As the SEO landscape continues to change in 2013, many tactics that had previously been low cost, easy to implement and effective are becoming less and less effective. For this reason, a lot of small businesses are struggling to choose the right areas of focus to get quality results from SEO on a limited budget. The truth is that things like comprehensive content marketing plans can be very expensive to execute, and for many small businesses a hefty monthly retainer to “do SEO right” might not be a legitimate possibility.

So what can a small business that’s on a budget do to improve their search rankings without exposing themselves to a high level of short term risk?

SEO Help for Those on a Shoestring Budget

1) Leverage External Expertise Strategically

One way to leverage external expertise on a limited budget is to contract with an agency in a specific, strategic way. Rather than engaging in a full-on retainer-based relationship, you might consider:

• An SEO Audit: Have the agency conduct an in-depth audit of your site and give you a list of items to improve. You might consider doing this annually with a different agency every year to get a “new set of eyes” and different ideas for opportunities.
• Monthly Consultations: Some SEOs will sell hourly phone consultations, which like an audit can be a nice way to get some quick insights for a limited fee. If you have $200-$500 a month to spend, you’ll likely be much better off getting 1 hour of time from a skilled SEO than you would be if you spent that money on services (as you’ll likely either get an extremely limited amount of quality link building, or a lot of lower quality link building that’s likely to hurt you more than harm you in the long run).

In either of these scenarios, you’ll have to be able to actually execute on the advice generated in the audit/consultation. But you’ll put yourself in a position to get a premium quality SEO plan on a restricted budget.

2) Generate Blog Posts by Curating and Aggregating Content

Your blog is one of the most effective SEO tools you have in your arsenal. At least it can be, if you use it right. But one of the most common stumbling blocks encountered by bloggers and business owners is a lack of content. Fortunately, there are tons of resources you can use to generate content ideas. (Think AllTop, Twitter, Google News and many of the sites you’re already using on a daily basis.)

The key to coming up with great content ideas is to shift your thinking from that of a content consumer to that of a content curator. What topics are trending? What are your readers and customers asking you about most frequently? What posts have been re-Tweeted hundreds of times on Twitter? Armed with this data, put a new spin on it – and you’ve got yourself a blog post.

Another useful way to generate share-worthy blog content is to collect quotes from internal subject matter experts and create a blog post surrounding this information. If there’s a hot-button topic in your industry, consult your leaders and ask for their insights. What are their perspectives on the changing trends, up-and-coming events, or recent happenings? If your internal experts have recognizable names, you’ve already got one factor in your corner contributing to the share-worthiness of your content.

A good way to do this can be to simply create an email distribution list for the right folks within the company, brief them on what you’ll be doing, then when news breaks send a simple question to everyone on the list and ask for a few sentences / paragraphs on the topic. You simply need to format the responses and you have what’s likely to be a highly useful and interesting piece of content.

3) Identify and Contribute to Authoritative Blogs in Your Niche

Another way to develop quality inbound links to your site is to create guest blog content.

This is a great low budget tactic if you’re aiming your efforts at quality blogs and avoiding typical guest posting mistakes, because you’re able to develop thought leadership, get referral traffic to your site, and build authoritative links in exchange for your own expertise and effort.

The main takeaway here isn’t necessarily that you should choose these three specific tactics, but rather that in looking for low-cost SEO options you want to consider:

• Quality Not Quantity: For the actual aspects you’re outsourcing if your budget is extremely scarce, you want to avoid riskier, higher-volume services and focus on extracting very specific value from experts in small doses.
• Use Your Relationships & Expertise to Get Links: Whether its getting experts (internally or from other sites and companies in your niche) to contribute to your content or contributing your content to other sites, you have expertise and have built relationships over time that you can turn into links

Combining these two (selective involvement from an SEO and a lot of effort from your own team) can net you some great results.

SEO Concept Photo via Shutterstock

The post 3 Ways to Perform SEO on a Shoestring Budget appeared first on Small Business Trends.

For that reason many small businesses need some sort of help – whether it be in the form of a piece of software or a service to manage your account. Because of the complexity of pay-per click campaigns and the ROI available from a well-run account, many quality PPC management services are out of the reach of a typical small business.

At Measured SEM, we’re frequently being approached by businesses who simply don’t have the budget for our services, but are still looking for help getting the most out of pay-per click.

As with my recent posts on landing page tools and local SEO tools, below are highlighted some affordable resources for getting more out of your AdWords campaigns.

1. WordStream

My former company, WordStream, offers a few tools for PPC users, including its free AdWords Performance Grader and free Keyword Tools. The WordStream PPC Advisor is the company’s full-featured Pay-Per-Click Marketing Management Software, which is designed to help users analyze, configure and monitor their PPC campaigns in 20 minutes per week.

They also offer hands-on management services aimed at small to medium sized businesses as well.

Key Features:

• Free AdWords Performance Grader and Keyword Tools
• Complete AdWords/adCenter integration
• Competitive intelligence helps identify profitable search terms
• Savings alerts help reduce unnecessary spending

Cost:

• Software: $299 per month (Small Business), $499 per month (Professional), $999 per month (Enterprise)
• Services: Pricing currently starts at $1,000 per month
• AdWords Performance Grader and Keyword Tools are free
• Discounts available for annual pre-pay

2. Gazel

Gazel is an AdWords Excel plugin allowing users to instantly refresh data with a single click, negating the hassle of downloading .csv files from AdWords. Users can track unlimited client profiles using Gazel and make use of customizable report templates to share data with key team members and external stakeholders.

The tool does require some level of comfort with Excel, but for those comfortable with Excel it’s a great tool for more efficiently manipulating data and optimizing your PPC campaigns.

Key Features:

• Powers pivot tables and reports
• Unlimited client profiles
• Shareable, customizable report templates
• Easy comparison metrics

Cost: $99 (Beta version, compatible with Excel 2007 and Excel 2010)

3. Portent Interactive PPC Essentials Program

It’s extremely difficult to get competent PPC help for less than four figures, but Portent actually offers a PPC essentials package that starts at $250/mo. and gives you a dedicated account representative. Obviously with a monthly fee that low there are several specific restrictions on deliverables, but of course they also offer additional services at a higher retainer.

I don’t know of any company doing quality work with a minimum monthly retainer that low, so it can be a great option for really low budget campaigns and/or folks just getting started with AdWords.

Key Features:

• Written reports with identified issues and suggested solutions
• Varying service levels for any size budget
• Ad copywriting and multi-variate testing
• Keyword, CPC and CTR optimization
• Certified account managers

Cost: $250 and up (PPC Essentials package, covering users with budgets under $3,000 per month and 200 keywords or less)

4. Trada

Trada is a crowdsourced platform with a network of experienced, certified optimizers who help companies take their PPC campaigns to the next level. Trada’s experts provide complete campaign buildout and optimization, meaning clients spend less time on managing and organizing their paid search campaigns.

Key Features:

• Optimizer Matching algorithm matches clients with the right experts
• Complete campaign buildout and optimization
• Continuous testing and optimization to maximize ROI

Cost: Varies. Clients and experts agree on a target cost-per action (sale, lead, etc.); Trada only wins when client goals are met.

5. AgileBid

AgileBid is an automated bidding platform designed to save users time on PPC campaigns – without marking up costs. AgileBid puts paid search campaigns on auto-pilot, allowing advertisers to set budgetary limits and sit back while the platform takes care of bidding and keyword optimization behind the scenes.

Key Features:

• Manages both Google AdWords and Bing ads
• Automatically search for winning bids and eliminate non-performers
• Automated CPC optimization; never exceed your budget limits

Cost: $49.95 per month (Starter, monthly spend less than $1,000). Advertisers with monthly budgets exceeding $1,000, $50 additional monthly cost per additional $1,000 spent.

6. WordWatch

WordWatch specializes in Google Shopping and Google Product Listing Ads, but also offers PPC optimization tools for standard paid search campaigns. Varying service levels accommodate advertisers with small to large budgets.

Key Features:

• Unlimited keywords at all account levels
• Simple interface usable for non-experienced advertisers
• Works behind-the-scenes to optimize campaigns and reduce spend
• Specialized features for Google Product Listing Ads advertisers

Cost: $49 (Small Budgets – 1 account, 5 campaigns), $99 (SMB Advertisers – 1 account, 25 campaigns), $199 (Marketing Pros – 10 accounts, unlimited campaigns), $399 (SEM Agencies – 50 accounts, unlimited campaigns

7. Certified Knowledge

Brad Geddes’ Certified Knowledge offers a collection of PPC tools, several in-depth training modules on various AdWords related topics, and a forum where you can get answers to specific questions and issues you’re having with your campaigns.

Brad is one of the smartest and most experienced AdWords advertisers around and if you’re looking to maintain control of your own pay-per click campaigns access to these tools and this information is extremely valuable.

Key Features:

BONUS: Google’s Free Tools

While using a paid tool or service can often jumpstart your campaign and save you a lot of time, it’s important to note that Google offers a number of free tools to help advertisers get the most from their paid search campaigns, and depending on your situation (how much time you can dedicate to the campaign, your budget, etc.) managing the campaign yourself with Google’s free resources may actually be the best approach for your business.

Google AdWords Editor allows advertisers to simplify the process of making bulk changes across campaigns, including keywords and bids, and also enables working offline with ease of uploading changes any time.

The Conversion Optimizer is a free feature for AdWords advertisers that you can leverage if you have conversion tracking set up (and you’re generating a minimum volume of conversions) to have your bids optimized for you.

The Google Keyword Tool is a widely used resource by both AdWords advertisers and for general users looking to improve SEO.

Key Features:

• Work offline; upload changes easily
• Keyword Tool valuable for general SEO
• Automated CPC and keyword optimization
• Analyzes user attributes, content targeting and search targeting

Cost: Free (Although you are, of course, already giving them money if you’re using the tools.)

Ultimately with any of these tools and services, you’ll still need to understand your objectives, ensure you’re getting the proper ROI, and provide input about your business.

But you can get significant time savings and campaign improvements with a fairly minimal investment if you find the right product for you so that you can get a better return on your investment and focus more of your energy on things like hiring smarter, making sure you’re allocating budget properly, and generally finding ways to grow your business.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, kycstudio

The post Low Cost Google AdWords PPC Tools and Services appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Lots of smart folks have already made some really interesting predictions and talked about key factors to consider in 2013.

I won’t focus on any specific crystal ball work, but I do want to call out five important trends that small businesses will want to keep an eye on in 2013.

1. Link Diversification is Increasingly Important

It’s obviously part of the focus in this post, and indeed it’s a really important SEO issue that’s become incredibly important in 2012 with Google’s Penguin updates, and will likely continue to be important.

From a small businesses perspective the important thing to keep in mind here is that a lot of SEO short cuts (such as spending a couple hundred dollars a month with an overseas SEO firm, or a firm that primarily leverages overseas labor) to get a lot of low-quality links with very aggressive and specific anchor text (meaning if you run Paul’s Plumbing and your company is located in Newton, Massachusetts, you would use “Newton MA plumbing company” to link to your site).

What Does this Mean for Small Businesses?

The important thing to note here is that it’s not “always wrong” to get a link with targeted anchor text, and getting a stray link from a site that’s low quality won’t sink your site, but the links to your site need to be a mix of different qualities, with different linking texts, that don’t look the same as a spammy link profile. Some of the other trends will talk a bit more about how best to get there.

2. Content Thickness & Quality is Increasingly Important

Since a lot of those lower cost, more aggressive tactics no longer work, that means that the tactics that do work are and will likely to continue to be things that require more (or “thicker”) unique content and content of a higher quality. The good news here is that in a lot of ways high quality content works and will continue to work even better, because the lower quality tactics are no longer competing with it in the search results (because that content doesn’t rank).

What Does this Mean for Small Businesses?

The biggest factor here for small businesses is that the $xxx per month outsourced, hands-off link building service will no longer be a viable option for getting quality search traffic. Small businesses will need to start to focus on creating solid content (or having some solid content created for them). In some cases, unfortunately, it’ll become more expensive to maintain the same rankings. The benefits are that this type of content (unlike getting 500 links from forum profiles) can drive referred traffic and have other benefits for your business outside of SEO.

3. Google Authorship May Become Increasingly Important

As Google rapidly updates their algorithm and looks for additional ways to sort signal from noise in search results, one thing to keep an eye on is Google Authorship. For those unfamiliar, this is effectively a means for an author to identify a page or post as his or her work to Google, and those posts are then highlighted in search results with information about the author.

What Does this Mean for Small Businesses?

This is a fairly simple, low-cost opportunity to implement authorship to get some additional “real estate” in search results for your content, and also to build the authority of your Google profile in the event that authorship becomes a more important ranking factor. There is a great list of resources here that should get you or your developer started on implementing and understanding authorship.

4. The “Shrinking Organic Search Result”

There has been a lot of talk about Google’s shrinking SERP and the fact that results from a single domain taking up entire search results are getting more prevalent. This can mean that specific domains may get more of the search engine real estate, and/or it can mean that the search results are simply showing more ads and more Google properties.

What Does this Mean for Small Businesses?

Unfortunately this really means that small businesses need to pay closer attention to alternative means of getting attention and traffic outside of SEO – if Google is “shrinking” the organic SERP by including more ads, it’ll likely become important for your business to understand how to get included in those ad blocks and how to optimize for them, whether they be traditional AdWords, Google Shopping, or otherwise.

5. Increasing Importance of Mobile & Video in SEO

None of this is news, but more and more people are using smartphones and tablets and the technology around consuming video on the Web is consistently making improvements. None of this is likely to be interrupted into 2013, so it’s important to understand how you can be well positioned to show up in various types of mobile and video search results in 2013.

What Does this Mean for Small Businesses?

The first step here is awareness – it’s important to think about how your customers and prospective customers behave when they’re looking for you. Not every small business needs to focus deeply on mobile and video, and of course you have limited resources, so ask yourself questions like:

• Do my customers / prospects look for services like mine on smartphones and tablets?
• What sorts of services are they likely to search for my business and businesses like mine on (Yelp, FourSquare, Google? Many of these types of sites and apps outside of Google can become a “search engine” as soon as someone starts querying them for information)?
• If I create a video is that likely to reach my customers and prospective customers?
• How much effort will it take to better position myself for exposure through mobile or video search?
• Is that effort going to be worth it based on how much of my customer and prospective customer base is I’m likely to reach?

The good news is that while there are a lot of mobile-specific search optimization tactics, much of the work you’d typically do around good old fashioned marketing will help you to rank well in mobile searches. Video for small businesses can be a bit trickier, and of course can have a lot more benefits than just SEO. This is a great guide to thinking through a video strategy – just from the length of the post you can see there are several moving pieces to consider.

In general, I think most of the trends we’ve seen in 2012 and are likely to continue to see into 2013 are centered around:

• Short cuts & lower cost SEO not working
• Higher quality content and additional work being required to be successful (in some case to maintain or regain the same rankings you’d previously gotten for cheap)
• The higher barrier to entry being an opportunity for some to get very high return for the additional spend and effort required to create good content
• Google continuing to move into certain verticals more and more aggressively, so that understanding additional traffic opportunities through paid channels (and channels completely unrelated to search) becomes increasingly important

So small businesses will want to think about how this should impact their overall content strategy, as well as what it means for SEO as part of an overall marketing mix.

SEO Photo via Shutterstock

The post Small Business SEO Trends to Keep an Eye On appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Before your small business gets started with conversion optimization, there are a few things you’ll need before you get started:

• Conversion Tracking – Many small businesses don’t have accurate conversion tracking implemented, and/or can’t track their primary activity (for instance if you don’t have a way to track phone calls or foot traffic to your store and those are your primary objective, you effectively can’t track conversions). If you can’t measure conversions, you won’t be able to optimize for them, so you’ll need to address this issue first.
• Sufficient Traffic – Many small and local businesses simply don’t drive enough on-line traffic to invest in conversion optimization. If you’re only getting a few hundred, or even a few thousand, visitors to your site a month and the number of visitors who actually convert is in the tens rather than the hundreds, you’ll likely be better off optimizing for the “top of the funnel” and working on tactics like SEO, advertising, content marketing, etc. to get more traffic to your site before you start to optimize for better conversion rates.
• Ideas – Conversion tools won’t tell you what to actually test – you’ll have to have your own ideas about what elements of your site you think could work better with some refinements and will have to have ideas of what to test. What could you change to make visitors to your site more likely to take the action you want them to?

If you already have each of the above and you’re considering tools to help with implementing some actual tests, the tools below are definitely worth considering:

1. Convert.com by Convert Insights

Convert.com enables SMBs to conduct A/B and Multivariate testing and offers intergration with Google Analytics. You also get some of the standard landing page creation tools such as a WYSIWYG editor, easy HTML capabilities and style sheet editor.

Convert has some e-commerce specific features as well, such as the ability to connect revenue, transactions and ordered items to your test results to show the best overall picture of outcomes. For such tests they’ve designed some automated controls to keep losing variations from running longer than necessary, while allowing winning variations to continue producing leads and revenue.

Cost Breakdown: Convert offers a 15-day free trial at all pricing levels; pricing starts at $139 per month for the starter package (a bit higher starter price than some alternatives), which includes 50,000 tested visitors but doesn’t include advanced integration or geo-targeting. Expert level pricing runs $399 per month and includes 200,000 tested visitors, while Agency level is $1,499 per month for 1,000,000 tested visitors. Each additional 1,000 visitors is $3 at this level. Enterprise packages are also available.

2.  Optimizely

Optimizely is a popular, simple-to-use program that enables the continuous tracking of any variations you want to implement after inserting a single line of code into your HTML. The program can track a variety of variables, including clicks, conversions, signups or any other measurable metrics you define.

It also integrates with several widely used analytics tools, including Google Analytics, KISSmetrics and SiteCatalyst. Like Convert (and many of the conversion optimization offers) Optimizely offers a WYSIWYG editor allows you to move elements around, edit text, images and more without ever touching a line of code. You can also read this Q and A with co-founder Dan Siroker on Small Biz Trends from a couple of years back.

Cost Breakdown: Three plan levels are available: Bronze, Silver or Gold. Each offers a 30-day free trial. The Bronze plan costs just $17 per month and includes 2,000 monthly visitors. The Silver plan is $71 per month, including 20,000 monthly visitors, and the Gold plan costs $359 per month and includes 200,000 monthly visitors. Additional features vary by plan and increase with each level. A fourth level is available, Platinum, but interested parties must call to discuss pricing.

3.  Unbounce

Unbounce offers a lot of the same tracking and landing page creation tools as the other platforms, including several landing page templates to help get you started, and an easy-to-understand reporting dashboard for conducting A/B and multi-variant tests.

Unbounce landing pages are hosted on Unbounce’s servers, although you can use a custom sub-domain name to make it look like a part of your primary Website (this is fairly easy to set up but may require very minor intervention from a developer). They offer a lot of nice third-party integrations, such as Google Analytics and even email management platforms like Constant Contact and Mail Chimp, which make it easy to sync your landing pages with a variety of other applications. Widgets permit the easy addition of videos and other media for a more interactive user experience as well.

Cost Breakdown: Plans include Starter ($49 per month for 5,000 unique visitors), Pro 99 ($99 per month for 25,000 unique visitors) and Pro 199 ($199 per month for 100,000 unique visitors). A free 30-day trial is available at all levels, and the Pro packages includes more features such as integration, two sub-users and the ability to add multiple users.

4.  Visual Website Optimizer

Visual Website Optimizer offers a few unique features that differentiate it from other A/B Testing tools, including behavioral targeting, which allows you to show specific visitors targeted messages to help boost conversions. Another bonus is the heat maps feature, which tracks visitors’ eye path to determine which CTAs are getting the most attention, where visitors’ eyes are directed to first and what areas of the page aren’t being noticed.

Like its competitors, Visual Website Optimizer allows landing page editing without any knowledge of HTML. You can split URLs, conduct multivariate testing and select from 15 different targeting options, including behaviors, system, geolocation and more. Finally, use the built-in usability testing option to ask visitors questions to get valuable user feedback.

Cost Breakdown: Choose from four plans: Small Business ($49 per month for 10,000 tested visitors), Small Agency ($129 per month for 30,000 tested visitors), Large Agency ($249 per month for 100,000 tested visitors) or Enterprise (call for pricing to test millions of visitors each month). Both agency plans offer multiple logins, while the Large Agency plan also includes sub-accounts.

5.  InstaPage

InstaPage offers landing page templates and a drag-and-drop interface that lets you easily add elements and move them around the page. Landing page widgets let you add third-party content from sources like Twitter and Facebook. A single, simplified interface tracks all your stats including visitors, page views, conversions and more.

InstaPage’s claim to fame, however, is its different approach to A/B Testing: Instead of a standard split test, the platform uses “Machine Learning” technology to automatically improve your landing pages. How it works: InstaPage tracks what content was displayed when a conversion occurs along with how far the user scrolled down the page, the time spent on page and other conversion metrics. This information is then used to improve your landing pages based on what works. 

A couple of important notes of caution here:

• Any time something (whether it’s made by a third party vendor or Google themselves) tells you it will do your optimizing for you, make sure you take the time to dig in and understand how that software is picking winners, and ensure that the metrics that are driving their automation decisions are the ones that are important to your business. Having software make decisions for you in the background sounds really nice, but if they’re optimizing for something like time-on-site rather than conversions and revenue, the decisions could actually be sub-optimal for your business
• When landing page software says they’re “Google Friendly” be sure you either understand the SEO implications of using their software, or consult with an SEO expert who does before exposing a page that drive significant SEO traffic to your site.

Cost Breakdown: InstaPage offers a 30-day free trial on all account levels, and prices are lower than competitors. A Single plan is just $9 per month, which includes one landing page and one custom domain along with all the other features such as automated optimization and lead form integration. The Basic plan, at $29 per month, includes five landing pages and five custom domains, while the Standard plan is $49 per month and includes unlimited landing pages and custom domains. The kicker: Every plan includes unlimited visitor tracking.

Bonus App: Google Analytics Content Experiments (formerly Google Website Optimizer)

If you’re not thrilled about the idea of forking over some cash for A/B Testing, fear not: Our favorite – and free – Web analytics platform, Google Analytics, now has integrated Content Experiments, what was formerly known as Google Website Optimizer. Because it’s right in your Google Analytics dashboard, you can use your already-created goals to track results for up to five different landing pages, each set up on its own URL.

You can define what percentage of visitors are included in your content experiments, choose the metrics on which to measure success and directly compare complete variants all within the same Google Analytics platform you’ve been using to track visitors and results for years.

The downside?

There’s no easy WYSIWYG editor, so all the technical coding is up to you. But in terms of statistical analysis, Google Analytics Content Experiments handles all that for you. So if you have the coding knowledge or development and design resources at your disposal, this is a free, easy solution to get you started creating landing pages that convert.

How to Choose Just One?

Each of the tools has some form of free trial, so I’d recommend taking a look at the features outlined above and narrowing to two or three that seem to suit your needs and then actually trying them out. If your requirements are more basic, it might come down to which is the easiest to use for you and/or price.

Personally we use Unbounce for most of our own and our clients’ projects because of the design of the application and the feature-set offered (also by the way if you’re looking for inspiration on things to test and/or conversion best practices, their blog is an excellent resource regardless of which tool you choose), but again a different tool may better suit your needs and/or price point depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, so take a couple for a spin and see what fits!

The post 5 Landing Page Optimization Tools for Small Businesses appeared first on Small Business Trends.

There are several great local SEO tools available, but we’ll walk through five, in particular, that you can leverage for some useful insights:

1. DIYSEO Local Report Card

This easy to understand report is customized specifically for your business. Using keywords, business type, industry, desired location and overall objectives the DIYSEO Local Report Card shows businesses their ranking on Google and tests their local listings on the major local search engines: Google, Yahoo, CitySesarch, Yelp, LocalEze and MapQuest.

With simple emoticons, a green smiley face and a red frownie face, the Local Report Card, provides a quick reference showing businesses where they are doing well and where they need to improve.

Bottom Line: DIYSEO Local Report Card is still in BETA testing but is free to use and provides a quick and easy snapshot of your businesses local efforts. DIYSEO also offers SEO planning programs for low monthly subscription costs.

2. Generate Local Adwords & Keywords

Not sure exactly what keywords will help you with your local campaign? As its name, this easy to use (and free) tool helps you establish local keywords based upon your already established list. You can narrow the list down through a list of exclusions and parameters.

Bottom Line: If you already know the keywords and adwords that have been working for your business, Generate Local Adwords & Keywords by 5MinuteSite is a great tool to help transform your words into locally recognized keywords.

3. Local Search Rank Checker

Tracking Google Local, Bing Local and Yahoo Local, the BrightLocal’s Local Search Rank Checker provides you with a comprehensive report analyzing your business’ local rankings, showing you your previous ranking for both the local and standard search engines. Additionally, this tool tracks four different types of results including local search, organic, directory search (such as Yelp) and secondary searches.

Bottom Line: Depending upon your package, the Local Search Rank Checker can track up to 100 keywords and schedule your reports to run automatically, either weekly or monthly. Packages for this easy-to-use platform start as low as $9.99 per month, but users can first take advantage of a free 30-day trial.

4. Local Citation Finder

Developed by Whitespark and based around a process outlined by Garret French, Local Citation Finder helps businesses find the best locations to list their businesses for better local rankings. This tool shows up to 245 citations and provides a great organizational tool to allow you to keep track of the citations you already have. This platform is supported in 41 countries and reports can be run multiple times to show growth.

Bottom Line: This is a particularly good platform especially for businesses that don’t have a robust Web presence but also gives SEO professionals the opportunity to identify quality citations that are being missed. With a free version available, users can choose from a variety of packages that best suit their needs.

5. Google Places Category Tool

If you’re looking to expand the categories for your local SEO, this is a great tool that helps categorize your SEO keywords into different sectors. For example, if you’re selling shoes, you may also want to consider using keywords such as boots, sandals, orthopedic shoes, footwear, or tennis shoes.

Bottom Line: The Google Places Category Tool a very basic tool, but at a fantastic cost – free. You might be surprised with some of the categories and synonyms that it produces for your keywords, giving you alternative options.

BONUS

It’s not a local tool, strictly speaking, but I just got a chance to take a look at a tool at SERPs.com that offers some nice reporting around organic traffic, keyword rankings, and what’s changed and local/small businesses and startups will likely find the tool really useful.

Do you have a favorite we didn’t mention? Share with us which tools are changing the way you do local.

UPDATE 1/11/2013: DIYSEO is now UpCity.

SEO Photo via Shutterstock

The post Five Simple And Actionable Local SEO Tools appeared first on Small Business Trends.

That said, if you’re creating content to try to position yourself as a thought leader and build your brand, you’re doing it because you have a business to run and a service to promote. So how do you establish yourself as an expert through your guest blog posts without being overly self-promotional?

Here are a few ways to sell yourself – without actually selling – in your guest posts:

Focus in on Your Niche

What differentiates you from your competitors? Do you have a specialty or a proprietary way you approach your service offerings that makes your company a clear standout? Focus on these individualized areas, those that set you apart, rather than more generalized topics anyone in your industry could discuss easily. When readers investigate potential vendors, your business will immediately land in front of the pack, if you play your cards right.

Don’t Post and Disapper

All too often, submitting a guest post is the last to-do item on a marketer’s list. Instead of providing the post and simply falling off the radar, keep track of social mentions, respond and thank those who recognize your content, and be attentive and responsive to comments. It takes less than two minutes (most often) to respond to blog commenters – and it’s usually two minutes well worth your while.

Be Generous in Giving Props to Other Experts

It’s not all about you. (Shocking, right?) But seriously, give a little link love to some other thought leaders and they’ll be likely to promote your post, giving you more recognition in the long run.

Wrap Up Your Posts With a Signature Blurb

It’s okay to mention your business here and it’s standard practice to link back to your website in this area.

Reference Useful Content You’ve Written

You’ve probably created other useful, educational content that’s hosted on your site or on other blogs.  Link to this information where appropriate so that the reader can see other examples of your expertise and can get a deeper understanding of your point of view - and only if it adds real value.

Share, Share and Share Some More

Once your guest post is live, help spread the word via your social networks. Don’t let the website owner do all the promotion. Devoting some time to draw attention to a post hosted by another website appears less self-serving than continuously posting links to your own website. But ultimately, you’re doing the website owner a favor while still building awareness for your own company.

Forget About Selling

Entirely. Focus on simply educating your readers. In the content marketing age, information sells. That’s why people browse the internet – not to be sold to, but to be informed. Impress them with your expertise and the sales will flow naturally.

In implementing these tips, be sure you’re falling within the publisher’s guidelines for guest posts.

For instance, some won’t like the idea of mentioning your business, even as an expert quote, within the body of the article. They’re doing you a favor by publishing your post, so return the favor by providing valuable insights their readers can actually use.

If you focus first on educating, and second on selling, your guest posts will be better received and more frequently shared.

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The post Sell Your Expertise Without Selling In Your Guest Posts appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Different people often describe different SEO tactics in different ways, but at a high level we can think about SEO in two basic categories:

• On-site SEO: This is basically anything that you’d do to your own site to generate more relevant search engine traffic. This includes specific on-page elements such as title tags, image ALT tags, meta descriptions, internal linking strategies, as well as technical SEO (i.e. duplicate content issues, etc.). On-site SEO is important for any Website, but may be more or less valuable depending on the type of site you have – for instance this should often be the primary focus for larger websites that have a lot of robust content, broad distribution “built in,” and already have a lot of authority and trust with search engines (such as news sites).
• Off-site SEO: This is essentially a variety of things that would be classified as “link building” such as guest blogging, link outreach and producing share-worthy content. If your site has a relatively small amount of content and is targeting a smaller basket of keywords that are highly relevant to your business, after you get the basics in place with regards to on-page SEO your focus will likely be on building links to help rank for your core terms.

Choosing the right SEO strategies – those that make the most sense for your business — is the first step to a successful campaign. This is followed by the decision between managing these tasks in-house and outsourcing to an SEO agency. Here’s a breakdown of the main strategies falling under each category and how to determine what tactics will make the most senseyou’re your business.

On-Site SEO

On-site content: The content appearing on your Website is the foundation on which you can build the rest of your SEO strategy. Without a solid base of content, traffic-building efforts will produce lackluster results. If your business involves highly technical information, and you have someone on staff with both the bandwidth and the skills to produce quality content, it makes more sense to retain content production in-house.

On the other hand, if your content needs exceed the capabilities of your staff, options include outsourcing to a content provider or hiring a dedicated staff writer. It’s also possible to maintain production in-house and outsource to an editor to refine content before publishing.

Blogs: Blogs alone can require a significant time commitment. But the nice thing about blogs is that having multiple voices is encouraged. In this case, multiple staff members can often contribute content, at least initially. But as your audience grows you may find that you need more frequent updates, so you may choose to outsource to an agency. Like on-site content, if the blog content is highly specialized, it’s probably better to keep it in-house.

Keywords, site structure, & technical SEO: Formatting the navigation and code of a website is one of the most technical aspects of SEO. This is one task not easily managed in-house, unless you’re already employing an SEO specialist or developer knowledgeable in SEO best practices. That said, for many smaller content sites a periodic SEO audit can be effective in keeping your site up to date with best practices without having to retain an SEO on an on-going basis.

Off-site SEO

Overall link building strategy: There are a variety of methods that can be used to drive traffic and links. One of the most effective that is also highly useful for branding and thought leadership is content marketing. You’ll want to spend some time thinking about the different types of content creation and promotion that will be the most efficient and effective for your business, and consider how best to use your resources to execute a content marketing strategy. This could be as simple as periodically publishing well-thought out articles and infographics, or it could be as complex as publishing multiple posts a day and adhering to a strict editorial calendar.

Guest blogging: Guest blogging is a widely-used strategy for both networking and linkbuilding. The process involves outreach, pitching and producing content appropriate for placement on related websites.  Guest blogs are often used as a way to establish thought leadership and brand awareness, so informative posts coming from a CEO or other high-level executive have a bigger impact. Still, it’s possible to have posts ghostwritten if you don’t have the capabilities to produce it in-house.

Content creation and linkbait: This category includes case studies, white papers, list posts, edgy blog posts, infographics, webinars, and all the content pieces that can be used to grab attention and encourage social sharing. Infographics should almost always be outsourced unless you employ a skilled graphic designer, while the other tasks can be managed either in-house or via outsourcing depending on the skill level required and the technical level of the content.

Before you determine whether your focus will be on on-page SEO or more on content creation think about some of the following questions:

• Do you have a large site that targets a number of different keywords on a variety of different pages? If so your focus should likely be on technical SEO issues and internal linking and information architecture.
• Do you have a smaller site focusing on a shorter list of keywords? If so you’ll want to find a way to build links into specific pages, likely spending more of your efforts – particularly your ongoing efforts – on content marketing and link building.
• What types of content resources do you have available (who has the ability and bandwidth to write a blog post, an in-depth article, etc.)?
• What types of outreach resources would you have available (in the event that you need to identify a list of sites to promote a contest/piece of content/etc. to who could carry out contacting those sites, if anyone)?
• Do you have any graphic resources available internally?
• Do you have any programming resources available internally (someone who could potentially build a simple widget designed to attract links or make updates to the site that would benefit SEO)?

Obviously in areas that are logical for you to focus on where you have adequate resources you can get those internal resources to work for you. If you’re lacking in the areas that you’ll want to dedicate the most attention to, however, (if your focus should be on technical SEO but you lack technical resources, for instance) those would be areas where you’d want to consider outsourcing.

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