Many people have never heard of Google Base – and if they have, aren’t really sure what it does.  This tool, found by logging into your Google profile and clicking on “Base”, allows you to upload all of your content directly into a Google information database. 

Google Base gives you full control over your content with its WYSIWYG editor.  Unlike many other places where you can distribute content, Google Base allows for unlimited use of anchor text, images, formatting, and even offers stats. 

Still, the impact of Google Base is elusive… I’m experimenting with it by posting some articles and press releases on it – mostly for the anchor text, but also to see if Base drives any traffic.  There have been a few hits on the content, but nothing to get excited about. 

I think where Base will really shine is for home shopping or car shopping or types of shopping where products have lots of attributes.  For example, you could use Google to find all 4 bedroom houses with a pool and a 3 car garage in San Diego – rather than going just to one site’s MLS listing.  Same with cars – search for all 2004 blue BMW 325i’s within 100 miles of your house instead of going to one site and viewing their listings. 

This is a hunch – anyone else have any personal experiences or theories about the direction of Base?  Leave a comment and share!

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If your business is one that serves the local community rather than the entire US or world, you may wonder if a lot of the money spent on search engine optimization will be wasted.  Not at all!  There are lots of ways to optimize for local search. 

This is mainly accomplished by adding city, state, or neighborhood names to your keywords, for example “Atlanta search engine optimization.”  Another small thing you can do is to add your full address to the footer of your website template so that it appears on every page of your website. 

Adding your listing to Google Maps through the Google Local Business Center is another way to obtain high rankings in local markets.  If you’ve ever done a search and seen a map image with listings to the right of it on the top of the search results, then you’ve seen the impact that Google Maps can have. 

Google has also teamed up with coupon giant ‘ValPak’ to offer localized coupons for those listed in Google Maps. By adding setting up coupons with Google for your customers, your listing to the right of the Google Map will have a link labeled “coupons” below it. 

Localizing search terms can increase your 1^st page visibility

Even if you do serve more than the local market, lots of people may be searching for with local keywords attached.  For very competitive industries and terms, this can greatly increase your number of first page listings.

We are an Atlanta search engine optimization company and although we work with businesses throughout the US and around the world, we also optimize for local search which and hold first page rankings for the terms Atlanta search engine optimization and Atlanta SEO. 

So give it a try - localize!

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Online networking today has finally reached a level of maturity that allows people to interact in almost the same fashion that we would in real life.  The problem is that most marketers trying to take advantage of the promotional benefits or social networking are trying to connect with other people using only the mass communication tools of the past. 

Of course there is a need for mass communication tools like advertising, press releases, etc in website promotion—but these methods don’t fit into online social networking.  Every blogger knows the frustration of seeing a page of mass-submitted comments heartlessly advertising Viagra or other amazing Rx products. 

C’mon!  Why did that person ever waste their time!  Getting spam on a blog is even more insulting than getting spam through email or mail.  A blog, like other social networking sites, is personal and in order to get noticed by a person, you’ve got to strike up some personal interaction. 

Just like at a business event you wouldn’t walk up to someone and say. “Buy cheap Viagra now!” and then walk away… those kind of one-sided, thoughtless tactics don’t work online either.  If you want to get noticed by your potential customers and industry peers, the process isn’t much different from doing this in person.

Here are some quick tips for striking up professional-related conversations online. 

1.  Reply to blog posts—regularly.  Make it a point read the blogs on your RSS feed reader every day or at least every week.  When you have something to add to the conversation, don’t be shy—leave a comment!  Challenge yourself not to just passively read blogs, but to think about what these bloggers are saying so that your comments add value to the conversation.  If you’re a regular commenter, the blogger and other regular readers are sure to take notice.

2.  Create profiles on blog social networking sites like MyBlogLog.  This way, when you visit a blog of someone who has MyBlogLog installed on their blog, your image will appear as one of the latest visitors along with a link to your MyBlogLog profile.  Pictures are powerful.  Bloggers and readers both are more likely to visit your profile and consequently your blog if they see a picture.

3.  Discuss the ideas and observations of other bloggers in your blog posts.  When you link to other blogs in your blog posts, a trackback is created.  Through trackbacks, bloggers can see who is talking to them and linking to them. Wouldn’t you be more apt to strike up a conversation with someone who highlighted some of your ideas? 

The key to social networking is to be genuine—just as you would if you were face to face. 

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There are lots of SEO Tools out there to help you gain perspective of your website from a search engine’s point of view. Perhaps the most fun and intriguing are those that allow you to learn more about your competitor’s SEO strategy.

Get ready to spend a few hours going down this rabbit hole… here are 5 of our top picks for tools that reveal SEO insight on your competitors:

Spy Fu:

Find out who’s paying what for online advertising among your competitors. Spy Fu is the follow up to Googspy.com and offers tons of features. Because SpyFu is currently in Beta, some of the data may be a few months behind, but incredibly insightful nonetheless.

Cost: Free

Niche Watch

Before you go spying on your competition, you have to know who they are. Niche Watch gives you a quick overview of the top 20 sites you must compete with to take the top spots. You’ll also get an overview for each competitor about of the number of backlinks to the page, backlinks to the domain, on-page keyword count, number of pages indexed in Google, and more.

Cost: Free

SEO SpyGlass

Shows you at a glance all the techniques your competitors are using to gain a foothold in the search engine rakings. By analyzing their tactics, you can formulate an optimization strategy that’s a step ahead.

Cost: $87 for a professional license

NeboWeb Search Engine ScoreCard

This nifty little tool allows you to size yourself up next to your competitors. Compare page rank, inbound links, on-page optimization factors, and ranking position for keywords in Yahoo, Google, MSN, and AOL. This tool doesn’t offer too much information you can take action on, but shows how you stack up to the competition.

Cost: Free

The Way Back Machine

There is something very rewarding about looking back on your competitors websites over the years. You’ll see how their websites have changed and gain insight about how their strategy has changed over the years as well.

Cost: Free

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Not every company can afford an SEO team right now. And chances are good that if your running on a tight budget, you’re also running on a limited amount of time. For you, we’ve compiled a list of 5 fast and simple things you can do to optimize your website:

#1: Break up long pages of text into multiple shorter pages.

Not only do search engines tend to favor shorter pages and smaller file sizes, but shorter chunks of content are also more user-friendly. By breaking up your longer pages of content into multiple shorter pages, you’ll bulk up your website with more pages of related content.

#2: Use keywords in H tags.

Instead of bolding text and increasing font size for your page headings and subheadings, use your Heading tags (H1, H2, etc). When you use keywords in your H tags you are telling the search engines that these are key terms for this page and worthy of a prominent ranking in the search results.

#3: Add a Sitemap:

From an SEO perspective, the goal of a sitemap is to ensure that every page on the site can be easily indexed by search engine spiders. Because spiders “crawl” websites, they need to be able to reach each page of the site from any one page. A good sitemap ensures that this is possible.

#4: Add content frequently:

When you add new content, you are essentially inviting spiders to come back and visit more often. Even if you’re busy, find the time to write at least 250 to 300 words of relevant content to add to your site on a weekly basis. Just think, if you did this every week, your site would have 52 new pages by the end of next year!

#5: Optimize title tags:

Title tags are such a simple thing but can be very effective in terms of SEO. The title tag for each page should be unique. Make sure your title tags include the specifics keyword or keywords you are targeting on the page.

A full scale website optimization project can take months of work by an entire team of software developers, copywriters, link building specialists, and a project manager with an extensive knowledge of SEO to oversee the entire project. More than likely, the competitors holding the top spots for your target keywords employ an SEO team.

We hope however that these simple SEO friendly adjustments will give you a rankings a boost and jumpstart your online success. We wish you the best in your online business building!

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