The Symbiosis Of The Marketing Mix

Everyone is keyword crazy, it seems. And every small business owner is expected to be an expert. It sounds so easy - choose the words that will help your customers find your company's products and services online, right? Wrong.

A little over a decade ago, keyword analysis would have hardly influenced the marketing budgets of the large corporations, let alone small businesses. The internet marketing industry was being born, thanks to Google's radical ideas on monetising search on the world wide web. Keywords have become the buzzword of our generation; everyone is expected to understand what they are, what they do, how to use them and hone the ability to exploit them to foster profitability.

It's a disarmingly transparent, yet sophisticated, system: choose relevant words or terms, optimise website pages and content, watch the traffic reroute itself from your competitors and into your profits. We all know that judicious use of keywords can make a business website visible and successful. What happens, though, if your competitors are using the same ones as you?

Words and terms comprise part of the framework used by search engines like Google and Bing to decide whether or not to rank a web page in its results. Often businesses can't work out why they are not achieving high search engine results page (serp) rankings and attracting more customers: it may be because they are too keyword-focused to appreciate the wider framework, or - to continue a metaphor - greet the other delegates at the table.

A company's keywords - used in its page headers, content, advertising and social media - will only work at their best if they are integrated into a wider plan of action. As lunch is served at our metaphorical board table, for example, bread tastes far better with butter, chicken and salad to complement it, and leaves you fuller for longer.

While your company might use some of the same searchable terms as its industry competitors, there are potentially others that can be used to drive traffic your way rather than theirs. Though each industry has dedicated keywords, each company can be made competitive in its products and services by using the marketing mix: analysis and diagnostics, pay-per-click, social media, blog posts, news releases, articles, link building.

Keywords inform these activities and the success of these activities informs their development in return. It's symbiotic; it's a successful business meeting. Moreover, because it is not a static process, it adjusts to the tough commercial environment of the internet, rises to the challenges set by changes in search engine algorithms and best practice, and therefore makes the best use of your marketing budget.

Return on investment (ROI) is what enthuses people about internet marketing. Agencies always talk about the ROI with the idea that even a small budget, wisely used, can drive traffic and make a profit. It's true: agencies and their clients are not indulging in a phantom feast but are experiencing genuine, sustainable success.

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Result-Oriented Services by SEO Marketing Companies

SEO Marketing companies are delightfully lavishing their attention to magnify the web presence of the website. They are making the website more interactive and search engine friendly in order to get the maximum attention of the web users. Full service Internet Marketing Firm offer creative and passionate website SEO services that are known as organic SEO for all the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

Media researches and studies have yielded that most consumers are no longer using print media to find the products or services or the mixture of both. Instead, they rely on the top-tier search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to search and locate product or service relevant information for their buying decisions. They are relying on the websites, its information, listings, customer reviews, etc to buy products or services. Considering the same, the competition has taken a new shape and online businesses are adapting themselves as per the newly emerging online marketing trends. This is the reason internet marketing companies are flocking towards SEO and SEM to collaboratively snatch traffic to the website, which eventually enhances sales and return on investment.

SEO Consultants of these internet marketing companies help online businesses to optimize their website and make it visible on the online platform. After getting the recognition and prominence from the top and leading search engines, these websites get immense traffic and nice rankings as well. Web analysts and consultants understand how search engines work, behave and therefore they apply their ethical and proven our methodologies to deliver the best results.

To achieve substantial prominence and rankings on the web, internet marketing companies offer result-oriented services including:

Search Engine Optimization

Web analysts and SEO consultants collectively provides a wide variety of online techniques that often includes directory and SE submission and registrations, profile listing, local marketing, link building, content optimization, article submissions, press releases writing and submission, and social bookmarking. They can instantly bring the website to the top of the search engines first page (SERP). They stringently employ white hat SEO strategies that will get you to the top and help to retain the positions through their continuous endeavor.

Directory Submission

Web Directories are the most authentic source of fetching the relevant and result-oriented information for Internet users. Even search engines captures vital data from the web directories. A web directory encompasses listing of several websites in certain defined categories. Getting a listing for your web based business in the most popular and renowned web directories can help a lot to enhance online popularity as well as presence.

Internet marketing companies offer SEO services based on the proper research and analysis. They provide every possible service to enhance online visibility as well as reputation.

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