Q. I run a service business in a given area. I want to add tags or some form of web reference that is less intrusive on the viewer side of my webpage but that will bring it up in the rankings for my small neighborhood outside a metropolis… example somewhere i dont live— xyz corp in Burbank or Glendale wants to improve his listings without competing with every corp in Los Angeles…
So is there a way to embed tags about the small town i want customers to find me from in the page?
I’m sooo not a web-guy, thanks in advance.

A . Maybe try the Microsoft SEO Toolkit? It’s a free download – website says that it can help you get more hits, control what people see in search results, find problems with websites and reporting.

Q .I have a local business referral website www.deserthc.com, need for it to be easily found by homeowners looking for services, events or local information. Not sure what keywords I should put for the best SEO/ placement. What is the best way to bring homeowners to our site? Ourlocal marketing efforts have not been very successful, Ad words is expensive! Help please.

A . Google has an adword tool you can use to see how many searches there are each month for a specific keyword. Firefox also has a lot of SEO tool that help analyze a website. The most important thing for SEO is link building. This is very time consuming however, so you might want to look into working with an SEO company. They can also be very expensive, so do your research!

- JP

Q. Is it true that SEO operates on the basis of a single market or simultaneously are the other markets also captured? What would the best approach be to make it a multi-market system if mostly the SEO works on a single market basis? This problem has been bothering me for quite sometime now as I want my websites to appeal on a global level and not only on a local level. I want these websites to have a really widespread reach. Does anyone have any recommendation?

A. Well, SEO work globally but there is also a local search engine optimization, which is called Local SEO. In local SEO , maps and physical address matters a lot. You can get plenty of tutorial about local SEO . Just google it

- JP

Websites can still be be very powerful tools for local businesses selling hard goods and/or consulting . . . BUT . . .it has to be done RIGHT.

Most local biz websites die deaths of quiet, no-traffic desperation. I have used a product called Site Build It to build a web site that WORKS… One that delivers 100 times the benefits of a Yellow Pages ad, at one tenth of the cost.

Don’t pay out a fortune on search engine optimization to so-called SEO experts – they try to “trick” or “outsmart” the engines by second guessing very sophisticated and constantly evolving search algorithms. The link below to Site Build It explains how building an honest website will grow your business and win the SEO traffic wars every time.

Q. My domain/website is 3 months old. Our website is currently on page 7 of Google for a keyword phrase that gets about 74,000 local searches. Also, what is a reasonable amount to be paying for quality SEO services?

A. Unfortunately there is no set answer to your question of how much you should be paying, without knowing a lot more info. I know that sucks, but it’s the truth. Anyone telling you otherwise is really just guessing – or is quoting for an amount of work that may or may not get you ranked successfully.

When I do SEO work, if I have a serious enquiry before I quote anyone I need to know their exact website and the keywords they are targeting. I will then do the following:
1) Check where the site is ranking currently for the main keywords.
1) Complete an analysis of what is wrong/right with the customers website than can be fixed easily.
2) Complete an analysis of keyword density and many other on page factors of the site, compared to the the top 10 sites in Google for that keyword.
3) Do a brief check of the amount and quality of incoming links to the site
4) Repeat for the top few results in Google, to see what their link profiles are like in terms of quality/quantity.

Only once the above or a variation of it is completed will an SEO specialist actually know how competitive the keyword is and the quality of the competition they are trying to beat (amount of searches has little to do with it). Once you know that, you can work out how much work has to be done and how much time/effort that will take.

A reasonable amount (as you mentioned) will depend on all of the above. In some really competitive niches like hotels for example, some of the top sites actually employ TEAMS of people, working FULL TIME on their SEO. If our niche is that competitive, you will have a tough time, and someone quoting say $1000 a month (which may sound like a lot) will have no chance of getting your site ranked. On the other hand, depending on the compeition, this may be plenty or even a lot more than you need to pay.

Sorry this isn’t an exact answer, but hope it helps.

- JP