Today, almost every company worth their salt maintains an online presence. The famous term ‘web 2.0 refers to the mass interconnectedness of social behavior on the web. The famous ‘Like’ button connected to websites provides the ability for Facebook’s tens of millions of users to publically broadcast information to all of their friends.

For the healthcare social media world, it’s just as valuable as in any other company to connect with potential customers and to help spread the image of a brand through utilizing the countless social media arms found on the web. A social media speaker such as myself helps to instruct companies about the countless, potentially low-cost marketing opportunities presented by sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Digg, and many up-and-coming resources.

Social media marketing typically relies on one fundamental concept that healthcare professionals should be aware of: content. The ability for information on the web to go ‘viral’ or spread between friends is almost entirely dependent on whether the content is valuable enough for people to be interested in it.

Your healthcare social media department should focus on blogging and creating high quality content that will attract the attention of readers. There are plenty of opportunities for expressing how a company cares about providing healthcare to patients, especially considering the controversial nature of finding affordable health care. Many customers are looking for healthcare companies that appear to truly care about their patients, and they will award these companies by telling their friends and sharing information on social media sites.

Another way of attracting medical social media attention is by providing resources of information. A blog or article database can help patients learn about specific conditions, or provide tips on leading a healthier lifestyle written by medical professionals within the company. If the articles are well written, they may end up shared among friends on social media platforms. Then, by utilizing web ‘grabber’ sites like Tumblr and Digg, you can ensure that whole new audiences are introduced to the original material located on your company’s site.

The next important way to help spread information across the web is through video technology. One of the oldest, and busiest, ‘viral’ hotspots is YouTube. Basic video editing software can help produce promotional material in easy-access video format. However, this type of social media marketing depends a lot on the quality and likability of the video. A boring video is unlikely to attract attention. The more the video can be ‘jazzed’ up, the higher likelihood that it will attract a wider scale Internet audience.

Where companies often go wrong with social media is trying to push content so hard that it becomes ‘spam’. Nobody on the web enjoys spammers, and so that’s why it’s important to remember that the number one fundamental rule is providing quality content. Whatever you produce—whether video, blog articles, or Twitter feeds, it must be relevant, and it must capture the attention of customers.

Finally, an important rule of thumb is to combine your healthcare social media strategy with a wider marketing strategy that involves boosting your brand’s general likability enough that people will want to follow your company on Twitter, or subscribe on Facebook. Everything from humor, 1 on 1 connectedness, and the treating of customers fairly and ethically will boost likability and add to the power of your social media platform.

As an online businessman and marketer, you must understand that the success of your online business depends on how well customers can locate your business in the World Wide Web. There are billions of web pages on the internet and thousands related to your kind of business are being added daily. This begs the necessity of being located in the billions of web pages and the several thousand that are added daily within your niche; these are potential competitors and you require every digital tool and expertise to be able to rise above them and capture your own share of the market to remain in business. One of the basic ways to achieve this is by mastering how people locate businesses on the internet, and how search engines direct these searches to particular web pages – they do this through effective search engine optimization campaign strategies.

The SEO optimization strategies work largely on the effective you of SEO keywords, and this is what you are about to learn – how to pick the right keywords for an SEO campaign:

• Analyze your niche/target market: This entails that you fully analyze the kind of niche business you are going into, and perhaps research this vis-à-vis what your competitors are into. This gives you the leverage to initially determine your areas of strength as against that of your competitors; and you will succeed at this by doing a target keywords research online to know what your potential customers are looking for. Target keywords, better known as SEO keywords when researched with Google tools and other keywords research tools gives you a breakdown of how people search for your potential business and the likelihood of having enough customer-base in this business.

• Use well-defined and specific keywords: This cannot be over-emphasized enough. Search keywords are the vehicles or tools that drive customers to your site or products, and your ability to be very specific in your choice of SEO keywords will define your popularity and strength among the search engines…and indeed your potential customers. You must avoid keywords that are too general or generic for your business, and go for those that specifically reflect what you do for business. Sometimes it might be necessary to determine certain keyword phrases to further consolidate what people search for online.

• Exploiting keyword misspellings: Many SEO experts have advised that it is sometimes wise to intentionally target common mis-spellings that people make when typing search keywords and phrases online. These misspelled target keywords will help ensure that every loose ends in peoples’ online searches are directed to your website and products, and gives you the leverage you require above your competitors.

Target geographical or local areas: Sometimes it is better to target SEO keywords that are highly people among people from a particular geographic region or local community. You will understand the importance of this when you consider using British English words for keywords targeting UK markets and customers, and American English words for targets targeting US markets and customers.

Even if a medical practice has an excellent website, it is not going to be effective if no one can find it. This is where search engine optimization, or SEO, comes into play. The goal of SEO is to increase search engine visibility by incorporating key phrases and words into existing online marketing efforts. SEO includes creating links and building content geared towards boosting a site’s placement on search engines such as Google. With more than 8 million Americans searching for medical information online, it is not a strategy that should be ignored. Here are five ways to incorporate an effective SEO campaign to boost the online visibility of a medical website.

Step 1. Set SEO Goals

The first step in creating a great medical SEO campaign is to set your goals. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Why do you want to market your medical site?
• What results do you want to get from your medical site?
• Are you promoting a particular product or service or your medical practice in general?
• Are you selling ad space to boost your revenue?
• What is it that you want visitors to your medical site to do?

The choices you make at this point set the tone of your SEO campaign. You can’t be everything to everybody. Setting goals helps to narrow the focus of your SEO efforts and increase the effectiveness of such a campaign. Once you have clearly established your goals, you can begin putting together a campaign more likely to produce results.

Step 2. Research Keywords

SEO basically starts with a keyword search. You want to list relevant keywords related to your medical specialization, geographic area, specific treatments and services you offer or even specific conditions or diseases. Do a brainstorming session and come up with as many relevant terms related to your practice as possible. The next step is to narrow down these keywords and phrases as much as possible to the ones that match your online marketing goals.

Step 3. Improve Content Flow

What it really boils down to is content. The content should flow as easily as possible. Even though you may be using a lot of medical terms, it is important to keep the content as easy to read as possible. Avoid “keyword stuffing” or throwing in keywords for the sole purpose of boosting your ranking. Naturally spacing keywords within content is a much better approach to achieving your SEO marketing goal. You also want to update your content on a regular basis. Thousands of new sites are jumping into the already crowded online marketing arena everyday. If you don’t keep your content fresh, even the best keyword placement won’t be effective .

Step 4. Use Links

Another way to boost traffic to your medical website is through linkbuilding. When creating rankings, search engines use several factors including importance, relevancy and authority. At one time, some medical sites would buy links before submitting their websites to directories to generate more links. However, this is generally frowned upon by most major search engines – and may result in your site being blacklisted or banned. Your best bet is to generate legitimate links by focusing on content. Another way to generate links is to contact websites with similar content – this is especially convenient in the medical profession – and asking them to post your link. Another option is to use backlinks that lead back to your site.

Step 5. On-Site Optimization

In order to ensure that search engines can properly index your site, it is wise to incorporate some on-site optimization techniques into your medical SEO campaign. Basic on-site optimization techniques include alt tags, header tags, a site map and internal anchor text links. This, combined with solid content, helps achieve better search engine rankings. You want to avoid a site created with Flash, for example, since these sites are difficult to optimize effectively. You want to identify target terms (see Step 1) and then use on-site optimization techniques to boost your ranking.

When in doubt about how to approach a medical SEO campaign, it is best to hire a professional to do the work to get the best results. However, an effective medical SEO campaign can also be created on your own if you have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. It all depends on how much time and effort you put into your online marketing. A carefully created and maintained website geared towards the right target audience can be an extremely effective part of your medical marketing campaign.

Chances are at some point you’ve wondered whether push marketing or pull marketing is the best way to promote your business. Both are effective in different ways, and both have benefits and drawbacks. However, in the long run, pull marketing is better because customers are coming to you to fulfill their needs, making the chance of successful sales much higher. SEO is arguably the champion of online pull marketing and an essential part of any marketing plan.

In push marketing, the goods or services are “pushed” outward to customers with advertising methods such as billboards, websites and email marketing. Push marketing works best for new and upcoming businesses making a name for themselves. It is one of the easiest and fastest ways to get established to a target audience. By using push marketing, your business is in essence creating a market for its products where none previously existed. Advertising these products with Pay Per Click ads and on your website is angled directly towards potential buyers and pushing them to purchase what you sell.

Pull marketing is, as the name implies, just the opposite. Customers that need your goods or services go looking for them, and you ensure that your company is the one that they find when they search. It can work well for both new and established businesses. Once your company has made a name for itself, pull marketing helps to broaden the circles of familiarity and expand them to generate more sales. This technique uses methods such as blogs and online communities. The best example of pull marketing, however, is Search Engine Optimization (SEO); considered by many to be the crown jewel of online marketing.

SEO marketing involves customers researching a specific subject, and your business utilizes techniques that bring it to the top of the search results. This is where the biggest advantage of pull marketing rests: because they want what you offer, customers will have their guard down. There is a tendency to be annoyed or defensive where unsolicited sales pitches are concerned, and consumers on the prowl will welcome your advertising if it meets their needs.

Getting started with SEO marketing can be easy, fast and relatively inexpensive. It doesn’t take a lot of specialized knowledge to create a blog or social media page. Writing blog posts and articles with strategically used keywords will get you off to a good start. Leave comments on other blogs and websites and interact with current and potential customers. Once word of mouth spreads about your company, the online mentions will contribute to your rankings as well. Customers tend to subconsciously equate high rankings with quality and prestige, so make sure your business delivers when they come looking for you.

Pull marketing and SEO marketing have a similar focus: to peak customer interest and draw them in to your site. Have helpful, interesting information waiting for them when they get there, and chances are good that not only will they return, they’ll share their positive experience with others.

The entire healthcare industry has recognized the benefits of leveraging social sites to engage online audiences. Healthcare providers are using social media to educate patients and other doctors on various medical procedures or pharmaceuticals. Social media has opened doors for collaboration in ways that no other forums have. Healthcare is evolving and strategies must be modified to include social media. As physicians migrate to electronic healthcare records (EHRs) and electronic medical records (EMRs), there are many implications for social media and sharing diagnostic images and videos.

How is the Healthcare Industry Currently Using Social Media?

Physicians currently use social media such as Twitter for live surgical procedures broadcasts. Broadcasts may be used as educational tools for other physicians or to inform patients of what to expect during surgery. Doctors and patients can engage in live chats on Facebook.

According to PwC’s Health Research Institute, social media is playing a larger role in consumer healthcare decisions. Of 1000 people polled, nearly half of the people had used social media for healthcare. These people used the forum for sharing research and to connect with other health organizations.

Social Media Marketing

According to Manhattan Research, 18 percent of healthcare professionals use Facebook and 12 percent of healthcare professionals use YouTube. Twitter is used only by six percent of professionals, and blogs are used by nine percent of healthcare professionals. Google Plus is new on the scene but has quickly gained interest of 8 percent of healthcare professionals polled. Twitter is the most difficult to incorporate because of the short messages. Also, there is no integrated video functionality.

Half of the adults online use tools online to for disease management, for physician discussions and to learn about conditions and treatments. Digital resources sponsored by pharmaceutical companies have prompted discussions with doctors, nurses or pharmacists. These advertisements may appear in the margins of Facebook or through other social media outlets.

Medical Social Media

Doctors and physicians are using medical social media, but there is not a lot of information on the social media communities. Sermo, for instance, is a medic

al social community used to aid in medical communications and marketing efforts. It is clear from studies conducted in 2008 that 88 percent of physicians use the Internet for more information on biotech, medical device information and pharmaceutical information. It is not clear how often physicians connect with medical social media forums.

Sermo has over 100,000 members and is one of the most popular medical social media networks. Ozmosis, DoctorNetworking and SocialMD are also popular in the medical community. Memberships in these communities are not as large as Sermo, but the communities have managed between 3,000 and 10,000 physician members in each community. These communities are used to share knowledge, offer support and to network. The communities are safe and secure for physicians to interact and share opinions.

Doctor Social Media

Doctor social media also includes medical journals and continuing education. Medical journals are provided in an online format. Physicians can have a more interactive experience with online content by sharing with other physicians. CME courses may also be offered online. Physicians can stay up-to-date with the latest in the medical community.

Pharma customer service portals offer live video conferencing to find out more information about the latest pharmaceuticals. Physicians are using their smart phones and applications to watch procedures and surgical techniques. Blogging is also becoming more popular. Top physicians may share their perspectives in an approachable way to provide a social force.

Hospital Social Media

Of 1229 hospitals polled across the country, a study found that 575 hospitals use YouTube, 1068 hospitals use Facebook, 814 hospitals use Twitter, 566 hospitals use Linked In, 946 hospitals use FourSquare and 149 use blogs. Facebook and FourSquare were the most popular social media tools used by hospitals.

Social media allows physicians to begin authentic dialogue with patients. Social media also increases brand awareness within the online community. Job opportunities may also be shared via this community. Physicians use social media to develop relationships with current and future patients. Through social media, patients can offer insight into their experience.

Dentist Social Media

Social media is slowly catching on in the dental community. Fifty-seven percent of dentists use Facebook, Twitter and Linked In to engage their audiences. In fact, one in three dentists use Twitter professionally. Even so, social media is used more by physicians than dentists. Some dentists cite that it is confusing. Most dentists prefer Facebook to engage their audience online.

As insurance companies impose more limitations on patient coverage, and employers make reductions in the type of healthcare plans offered to workers, the medical field is becoming more consumer-driven. From shopping around to questioning the need for tests and procedures, patients are taking more active roles in their healthcare decisions.

This has demanded changes in the healthcare industry’s approach to medical marketing. Medical facilities are faced with reaching patients who insist upon substantial amounts of information, but want it delivered via quick and convenient means. They desire relationships with their care providers, but initially seek those connections through their computers. The solution to reaching this growing population is medical internet marketing and here is why it’s effective:

Quick Access to Care Providers

Gone are the days of tedious physician searches made through the phone book. Today’s patients have the convenience of logging onto search engines and typing in the name of a specialty and hometown. In seconds, they receive a selection of possible medical practices to meet their needs, making medical internet marketing a resource to be utilized in today’s competitive environment.

Providing Information

A well designed, patient-friendly website gives the information generation what it can’t get from a billboard, and that is volumes of knowledge used to make decisions about which medical practice to visit. A website can describe services provided, insurance and payment types accepted, hours of operation and directions to their location. In addition, the site can offer the ease of making appointments online and downloading paperwork that can be filled out prior to the patient’s visit.

Building Relationships

Pro-active patients know they have choices, which means a good bedside manner is more important than ever and must be conveyed in medical marketing. One way that connections with doctors and staff are fostered is through websites that offer biographical pages, articles about the specialty, frequently asked questions, tips for healthy living, positive patient reviews, online newsletters and virtual tours, all working together to present an interest in patient care and comfort.

Word of Cyber Mouth

Teenagers exchanging gossip are far from the only people comprising the millions who frequent social networks. Adults are online, too, and when one asks friends to recommend medical practices in their community, they will likely get responses. In addition, many respected medical practices have embraced the power of medical internet marketing by establishing Facebook pages, where they keep patients updated on news about the practice, the specialty and other information of interest. This not only communicates with current patients, but may also be viewed by, and open the door to, the friends of those patients.

Close-to-Home Targeting

Despite the internet’s wide outreach, it is easy to target organizations and support groups comprised of people interested in specific diseases and conditions. Some of these groups are very localized and may have members who live in close range of a practice. Medical practices can target them by sponsoring or advertising with the site, or by joining it to offer valuable information about medical concerns.

Cost effective and consumer-reaching, medical internet marketing meets the needs of medical practices — so they can meet the needs of those who will benefit from their services.

If you aren’t using search engine optimization (SEO) on your medical practice website, the question you should be asking yourself is “how will my potential patients find my website?”

Without medical SEO driving traffic to your website, it won’t matter how informational and professional your website is–because no one will be seeing it. Improving traffic to your website is the major purpose of SEO, but there are a number of benefits. So, let’s look at the top seven reasons your medical practice should use medical SEO to help increase business.

1 To reach your target audience–the patients who are out there and those you already have.

Let’s say yours is an orthopedics practice. When someone needs an orthopedic consultation, how is he or she going to find you? If your Google ranking has been raised through using SEO for medical marketing, your practice name will be at the top of the list. And, as a medical SEO specialist, I can tell you that it has been proven that people click on the names at the top of the search engine results. If your medical practice is at the bottom, it’s very likely you will be overlooked.

2 To convert website visitors to patients.

SEO can help you encourage people who visit your website to actually pick up the phone and make an appointment. There are optimizing techniques that will help this to happen. There is even a related technique called conversion rate optimization (CRO) that tries to create a very focused landing page, using all of the target keywords you have identified. With CRO and SEO together, you have a much richer opportunity to encourage visitors to become your patients.

3 To provide traceable results.

Done correctly, SEO optimization, along with Google Analytics, can help you track your Internet traffic and understand where new business is coming from. This can help you determine how to distribute your medical marketing effort and money.

4 To reduce marketing costs.

Advertising, as you know, can be extremely expensive. While we usually think of lowering advertising expenses, you can also increase your profitability through lowering marketing costs. Effective SEO techniques can save you money by using the most cost-effective keywords.

5 To increase the visibility of your medical practice.

Most websites are either informational or sales-oriented. A medical practice website can be both. A professional, attractive, and informative website will help build your professional reputation. Again, people have to be able to find your site for you to benefit from the effort and cost of maintaining it. Every time someone goes to your site, you have a chance to make that visitor into a patient. The right keywords, through professional SEO techniques, will get the traffic to you.

6 To attract patients from other areas and to expand your base.

Because the Internet is not limited by geographic boundaries, SEO can help make your site visible to people outside of your local area.

7 To keep up with your competitors.

Since everyone has a website these days, competing in the medical marketplace means focusing on making your website the best in your area of expertise. As a medical speaker, I see many medical practices and their websites, and I can’t stress enough how important properly done medical SEO is to increasing business.

Internet Marketing Speaker, Mike Newhouse, shares his thoughts on how to write website content. 

The challenge to write website content is daunting. Most people view it as a non-rewarding, time consuming and difficult chore to accomplish. Furthermore, website copy is a critical piece of the SEO process. Content and SEO go hand in hand.

Newsflash — Creating great website content is actually quite simple once you get the hang of it.

Generating SEO web content is incredibly rewarding. Not only does it show the searcher that you really are the expert in your field, but it benefits your business in several ways.  Writing content or more specifically, writing keyword rich content increases your business, grows your client base, maximizes your profits and educates your customers.

You’re probably asking, “What does ‘keyword rich content’ even mean?”

It means you write for a purpose and a goal in mind. Specifically, you write content that will show up for specific search engine terms. I’ll go into further detail on this a little later.

In the beginning, writing content for SEO can be tricky. Just like any new skill, it takes practice. However, achieving high search rankings due to keyword rich content isn’t as difficult as you would think.  Though you may end up making slight changes to your writing style, in the long run you’ll come out on the top of the search engines.

By following this guide, it is my hope that eventually your website copy and keyword rich content will be the gold standard in your industry.

My Website Content Creation Tutorial

In order to start writing content for SEO purposes, you must first put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for you. You’ll have to answer a few quick questions that will take you down the right path.

Throughout this “website content creation tutorial” I’ll be using an insurance agent as my example. All information associated with “Sam” the insurance agent is 100% fictitious and is used to illustrate how to write SEO web content.

Website Content Creation Question #1

-How do you choose the right search term?

The Problem: Sam sells different types of insurance. He sells life insurance, health insurance, auto insurance etc. He decides to write content to increase his rankings in search terms as his primary internet marketing strategy. He begins writing content without researching what terms people search. After a month, he feels his website copy is very well written, but it has yet to attract any extra traffic to his website.

The Solution: Using online tools can help you decide which keywords to write content for. After being underwhelmed with his content, Sam uses the Google Keyword Selector Tool (http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolE

xternal ) and finds the term ‘insurance’ is searched over 55 million times a month! Using this tool can help you target keywords to put into your content. Typically, your keyword density, or the number of times a keyword appears in your content, should be about 2-3%. For Sam, since his content is 200 words, he decides to put the term ‘insurance’ in 4 times.

However, when it comes to writing content for SEO, it’s a bit more than picking a key term at random and writing for it.

Website Content Creation Question #2

- Are you targeting the right keywords in your content?

After using Google Keyword Selector Tool and seeing that every month there were 55 million searches for ‘insurance,’ Sam decides to alter his content for SEO so he ranks number one for this term.  After all, if even a small percentage click on his site, it could do wonders for his bottom line.

The Problem: Sam knows how to write good website content, but unfortunately, his site is not a big enough player to rank highly for ‘insurance’.  His website does not compete with well-known companies such as State Farm, Farmers, Geico, and others.

The Solution: Sam decides to change his strategy a bit! Instead of writing SEO web content for ‘insurance’ he targets a different search term. Using his Keyword Selector Tool, he discovers that 1,900 people search for ‘Dallas car insurance’ monthly. Since he primarily works in Dallas, he decides to write content for this term. He knows there is much less competition within a single city and surely with his website copy writing abilities, he can be number one for this search term.

Within weeks, Sam’s site appears first on Google for “Dallas car insurance”.  He is ecstatic! The phone starts ringing and Sam is as busy as he has ever been.

Specifying your keyword content is an important step in ranking on search engines. Targeting local searches within your area is often a good strategy to improve your ranking and be found by consumers looking for your product within your region.

But that’s not all; believe it or not, well written website copy can make a lot more money if you only change one word.

Knowing what search terms to write website copy for is critical. In this case, If Sam changes just one word, ‘Car’ to ‘Auto’ he would actually be better off. 2,900 people monthly search for ‘Dallas Auto Insurance’ compared to 1,900 for ‘Dallas Car Insurance’

However, just because your site ranks, doesn’t mean you necessarily get the results you are looking for…

Website Content Creation Question #3

- Is one part of your business more profitable than the other?

The Problem: Sam is quite disappointed when he receives his first commission check and realizes that although he wrote amazing, compelling, keyword rich content, he only made a little bit more than last month.  He thinks to himself, “What’s wrong?”

Sam fails to realize car insurance is not the most profitable portion of his insurance agency. He actually makes FOUR TIMES AS MUCH when he sells life insurance as opposed to car insurance.

The Solution: Sam goes to town writing out keyword rich website content on ‘Dallas life insurance’.

Just like last time, Sam is number one on Google for his search term, and is even busier than before! This time though, he makes more money than the previous month. By changing the search term target to the most profitable part of his business, Sam’s profit margins increased.

Ask yourself, “What’s the most profitable service that I offer?” Write content for the services that you’re looking to sell. Be aware of the competition in search terms however. In the previous example, Sam wrote content for ‘Dallas Life Insurance’ and not just ‘Life Insurance.’ Depending on the competition, Sam might also consider a similar term such as ‘Dallas Life Insurance Policy.’ If competition is too abundant, go down the list and try again.

Website Content Creation Question #4

-          What are you trying to achieve in writing this content?

The Problem: Content and SEO can go hand in hand. But the purpose of your content is just as important as the keywords you put into it.

If you remove “have our content rank high on the search engines,” as an objective, your goals are actually quite varied when it comes to content creation.

For example, some pages on your website may be selling a product or service, while another may be educating customers on this product or service, while other pages, may just be a lead generation tool. Every webpage on your site has a specific objective.

The Solution: How you write content will also vary depending on what your overall objective actually is, but there are a few key points you should keep in mind regardless of the content you’re writing.

1. Keyword stuffing is a terrible idea – Keyword stuffing is when you put in a keyword over and over again in your content. It can make your content difficult to read and the search engines hate it. My belief is your key terms should be scattered throughout your content, and be roughly 2-3% of the verbiage on the web page.
2. Write website content, not search engine content – Writing content is critical to be found by the search engines, but don’t write FOR them. Write for the reader, give them good information, and keep the search engines in the back of your thoughts while writing your content.
3. Website Copy Formatting – People are lazy and when they come to your site, they will lose attention if they instantly see gigantic blocks of text that take up half their screen. Format your content in smaller paragraphs like these, use bullet points, and number things so that people can quickly scan your page to see what’s useful.
4. Content is wonderful but… – Yeah you wrote great content, but where are the pictures? Remember to add in some pictures, charts, videos, or even little random notes throughout your content to break up the blandness and monotony of your site. Keep people engaged.

So, with the exception of having your content rank highly, what are you trying to achieve? Make sure you write in a way that engages the viewer and makes you appear credible.

Website Copy Creation Summary

Whether you realize it or not, Search engine optimization plays a huge role in your business. In fact, as we speak it’s either helping you or hurting you.

The process of writing SEO web content can be fun, challenging, but most importantly rewarding. In my experience, I find that many people keyword stuff their content, and then quickly believe that “SEO doesn’t work.”

Well, it does. Before we’re done, I want to show you something.

In writing this, not only did I want to educate you, but I wanted to increase my search engine presence. I thought about my keywords, I used the keyword tool, and wrote great content. I followed all of my steps.

Here’s a breakdown of the keywords I used throughout this page, how many times a month that term is searched for, and how many times I used it on this one page.

• Keyword rich content – Monthly searches, 170 – Times used, 6
• Write SEO content – Monthly searches, 210 – Times used, 3
• Write website content – Monthly searches, 720 – Times used, 4
• Content and SEO – Monthly searches, 1,000 – Times used, 4
• SEO web content – Monthly searches, 1,300 – Times used, 5
• Content for SEO – Monthly searches, 1,300 – Times used, 5
• Website copy – Monthly searches, 22,200 – Times used, 9
• Website content – Monthly searches 60,500 – Times used, 14

So did I keyword stuff my content? Not at all. What I did do was use my key terms several times in strategic places throughout the 1842 words on this page.

One last topic is latent semantic content. Essentially, this is related, but different words that pertain to one another. For example, this document uses several key terms multiple times, but they are in service of one topic (how to write SEO content). Latent semantic content is Google’s way of making sure your content is coherent and not written over and over again with little purpose or direction.

All right, you’re done reading! It’s time for you to start writing content of your own!

Getting listed within the Google, at least within the local search sounds easy, and it is. Performing Google local search optimization is where people run into trouble. Like most things in the life, it’s easy to “scrape the surface” of a project. It’s a completely different game to go all in, knowing without a doubt that you’ll do whatever it takes to come out on top.
Google local search optimization will take some work, but I promise you it will be worth it. Think about it, by optimizing your name for local search on Google, you’re ensuring that people that are looking for your products or services, and more specifically looking for them where you’re located, are finding you.

I was working with a salon in the Dallas, Tx area. There website is incredibly nice, but it’s all Flash based. For you SEO’s out there, you already know what that means, and for the rest of you, it means that this site is going to be incredibly hard to show up in Google due in part to the lack of text on the site. When Google bot visit’s the page, it has nothing to view, nothing to see, and thus doesn’t know what the site is about.

I decided to heavily pursue local search where by accident, they were showing up about 9 times a day, but only when people were searching for their business name. It was bad. I took action on all the steps I’ll cover in a minute, and within a month, they were appearing over 200 times a day for terms like “salon”, “massage”, “spa”, and more. Their website traffic went up by over 400%, all from people looking for the services they already offer, in the area they already service. They were ecstatic.

Here’s what, with my experience I believe you need to complete in order to say that you are “Google Local Search Optimized”. (Not necessarily listed in order of importance.)

Google Local Search Optimization Tips

1. Use the Google Local Business Center – Here’s a case where Google gives you a platform to perfectly describe your business. It will tell you how complete it feels your listing is, allow you to describe what your business is about, add photos, videos, and even coupons. Use it!

2. Work on your site – Making your business more local is a big step in local search optimization. Google needs to see that your site is both relevant to the search term, but also relevant to the location. You’re site may have great information on your area of expertise, but remember, it is called “local search optimization” which means your site needs to be also be targeted towards people locally.

3. Get on “Yellow Pages” like websites – Most people know by now that the yellow pages are also an online search tool. By getting listed in the following sites, it shows the same name, address, description, and categories repeatedly. The more sites like these that you’re mentioned in, the better off you are for local search optimization. Here’s a quick list of sites that can help you in your local listing optimization (some free, some not):

YellowPages.com
SuperPages.com
Localeze.com
Yelp.com
InfoUSA.com
CitySearch.com
Brownbook.net
InsiderPages.com
BOTW.com
OpenList.com
iBegin.com
Kudzu.com
MagicYellow.com
TrueLocal.com
Local.com
CitySquares.com
Zipingo.com

4. Get listed on local sites that count – Try getting yourself listed on sites like the local chamber of commerce, your rotary club, lions club, local newspaper, visitors bureau, local directories. Do a search for “(cityname) business directory”, and contact whoever owns the list.

There you have it, four quick tips on local search optimization. I’ll go over the use of sites like Bing.com, Yahoo, and a few others over the next several days. Also, I’ve run into some issues before like your listing being flagged as spam. How do you get around this? I’ll write on that as well.

If you enjoyed this, share it with some friends. I’d appreciate it.

There’s always lists about the do’s and the don’ts, the have and have not’s. There will always be the 101 best lists and 101 worst. I on the other hand, just want to share the one. If there’s one thing you need to understand about social network marketing, what is it? Why?

I do a lot of internet marketing speaking events. We play lots of games, have lots of fun, but more important, stay engaged and learn. In a lot of these events, my goal or objective (“take away” for you fellow speakers out there) will vary. With some groups, my time is limited and my take away is simply, “you need to be doing this, with me, by yourself, or with someone like me… just do it”. My objective with this group is simply to reach a common understanding with the audience that social network marketing is a must for business today. As an internet marketing speaker, these events are challenging, yet mutually rewarding.

At other events, my take away changes; I have the time to explain why they need to be involved in social network marketing, what they need to be doing, and more importantly, what’s in it for them should they become involved. From an internet marketing consultant’s perspective, these events are much more informative, but like the shorter events, still mutually rewarding to the audience.

Regardless of the type event, I play one game at all of them that gives the audience a crystal clear understanding as to how they need to go about social network marketing. I could break it down into several small steps, and give you a “best of” or “most important” list. It’s so important, that I don’t want it to get lost in the shuffle.

As an internet marketing speaker, it’s not always easy to drive home take away points with an audience. Their knowledge of computers is sometimes non-existent or lacking, and sometimes, I’m told that “I’ve heard of Facebook, but I’ve never seen it. I just learned how to check my email!” This is why audience interaction and playing games can completely change what they take away from an event.

The MOST important tip about social network marketing is that it’s NOT business as normal.

In my internet marketing speaking and training events, I’ll ask the audience to stand up, and meet 4 or 5 people in the room, just like they would at a networking event, or before a meeting. Everyone stands up, shakes hands, puts on a fake smile, and says their name. Sometimes people even hand out business cards getting deep into what I told them, and actually networking.

I’ll make everyone sit down. They don’t know why I just did this, as I have yet to mention anything about social networking. I ask them what it was like to do this, and the response I get most of the time is, “Business as normal!” Perfect, they took my bait.

I make everyone stand up again, and I begin to paint a mental image. I tell them that they’re at a 10 year family reunion, and old Uncle Vinnie is coming across the room to see you. I tell them everyone has had a drink by now, so you can let down the guard, and just enjoy the moment. I ask them to meet 5 people in the room like they’re family, and tell them not to hold back.

What happens is amazing. Complete strangers in the audience go around hugging people they never knew. Everyone’s arms are wide open, smiles are wide and genuine. Laughter, screaming, and sometimes a fake tear are even shed. It’s amazing.

Everyone takes their seats, no longer caring what the point of the exercise was for, but now their primed, on the edge of their seats wanting to know more about whatever it is that I’m going to talk about.

I ask a few people what the difference in the two exercises were, and responses vary from “everyone in the room felt like family” to “I wish we could all do business like that”. Everyone feels the enthusiasm and a connection with one another. Everyone feels like … socializing.

The MOST important tip about social network marketing, is that it’s not business as normal. Everyone is quite possibly your best friend.

I tell them, this is the difference with social network marketing. Our first exercise was business as normal, everyone agreed. Our second exercise, something happened. We stopped trying to sell ourselves, and started acting ourselves. No one had to worry about what they were being sold, no one had to worry about being judged, you could be yourself AND do business.

That’s the difference with social network marketing.

My name is Mike Newhouse, and I am an internet marketing speaker, trainer, and consultant and I would be overjoyed to deliver a message just like this to your audience.