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Searching for Business

Like everyone else, we’re always looking for ways to use the Internet to grow our business. Search engine optimization (SEO) has been around for a long time, but gaining a top ranking requires you to hit a moving target. Here’s what we did.

We started by hiring Pam Aungst and Pam Ann Marketing, a specialist in local search engine marketing. Being local was very important to us because even though we have clients far away – whom we serve over the Internet – so much of what we do depends on at least one site visit to understand how everything fits together.

Pam gave us a roadmap based on the geographic area we wanted to cover and keywords that connect widely used search terms to our services. We tied all of this into Google Local to focus on searchers in the area we wanted to serve.  Essentially, this was like preparing the foundation for building a house.

The “house” we built was a link with a shortened URL for our Google Local listing (http://bit.ly/SterlingRose), which many of you have already seen. We use this for soliciting customer reviews.  The link allows us to more easily direct you to our listing, instead of having to type in long and complex web address that actually takes you to the link. We know we are asking you to do us a favor when we ask you to write a review, so we want to make it as convenient as possible.

By the way, if you are so moved, you can click that link now and write a review. If you have any questions, a link can walk you through the process and help you decide if you want to sign up for Google +. It’s not necessary to sign up to write a review. We needed to be part of Google + and part of the Google SEO system, however, because it is part of the way to show up higher in Google searches – which was our goal.

With all of that set up, we couldn’t be passive. We started actively soliciting reviews through our link – http://bit.ly/SterlingRose – and we’re still doing it because it helps our marketing effort. The reviews must be genuine and placed by the reviewer. Any company that posts fake reviews can be fined and sued for deceptive advertising practices.

Pam told us that getting reviews would be the most critical part of our SEO marketing campaign, and that we would need to be diligent about asking for them. We followed her advice, and quickly got 12 positive reviews on our Google Local listing. We jumped from position #14 to #1 for “it support” on Google Local, from zero to #2 for “it support mac”, and from zero to #4 for “it support” in regular (organic) Google search results.

You can read Pam’s case history on our success from her perspective and get an understanding of what it takes to raise your SEO profile. We also invite you to contact us (973-433-6676) if you have any questions about SEO marketing from a “customer” point of view. Growing together is a good thing for all of us.

This article was published in Technology Update, the monthly newsletter from Sterling Rose LLC.

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