4 First Steps to Grow Your Los Angeles Business Using SEO

Whether you run a B2B or B2C business, search engine optimization can turn your website into a powerful, cost-effective source of leads.

In big cities and metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, the benefits of SEO are even greater than they are in small cities. With a huge population to tap into, ranking even for a “small” keyword is often all it takes to drive a huge volume of prospects and customers to your business.

Just like with most marketing strategies, SEO is just as much about taking action as it is about putting together the perfect strategy. Put continual effort into ranking your website and, even if your gameplan is far from optimal, you’ll still see measurable results.

Below, we’ve put together a simple four-step guide for businesses in the Los Angeles area that are just getting started with SEO. From structuring your website the right way to optimizing your subpages, the steps below will help you begin to generate traffic and leads from organic search.

Understand Your Industry’s Top Search Terms And Keywords

Keywords are the foundation of effective search engine optimization. Without an understanding of the search terms your prospective customers use, it’s extremely difficult to improve your site’s visibility and start generating traffic.

Whether your business is B2B or B2C, the first step you should take in any SEO campaign is to understand the most effective keywords for your business to target.

You can do this using tools like the Google Keyword Planner, or by talking to our expert search engine optimization team.

Keywords can be divided into several categories. We recommend targeting buying keywords, which have more obvious commercial intent than informational keywords, as the foundation of your SEO efforts. You can also target ‘interest keywords’ that are related to your business.

Once you’ve put together a set of keywords that are closely related to the products or services you offer, you can move onto active, on-page optimization.

Optimize Your Sub-pages For Hyper-local Search Keywords

One of the benefits of operating a business in a large metropolis like Los Angeles is that local keywords aren’t limited to the city itself. Instead, you can target a huge range of cities, suburbs and other areas within Southern California in which your business operates.

This is hyper-local targeting — SEO based on suburbs and communities rather than much larger metropolitan areas. When used effectively, it can drive highly targeted traffic to your website and generate some of the most pinpoint accurate leads your business will ever receive.

The best way to optimize your subpages is to create content for each district, suburb or area in which your business operates. For example, if you run a roofing business, you can break your website into specific pages for each ZIP code.

This type of hyper-local targeting lets your business gain traction faster, as ranking for extremely localized terms is much less difficult than ranking for city-wide terms. This can be a great source of leads as you focus on optimizing for shorter-tail, city-wide search keywords in the future.

Build The Foundation For City-wide Keywords As Early As Possible

Ranking for city-wide local keywords such as “los angeles dentist” is a real challenge, especially if your website is new. Not only do you need to compete against bigger businesses — you’re also competing against older, more authoritative and significantly more heavily linked websites.

This makes it important to lay the foundation for city-wide rankings as early as possible, even if you aren’t actively targeting them. By having the local citations, links and other signals as early as possible, you’ll put your website in a far better position to rank for its target keywords one or several years from now.

There’s a saying that “SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.” Just like you’d prepare for a marathon as early as possible, preparing to city-wide keywords several months in advance puts you in a far better position when you decide it’s time to finally take action.

Once You Reach The First Page, Optimize

There are two ways to expand your website’s search presence. The first method is to make your reach as wide as possible by targeting keywords related to the search terms for which you rank, such as “dental implants los angeles” after you rank for “dentist los angeles.”

The second method is to make your reach thin but tall by ranking for a smaller number of search terms, but at a higher position.

Surprisingly, the second method — ranking #1 for a small number of keywords instead of #6 for a large number of keywords — is often the most effective at generating a large volume of leads for your business.

Once your business pops onto the first page for any of its target keywords, make a push to bring it into the top three positions. Traffic on the first page often increases exponentially as you move closer to the top, making it worth putting in the extra time for a top three ranking.

Improve Your Website’s Search Visibility

Our company specializes in finding profitable search keywords and improving your website’s visibility. If you’re new to the world of SEO Los Angeles, our expert team can put together and execute a detailed plan to give your business the search visibility and traffic it deserves.

 

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How to Target and Convert Local Customers Using Your Company Blog

Think of conversion-optimized content and you’ll probably picture your website’s homepage and service-focused landing pages.

While these are the pages that most business owners think of as generating conversions, there are often resources on your website that you can use to turn readers into prospects and convert their attention into real, actionable business leads.

We’re talking about your company’s blog, of course — a highly valuable marketing tool that, for the most part, isn’t used to its full potential.

If you run a B2B business, your blog can be an incredibly valuable marketing tool. Below, we’ve shared some of our favorite ways to convert your blog from a purely informational resource into a highly effective tool for generating leads and driving revenue for your business.

Treat Each Blog Post As A Warm-up For An Informational Resource

People read your blog for several reasons, the most common of which is that they want to learn from you. If you operate a B2B business, this creates a great opportunity to convert readers that seek new information into prospects that can become loyal customers.

One of the easiest ways to do this is through a technique known as a content upgrade.

Content upgrades are long-form guides that stem from a topic you discuss on your blog. Instead of being freely available like blog content, content upgrades are only available to download once a reader opts in to your email list.

In short, they’re tools designed specifically to turn your passive blog readers into real prospects.

The most effective content upgrades exist to answer common questions related to your product or service. For the best results, your content upgrade should be related to the content you write about on your blog.

For example, if you run a trade show exhibition business and write about designing exhibits on your blog, your content upgrade could be an eBook on “How to Design and Operate Your First Trade Show Exhibit.”

This type of content upgrade works so effectively because it touches on a need of your target audience. After all, people reading about trade show exhibiting tips are very likely to have an interest in learning how to design a trade show exhibit.

Each and every person that opts in for your content upgrade is a potential customer. With an effective email and phone-based follow-up routine, you’ll be surprised by how many content upgrade subscribers you can turn into real clients and customers.

Need help thinking of content upgrade ideas? Check online for great content upgrade ideas that you can use to grow your email list and generate new marketing prospects with every blog post you publish.

Add A Live Chat To Your Blog

This is a simple idea that, if done right, can be highly effective at generating leads for your B2B business.

The vast majority of people that come to your blog leave the same way — by closing the tab or window in which they’ve opened your content, and moving on to another task. By adding live chat to your blog, you can extend their interest and turn numerous readers into prospects.

Live chat works best for highly focused, specific blogs that cover a topic in incredible detail. This can mean a focused B2B marketing blog, a blog that covers specific legal problems, or a health and medicine blog that deals with a specific type of medicine.

Since most people that read your blog will have at least some interest in its subject matter, live chat can help you convert passive readers into active prospects — prospects that can often turn into highly valuable sales leads and customers.

Just like with the content upgrade strategy, the key to live chat is that it takes interaction from a passive activity (reading content) and turns it into an active one, letting you establish a working connection with each reader and develop a client or customer relationship.

Is your blog an effective marketing asset?

Many businesses blog simply because they think it’s worth doing. The end result is often a blog that’s packed with content but lacking in focus, making it far less valuable as a marketing asset than a smaller, more specialized blog.

Is your blog an effective marketing asset? Our Los Angeles SEO company specializes in using content to generate leads, inquiries and sales. If you’re interested in developing your site into a source of sales and revenue, our experienced team is always available to help.

 

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Simple SEO in Los Angeles: How to Earn Links from Local Businesses

As a small business, it can seem impossible to outrank your larger, more funded competitors for the most popular and profitable search keywords.

While you may not be able to match your larger competitors’ budgets, you do have a very useful advantage: access.

From reaching out to other businesses with special deals and offers to contacting the owners of local organizations, being part of a small business means you can implement a variety of highly effective strategies that are “too small” for your larger competitors.

Below, we’ve listed five of our favorite local link building techniques that your small business in the Los Angeles area can use to increase your search visibility, generate more traffic and bring in clients and customers using SEO.

Offer discounts for customers of local businesses

One of the easiest ways to earn links from other local businesses is to offer a special discount to their customers.

For example, if you own a restaurant in a specific area, you can reach out to doctor’s offices, car mechanics, parking garages, dentists, study centers and other businesses in the area to inform them that you’ll provide a 10% discount for customers that bring their receipt into your store.

This strategy works because it’s a two-way value exchange. Your offer strengthens their unique sales proposition, all while generating leads for your business. Ask them to add the discount to their website and it also becomes a highly effective strategy for building local one-way links.

Hold meetups for local groups and clubs

If your area is home to local meetup groups and clubs, you can offer to host them at your venue either for free or at a heavily discounted rate. You can even sponsor a group and offer a service or product of some kind.

In exchange, you can ask the group or club to list your venue on their website as a sponsor or supporter. This is a great way to build links for cafés, restaurants and bars, all while building a local customer base at the same time.

Create local ‘best of’ lists

Businesses love to be mentioned online, especially on the websites of other businesses in their area. Another easy way to earn links from nearby businesses is to create “best of” lists on your website that catalog the best restaurants, cafés and other local businesses around yours.

Once you’ve completed the list, you can reach out to the businesses mentioned in your content and let them know why you’ve included them. Since social proof is such a useful marketing tool, most local businesses will be happy to mention and link to your list from their own websites.

Host a local event

This is another tip that works extremely well for cafés, restaurants, bars and other venues. If you have a business that can host other people easily, try holding a local event that attracts owners of other local businesses.

Not only can local networking events help you develop new connections — they can also play a part in establishing new partnerships and groups. Promote the event the right way and you can even earn links from local government websites and directories.

Moz has an excellent post on putting this strategy to work that covers the entire process of using local events to build valuable one-way links to your website.

Review local businesses

Finally, one of the easiest ways to earn links from other local businesses is to review them. Most businesses love positive reviews, especially from people in the community. Post a helpful review of a local business and there’s a good chance they’ll link to you to earn some social proof.

Although this strategy can work for any local business, it’s most effective for business in different industries from the subject matter they’re reviewing. If you own a local newspaper or magazine, a series of targeted, detailed reviews can be a tremendous source of highly relevant links.

Do you need help with link building?

Our company specializes in link building and promotion for businesses in Los Angeles County and throughout Southern California. Our expert team can help you think up new SEO Los Angeles link building strategies that improve your rankings, generate more traffic and drive more sales.

 

The post Simple SEO in Los Angeles: How to Earn Links from Local Businesses appeared first on Bliss Drive.

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Targeting LA Neighborhoods via SEO for Leads, Revenue and ROI

Over the last few years, one of the biggest trends in online marketing has been local. Instead of aiming for short tail keywords, businesses have focused on smaller areas, targeting their city for keywords related to products they sell and services they offer.

This is a great strategy for small cities and towns, where prospective customers are more likely to search for city-related geographical keywords than specific neighborhoods.

In big cities like Los Angeles, one of the most effective ways to generate leads, sales and ROI from SEO is to go hyper-local. This level of targeting involves breaking your SEO efforts down into specific neighborhoods and suburbs, instead of city-wide terms.

We’ve implemented hyper-local SEO for many of our clients, always with positive results that, in the majority of cases, exceed those achievable with traditional SEO.

Here are a few reasons why we’re big fans of targeting neighborhoods and hyper-local areas for SEO:

 

• It’s less competitive. Most businesses don’t optimize for their local area, instead opting to compete for “big” local keywords. Since there’s less competition, you can get closer to the top of the search engine results pages and drive more traffic to your website.
  

• It’s faster. Since there’s less competition for hyper-local search keywords than for local keywords, you can build and promote pages that rank within a few months, instead of a few years.
  

• It’s better. Since hyper-local marketing is focused entirely on your immediate area (or the areas your business serves), it tends to generate more specific, focused leads that convert into customers at a higher rate than leads from regular local SEO.
  

• It’s cheap. Because competition is lower, there’s much less of a need to promote your content and spend your budget on traditional outreach and link building campaigns for hyper-local search.
  

• It’s much more targeted. In big cities like Los Angeles, city-wide targeting often results in leads that are outside your service area. With hyper-local SEO, you have more control over the areas in which you market your business.
  

• It’s easy to scale. Once you reach the number one spot for a short tail local keyword, it becomes hard to scale. WIth hyper-local SEO, you can quickly and easily scale to other neighborhoods, districts and suburbs to expand your reach.

One of the biggest advantages of targeting specific neighborhoods is that it’s extremely easy to implement. For most businesses, all that’s needed to reach the front page for hyper-local search keywords is a short, helpful page that covers the specific topic.

Since competition for hyper-local keywords is so much less intense than for local keywords, you can often rank purely on the strength of your website as a whole, with little or no link building or outreach required.

How to identify hyper-local search opportunities?

If you run a service business that operates in a specific area, one of the easiest ways to start a hyper-local SEO campaign is to break the area down into suburbs and sections.

For example, if your business is located in West Los Angeles, you can divide it into sub-cities such as Culver City, Santa Monica and West Hollywood. You can even break it down to target specific neighborhoods, such as Playa del Rey and Venice.

One way to target specific areas is by using ZIP codes. You’d be surprised to learn how many people search for local businesses by adding their ZIP code to a keyword, and how effective a quick mention of a specific ZIP code in your page title can be.

The more specific your targeting is, the smaller your potential audience becomes. However, as your keywords get more and more local, you’ll also find it easier to outrank your competitors for the top spots.

Can your business benefit from hyper-local SEO?

In big cities, hyper-local SEO is a valuable, underutilized source of leads and revenue. Our Los Angeles SEO company specializes in finding and capitalizing on local search opportunities that can help your business drive traffic, leads and sales.

 

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