How Can You Support Local Business This Holiday Season

Are you a small business owner or manager? If you answered yes, you are in this exclusive club of people who drive our economy. You are one of the 15.6 million Main Street business people that contribute roughly 52% of the US GDP. If that does make you proud, you have a chance to support other people like you to feel proud.

There are those of us that are celebrating a century in the industry. At Blend, we are celebrating 10 great years of service. There are also those who are starting. All of us offer something valuable. If we don’t support each other, we will leave our friends in the community who are relatively new here to the big bad wolves of the street.

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Explosive Internet Video Marketing

Video Marketing

Video marketing is quite simply the most influential form of marketing there is available to us today. What’s more, video can generate immense amounts of traffic to your website and that is all free traffic! People are naturally drawn to and will always watch videos whether they are on television, ipad, smart phone, airplane or on the Internet. So why not give them what they want?

Marketing using the power of video is a highly efficient communication tool and the competition out there is much less than standard website search engine rankings.

Videos can take many forms and as with all business decisions it is best to have a clear strategy and achievable objective before you start to implement video marketing into your overall marketing mix.

A video can be as simple as a talking head or vox pop, a Powerpoint Presentation, a mini series, a vlog, product or service announcement, an EPK (Electronic Press Kit), a showreel, a teaser trailer, Property Video, How To Video or a full blown production depending on your business, objectives and budget.

Uploading your videos to Youtube and dozens of other diverse video hosting sites such as Revver, Daily Motion and Yahoo Video will broaden your influence on the Internet. One of the main benefits of video marketing above all other forms of Internet marketing is the viral effect. It’s very easy to send someone a video, link it to your and anybodies Facebook page and even twitter it to literally hundreds of other social networking sites.

To ensure you get the most from your video marketing it is important to set up the video with an appropriate title, description, links, keywords or tags, and submit it to a suitable category. For maximum results we also bookmark videos on a minimum of 20 social bookmarking sites and submit them to 10 RSS feeds.

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo! And Bing give more weight to website pages containing video than text alone. They also have the power to keep people on your page longer. When 8 seconds is the average time for someone to land on a page before leaving, video can keep them there a lot longer, 3 to 5 minutes is not uncommon.

Video Marketing Advantages

* The most effective way to immediately drive traffic to your website.

* An excellent strategy to build relevant and quality back links to your

website.

*Increase your Google ranking quickly for highly competitive keywords.

* More listings on SERP (Search Engine Result Pages)

* An estimated 90% of people would rather watch a video than read.

* Allows people to get to know, like and trust you.

* The viral effect

Just 4 examples of videos we have produced.

Video Baby Monitor Reviews

How to Cure Phyto Plankton

IMP Film Co. Showreel

How Long Will it Take to complete Orthodontic Treatment?

Below is a screen grab of one of our clients videos dominating is SERP.

Discover how Internet video Marketing can increase traffic to your website, position you as the go-to expert in your field, allow customers to know, like and trust you, dominate SERP for multiple keywords and distribute your business or brand all over the net. Contact Blend here Now!

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

It’s Movember – We Need Your Help to Raise Awareness of Prostate Cancer

Our Chief Operations Director – Perry Stevens is teaming up with his fellow Mo Bros, LA based actor Marc Crumpton to grow a hairy upper lip for Movember, but don’t worry, it’s all for a good cause.

Marc ‘Crumpy’ Crumpton (Los Angeles) and Perry Stevens (Bangkok) are growing hairy upper lips to raise awareness and some money for The Prostate Cancer Charity throughout the month of Movember.

Oh yeah, they are both going to look pretty stupid doing it: )

What is Movember, we hear you cry!

Above a short video by Perry explaining what Movember is all about and how you can get involved!

During the month of November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces around the world. The aim of which is to raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.

On Movember 1st, both Perry and ‘Crumpy’ registered at Movember.com with clean-shaven faces and then for the rest of the month, they will grow, groom, trim and wax their way into the annals of fine moustachery.

Mark Crumpton

They need your support, our Mo Sistas and Mo Bros, to help them raise funds by seeking out donations for their Mo-growing efforts.

They aim to raise a modest £500 collectively for their Movember team – City of Mo Fo’s.

Visit their Official Movember Page and make a donation to Perry or Crumpy or collectively or for the team – City of Mo Fo’s..

Go team City of Mo Fo’s!!

Perry Stevens

How Else Can You Support!

Mo Bros – if you want to join their team and help raise Mo money and awareness they would be happy to see you and welcome you into the City of Mo Fo’s.

Click here to join City of Mo Fo’s Official Movember Page or make a donation.

Click here and ‘Like’ the City of Mo Fo’s Official Facebook Movember Page.

Please help us raise awareness and Mo money for The Prostrate Cancer Charity by Retweeting, Liking and Sharing on Twitter and Facebook with your friends.




The Prostate Cancer Charity is a charity registered in England and Wales (1005541)

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Take Action – Your Local Search Marketing in 2011

Local Search Marketing in 2011

Blend Local Search Marketing have just returned to the UK after a after a 2 month trip to S/E Asia, in the main, Thailand, the beautiful land of smiles. While there Blend provided consultancy and Internet marketing training to a multi-award winning 5 star hotel, resort and spa in the region and other local businesses such as restaurants, bars and online retailers.

Vitanart Vathanakul and Perry Stevens – Royal Cliff Hotels Group

While there we observed businesses facing the same problems in two very different economic climates. As the UK, Europe and the USA struggle with their heavy burden of debt, the East is absolutely booming, so much so that you can almost feel it in the air.

Global/Local Search Marketing

The common problem businesses face in both climates is visibility, and now days that means online with local search marketing. Everyone knows they need a website but it’s still surprising that even in 2011 there are still hundreds and thousands of businesses without one.

Most businesses also know they need a Facebook page, Twitter and Google Places but don’t know how or have the time to get themselves established online or even know what to do with them if they already have them.

Record Growth

Blend Local Search Marketing celebrated their first year in business at the beginning of February and now service clients on 3 continents. All our clients without exception have reported steady growth, more customers and increased profits in the short time we have implemented and managed their Internet marketing strategies. Some have experienced growth as much as 30%, others have had record sales month on month. Not bad at all in the current climate!

Listening to the radio, watching TV or reading the papers and all we hear are stories of doom and gloom so it’s inspiring to hear success stories such as these across many different industries. It’s inspiring but not surprising because our clients are smart! They knew where their prospects and potential customers were and took action to reach them… and that was online!

Local Search Marketing – Taking Action

Google Adwords are getting more expensive and who can afford to throw money at this advertising medium month after month when Google can pull the plug on your account without warning like it did to 40,0000 accounts last year. Over night your whole advertising and marketing strategy has disappeared along with you potential new customers and leads.

Blend Local Search Marketing have a proven track record of getting their clients on page 1 of Google for their chosen keywords and with multiply listings that have the added benefit of knocking your competition off the page and can demonstrate this in real time searches.

Blend Local Search Marketing can help your business get more customers, increase profits and help you produce record sales in 3 steps.

* Firstly by analyzing your competitors.

* Secondly by implementing a winning and proven Internet marketing strategy.

* Thirdly, maintaining, building and broadening your Internet marketing across the net.

Your investment will last for years to come and will only grow bigger and stronger with time. You see Google love history and relevancy and that is exactly what our online marketing strategies are built on.

To hire Perry for Internet marketing consultancy, speaking engagements or staff training days click here.

To get your business or brand visible online and to discuss your Internet marketing needs and strategies Contact Blend Local Search Marketing click here.

Internet Marketing with Blend Local Search Marketing

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Local Search Marketing – Case Study #2

In the second case study for Local Search Marketing by Blend we are going to have a look at London Property Video Productions.

This is a new company that produce videos to promote the selling and rental of properties. Their service, already established in the USA and Asia is new to the UK market. A website was required to showcase their products and services B2B.

The keywords chosen were in a very competitive area producing nearly 64 million index listings. This makes it much harder to rank in Google or any other search engine.

A content rich site was constructed. A blend of SEO, vertical, local and social marketing techniques is used to rank the website. Within six weeks London Property Video Productions have established themselves in the front of their customer base by dominating Google page #1 and #2 with 8 Google page one listings and 6 page two listings.

Above Google Page 1 Domination with London Property Video Productions taking 8 out of 10 listings in a very competitive market place.

Above London Property Video Productions even have 6 index listings on Google Page 2 and note there are 63.8 million listing for this search term.

The methods we use to blend local search and market this company give the potential searcher rich content and relevant information on the business and its property video marketing services. Their competitors are simply not seen and are completely left out in the dark.

A website that ranks as well as the one above is a piece of company real estate commanding a high value and a tangible asset.

Back to Previous Local Search Case Study.

Contact Blend to skyrocket your business, generate more leads, gain new customers and make more sales now!

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

5 Reasons Your Site Should be HTTPS

In the past, simply creating a basic website and going live was an achievement. The site simply kept your business visible in a busy world. Inside the virtual world, however, technology slowly became more complex. Your website with an HTTP prefix is now an archaic designation. The trend today is converting to an HTTPS address. Don’t hesitate to take on this technology trend. There are important reasons why your site should be HTTPS designated.

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Blend Local Map Marketing Service

Local Map Marketing Services

Blend Local Search Marketing have created an affordable stategy for listing local businesses in the Google Local Map 7 Pack in organic local search page 1 results.

“Your business can feature in the Google Local Map 7 Pack in organic local search with or without a website!”

Google Local Listings have made internet marketing a level playing field for businesses. Now you can compete and beat the big corporations at their own game by implementing an inexpensive local search engine marketing solution. Those who take advantage of this opportunity sooner, rather than later will make the greater returns on investment.

Does your business show up in the Google Local Map 7 Pack? If not, read on to learn how your business can be listed in Google Local Maps in organic local search.

Blend Local Search Marketing have developed an affordable internet marketing strategy that gets your business visible where customers are searching; on the net and on Google Local Maps… it’s called Blend Local Map Marketing (BLMM)

Are you disillusioned with the ROI with your Yellow Pages advertising?

Are you confused by SEO and internet marketing information overload?

Are you paying a fortune for CPC (cost per click) Google Adwords?

“If you are serious about having your business in the Google Local Map 7 Pack and on page 1 of organic local search this is going to be the easiest business decision you have ever had to make”.

Type in any ‘service’ and a ‘city’ into Google i.e. cycle shop Lincoln, restaurant Brighton or orthodontist Leeds. This is how your potential customers will find you. Do you want new customers to find you?

Google page 1 shows the same results for the local search. You’ll notice Google local maps have 7 spots (A to G) to the right of the map, below there are 10 organic listings and to the right (and sometimes above) are paid advertisements (CPC).

Here’s the thing… If you are not in the Google Local Map 7 Pack or page 1 of organic local search no one is going to find you. Page two is rarely looked at. The reality is if you are not on page one you are NEVER going to get any business from Google. However, one point to remember is that you don’t even need to have a website.

So why choose the Blend Local Map Marketing service for your effective local search engine marketing solutions? Well we really believe that we have simply put together the strongest local search marketing package available today at the most affordable price. Your success is our success.

Do you want more quality leads?

Do you want to get new customers and engage with existing ones?

Do you want to increase sales?

Get your business in the Google Local Map 7 Pack and be on the first page of organic local search and you will get more leads, engage with customers and skyrocket sales. Well, that’s exactly what we’ll do for you. We’ll get YOU seen in the right place, by the right people so you can convert these qualified leads into sales and build ongoing relationships with them.

Be Seen Where the People Look!

Online local search is the new Yellow Pages and a whole lot more. A whopping 86% of adults now use search engines such as Google to look up information, products and services from local businesses. A reported 80% of all income is spent within a few miles of their homes or place of work. A strategic internet marketing campaign is now imperative to the success of running a thriving business in today’s market and even more so as Google roll out Social Search.

“Someday is not a day of the week”.

Many small businesses have been slow to respond to this shift from traditional media, so NOW is the time to invest in Blend Local Map Marketing and beat your competition to the top spots.

Blend’s Unique Service.

Blend Local Map Marketing will create a customized business profile and optimize your listing for the highest possible ranking in the Google Local Map 7 Pack. We use the correct keyword phrases that your customers use to find you. This ensures that when a consumer uses the internet or a mobile devise and searches for YOUR business or service in YOUR location you WILL be found. 75% of searchers do business with listings they find on the first page. BLMM will ensure you are there.

Does Yellow Pages, cost per click and traditional print media advertising seem like you’re throwing good money away? With local search marketing you are actively investing in your business and building up online real estate, a real company asset.

Here’s Exactly What You Get

An optimized custom business listing in Google Local.

10 UK Business Listings including Bing, AOL and Ask.

10 social bookmarks

A 60 second slideshow video – optimised with 5 keyword phrases and submitted up to 10 video platforms

Your own fully optimized Youtube Channel

1 custom Twitter profile – optimised with 100 organic followers

1 Flickr or Photobucket profile – optimized and loaded with your photographs

1 Facebook Group Page – including all your videos, photos, links and business details.

1 Web 2.0 custom lens – fully optimized with your videos, photos, links and business details

1 Blog – including all videos, photos, links and business details.

Your top 20 keyword phrases

50 UK Business Directory listing submissions

100 Monthly hand built links across City Directories and Industry Specific Directories. Including – videos, photos, business details and links to your website

Monthly detailed reports emailed directly to you.

Here is a list to some of the directories we post to:

Yelp, Dmoz, Qype, HotfrogUK, Ufindus, Scoot, Smilelocal, Bizwiki, Wampit, Yellowpages, Freebusinnessdirectorylisting, Blueboomarang, UKsmallbusinnessdirectory, Business-directory-uk…

Your Bonus – We will set up something else for you. We don’t want to give all our secrets away here but this will give you more links, more customers and possibly another listings in organic results below the Google Local Map.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Perry (that’s me in the photo) I manage the team at Blend and you have my personal guarantee of the work we will be doing for you to get you in the Google Local Map 7 Pack and listed on page 1 of organic local search results. When you make your order you will get my direct line and Skype so you can have constant communicate with me so you know what we are doing for you. I’ll also give you ideas and advice (on and off line) how you can help improve your rankings.

The Winning Strategy

Blend Local Map Marketing comes in three packages Gold, Silver and Bronze. We recommend the Gold Package as it’s designed to give the best possible return on investment. The Silver Package is very good value for those on a tighter budget or in a market that has little online competition. The Bronze package allows you to claim your Google local listing before someone else does and creates your instant web footprint to be found by your customers.

Click here for your package elements and price plan.

Blend Local Map Marketing Gold Package

Blend Local Map Marketing Silver Package

Blend Local Map Marketing Bronze Package

Satisfaction is guaranteed. Your success is our success. We can’t get you on Google page 1 over-night; it takes time to move up the rankings. It will depend on the competitiveness of your market as to how long it will take to get you ranked on page 1 in local search. However with diligent SEO practise on our part and if you’re patient and trust the process you will eventually reach page one.

We do not insist on a monthly contract so if you are not satisfied with the service we provide you can cancel anytime. If at anytime you cancel the agreement we will discontinue our local search optimization service. It’s our goal to get you to page one of Google in local search so you can begin turning a search in to a sale. The sooner we start, the sooner your listing will show up.

Google can change their algorithms at any time so we may have to implement new optimisation tactics to achieve the same results. I would like to thank you for your business and rest assured the team at Blend are working on your behalf to help your business succeed beyond all expectations in these competitive and difficult times.

Read the ‘Think Local’ Report by Rachel Rosmarin at Forbes.

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Easily Host and Install a WordPress Blog

Hosting and Installing a WordPress Blog

I am fortunate enough to be able to do a lot of of traveling and I also spend a considerable amount of time online but it always surprises me when I find a business that doesn’t have a website. After all, online is where customers are searching for products and services and a website is your shop window to the world.

I, like most people, ran a company many years ago and I wanted to get my business seen online and needed a website building. I didn’t know anything about DNS, HTML, PHP, CSS, Style Sheets and all the other coding scripts and tech babble so I bought ‘Building a Website for Dummies’.

I struggled to get my head around the simplest of ideas and I could see this was going to take a forever to figure out and build a functional and good looking website. Time I didn’t have as I was running a business. I wasn’t a designer or a coder.

A long story short, a friend built me a websites instead. All well and good but I often wanted to change or add new content to my site. This was expensive and I couldn’t always get hold of him so the updates were not very timely.

This I found very frustrating but made me determined to find a solution to my problem. I knew there was a way of being in control of my own site and business. What I needed was to have the ability to update my website as often as I wanted and do so without breaking the bank. That’s when I discovered WordPress. If you’ve had similar experiences read on…

The perfect fusion between, design, functionality and SEO.

WordPress is an open source web blog, meaning literally thousands of people and companies contribute to developing the style and functionality of the code and do so continually.

No 2 WordPress’s are ever be the same as there are thousands of designs, widgets, plugins and themes to mix and match. They are totally customizable and incredibly search engine and design friendly. They really are the perfect fusion between, design, functionality and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

You can have a free WordPress and host it on their platform or a self hosting wordpress giving you unlimited functionality. To self host your WordPress (it’s what I would recommend) all you need to do is purchase a domain name from a domain name company like Namecheap. (more about domain names and web hosting in future posts) Once you have your domain name for example: www.mywordpress.com you need to host it somewhere. Never purchase a domain name and host it with the same company. It’s like having all your eggs in one basket!

I highly recommend Hostgator as the hosting company for your domain. They have round the clock customer service that is second to none and dozens of fantastic training videos. So if you want to learn how to carry out just about any task on your website by literally watching over someone’s shoulder, you can start/pause and teach yourself very easily using these video tutorials. Hostgator are also committed to providing greener solutions for their servers. With their certified Renewable Energy Credits (REC’s) in wind power, HostGator is not just neutralizing their environmental impact, they’re actually reversing it. So by hosting your website with them you’ll be making a positive impact on the environment too.

You will need to point the DNS (Domain Name Servers) to your servers and wait for it to propergate. When this is done (it can take a few minutes or up to a day) look for the Fantastico DeLuxe logo or Hostgator’s WordPress Quickinstall in your control panel. Click on one of the logos and follow the easy instruction and in less than a minute you will have a live WordPress blog style website. Now all you need to do is customize it for your business and optimize it for the search engines. (More about how to do this in future posts)

It really is that easy, I mean if I can do it just about anybody can! And as I say, there are excellent training videos showing you how to do it, each and every simple step of the way.

If you would like help building or designing a WordPress Website or you require some assistance purchasing a domain name and hosting, contact Perry at Blend Local Search Marketing. I’m always happy to help!

We are always interested in what you have to say, so please leave your comments and questions below.

Important Note: I like to be open and transparent so I want to make you aware that if you click on some of the links in this article you will be taken to third party sites where if you buy a product or service I may be paid an affiliate fee. I only recommend products and services that I am happy to use myself and be associated with so you can be sure of the same level of service.

Related Blogs

Things to Check While Hiring a Web Design Service
What Is Open Source Website Design

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Using the Google Keyword Tool for Research

Google Keyword Research

In this post we are going to be looking at how Google can help you get your website ranking high in search engine result pages (SERP’s). Of course we can discuss ‘Competitor Analysis’ and ‘Reverse Engineering’ but that is a another post entirely. Today we are going to look at the benefits of using targeted keywords and how to find the very ones your prospects are typing into search engines to find you.

Click here to go directly to Google Keyword Tool

Google are the biggest search engine in the world with over 60% of the market share. They also provide email services such as gmail, social networks like buzz, local search profiles – Google Places and analyitics tools to track the traffic on your website or blog.

They also have what is known as Adwords – Google Keyword Tool that allow you so view and analyize data to find the volumes, cost and location of keywords or tags that people use to search for anything and everything online.

As we know, next no-one uses Yellow Pages anymore and besides you would never get this kind of analyitical information from thumbing through the big yellow book. (80% of searches are now done online)

The Keyword Tool is an invaluable tool when setting up a website, starting a PPC (pay per click) Adwords campaign or snooping on your competitors. And the best thing is… it’s free.

There are other similar tools out there, some free and some you have to pay a monthly service or buy some software. It’s good to use 2 or 3 of these to dig deep and crunch the data when you start to get more serious about your Internet Marketing. For now however, Google Keyword Tool is a great place to start.

With the Google Keyword Tool you can set up your website or campaign using the correct keywords to attract the maximum amount of organic traffic for your service or offer. It also shows other relevant keywords that you may want to use but never even thought about.

You can check out Google Keyword Tools here.

Alternatively, if you want a website building and optimizing with the correct keywords and keyword phrases to attract tons of free organic traffic by the search engines contact Perry at Blend Local Search Marketing. I’M Always happy to help!

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Twitter for Local Search

Promote Your Website With Twitter

Twitter is the fastest growing micro website full of opportunities to send laser targeted traffic to your website.

When Twitter is used properly it can generate a flock of targeted visitors to your profile in a very short space of time. This branded micro site is a great tool to promote your website and business on and off line. It’s easy to notify your customers of new product launches and updates on your website and over time, builds quality links back to your site through optimised posts or tweets.

Blend will create an account and build a customised Twitter profile dedicated to your website ensuring it’s set up correctly with your keyword phrases. We will also post a tweet for the first 30 days for you.

Of course the effectiveness of your promotion depends on the number of organic friends or ‘followers’. We will submit your Twitter profile to 20 directories using your 3 top keyword phrases and guarantee you 100 natural followers in the first 30 days.

The Blend Twitter Creation and Promotion Service Was £147 Now Only £97 for a limited time. Simply fill in the form below and we will contact you.

Don’t have a website? Visit our Website Design here.

Join Blend Local Search Marketing on Twitter for up to the minute tweets.

Related Blogs

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Wanted – Social Media Administrator

Wanted – Looking for a dynamic individual to join our amazing social media team.

Our ideal candidate must have a keen interest, understanding and experience in social media marketing and promotion on networks such as; Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Linkedin, Google+ and Pinterest.

Be able to add blog posts to WordPress sites and complete basic onsite SEO.

You must also have English as your first language and be great with communication, both verbal and written.

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Hostgator Customer Service and Hosting Review

I’ve hosted sites in the USA with Hostgator for getting on for 5 years years now. First with their Babycroc Hosting and more recently VPS. In all that time I’ve been a loyal brand ambassador and affiliate. I believed in their product, loved their customer support and was very happy with the service provided.

A couple of months ago all that changed. Sites were disabled without any prior notice for ‘cashe’ plugin issues.

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Changes in Google Places, Your Business & Local Search

Google are at it again and the effect could alter your position in local search results. They have changed the way Google Places looks. It’s now cleaner and has more emphasis on customer reviews and photos/videos. The ‘Write a Review‘ button is now in red in a prominent position on the page. (Fig 1. Why did I added an arrow to this screen shot? Ed) This demonstrates the importance and weight that Google give to reviews on your Google Places page in local search results. HINT: They want you to get reviews for your business… lots of reviews… the more the better… get the picture? Good read on…

If we scroll down the Google Places page a little further we notice another prominent ‘Write a Review‘ button (Fig 3. What do Google want us to do?) but this is where the story takes a sudden twist.

The Change in Local Search Listings post Google Places Changes

Google used to pull in reviews from third party review sites like Yelp, Qype and Local.Yahoo and feature them quite heavily. Now they have all gone except for a couple of nondescript links at the foot of the page. (Fig 4. Indicated by my 4th and final arrow ; )

Some say that Google built Google Places scraping review content from third party sites using an unfair advantage but now, as ‘Google Places‘ has enough content of it’s own they can stand alone and no longer need the 3rd party support. Google couldn’t have built this service without the 3rd parties and have now abandoned them. Whether this was ethical or morally right or wrong is another debate but they have now changed their policy.

One other thing to note is that you may have had 100’s of reviews on your Google Places page only to see that number now reduced to just a handful as the 3rd party reviews are no longer being counted. We are still investigating how this has effected rankings and place positions. Also take into consideration that only gmail account holders can write reviews on Google Places.

I’m currently beta testing Google + and wouldn’t be surprised if Google Places features in this new social phenomenon in the near future. So what does all this mean to your business listing on Google Places and your position in Local Search?

Google Places Should Be the Cornerstone of your Local Search Strategy

At Blend Local Search Marketing we have always treated Google Places as the primary business listing for our clients. Now more than ever, it is essential to claim your Google Places listing and complete all sections fully including photographs, videos, and a comprehensive description of your local business.

Once your Google Places listing is set up correctly, actively encourage your customers to visit the page and write a review. They need a gmail account to do this.

You can even email your Google Places page to your customers. It’s as easy as 1,2,3!

1) Simply click on the ‘More‘ button (Fig 2.) underneath your business address and a small window appears.

2) Click on ‘Send‘ and add an email address and short message.

3) Press send again.

In the same window you will also find a URL link. You can cut and paste this link into the ‘Signature box’ in your email account. Then every time you send an email, you will be actively promoting you Google Places page.

Remember, Google want you to get reviews and will reward you by giving your Google Places page a higher ranking in customer search results. This is a sure fire way of getting a number 1 ranking in Google local search results.

We want you to succeed in your local search marketing efforts. If you want your business to be found for your local search keywords by hungry customers in Google Places we can help you set it up right now so you can benefit immediately.

To see what we do and how we can help you click here. To contact me or one of my associates click here. Alternatively leave a comment below – Perry.

FYI – Readers of this blog can claim 25% OFF Green Web Hosting with Hostgator with this exclusive code: GreenBlend

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Local Search Marketing starts with Google Places

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Your WordPress Ping List

What is a Ping? What is a WordPress Ping List? Why do I need to Ping my blog? In this post we are going to be looking at Search Engines or rather we are going to be looking at an easy way to notify them of any changes you’ve made to your website or blog. I mean, why wait for the search engines to ‘crawl’ your site when you can notify them by pinging your blog?

To notify the search engines of the new changes to your website or blog you need to ‘Ping’ them.

Basically a Ping is a push button way to say to the search engine ‘Hey! Look over here, we’re new, relevant and we have something you should take a look at!’

The best way to do that if you have a WordPress blog is to cut and paste the following WordPress ping list of over 25 ping services into your WordPress Blog Update Services Field.

We’ve also made a short video literally showing you ‘over my shoulder’ the exact steps you need to take to do this.

WordPress Ping List

http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/pingSubmit?bloglink=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yourdomain.com/
http://audiorpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx
http://blog.with2.net/ping.php
http://www.youdao.com/
http://blogping.unidatum.com/RPC2/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://catapings.com/ping.php
http://www.news2paper.com/ping
http://bitacoras.com/agregador/enviar
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.fc2.com
http://ping.groove-cast.com/ping.php
http://ping.rss.drecom.jp
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.wordblog.de
http://rpc.bloggerei.de/ping/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.twingly.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php

Add Your Your WordPress Ping List to Your Blog

Your WordPress Blog Update Services Field can be found by accessing your WordPress Admin Dashboard or backend. Scoll down the page and search the left hand side column until you find: Settings > Writing > Update Services Field.

Cut and paste the WordPress ping list from above and then hit the save button. Next time you make a change to your blog or publish a new post or page to your website, it will automatically ‘ping’ it to all the search engines allowing greater visibility for your site.

When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the Ping site update services. (Pingomatic is the only service set by default).

For more about this, see Update Services on the Codex. Remember to separate multiple service URLs with line breaks or commas.

A Word of Warning! – Don’t manually ping your blog without making changes or updates to it as this can be seen by the search engines as spammy and black hat. Once is enough when you make an update and this will be automatic so, it’s literally set and forget!

The search engine love to see relevant and regularly updated blogs, so now is the time to take action! You now know what a Ping is, you have a WordPress Ping list and know the importance of why you should Ping your blog, so post a new article today!

Video Update on Power of Your WordPress Ping List

Watch this video below to see the proof of the speed of this actual post ‘Your WordPress Ping List‘ appearing on the first page of Google SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages) for it’s main keywords.

If you found this Wordpres Ping List and this post of value, please ‘share’ or ‘Like‘ on Facebook, tweet on Twitter and leave a comment below.

Feel free to Contact Us if you need any questions answered. We’re always happy to help.

Post by Perry Stevens Movember 2011.

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Twitter: BlendLSM

WordPress Ping List

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Local Search Marketing, Your Business and The 2012 London Olympics

Are You a Winner?

Be a winner with Local Search Marketing! There is an amazing, once in a life-time opportunity opening up for London businesses especially if those business are located in the East London boroughs of Hackney, Greenwich, Tower Hamlets, Newham and Waltham Forest.

In case you haven’t heard (where have you been?), the 2012 Olympic Games are being held in London from 27 of July followed by the Paralympics until 9 September.

Thousands of athletes and millions of people will descend on the capital and will need products and services that you can provide as a business owner. So now is the time to make sure your business is ready for this huge influx of people and to ensure that it benefits from this rare opportunity.

Most visitors to London 2012 Olympic Games will be searching on websites for the products and services they will need during their stay long before they get of the plane at Heathrow.

Local Search Marketing Winner! Have You Claimed Your Google Place Page?

To win the Local Search Marketing game, the first thing to do is to claim your Google Place page and ensure you complete every section. This will include you business name, address and telephone number, a business description, opening hours, payment methods, photos, videos and much more.

This is the single most important thing you can do for your business today, Olympics or no Olympics. Why? Because it can catapult you to page 1 of Google in local search. Do you want to be on page one of Google?

Optimize Your Website or Blog with Local Search Marketing Content.

When people search for products and services near the Olympic venues you need to ensure that it is your content that gets seen in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s).

You can do this by making sure you include your location, full address, postcode and phone number in all your posts and pages.

Of course, not everyone speaks English, so why not get some of your web pages translated to one or two other languages. If you have built your blog on WordPress you can easily install a Translation plug-in.

Make it easy for people visiting your site and your business and you will be rewarded especially when you competitors are doing nothing to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity.

Sell Your Self and Your Business With Video

Everyone loves video and they are very easy to make and share online. You can record yourself selling the virtues of your business and upload it to Youtube.

If you are not comfortable in front of the camera get a member of staff or a friend to do it for you. Better still if you can speak another language or have family of friends that can, ask them to do this also. Then upload all the videos to Youtube.

Once you have uploaded your video(s) use a title with a local search keyword in it. Also remember to include a link to your website in the description. For more information about optimizing videos on Youtube click here.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

It goes without saying that your website needs to be seen by as many people as possible, so it is essential to ensure every page is optimized for the search engines with your local geo targeted keywords.

Once you’re on-page optimization is complete you can look at off-the-page optimization to help rank your site even higher. This can include many things from online Press Releases, Videos, Social Media and Directories. Consistently building relevant links to your website will ensure it stays at the top of Google for all your keyword search terms.

Converting Website Traffic to Paying Customers

It isn’t as simple as having a number one website on Google if people can’t navigate the site, find where you are or even call you. You’re site needs to convert that traffic into customers.

You’re website not only needs to be optimized for the search engine with keywords your prospects use to find you but also optimized for converting them into customers.

*If your business requires people to visit you (i.e. restaurant, car hire, guest house) can they find you? Do you have a map on your website with your specific location and clear directions?

*Is your address clearly visible? Can people find your phone number? Does anyone pick up the phone when it rings? If not maybe you can hire a Telephone Answering service or use Skype.

*Do you check and respond to emails?

*Do you have an email opt in form on your website? Maybe you could encourage people to opt in by offering them some free advice about the area or service.

If people visit to your site but can’t find a way to contact you, they will move on and once they are off your site you have lost them for good. With just a few tweaks and a little bit of testing you can optimize your conversions and increase your profits.

More Local Search Marketing and Social Media Marketing

To compliment your website and dominate your search terms in Google set up a Facebook Fan Page, Youtube Channel and a Twitter account.

These are all great ways to find, engage and socialize with your customers and offer them exclusive deals through each channel.

I would recommend you start to implement some or all of these recommendations today because before we know it, the 2012 Olympic Games will be but a distant memory. One that will leave your business a gold medal winning enterprise for having taken part if you get things moving now!

However, remember that building up a strong Internet and social media presence is a Marathon not a race. It takes time to grow and nurture online relationships but when done correctly will pay dividends for a long, long time.

Blend Local Search Marketing can set up and manage all your social media channels and implement proven winning Internet marketing strategies that will get you more customers and more profits. Contact us today to discover how we can help you.

To your gold medal local search marketing success,

Local Search Marketing

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

So What is Google Places and Why Does Your Business Need to Claim it!

Google Places

Google is the largest search engine in the world with nearly 70% of the market share. This single fact alone makes it vitally important that your business claims its Google Places Page. It’s the most important directory listing you should have and it’s free. Secondly it should be correctly optimized so it will get found on the first page of Google. Then when prospects are looking for your products and services from their desktops or smart phone it’s you they are find and not your competition.

What is Google Places?

If you have gone to a Google Places Page that is empty or has little information on it you will notice how unprofessional it looks. This is a poor reflection on the company you don’t want, so ensure your Google Places Page is filled out completely with all your companies’ information and you will attract more customers.

You will need to add your company name, address, zip/post code, telephone, fax and website. Also include your opening times, payment methods, category and lots of photos and videos.

‘People don’t do business with businesses they do business with people!’

Use photos and videos on your Google Places Page to show customers that you are real, personable and trustworthy. Also show photos of the inside and outside of your shop, restaurant or office so people can easily recognize and find it.

Videos can be like your own TV commercial but hosted online and available to see 24/7. They can also be FAQ’s or customer testimonials that will help win over new customers.

Getting all this right will give you the edge over your competition so you get the business you need not only to survive but also prosper in today’s market.

Still not sure if you need to be on Google Places?

Lets look at some interesting local search marketing facts and figures about Google Places and the future of local search:

* 97% of consumers search for local businesses online. (Google)

* Google dominate as the primary site used to search for local businesses with 74% market share.

* 59% of consumers report using Google every month to look for a good local business.

* 71% of searchers report they value the information provided in local search results.

* 60% of online searchers report that they notice images and logos on local search results more. However less than half the businesses that have claimed their Google Places Page haven’t included them.

* Only 20% of businesses have added a video to their local Google Places listing

Google have now integrated Google Places listings into organic SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages) but when your Google Places Page is optimized correctly you can still reach the top spots.

The Future of Local Search is Mobile

According to a 2010 Google study, 1 in 3 mobile searches are local, and 61 percent of those users actually called the business. So it is vitally important that your Google Places Page is optimized for mobile with your company name, address, website and telephone number.

* 33 percent of mobile users are looking to access local content relevant to their GPS positioned location (eMarkerter, August 2011).

* 77.1 Million mobile subscribers use local content on a mobile device accounting for 33% of all mobile subscriptions.

* Only 5% of business who have claimed their Google Places Page have added a mobile coupon to their local listing

There is a huge opportunity for your business to jump ahead of the competition. More and more local searches are now being conducted, not on desktops but on smart phones. So as technology moves forward we have to stay ahead of the competition to. The release of the iPhone 4S is the game changer, here’s why…

The iPhone S4 comes with Siri voice recognition integrated into its operating system. This in short means it can answer questions and perform actions across multiple Apps. With a single voice command, Siri can control Apps and search Google Places Maps.

This will revolutionize local mobile search, making it both simpler and user friendly. By simply speaking a command like ‘florist near me’ Siri uses your geo-targeted location to perform a local search of florists in your immediate area leveraging the Google Places Maps database of local businesses. It will also search for listings and reviews from other sites like Yelp and City Search.

It delivers a list of results from within the App, then allows the smart phone user to speak another command ‘get directions’.

So to ensure your local search listing gets picked up by Siri it is now more important then ever to ensure your Google Places Page is fully completed with your company name, address, telephone number and website.

You should be in the correct categories and include the keywords your customers use to find you such as Orthodontist or Florist. The description field should also be SEO friendly and include your keywords, photos named with your keywords and videos have your name address and telephone number in their description (and hosted on Youtube).

It’s important to maintain your other listings on Yelp and City Search etc and encourage reviews for all your local directory listings including Google Places.

So there’s no doubt that the smartest business decision you can make today is to claim your Google Places Page and get it completed correctly and fully optimized with your essential business information.

Blend Local Search Marketing can do this for you and will even make you a video to promote your company online. For more information of what Blend can do for you click here.

Summary: Claim your Google Places and other online local directory listings ( Yelp, Yellow Pages, Qype, City Search, etc.) ASAP. Complete them with relevant information about your businesses and its physical location.

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Google Places

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Buying and Hosting Your Domain Name

10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Internet Marketing

No 2. Hostgator

Before you even start to build your own website there are two things you will need. The first is a domain name and the second is a website hosting company.

A good place to purchase your domain name from is Namecheap. You can get all your .com’s, .nets and .co.uk’s there. Always remember to have you keyword in your domain title i.e. LibertiesRestaurant.com, RoyalCliffBeachResort.com or BlendLocalSearchMarketing.com.

Namecheap also offer a free Whoisguard. Did you know that when you register your domain, your name, address and phone number are readily made available to anyone that requests it via a whois search? Whoisguard privacy protection allows you to keep your information private, as it should be. Don’t let spammers and telemarketers compromise your privacy. Get Whoisguard protected free with Namecheap.

Before you purchase your domain, Google ‘Namecheap discount code’. Use this code if applicable to save a few dollars on your purchase. Once you have purchased your new domain name, you need to host it somewhere. Never host your domain where you bought it. (Never keep all your eggs in one basket!)

HostGator is one of the world’s top 10 largest web-hosting companies with more than 2,500,000 hosted domains around the globe. They have over 400 employees to provide you with superior around the clock support. They are the perfect choice whether you are looking for business, personal, or even Fortune 500 hosting.

Hostgators web hosting plans come with a 45-day money back guarantee, 99.9% uptime guarantee and are fully guaranteed by the owner himself.

From experience I can tell you they have unparalleled telephone support and 500+ ‘how to’ and training videos, over 600 articles and an active forum.

Did you know servers use a huge amount of energy? Hostgator shared servers are all wind powered and they purchase certified renewable energy credits so they are actually reversing the environmental impact the amount of electricity used on powering and cooling their servers. So by hosting your domain on Hostgator you will not only have the assurance of top quality hosting and customer service but you’ll also be doing your bit for the environment.

Why not let Blend Local Search Marketing take the hassle out of registering ane hosting your domain? We can build you a custom WordPress website and host it on hostgator for you. Contact Perry now for a no obligation quote.

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

How to Create a Beautiful Website

10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Internet Marketing

No1. WORDPRESS

Blend Members Market

Several years ago I set up a production company, IMP Film Co. and I, like most people wanted to get my business seen online and so needed a website building. I didn’t know anything about HTML, PHP, CSS, Flash and all the other coding scripts so I bought The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating a Website

Even struggling to get my head around the simplest applications, I could see this was going to take a long time to get to know and master and finally build a functional and good looking website.

So I enlisted the help of a friend who builds sites instead. He built my first website and charged me a fare price. My only trouble is I’m always looking to change things around or I wanted new content such as videos and photos uploading to the site. Each time I had to ask my friend, book in some time and several weeks later I would get the desired results.

I found all the waiting around very frustrating but knew there must be a better way of being in control of my own site and business and have the ability to update it as often as I wished. That’s when I discovered… WordPress.

WordPress is an open source web blog, meaning literally hundreds if not thousands of people contribute to developing the style and functionality of the code and continue to do so.

No two WordPress blogs need ever be the same as there are thousands of designs, widgets and themes to mix and match around. They are totally customizable and incredibly search engine and design friendly. It’s the perfect fusion between, design, functionality and SEO.

You can have a free wordpress and host it on their platform or a self hosting wordpress giving you unlimited functionality. To self host your wordpress (it’s what I would recommend) all you need to do is purchase a domain name from a domain name company such as Namecheap. (more about domain names and web hosting in future posts) Once you have your domain name for example: mydomainname.com you need to host it somewhere. Never purchase a domain name and host it with the same company.

I highly recommend Hostgator as a hosting company for your domain. (More about web hosting in future posts) They have 24/7 customer service that is second to none and fantastic training videos. So if you want to learn how to carry out any task by watching over someone’s shoulder, you can start/pause and teach yourself.

You will need to point the DNS (Domain Name Servers) to your host servers and wait for it to propergate. When this is done (can take 20 minutes or up to a day) look for the Fantastico DeLuxe logo in your control panel. Click on this logo and follow the easy instruction and in 30 seconds you will have a live WordPress blog style website.

It really is that easy, I mean if I can do it just about anybody can! And as I say there are excellent videos showing you each simple step.

If you would like help building or designing a wordpress blog or you require some assistance purchasing a domain name and hosting, contact Perry at Blend Local Search Marketing.

I’ll follow you, if you follow me!

IM always happy to help!

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

The Best Online Marketing Methods

Attracting more people to your website is important if you want to enhance branding, increase your customers and enjoy higher profits. Of course, website promotion takes some work on your part. The good news is that you can use a variety of online marketing methods as a party of your website promotion strategy. If you’re just getting started or you need a better marketing strategy, here is a look at some of the best online marketing methods you can use for great website promotion.

Method #1 – Article Marketing

One of the top online marketing methods to use for website promotion is article marketing. This strategy works by writing articles on topics related to your website and then submitting them to an article website. When you submit your articles, you have the opportunity to add a resource box at the end of the article. Within this resource box, you can include your website address. People looking for good information on a particular subject often search for good articles that offer that information. Writing articles can help you establish yourself as an expert and you can get your website address out there, building helpful backlinks to your site.

Method #2 – Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is another online marketing method you’ll definitely want to use. This method focuses on what you can do on your own website to optimize it for the search engines. You may have a great website, but if people cannot find you, you have a problem. Using SEO techniques on your website can increase your rankings on popular search engines, bringing in more targeted traffic to your website.

Method #3 – Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is one of the newer online marketing methods, but it’s proving to be one of the most effective. This includes using social networking and media websites like Twitter, Facebook and even Pinterest. Connecting with people is important if you want to bring them to your website and convert them into customers. Social media marketing allows you to connect with people in new ways, increasing brand recognition and bringing more visitors to your website.

Of course, these are only a few of the online marketing methods you can use to successfully promote your website. Blogging, email marketing and publishing press releases are all excellent methods that you may want to use as well. Begin using these excellent marketing methods and you’ll begin to see great results on your website, boosting visitors, conversions and profit.

*****

Local business from London to Los Angeles can contact Blend Local Search Marketing for website builds, social media management, search engine optimization (SEO) and bespoke, turnkey Internet marketing services. We are a results driven company and do not tie you into any contracts what-so-ever. Our clients stay with us because of our level of service and the high ROI they receive. But don’t take our word for it, click here to read some of our unsolicited testimonials or contact us today to discuss how we can help you achieve and surpass your online objective.

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

The Best Online Marketing Methods

Are Business Directories a Good Source of Free Advertising?

Here at Blend Local Search Marketing we are passionate about finding the best possible sources for advertising and marketing your business on the Internet. This is in order to increase you position in major search engine’s results, and ultimately to increase customer enquiries. So in this article written by Wampit guest blogger – James Stevens, we are going to focus on the world of free advertising and business directories and how they can benefit your company on the Internet.

The Internet has created many new and innovative ways for people to advertise and market their business for free. These range from producing and hosting a promotional video, through to participating and networking in forums to get your business known and trusted amongst your target market.

Business directories have been a popular source of free advertising over the last 10 years, i.e. free advertising sites that allow business owners to create a profile for their company that is then added to the directory (usually by category or keyword). These business directory profiles (advert listings) are then returned in search results on the site for people looking for a business, product or service.

Traditionally these business directories relied on people knowing about their service in order to search for and find businesses directly. However, in more recent times it’s a well published fact that about 80% of Internet searches are now actioned in the major search engines (Google / Yahoo / Bing), with Google taking about 80% of this proportion.

Today, the quality business directories have evolved with this trend by organising and serving their content in a search engine friendly format – they do this by:

– Creating a unique page for every advertiser, e.g. www.directory.com/your-co-name.html

– Internally linking to these pages via category and location structures, e.g. ‘Plumbers’ or ‘London’

– Submitting the unique page’s URL to search engines via XML Sitemaps (basically a file with a list of up to 50,000 URLs in)

This means the content that these sites own can now be crawled and indexed by major search engines more easily. So for example, when someone types ‘Plumber in London’ in Google then links to pages owned by the business directories that match this search entry have the potential to be displayed in Google’s search results.

The obvious benefit of this process is that the person looking for a business or service can land on an advert without knowing about that site or searching in it directly.

So Does This Mean I Should Advertise On All Business Directories?

Absolutely Not – basically like a lot of other free advertising services on the Internet, there are varying levels of quality and service. A few years ago it was a popular SEO strategy to list your business on as many sites as you could, in order to gain links to your site. However, this strategy has changed recently and even more so since the Google Panda updates earlier this year (changes to Google’s search in the pursuit of displaying quality results and relevancy) – so now it’s important to only associate your business website with quality and trusted free advertising services.

So What Are The Top Business Directories?

The best free advertising services are ones that are established, operate ethical and best practice processes, and are trusted by its users. The major search engines favour human-edited business directories, i.e. so the content it holds is of the highest quality.

The following sites are quality and human edited free advertising services based in the UK:

1. Yell

2. My Local Services

3. FreeIndex

4. Thomson Local

In Conclusion

We recommend adverting your company on these quality sites, however, there are a few golden rules you must follow when actioning this marketing strategy:

1. Add well written content to each one describing your business / services

2. Don’t copy text from your website or other sites – unique content only

3. Link to your own website from the business profiles to make it easier for potential customers to visit your site

4. Keep the content up-to-date throughout the year, and add details about any special offers / discounts you’re running

It’s as simple as that, and should take you no longer than a couple of hours to get your site noticed on the best quality UK business directories.

Claim your Free business listing on Wampit – a leading global advertising service today!

About the Author: James Stevens works as freelance blogger and has a passion for all things business and Internet related. He’s recently worked with various business marketing companies – you can read his Google+ profile here. You can now list your business on Wampit in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and EU.

Free Advertising with Wampit Business Directories

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Local & Social Search Blueprint

The Local and Social Search Blueprint

Confucius said ‘Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime’

At Blend Local Search Marketing we really believe that we have simply put together the strongest local search marketing packages available at the most affordable price and that your success is our success. We’ll take care of your online local search marketing while you do what you do best, running your business and capitalizing on your new customers.

However, we know how rocky the business landscape is at the moment. The thought of committing to an monthly marketing strategy is maybe out of your reach. Building and ranking highly in the Google Local Map 7 Pack and in organic local search, although an essential must today and very attractive, may not be financially viable for some small businesses at the moment. Maybe you have one resource you could use more effectively and efficiently… your staff!

Introducing… The Local and Social Search Blueprint

Do you have staff members with time on their hands?

Do you want your staff to retrain and learn new skills?

Do you want to utilize down time to promote your company and services online?

The Local and Social Search Blueprint is an essential investment in your staff and your business.

Blend Local Search Marketing Consultant Perry Stevens will visit your place of work and coach a small number of your key staff members on how to implement and effectively use Local and Social Search as an effective marketing solution for your business.

“During the two day course I’ll teach one on one or a small group of your workforce how to build and implement an effective online local search marketing strategy”.

The day starts with and will continue to focus on Google as they are by far and away the biggest search engine with around 65% of the market.

“We encourage a best practice approach and

record management from the start”.

The course is ‘hands on’ meaning we will be:

*Listing and optimizing your business in Google Local Maps

*Building a Facebook Group page

*Opening a Twitter profile and optimizing it

*Constructing Web 2.0 properties and adding relevant content

*Opening a Youtube Channel and uploading a video

*Starting a Flickr account

*Building a blog

Once we have built the web properties we look at how social bookmaking can help you achieve your goals, build links, drive traffic to your sites and customers to your business.

We will also look at the free tools and software available to maximise the exposure of your web properties and make an attention grabbing video.

While we encourage students to take notes throughout the course we also provide full course details, step by step instructions and resource notes at the end of the day in a PDF format.

The Local and Social Search Blueprint (2 Days) is a one time investment of £1497 for a lifetime of rewards.

YES I want to make that investment in my staff and my company by booking The Local and Social Search Blueprint in my workplace.

Please contact us here now.

“Those who take advantage of this offer sooner rather than later will make the greater returns on investment”.

Related Blogs

Introducing the Hot New Social Network, PhoneBook | Understanding …

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Top 10 Tips to Optimize Your Website

The Top 10 Tips to Optimize Your Website

Top 10 Tips to Optimize your Website

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The Top 10 Tips To

Optimize Your Website

If you already have a company website of course you need to have it working for you and not against you. A fully optimized website is your shop window and your calling card to the world. First impressions count and it is reported that you have about 8 seconds to impress a casual web browser to stick around, entice back and ultimately buy your product or service.

An attractive, functional and fully optimized website will rank high in the search engine providing you with free traffic 24/7 and 365 days a year. It never takes holidays, turns up late for work goes on strike. In fact I like to think of a website as the best employee you could just about have.

Here are our top 10 tips to optimize your website.

1) Keyword Phrases – Find and use the keyword phrases your customers would use to find you. (Put yourself in your customers shoes) When I say phrases I mean 2, 3 or even four words. Google have some free tools you can use to find the value and number of times your keyword phrases are used in monthly searches. Get Keyword Tool here.

2) Local Search Optimization To optimize your website for local search, include your bricks and mortar business address at the foot of the page including postcode and telephone numbers.

3) Website directory Structure – Target your specific keyword phrases for pages on the directory structure. Keywords and phrases need to be generic i.e. local search, local maps or local listings etc.

4) File Names – File names and your website URL need to be targeted towards your keyword phrases.

5) Titles
Titles, Metatags, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords: Ideally there should be around 10 words in your title and 25 words in the description. You’ll notice when you surf the keywords you use are in bold in the website description. These are the keywords. Do not over stuff keywords or keyword phrases into your description. Once or twice is enough.

Before I start to build a website I put all the information I need into a Notepad. Then I know where it is and I can cut and paste from it when ever I need it. (Do not use Word for this).

Titles and Metatags should start with a keyword and need to have key phrases in them. For example Local Search Marketing in London, Local Search Services in London.

6) Sitemaps – There are two different types of Sitemaps that should be used for a new website. These are Sitemap.html within a website and the other one is a Google Sitemap (Sitemap.xml). The xml based sitemap can be generated using a Sitemap Generating Tool. If you use a Google friendly WordPress get the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. Asitemap.html page will have links with all the inner pages of a website. These two sitemaps are to make the pages saturated on the search engine databases. This is referred as Search Engine Saturation.

7) Body Content – Great ‘copy’ or content is the main reason that a website exists. It needs to provide information, entertain, enlighten or convert visitors to sale or to just make a better site stickiness for the users. (Video is good sticky content). We need to use an online LSI tool like Quintura to help make a web page more relevant to the website. The Quintura search engine works the way people search and its LSI tool evaluates latent semantic terms.

Each page should have at least 3 text links (anchored texts or hyper-links) to the inner pages that are relevant to the context of a page. Navigation should be consistent and run through the site’s pages. Most important pages need to be linked from the index page that includes the Sitemap.html.

A note about positioning relevant content on a web page: It is good to understand a little bit about how a search engine spider sees a web page while scanning it. Search engines read pages like we do, from top to bottom. It is reported that they also assume that the content near the top of the page is more important than the content at the bottom of the page. The text at the top of a page receives more weight than the text at the bottom. Hence it is better to shift the unnecessary code such as the navigation links on to a side bar menu or to the bottom of the page.

8) Coding Web Pages – When coding WebPages for a website, calling external CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) can be used to minimize the amount of code on web pages and is beneficial website optimization process. Also, CSS should use a different style sheet for mobile visitors, not a different site. If you use WordPress for your blog you do not need to code a single line and we would recommend that you use this open source platform for your websites. They are extremely search engine friendly and customizable.

9) Back Links – this is one of the most important factors that many of the search engines consider to weigh a website. Links should be built up over a period of time and come from relevant sites to your own. You should check for websites that offer backlinks without a NoFollow Tag to your website. This makes the link value (Link Juice) flow from site A to Site B.

10) Check Links – Check all your links to ensure they are working correctly and are linking to the correct site, page or are broken resulting in an error message.

Don’t forget to name all your photographs with your relevant keywords and phrases. The search spiders will thank you for this (more juice!) and your customers will be able to read the text if the photo doesn’t load (Jpeg3 doesn’t look good or mean anything to anyone!).

Local Map Restaurants E1 othodonists Local listings

The three screenshots above are of the Google Local Map 7 Pack. This is where YOUR business needs to be seen. If you are not seen here, you will not be seen at all.

We have 3 affordable packages to get your business listed in the Google Local Map 7 Pack.

Blend Gold Profit System

Blend Silver Profit System

Blend Bronze Profit System

“Someday isn’t a day of the week”

Get in the Blend and contact us now to get listed on Google Places and on page 1 of organic local search!

Email: Blend

Website: Blend Local Search Marketing

Related Blogs

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Blend Custom Fan Pages

Facebook, Facebook, Facebook! There’s no getting away from it. It’s everywhere and permeates just about every aspect of our lives.

It’s a great way to stay in touch with family and friends (the average Facebook user has 130 friends). As I travel around a lot, it has certainly made my world a smaller place. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’m away at all, as I’m in constant contact with my closest friends.

Another great thing about Facebook is the opportunity it opens up to Internet Marketers and just about anyone who wants to promote their business, products or services online.

Facebook is a high impact, low cost viral marketing medium that can’t be ignored!

Every band, brand or business should have a Facebook page, AKA landing page, business page and fan page (different to a Facebook Profile).

A Facebook Page allows you to promote your business through the ‘Like‘ button. When people ‘Like’ your page your posts are published on their wall. Friends can see these posts and may have similar interests so ‘Like‘ your page to. This is what’s known as Viral Marketing.

To establish your brand on Facebook you will need a Custom Fan Page. A Custom Fan Page is a page designed on iFrame and looks more like a regular website. They can include video, an opt-in box and a whole lot more.

A well designed Custom Fan Page will increase your ‘Likes’, drive more traffic to your website, build your list, engage viewers with video and even allow you to sell your products or services straight from Facebook.

Blend Custom Fan Page Gallery

We are launching a design service that will get your Custom Fan Pages built and live on Facebook easily and stress free.

Click here to ‘Like‘ Blend Custom Fan Pages Facebook Page.

Related Blogs

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

The End of Keyword Research.

Dominate Page 1 of Google in Local Organic Search With a No Cost Website Analysis and Keyword Research Report from Blend.

These days it isn’t enough to be on Page 1 of Google, you need to completely dominate it!

If you share page 1 of Google with other competing businesses in your sector you still only get part of the market share. By completely dominating it you get the lions share.

Did you know that over 80% of website traffic is the result of search engines? If you want to increase the number of visitors to your website it is crucial that you have a top search engine position for the keywords your customers are using for search.

Most SEO experts optimize one static website. Blend creates multiple listings outside of your website to dominate Google Page 1 using keyword phrases your customers use when searching.

At No Cost to You, Blend will run a website analysis and keyword research report showing you exactly where your business is visible on the net. This will include the optimum keyword phrases your customers use to find you, monthly searches, cost per click (CPC), Local search competition and domination viability. Then we will email you our analysis report along with the recommendations of how we can market your company on the net, increase your ranking, improve your websites traffic dramatically, eliminate your online competition and produce a high ROI.

We exclusively provide our Local Search and Google Page 1 Domination tactics to only one company in its business sector. Don’t let it be your competition.

To Get Your No Cost Website Analysis & Keyword Research Report Today Complete the Form Below or follow this link to see how Google Page 1 Domination looks.

‘Get 12 months for the price of 10 with this exclusive offer’.

We look forward to running your report.

Perry Stevens – Founder of BLEND Local Search Marketing

This Offer is Now Closed

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Affordable Internet Marketing for Small Businesses

Blend Local Search Marketing – Press Release.

London, England (Press Release) 18 May 2010. It’s still a tough and uncertain time for trading in any business sector post election but small local businesses can now finally compete with the big companies and beat them at their own marketing game.

While top end grocers (TEG’s) are not content to dominate with their hyper stores and continue to pursue their growth with ‘Local’ and ‘Metro’ brands, Google now offer small and medium size businesses a golden opportunity to get seen where the customers are searching… and that’s on the net.

One London based internet marketing company is aiming to provide all the internet marketing strategies these small companies need at affordable rates to dominate in online local search. Perry Stevens founded the company, Blend Local Search Marketing in 2009. Prior to establishing Blend, Perry worked in marketing with some of the biggest household brands in the world before running his own successful small business, IMP Film Co. a production company again in London.

Blend was born of the advertising shift from TV, radio and traditional print media to online, viral, social and local marketing. Small businesses are now able to claim and build their own real estate in the form of web properties and utilize the growing trend for social networking, video and map marketing to lazer target new customers and elevate their company profiles to rock star status in local search.

‘It’s very important for business to claim their brand online. This means claiming a listing in Google local, registering websites and having accounts and profiles in all the major social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube’. Perry continues ‘If you don’t claim your brand, there is a strong chance someone else will ‘hijack’ it and create all kinds of problems for you down the line’.

Blend Local Search Marketing is not an SEO company in the traditional sense. Blend build and optimize web properties and directory listings for small companies with or without a website. However they strongly recommend a website or Blog for maximum effect in local search results to stay ahead of their competition, help build their brand with video and create invaluable company awareness.

Blend offers three affordable packages to get any small business on the first page of Google in local search – Gold, Silver and Bronze.

Blend claim your business listings and then build and fully optimize each web property with videos, photos, keyword rich copy and use a whole suite of tools to rank you higher then your competition, using the keyword phrases your customers use to find you.

Every small business today should have a web presence and Blend’s ‘Local Map Marketing Service’ is the affordable first steps to be seen were the customers are searching and that’s online.

A reported 86% of all local searches are onlinewith 90% of these searches resulting in offline activity. 61% of this offline activity results in a purchase with 90% of these consumer purchases being made within a 20 mile locality of where people live or work. If you run a local company wouldn’t you want those customers coming to you? Your competition certainly would!

If your company isn’t seen on the first page of Google, the fact is you are not going to get any customers from online. Can your business afford to miss out on new customers, growth and sales?

The real beauty of investing in local and social marketing is three fold:

* Firstly, it’s working for you 365 days a year all round the clock (sounds like the perfect employee!) and continues to grow and evolve over time.

* Secondly is the invaluable dialogue you can have with your customers. You want them to be talking about your products and services so why not lead the discussion and build long lasting relationships with them?

* Thirdly, most people like to do business with people they know, like and trust. By stamping your personality all over your web properties, searches get to know you and long standing, trusting relationship are formed. These customers want to do business with you.

A strong Local Map Marketing strategy will raise your company profile above your competition, engage and inform your customers which in turn result in retaining old and creating new customers, more sales and a healthy ROI.

For more information on internet marketing for small business in the UK contact Blend Local Search Marketing.

www.BlendLocalSearchMarketing.com

Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd.
Overseas House, 66-68 High Road, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, WD23 1GG
Tel: +44 203 114 5119

Contact Us here.

E: Perry @ BlendLocalSearchMarketing . com

Related Blogs

Perry Stevens

Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.

Connect with Perry

blendlocalsearchmarketing.com/

Video Marketing

Video Marketing Advantages

Just 4 examples of videos we have produced.

Video Baby Monitor Reviews

How to Cure Phyto Plankton

IMP Film Co. Showreel

How Long Will it Take to complete Orthodontic Treatment?

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Record Growth

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The perfect fusion between, design, functionality and SEO.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Converting Website Traffic to Paying Customers

More Local Search Marketing and Social Media Marketing

Google Places

‘People don’t do business with businesses they do business with people!’

Still not sure if you need to be on Google Places?

The Future of Local Search is Mobile

10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Internet Marketing

No 2. Hostgator

10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Internet Marketing

No1. WORDPRESS

Blend Members Market

The Best Online Marketing Methods

Method #1 – Article Marketing

Method #2 – Search Engine Optimization

Method #3 – Social Media Marketing

Are Business Directories a Good Source of Free Advertising?

So Does This Mean I Should Advertise On All Business Directories?

So What Are The Top Business Directories?

The Local and Social Search Blueprint

Confucius said ‘Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime’

Introducing… The Local and Social Search Blueprint

“Those who take advantage of this offer sooner rather than later will make the greater returns on investment”.

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The Top 10 Tips to Optimize Your Website

The Top 10 Tips To

Optimize Your Website

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Blend Custom Fan Page Gallery

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Dominate Page 1 of Google in Local Organic Search With a No Cost Website Analysis and Keyword Research Report from Blend.

This Offer is Now Closed

Blend Local Search Marketing – Press Release.

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