SEO Tips

Great Local Ad Solution

mwalker — 2009-09-03T08:49:06-07:00

Believe me, I have seen more SEO solutions, programs and strategies than you can believe. Because my main focus is SEO, I am bombarded by companies and recruiters for SEO programs and solutions, so I see them all the time. I also spend time looking for the latest and greatest so that I can offer it to my clients.

I recently signed up as a partner/reseller for a solution called Adzzoo that is fantastic. Let me tell you some of the main reasons I like it:

It is a combination of organic and pay-per-click, they create a search engine optimized listing on their directory. This means you get both organic results and results from PPC
It is actual humans doing work on your account. This is important to me because many solutions are just software programs, which is fine if it works and is worth the money. With this solution, Google Adwords experts refine your keywords, ranking strategies, etc. on an ongoing basis. This is worth money in the bank, to me.
They send you monthly reports on all of your account activity, thank you. You can see samples here.� I have signed up for one Local Search Solution, it will cost me $1500.00 to sign up, and they have no reporting mechanisms, OMG, are you kidding me? I am working with them to either provide me with some reporting or not sign up. Reports are awesome, a requirement, like Google Analytics.
Another key component of this solution is this: YOU CAN CHANGE THE MAIN LOCATION OF WHERE YOUR AD WILL APPEAR. Let me tell you why I put that all in CAPS. With a brick and mortar location, a real store, you are stuck with your actual physical address. It is used in Google Local (Google Maps) Yahoo! local, maps and Bing (formerly MSN). If you were located in one city, but wanted to draw business from another city, the only way to do so was straight PPC/Google Adwords. With this solution, you can pick a 5, 10, 20 or 50 mile radius, BEGINNING FROM ANY POINT. It doesn't have to be centered from your actual business location. You can run multiple listings, in different areas, fantastic.
It is reasonably priced. Packages start at only $119.95 per month, nice. With everything you get, I am excited about it.

Many of my clients are in the process of signing up and I am looking forward to managing their results. Check it out for yourself at www.localspotlight.com, email me at mwalker@walkerseo.com or call with any questions on specifics.

God Bless, happy SEO'ing

-Martin Walker
Walker SEO
479-286-1166
www.walkerseo.com

New Name, New Location

mwalker — 2009-07-24T06:56:59-07:00

To all our valued clients:
Wilshire Publicity, Inc. is now Walker SEO. We have also changed our company headquarters from Southern California to Bentonville, AR.

As we have become a national company and continue to expand and serve clients in different states and with our work being online we found Northwest Arkansas to be a better location for the company.

The website wilshirepr.com will stay live as well as our new website www.walkerseo.com.

This new direction just reflects what we do more accurately. Years ago we started as an online Public Relations firm and have grown into a SEO, SEM and Internet Advertising firm, serving clients in Pennsylvania, Oregon, Arkansas, California, Washington State and many other locations across the U.S. With our major vendors and strategic partners located in San Jose, Bulgaria and Canada, we found the Arkansas location to be more cost effective and efficient.
-Martin Walker, CEO, Wilshire Publicity, Inc., Walker SEO

The New Frontier of Local Search

mwalker — 2009-05-22T08:08:19-07:00

Local Search has come to me more than I have gone to it. As an SEO professional for over 5 years, I am busy enough with on-page, natural Search Engine Optimization services for my clients. Many of my clients have been seeking website traffic from either the domestic United States or Globally. Local search was never an issue.

Slowly, over years, my new clients were one-location, small businesses who just needed website traffic from their geographic area, hmmmm. The only way I knew how to do that was my usual SEO practices, which, looking back now, was the hard way.

MySpace Local
I wrote this blog because today MySpace just announced a local search component. Wow. Local search MUST be mainstream now. As you can see, it is in Beta, which means it is brand new and they are working out all the bugs and testing the solution.

In my studying of local search solutions since the first of this year, I have been astounded by the technology, the new solutions as well as the existing ones that are in place to solve the local search issue. It looks to me like everything is going local, that there will be an entire other world on the Internet, Local.

A New Local Search Solution
My company will soon be announcing a Local Search solution that will make all other Local Search Solutions look like they are playing house. Our LS Solution will be the Mother of all Local Search Solutions, no kidding.

I took my energy and frustration on what I have experienced with current solutions, including Local Ad Link, Merchant Circle, Local Splash and tons more, some you have never even heard of, and put together a unique, proprietary answer.

This solution will be all organic and not have a PPC component built in, I am working on that and considering that, but very happy to move ahead without it. I will be posting the details of our new solution as soon as I get the information organized in a understandable and credible presentation.

Because the solution is such an aggressive, pro-active and leveraged program, your listing will appear multiple times organically, instead of just once on a page like PPC. Adding the PPC component will not be hard, but I don't think it is necessary and it is arguable that the organic, multiple listing results will out perform a PPC component/program.

Local Search is my new best friend. I have already shared local search solutions with my clients and have had fantastic results, they are happy.

Happy SEO'ing, see you next time!

-Martin Walker, CEO
Certified SEO Specialist

New "Mini-SEO Package" for Small Businesses

mwalker — 2009-04-30T09:17:20-07:00

New product for small businesses

30 April, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ontario, Ca. --- Wilshire Publicity, Inc., a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) company has created a �Mini Local Search� product for small businesses.

The company traditionally works with medium and larger sized businesses providing organic, or natural SEO services. These services typically cost approximately $750.00 to $1500.00 per page.

This new product is priced much less, starting from $325.00 per month and is designed for smaller, local businesses.

Wilshire Publicity�s CEO Martin Walker explains �We are excited to have this smaller product to offer, it is very effective and very affordable. It allows the local business owner to be found online and drive new customers to their location from the Internet.�

The product is exclusive because it is a combination of organic SEO, paid search, social network visibility (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.) in-person and online meetings.

Walker adds �This is the first product of it�s kind, we are the first company to put all these small pieces together and offer them at an affordable price.�

�What does a restaurant in Riverside care if they get found online in New Jersey?� Walker states, �This product makes it so that the restaurant, or any other local business gets found in the same area as it�s customers. It is great for any local small business.�

This "Mini Local Search" product raises the visibility of the clients� website online, but focuses on only the area the client is located in, within a certain mile radius. This strategy allows local businesses to be found by local customers.

Included in the product is a listing in a major local directory so that the customer doesn�t even actually need a website to be found online.

�We try to offer the latest technology, and the most effective solutions for our clients.� Walker adds, �When our clients succeed, we succeed.�

For more information, call Martin Walker at 909-456-8847

Is Local Ad Link a Scam?

mwalker — 2009-04-27T07:39:17-07:00

I think "Scam" is a little harsh.

I have compared another local search solution, Merchant Circle to LAL. I have run a handful of ads on LAL and have a few MC accounts for myself and for clients, I wanted to do an accurate comparison.

I have sold LAL and am a reseller for MC. I have been focusing on local search solutions for the last year or so as was excited to see the LAL platform and fell in love, or lust, with the technology. I have invested time, money and my reputation into Local Ad Link and am very disappointed.

Everyone I have involved with it has had problems, literally. For the cost, I find this unacceptable.

When I first signed up as a reseller I thought the commissions were kind of high (50%), how can they sustain this? One of my associates had the same question, "Where does all the money go?". "Would the client be comfortable knowing that 40 to 50% of their money was going into the sales rep's pocket?"

Unfortunately, I have found that LAL simply does not work in a reliable and predictable fashion, what I would expect for the high cost and in offering it to my clients. It is a clanging gong.

These were questions we asked of ourselves. We thought if it worked like it said it would, the commission structure wouldn't matter, the client got fat results, and we got paid for taking a risk and stepping out into a new frontier. The commissions were structured to be lowered over time as well.

For those that have had success with LAL, simply don't know any better. All of the samples I have seen and heard of that tout success are results that could have been gained for free. For example, I am getting more referrals from my Twitter account than my three paid LAL accounts.

The LAL platform is being held together with duct tape and band aids, like that plane in Madagasgar 2.

The problems they are having are wide and deep, too many to go into in this entry; way too many. I cannot recommend it to my clients in good conscience. The organization has a lot of good people in it, they are just in a bad boat.

A good comparison is Merchant Circle, try both. The good news is that MC is free. They do have paid solutions, and I recommend trying some of them, but you can do a lot more with the free version of MC than you can do with the paid version of LAL.

My name and reputation is all that I have and unfortunately, LAL has dented it. Not that I can't dent it myself, but in this case, it wasn't me.

For my clients that I have sold LAL to, I am making it up to them by creating free listings on MC and helping them build those listings to drive more traffic to their sites. This is my way of making up to them for unknowingly leading them down a dirt road.

I am looking deeper into more local search solutions and will provide information on them as I dig them up. None of which I care about except the ones that work in a reliable, predictable and honest fashion.

I think the Local Ad Link company, Beyond Commerce, I-Supply, et. al is running too fast and obviously tripping on their own feet.

I am curious to know what Bob McNulty's true agenda is, as he is moving forward rapidly with new solutions while major problems exist with existing ones, this is telling in and of itself. From bad checks to late commission payments, I will be surprised if they are around in 18 mos.

If you are considering Local Ad Link, look around, do your homework, I advise against it. There are many things you can do for free and achieve comparable results.

In the meantime, try out Merchant Circle too, for FREE.

I have a more comprehensive article posted on www.ezinearticles.com, and will post more local search solutions here in the months to come, free and paid.

-Martin Walker

Using the "F" Word on your website

Martin Walker — 2009-04-01T10:40:36-07:00

Ok, I know this is a little touchy. I am a Christian and I don't use this kind of language, especially on my website. But, what are the implications and organic traffic results when you optimize your website pages with the "F" word?

Well, the "F" word is "FREE"

You may be tempted to use the word "free" throughout your site or on selected landing pages because of the high popularity of the word. High popularity = High traffic, right? Maybe so, but what kind of traffic. Car salespeople call them "tire kickers".
Tire kickers are people who either don't have any budget, are not ready to buy or make a decision or are truly looking for a free resource.
I would recommend omitting the "F" word from your site unless you are using a page(s) to provide high value, free, UNIQUE, information to your prospects.
Providing this kind of information may establish you as an expert in your field and give value to your site and is a viable strategy.
But, many times, you are better served by optimizing your pages for other keywords, and just walking over the "F" word, FREE.
That's my 2 cents of the "F" word on websites!
Happy SEO'ing!
-M. Walker

How to find great keywords, Part 1

Martin Walker — 2009-03-27T05:38:23-07:00

Finding great keywords has 5 major components to it:

1. Popularity (What are the words people are actually typing in Google?)

2. Competitiveness (How many other businesses are after that same keyword?)

3. Relevance to product (Will this word lead the visitor to where he expects?)

4. Relevance to branding (Is this the exact kind of customer your want?)

1. Popularity

How do you know what people are really typing in to find your product or service?

Do people type in "kickboxing" or "kick boxing"?

You may be surprised.

What about "nosejob" or "rhinoplasty" what's the difference?

You can use a free keyword tool called Wordtracker, click here.

This tool will show you exactly how many times a word was searched, across multiple search engines including Google, Yahoo!, MSN and all of the top ones, there are hundreds. This is based upon factual, historical data, no more guessing, or putting in wrong keywords.

By using this tool, you can find out exactly what people are typing in. Start off with one main word, and you will see that you can drill down into the results and see more combination's and more details of your main keyword. Add those keywords and keyword phrases to your site, add them to your page content, headline on a page, in the description metatag, in the keywords metatag and don't forget the Alt tags.

Remember, you are optimizing one page at a time. So you will optimize one page for one main keyword/keyphrase at a time. 5 main keyphrases means 5 landing pages, one page for every main keyphrase.

With "nosejob" or "rhinoplasty", this illustrates the difference between a "tire kicker" and a real qualified prospect. The word "nosejob" is what someone types in when they don't know much about what the surgery is; "rhinoplasty" is obviously more specific, and shows a higher degree of knowledge, or at least, research, by the person. It is reasonable to assume that optimizing a page for the word "rhinoplasty" may give you a better qualified prospect. This rule can be applied to any product, service or industry.

More to come in Part 2

Good luck, have fun and happy SEO ing!