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Marketing Opportunities for Los Angeles Businesses

March 31, 2016/in seo blog /by Arsen Rabinovich

You might feel like you’re on a constant roller coaster as a Los Angeles-based business owner. With a diverse potential customer population in constant flux, a widespread geographical area and stiff competition, the action never seems to stop. You need some ways to market yourself to the millions of L.A.-based people who could benefit from your products and services.

SEO Opportunities

As is the case throughout the Internet, you can’t overlook the importance of SEO in Los Angeles. An acronym for search engine optimization, SEO involves creating a site that is user-friendly, easy to navigate, attractive and above all considered an expert source by the search engines. Using keyword-rich content is the best way to do this, and in turn will boost your rankings and draw potential customers toward your business. The more you can customize your content to what customers are looking for, the more successful your SEO in Los Angeles will become.

Social Media Opportunities

Twitter and Facebook:

Humble and even trivial though it may seem, these two social media giants can actually help you boost sales. Make yourself known to countless L.A. customers by sending regular posts, tweets and photos about your local company. As you start getting likes and follows, don’t forget to engage with your fan base. And remember, the more people you follow and the more you open up to others, the more people will participate on your feed, creating the kind of advertising that money can’t buy.

Your competitors are also using social media, but what exactly are they doing and what results are they getting? Find out by using Facebook’s businesses to watch feature on their business pages. Once you know what’s working – and what’s not – for your rivals, you can benefit.

Pinterest and Instagram:

Photo images can also be a major customer attractor. Just ask the millions of people who have already made Instagram their own or “pinned” images on Pinterest. Share images of your products and infographics to these sites and link them to your website. Create the potential for amazing results.

Sponsorship Opportunities

Since you are already paying for a website, put it to work for you as well. Through the use of your social media pages, sponsor photo and video contests that have the potential to go viral and link them back to your website in some way. You can create a landing page that will bring visitors to your website, while simultaneously building a database of contest entrants.

If you want a more personable approach to networking, consider sponsoring a booth at a trade show or being the lead sponsor at an event. This will give you the opportunity to talk to potential customers face-to-face and engage them on a whole new level. And don’t forget to encourage your new friends to share their experience with you on social media. You can never have too many leads!

Perhaps the most important marketing strategy isn’t really a strategy at all; it’s more of a mindset. With business practices and technology changing at warp speed, you can’t afford to be stodgy. Keep your ear to the ground and embrace new marketing developments as they happen. While not all of them will be successful, you will definitely set yourself up as an innovator at a time when being at the forefront is crucial.

How Moving Your Office Can Affect Your Local SEO

March 29, 2016/in seo blog /by Arsen Rabinovich

Moving your business even just a few miles can be a painful process, and we’re not just talking about the headaches found in boxing up inventory and closing down your old shop. Believe it or not, even a minor move can lead to migraine-sized problems with your local SEO. Read on to learn more.

Surely, there must be a one-click way to let the entire online world know about your business’s new home, right? Sadly, the Internet doesn’t have the same tools that, say, the post office uses every day to forward mail to your new address. As a result, you could easily end up in a situation where your customers seek out your old address in Silver Lake long after you have moved to Echo Park. You simply can’t afford to get lost in the shuffle.

Okay, you say. This is a horrible situation, but it won’t happen to me because I updated my business’s Google+ page. The bad news is that this simply won’t be sufficient. Google pulls in information about your business from numerous sources throughout the Internet, some of which are not at all reliable. When you move offices, your address obviously changes, and that leads to an inconsistency in your business’s primary data, usually known by the acronym NAP. This refers to your name, address and phone number. When search engines encounter this inconsistency, they may rank you lower. When it comes to local SEO, this can be the kiss of death.

Don’t despair though. There are several things you can do to minimize the damage that could come from moving. First, if at all possible, keep your old phone number. Doing so will enable search engines such as Google to verify your new address more quickly.

Next, do some detective work of your own. Run a Google search using some of your old, now incorrect data. Take note of what pages come up. Then begin the process of alerting each to your recent change of address in the area. During this process, don’t forget about Google Maps. If you find that some of their information about you is outdated, click the “report a problem” button at the bottom of the list.

Although you might find a lot of incorrect information at local directory sites, they often initially obtain it from elsewhere. That’s why it is also imperative to change your data with Acxiom, Infogroup, ExpressUpdateUSA and Localeze. These companies provide business data not only to Google, but also to major mobile apps such as Facebook Nearby, Foursquare and Apple Maps.

No matter how diligent you are in performing these tasks, you need to also have a healthy dose of patience. It can sometimes take two to three months for your modifications to trickle down through the system. All you can do is to take pains to minimize the effects of the transition.

How Does Social Media Affect Your SEO?

November 16, 2015/in seo blog /by Arsen Rabinovich

Social media and SEO go together like peanut butter and jelly. When one has a high profile, the other generally follows suit. Although there are many who say that SEO is destined to go the way of the cassette tape and the floppy disc, the symbiotic relationship between these two items is too strong to disparage. Already, Google is including social media among the many other factors it considers when indexing Internet content. Read on to learn some of the ways that sites like Facebook and Twitter can increase your SEO rankings.

Link Building is Happening Through Social Media Shares

For years, search engines have used the number of links to your website as a criterion to determine your rankings. These days, the best way to get noticed by Google is to write excellent content and share it across social media platforms such as YouTube, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. The search engines regularly crawl these sites to determine websites that are keyword-rich and credible. For example, if raves about your Los Angeles-based restaurant are tweeted many times, the search engines will give it higher visibility. The assumption is that if people shared it, it must be good.

Social Media Exposure Speeds up Indexing

Let’s return to the example of your Los Angeles restaurant that everyone is buzzing about on social media. When the search engines register the fact that it is garnering all of this positive attention, they will assume that its indexing process needs to be speeded up. The Internet is, after all, a creature of the moment. If you are the talk of the town, it is likely that Google will take half the time it usually requires for indexing.

Quality Followers and Friends Make a Difference

It’s not so much about the quantity of the people who follow you, but also their quality. Don’t waste your time accumulating spam friends in the vain attempt to make yourself look popular. Instead, lure reputable companies and other Internet influencers to like your page and follow you on the social media sites. One or two of these is worth hundreds of bogus fans.

Make Your Profile and Content Rich in Keywords

When conducting their rankings, search engines look for content from two places in social media: the content of your posts and your profile. Therefore, it is crucial that you complete all of your business profiles, packing them with relevant keywords about your company in as natural a way as possible. Be sure that your company name, URL and bio are included, as these are what the search engines are seeking. This should also be the case with your content, which should contain as much relevant, sharable information as possible. Does your Los Angeles restaurant serve burritos and other Mexican food? If so, then write content that discusses burrito history, recipes and types as well as anything else you think potential customers might be searching for.

Keep it Local

Be sure your business is listed on location-based networking applications such as Yelp and Foursquare. Periodically check to confirm that all of your contact information is correct, including directions to your place of business. If it is, people searching local business sites such as Google Plus or Yahoo will be more likely to make the correct connection.

In a sprawling but high-energy area like Los Angeles, competition is fierce. If you want to get a leg up on your rivals, you need to learn how to effectively use all of the tools in your kit. Social media is one of the hottest commodities on the Internet scene today. Why not capitalize on its popularity to raise your business to the next level?

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