Are you interested in increasing your web presence online?  This is a very important issue and is actually at the heart of the SEO industry.  SEO, otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization, is the process of promoting yourself online and increasing your search engine visibility.

If you are a business owner new to the idea of SEO then it’s easy to become overwhelmed at all the various facets of online business promotion.  We generally recommend a dual-action strategy: Organic SEO with PPC.

Organic SEO

Organic Search Optimization can take some time to pay dividends – sometimes as long as six months to a year, depending on your industry. Organic SEO can cost more initially, but can be more cost effective once you’ve achieved a certain level of market penetration.

PPC Marketing

On the other hand, PPC Marketing can yield immediate results, if managed effectively. This is good because you can start bringing in buyers right away, but it will also require a relatively constant amount of budget on an ongoing basis.

Here are three specific avenues you want to think about, and that will help you communicate with the SEO consultant.

1.    You want a strong local presence.

Make sure that Google Places, Google Maps and Facebook Places are all part of the plan.  It is much easier to compete and win for local search results, since the Google Venice update actually helps to send local traffic to you, even for broader keywords with local phrases added

2.    You want long-tail keywords relevant to your industry.

Don’t go after broad keywords unless you have lots of patience and time. Instead, go after less popular (but still niche popular) keywords.  Rather than take blind guesses, the best course of action is to research the most popular “long-tail” keywords that have a reasonable degree of searches but with low competition for them.  Make sure these words are relevant to your company so as not to face a penalty from the search engine.

3.    Diversify Your Links

Much attention has been given in recent weeks to over-optimization, which is essentially second-rate content used only to artificially increase the number of links.  With the recent Google algorithm updates, and presumably with more updates on the way, it is essential to diversify your links (from a variety of directories and blogs) as well as diversify your SEO by looking into other search engines besides Google.

It’s not hard to break into web marketing and to get some “instant success.”  It won’t be colossal success right away, but if you strive to follow these three paths, you will establish a strong reputation in the business.