Three Successful SEO Techniques Everyone Should Learn - Search Engines - SE Positioning

As the internet grows, so do the number of local searches. You are about to learn some SEO techniques that will be helpful for achieving success.

The best way to start out with local SEO is to imagine that you are one of your prospects using a search engine. Before you can do SEO for your site, you have to get into the customer's mind. The trick is to imagine that you were someone doing a search engine query for a product you are marketing, and consider what words you would most likely search for. Pretend for a moment that your store carries golf accessories and nothing else. Many people search for the term "golf," but this doesn't describe what you sell, as it includes too many things Other searchers may be looking for "golf instruction," which isn't related to what your store sells. Someone who enters "golf accessories," though, is a likely customer for your store, so this is the kind of keyword to be focusing on. Businesses trying to generate local traffic tend to overlook keywords that are relevant but not hugely popular. They are fixated on the top keywords that get most of the traffic, but that thousands of ot hers are also targeting. It helps you to target the most effective keywords if you can put yourself in the customer's place. As you start to learn which keywords work best for your campaigns, your website traffic will increase and you'll start to rank well on more and more keyword phrases.

One way to get started promoting your site locally is to claim your profile on popular local listing services, including Bing Local, Google Places and Yahoo! Local. Each of these sites has a fairly straightforward verification process to claim your profile, and all you have to do is complete some boxes and verify your address and phone number. Many businesses never think to do this, so it's a simple way to give you an advantage in your marketing efforts. Another way to easily improve your image in the minds of search engine users is to simply post pictures of you or your business to local site listings, as this makes you seem more open and honest. Try to find the best pictures you have handy and upload them, so people have something to see when they find your listing. You want to portray your business as impressively as possible, so you should use quality pictures, though they don't have to be perfect.

Listing your business in the Yellow Pages and other directories like it is also smart. YelloPages.com, YellowBook.com and SuperPages.com are all great directories to start out with. It is notable that YellowPages.com gets tons of local searches each month (over 100 million) and they still offer free listings too. On the other hand SuperPages.com supplies its listing to big portals such as About.com and MSN. It is free to list with them but the listing is basic. To conclude: local SEO is the way you need to go if you want to get more exposure.