8ee66877

3 Stages Of Business For Advertising: What Stage Is Your Business?

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Sat, 02 Jul 2022 01:33:13 GMT

Identify your stage before investing in advertising, trust us, it will have you time and money.

Today’s topic will be a short one. Identifying the different stages of generating business for your business.

At LSL, our primary clients are small businesses providers and contractors. So oftentimes it is the clients first time advertising or attempting to generate traffic through online channels. With the rising popularity of SEO, search engine optimization, small business owners hop on the search for SEO services . To later be surprised by the costs and time it takes to rank keywords. Giving the bad first impression.

That’s why within our agency, we identify our clients into 3 stages. I believe it would be helpful for small businesses to first identify their stage then proceed to search for the right type of marketing.

Stage 1: You are a newly developed business, still working on establishing a clientele and finding your market.

At this stage, you should not be looking for advertising or other avenues to generate more leads. First establish who your market is and identify the niche you are in.

Stage 2: You have clients and are relying on referrals but ready to expand.

This is the stage when advertising is most suitable. When your business has the capital to advertise without major risk of likelihood, have availability to accept the additional leads, and know who your target audience is. These are the major identifiers for a business that is ready for advertising.

Stage 3: Have advertising experience, have >1k advertising budget, able to make long term investments.

At this stage, it consists mostly of seasoned businesses that have a lasting reputation. This stage is best for brand advertising, targeted email marketing campaigns, and SEO. Which is more of a long term approach to acquire additional leads. These leads are often higher in conversion or are simply more cost effective.

So before you look for advertising options, first identify the stage your business is in. It will save you a lot of time and money before you invest.

Does Your Competitor Have A Similar Domain Name OR Are You Considering A Direct Competition?

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 20:14:31 GMT

Things may get nasty, lawsuits are common, and you may be locked out of ranking forever.

This week we encountered a unique issue that came up with a business owner. The business and a local competitor on the other side of town have incredibly similar names. Over the years, the two businesses clashed, but the business owner I spoke to has expanded and grew larger than its previous rival since then.

In retaliation, the old rival has changed their website domain to match almost identically to the bigger business. The owner noticed this through leads that would call in from the other side of town asking for the other service with the slightly different name. I would assume the change in domain was in hopes to capture a few leads through misunderstanding.

In the world of SEO, this is actually fairly common. Attempts to generate traffic through similar names and misspelling of keywords are pervasive.

However, this is often a mistake. This particular strategy is only advantageous if business names are NOT similar, but the website is ranking for competitor keywords or names. If you are the “smaller guy” changing domain name to match similarly to larger competitor is often a SEO suicide.

Imagine this, a large company ranking for “Houston Pest Control” would logically rank for “Pest Control Houston” as well. If you are a small company that decides to rename into the latter title, you have now positioned your business in direct competition with the larger company. Forever locked out of the number 1 position in search rankings due to lower SEO budgets.

So in this example, the business owner is now aware of the situation, and is given the opportunity to expand on keywords or even in territory thanks to the old rival spreading its similar name. Once the larger company drops the hammer on SEO, the old rival will forever be locked out of its organic top ranking unless they change their domain again.

Besides the obvious possibility for injunction lawsuits and bad blood between companies. If you decide to take a piece of a pie from someone else’s plate legally, make sure you are in the position to do so without it being reflected back with you giving up your piece instead.

Target vs. Untargeted Ads, Rookie DYI Advertising Mistake Commonly Found In Contractors

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 20:49:14 GMT

How untargeted or board advertising decreased your conversion rate and ad cost efficiency.

This week shortly after a local networking event, I had a quick “elevator talk” with a local appliance repair contractor, he voiced his concerns about the high cost in his PPC (Pay Per Click) and that the leads are unpredictable as well, ranging from low and high ticket jobs. He wondered what are some alternative solutions to generate more leads.

After hearing this, I noticed it was another case of a DIY advertising blunder. Oftentimes when contractors or small businesses start an advertising campaign on their own, the first thought is to advertise for the company and all of its services. The thought might be that it would be more efficient by consolidating the ad into one, however, the result is quite the opposite.

By compiling all keywords and services provided into one ad, the sales conversion drops significantly and efficiency of ad cost also decreases dramatically. Here’s why:

Sales conversion drops due to the fact that from the searcher’s point of view, you are not a specialized service provider. For example, if a searcher is looking for a repair on their high end refrigerator and the ads shown are an ad for a local appliance repair shop vs a specialized ad targeting refrigerator repair, the latter would without a doubt have better results.

As for ad cost efficiency drop, the unspecialized ad is used to bid for higher cost ads which will still generate clickers, but have a higher chance of prospects opting out and choosing an alternative. Spending your ad cost with no conversion.

So when it comes to advertising for contracting services, my advice is to first identify the high ticket items within your service, then research the costs per click using google keyword planner . Compare the cost to revenue of each service, then create ads targeting those services specifically with a controlled budget.

This will give you the competitive advantage over your competitors for each service they may have not targeted and a better control of budget across the board.

When it comes to the sales writing, take into account features vs benefit. It is much more effective to describe the benefit of each targeted service instead of describing all the features of your company. Click here to read about the importance of features vs benefits in last week's blog!

For any questions or inquiries, contact us now!

Credit to Good Rebels for their broad target vs target ad research.

SPIN Selling 101 Features vs Benefits: How To Identify Them And Write A Simple Compelling Sales Copy

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 21:32:48 GMT

Sell By Using A Simple Technique Of "That's Why And Here's How".

During this week's meeting with a friend and colleague, we discussed his new sales campaign and difficulties he faced. In the process of breaking down his sales technique and script, we went back into the basics of features vs benefits and noticed the pitch was misidentified, therefore not receiving the impact it should have been.

So in today’s blog, I would like to give our readers a quick SPIN selling 101 lesson on “Features vs Benefits” and how to sell by correctly identifying what are the benefits and features of your service/product. This technique will not only be effective for live sales, but also translate to online sales copy advertising and marketing.

The bold description of each word are as such:

Feature is simply a part of the service or product, usually with a positive affect/intention.

Benefit is what actual positive impact the product or service will provide to the customer.

Now oftentimes, sales preach the phrase “sell benefits, not features” but that’s not entirely true, since features are ultimately what would provide the benefit. The way I personally think of the two, Benefit gives the reason why while Feature is the how. When used together, the combination creates a compelling sell that is hard to refuse.

Let’s use decaf coffee for example, the features could be:

-Crowd tested to have indistinguishable taste from fully caffeinated coffee amongst popular brands

-98% less caffeine by volume

-Authentic coffee

But when consumers are asked why they like decaf, their answers are more likely to be:

-Satisfies the coffee craving

-Can enjoy the taste of coffee again without heartburn

-A trusted alternative with same ingredients

In this case, you can see that the features are the factual descriptions while the benefits are a more organic response to how a problem may be solved.

So next time when you are selling a product or service, look for a conversation and tackle the benefits before presenting the features. Such as, “Would you like to enjoy coffee once again without bearing the pain of heartburn? Our crowd tested 98% decaf…”. Using this classic technique of utilizing “why” and “how”, you are able to create a strong sell when used correctly and major benefits are identified.

Try this exercise on your product or services!

First identify what is the basic need that the product or service needs to provide, then identify what are its features. Lastly, identify what are the potential benefits.

Happy marketing and contact us if you want to learn more!

How To Start Cold Emailing 1000 People Per Day At $0 Cost And Stop Relying On Referrals.

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 00:07:37 GMT

An essential marking strategy to grow your business to the next level. Start cold emailing now at $0, it's "free gambling"!

During my weekly meet up with my mentor and colleagues, the recent greenhorns were experiencing trouble with their advertising efforts not reaching their clients. These greenhorns mostly consist of entrepreneurs who have their own businesses in various fields and are learning SEO/advertising to increase their sales. After a more detailed discussion, we realized that they utilize straight forward and old school methods such as door to door marketing and PCP ads. So in today’s blog I would like to address the power of volume and generating leads from cold emails.

Cold emails, similar to direct mail, are incredibly essential to a growing business just because of the sheer volume it has to generate new/never found before leads. Emails compared to direct mail however, are what my mentor often calls “free gambling”. Direct mail can have the volume and targeting, however it costs service and material fees. When it comes to email marketing, it can be completely free to start and reach high volumes.

To sum up the process into one sentence, the flow of the marketing methods is to choose the right audience, organize the marketing schedules, then follow up with the sales. This is the flow of the planning process but now I will break down a step by step process of how this can be done at zero cost.

Warming up emails

To begin an email marketing campaign, you will need to have functional mailboxes that have good deliverability. That not you cannot use your personal email, but I would suggest creating 10 emails relating to the business to begin with. The warm up process is simple, for 7 days, begin email conversations with 10 other emails on a daily basis. This will establish the authenticity of the inbox and prevent it from being marked as a spam mailbox. You can also look into mailing services such as QuickMail for their free warm up feature.

Scrape a List

Getting a list of contacts is the most crucial and important step of the process. Ideally, you want to obtain emails of local businesses or potential clients through directories or public listings. This can be from yellow pages, yelp, Facebook, etc. There are ways to obtain these contacts as well through service providers such as D7leadfinder and many others.

Clean the list

Now that the list of potential clients are in hand, make sure to clean the list to prevent sending emails to non existing mailboxes which will lower the deliverability of the email domain considerably. This can be done using free services online as well or using Kendo or Hunter.io

Scheduling Email Campaign

Congratulations! If you made it to this point you have put in the majority of the work. Now to schedule your email campaigns, you have a few options, organically one by one, BCC to call contacts on the list, or use a mailing service such as GetResponse . Keep in mind that using the services will allow you to track the open rates and instructiveness of your recipients.

Before sending the emails however, make sure to slow down the pace and do not cold email the entirety of the list at once using one mailbox. Using this method to start off, each mailbox can only withstand 20 cold emails per day before being marked as spam. However, continuing after the mail boxes have been warmed for 7 days, starting at 20 emails per day, increase the amount allowed to send per email by 10 until you have reached the maximum of 100 emails per day. Using this method, by week 10, your mailboxes should have the ability to send 100 emails per day totaling 1000 emails per day!

If at any point you are skeptical about the deliverability of your mailbox, use Mail-Tester to test its score.

Using this zero cost method I was able to start my advertising business on the side and obtain loyal customers slowly before using much more powerful services. Most importantly, building my business without relying on referrals or cold calling.

Now at Local Spear Leads, we also provide email services to our clients including data scraping to building the campaign from the ground up. Contact us now to learn more!

Why You Should Create A Blog, Personal or Professional, And What Are Its Benefits

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 27 May 2022 21:47:32 GMT

It All Comes Down TO SEO

A bit of a 4th wall break for the post today.

This week I had finally publicly announced a personal blog project I have been working on. I was delighted to find my friends and family finding the blog to be unique and humorous. But then comes the question of “why?”.

So in today's topic I hope to help our readers understand the actual benefits of starting a blog, professional and personal, besides self journaling satisfaction.

Personal Blogs

Blogs unrelated to a particular business are regarded as a personal or hobby blog. These blogs create original content and often only generate niche readers who are interested in the topic. Often unexpected by the creator though, blogs are an important asset to SEO providers. When it comes to backlinking and establishing an authoritative website, the destination and quality of the anchor text plays a major role in ranking. Similar to advertising, personal blogs can become monetized with backlinks or ads with enough organic traffic. Another great use of a personal blog is to boost your professional website.

Professional Blogs

There are a few main reasons why you should start a professional blog for your business website.

Increase your organic traffic

Establish higher authority for keywords

Gain credibility

Higher customer satisfaction

By creating a professional blog and covering your services, not only do you create more index pages within your domain, boosting your authority as a content creator or google, you in turn help increase traffic and customer satisfaction by providing further information on your services.

As simple as it sounds, blogging is a big part of creating an authoritative website. Without a blog, a business can only create so many pages regarding the services they provide without complicating the navigational UI of their website.

How to create a decent blog page

The purpose of this post is to cover the benefits of blogging, however, if you are keen to design a blog yourself, here are a few tips to create a great blog page.

To sum it up simply, have a minimum 500 words of optimized content, proper internal linking, and blog page anatomy. There is a limitless amount of information when it comes to designing a blog page but here are a few great reads to help you along the way.

Featured as the image for this post, Gill Andrews has created great checklists for blog page anatomy and many others.

When it comes to content of the blog, Semrush has a detailed description and process on how to create authoritative content here .

Shortly in the future I hope to cover an over-the-shoulder way to optimize blog page content. But I haven't decided if that should be in video format or another blog post. I believe it would be helpful to our readers and much easier to understand when it’s more of a how-to instead of a dumping of information such as this.

Lastly, the tone of your blog and the way it is written also matters to some degree. As you can see, even with professional blogs I tend to keep it in a first person and casual tone. I have chosen this direction because readers are typically more engaged in reading a conversation/story than an informational manual. But this varies depending on the business and should be considered thoroughly.

Semrush has another great post on tone of voice and techniques to writing an effective post, you can find that here .

9 Things To Follow To Create The Perfect Landing Page - As Instructed From The Conversion Code

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 20 May 2022 21:15:18 GMT

Key elements to making a killer landing page

Reading has always been a major hobby of mine, and as I design more and more landing pages, it has become second nature for me to naturally recall the key elements perfectly describes in the book “Conversion Code”. Today I wish to provide to our readers who may be building their own landing pages a few general rules and guidelines as it was mentioned in the book.

1 Head line

Needs to be clear, obvious, and relevant to the ad or title of the redirection source that has guided your traffic to the landing page. The objective of the headline is to ensure the lead that they have been redirected to the correct place they need to be. Statistically, new visitors only have about 8 seconds of attention, so try not to get too fancy.

2 Sub headline

The goal of the sub headline is to guide your readings downward to the meat and potatoes of the page. Often this is a hook or incentivized offer to push the visitors to stay. “Free Checklist To Build A Landing Page” “Increase Landing Page Visitor Retention Now” are both good examples of how one would keep a visitor.

3 Description

Make sure to comb through all of the spelling and grammar of the text including punctuations. Check every line of text through a detective lens, with everything being published. Being unable to talk to potential new customers, words are your tool. So make sure they are at the very least correct.

4 Testimonials

If you already have results, testimonials are great ways to establish trust very quickly. Using positive reviews will also accredit your business and break down the wall of skepticism from your visitors. Even accreditation or experience are great testimonials. Keep in mind that every purchase is bought with the trust that the good or service will be delivered.

5 Call to Action

The call to action must be visible, easy to find, and ready whenever the visitor has made the decision to continue with the conversion. For the button, avoid using “Register” or “Subscribe”, instead try less action or demanding phrases like “View Now” or “Unlock - Free”. Be creative and don’t be afraid to test!

6 Buttons

It is advised to have the conversion button a bright and easily noticeable button. Most importantly, make sure the button is located above the breaking line so the readers do not need to scroll to find the button.

7 No Misdirection

Landing pages should and only be single purpose pages. There should not be any other things that will misdirect or distract the visitor. Having other buttons or links to your home page are examples of potential misdirection, defeating the purpose of a landing page. Keep in mind that landing pages are NOT your website, they are to gather leads.

8 Image or video

Have captivating media content. Think about as you scroll through Instagram or Facebook, what kind of image has the stopping power? At Local Spear Leads we gear towards a single captivating picture or video instead of a collage. If you do not have any readily available media content relevant to your landing page, there are many free stock images available online such as Stock-Up or Pexels .

9 Stay Above the Fold

Since many of the visitors may also be visiting from their phones, it is important to keep the best of the converting content visible without having to scroll on the phone.

With this I wish your readers have a general understanding of how a landing page is best designed and have greater success finding leads! If you have any additional questions, contact us for a free evaluation of your landing page or submit a inquiry to let us help you build one!

Not Showing Up On Google Maps? Follow This Simple Check List

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 13 May 2022 22:10:45 GMT

Key factors to rank on any geographical search result.

While talking to a friend this week, we discussed the topic of GMB or Google My Business optimization. My friend had a hard time showing up on the maps when he searched for his own business even when he was located close to his business address. So in today’s blog I will quickly go over a few key points to put your business on the map and likely ahead of most of your competitors.

Descriptions

First things first, it may sound basic but for some reason or another, not many do this. In each and every description for your GMB, fill out the blanks as much as you possibly can. Similar to the functions of SEO, having more content increases the ranking of your business simply because Google will have more content and relevance to deliver to their searchers. Therefore, go through each and every single tab within your GMB and fill out all the information you possibly can.

Keywords

When you fill out the information, be sure to also include keywords that you are targeting. Within our other blog post , we cover the few details on how to research target keywords for your business. Within your descriptions, mention the targeted keywords while maintaining a descriptive answer for the prompt.

Media Content

One of the biggest ranking factors and a game changer is to have consistent media content. Looking at the cover picture, a study done by Digitalmaas you can see the drastic increase in search results just by having media added to your GMB. That being said, make sure to add photos consistently. Obviously the more often the better but consistency is the key. Regardless if you decide to have posts weekly or monthly, having consistency will help your page be on the google bot schedule to come by regularly and check on your new content. However your images needs to be:

-JPG or PNG

-Between 10KB to 5 MB

-Min resolution 720 px tall and 720 px wide

-The Quality of the photo should represent reality, meaning no excessive filters, alternations, or poor lighting.

Pay special attention to the file size of the photos, load speed affects the ranking of a page in a major way. Average users allow 2 seconds of load time for any page, taking this into account, Google automatically will deter from serving up any page that loads any slower.

Attributes

Add Special attributes to your business if they qualify. Businesses gain additional niche traffic when it is labeled as Woman-owned, Black-owned, or healthcare-related. These additional labels will target searchers that have been categories to prioritize search results with those specific attributes.

Live Messaging

Turn on Google Messaging. It may sound inconvenient, but having this feature enabled by itself will allow you to be presented as a higher search result compared to your competitors. In combination with your correctly updated business hours, spelling plainly, it should not be any major inconvenience anyway.

Reviews

Responding and managing customer reviews will give more presence and visibility to your business. Make sure to handle each negative review with an open mind and utmost professionalism and whatever you do, DO NOT DELETE A NEGATIVE REVIEW. This sends major red flags to Google Reviews for altering and curbing review ratings.

Citations

More on a SEO background note, citations are another important factor to ensure the visibility of your business within search results. Citations are the exact same as mentioned in the top 4 key components to ranking a website blog. To put simply, citations are the number of times the business information is found throughout the inter-web, letting search engines know how real the business and establishment is.

Product catalog

Lastly, if it pertains to your business, Google allows merchants with products to submit a product catalog to showcase their products on their GMB page. This will give more chances for Google to serve your business to the searchers and take up more of the real estate on the search page.

At LSL, we provide GMB optimization services, permanent citations, along with keyword research to ensure your business is fully optimized for geographical searches. Contact us now to learn more!

What is a Lead Generation Website?

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 06 May 2022 20:51:44 GMT

Specialist notes on how are Lead Generation websites utilized and used efficiently.

Happy Friday yet again everyone!

This week we celebrated the success of a client who's just had their lead generation site ranked up on searches as a satellite online real estate! With the additional traffic to their business, they are seeing a rough increase of 12% in total sales! So in this week's blog I want to address the major advantages and usage of a lead generation site in addition to your own company website.

First off, the purpose of satellite lead generation sites are usually one if not all of three things:

A site to cover additional ground that the main website isn’t ranking within the area. A lead generation site typically won’t have to rank for every keyword the main site has since more remote areas tend to be less competitive with keywords. This allows business traffic to expand and is a permanent solution in comparison to advertising to the satellite areas.
Second popular method of using lead generation sites is to cover additional ground within the area that your website already ranks for. The additional coverage of the same keywords will ensure your business gains traffic from multiple ranking positions. Seeing the figure above, a study done by SISTRIX (a SEO expert software provider), you will notice that ranking number gets most traffic but it still leaks through to other positions as well. But just by capturing the 2nd position on the SERP, online traffic for your business will increase by 50 percent!
Last but not least is a more special occurrence. A lead generation site covering services that may result in a new branch within the company. For example, a cleaning company may desire to separate commercial and residential services onto two separate website entities. Therefore before branching out first with a lead generation site and ultimately become a separate entity under the original business. This also works for when companies have a target to specialize in a specific service or industry.

Lead generation sites are versatile and can be used for many reasons. But with that being said, lead generation sites all have one thing in common, it will increase overall online traffic within your business by 15 to 30 percent, ORGANICALLY. The additional increase is a more permanent solution compared to advertising campaigns to gain additional traffic. A definitive no brainer decision!

So when consulting with our clients, we often advise them to take the advantage to further dominate the online presence within their jurisdiction. At Local Spear Leads, we offer satellite lead generation sites to further expand web traffic capture. Including our Paid For Itself offer to set up lead generation sites at no risk!

LSL Paid For Itself LG offer is a lead generation satellite website designed to cover high ticket items (any service above average of $1,200) installed with a one time setup fee and bounded by contract, the traffic generated will be exclusive to the client’s service with no additional fees until the website has paid for itself in CLOSED business! Then the website moves to a flat fee or low commission basis, providing exclusive leads to its contracted service provider.

Contact us now for a free consultation or submit a form for the no risk lead generation site here that will increase your web traffic by 15 percent for your high ticket services!

Rules Of Thumb To Convert Advertising Leads

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 21:25:24 GMT

Quick know how on how you can more effectively convert your advertising leads.

Happy Friday everyone!

In this blog post, I come from a perspective of venting to the world and hope for our readers to understand that if you have never sold advertising leads, you still have much to learn in the world of sales.

With our lead generation offer, we find that clients without a CRM often do not know how to handle advertising leads, regardless of their level of confidence. Confidence quickly becomes arrogance when it comes to taking advertising leads, “I can sell anything if I want to” or the typical “I can sell a fridge to an eskimo”, are the typical claims from a confident client who has always sold to clients who looked for them. Then they become quick to learn that converting advertising leads is a real skill in itself, persuading an individual to take action, spending part of their wealth, without a need for the service is a difficult task.

With that being said, here are a couple statistically proven metrics I wish to go over with our readers to even better maximize the rate of closing.

Lead Response Time:

Looking at cover picture, the studies on lead response timing are pervasive across all industries. From the research results, it can be concluded that across the board, the best response time window from when someone fills out a form or submit interest of service, the response should be within 5 minutes of the action taken. After the 5 min mark, chances of connecting with the prospect drops 100x in likelihood.

Here is a great study article on this subject:

https://www.chilipiper.com/resources/blog/speed-to-lead-statistics

“How can I do this?” you might ask, we suggest having the leads generated notified to your business in real time. At Local Spear Leads, all leads are notified in real time via email and or text message. Options are also available for a call to be automated in an attempt to connect the customer and service provider within the 5 mins. In addition,automated text or voice messages can be set up to contact the customer, alerting them that a call may be incoming soon. With these techniques, the customer will stay aware of their original interest in the service, which makes a world of difference than a potential client who has forgotten why they filled a form.

Keep the leads warm:

For potential customers that may have escaped the initial conversation, make sure to constantly remind them of your offer and service. I personally suggest setting up autoresponders sending scheduled emails and offers to keep your potential clients engaged. If phone numbers were captured during the initial lead, also send text notifications or even schedule calls to keep your business in their mind. In our experience, the golden number is following up 6 times before giving your old leads an offer with an ultimatum.

Treat all calls like cold calls:

This is one of the biggest difficulties we have seen with our clients who have been used to incoming calls being customers who have already been sold. Advertising leads are customers who are much more upstream from the sales funnel. When calling advertising leads, make sure to remind them of their need for the service. Ask questions that will bring back their initial needs for the service. For example, if you are in the hair restoration service, leads are often shunned away if the call starts too direct. “Hello sir, thank you for your interest in hair restoration service, would you be free this week to come in for a free consultation?”, a hard close such as this is a horrible example yet often used in the service industry. An example of reminding the customer of their pain points would be “Hello sir, thank you for your interest in our hair restoration service, to start off, may I ask what areas are you hoping to receive the treatment?”. Probing questions such as this brings back the initial pain points from the customer and pushes their needs to take action once again.

Bonus example: Lawn service calling out to a lead.

Don’t: “Hi, thanks for your interest, I am myname calling from mybusiness, what is your address and day to start?”

Do’s: “Hi, thanks for your interest, I am myname calling from mybusiness, to get a better picture of your lawn's current condition, can you tell me how tall the grass is right now?”

“When was the last time it was cut?”

“Who was the last person to perform the maintenance?” “How did it go?”

With this, I hope to have helped you become more aware of the difference in advertising leads. However, there are many more alternatives to keeping an advertising lead warm and correctly capturing advertising leads. Contact us now for a free consultation on how we could help you maintain and/or generate more leads to your business!

3 Quick and Effective Ways To Reconnect With Past Clients Fully Automated

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 20:11:24 GMT

Don't miss out in past opportunities, they just waiting for you to take them!

Talking with a client this week, we noticed that the client has a long history of work and their service is a recurring service. So we developed a plan to revitalize the client’s contact list. From our experience, we have gotten over 20 thousand in uncollected business within 1 week from a contact list for a gym. Even if your business does not provide recurring business, there is a significant amount of wealth from revisiting your past business by pushing for referrals.

So in today’s blog we will describe 3 ways to re-spark your connections with your previous clients if you are not already doing so.

Autoresponder Email Blasts

One of the oldest digital solutions to stay in touch with your clients is using email blasts for promotions or new deals. This method can be fully automated and is much less intrusive than most methods. Services such as MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and GetResponse are great tools to set up scheduled email campaigns to get in touch with your clients again. Simply set up campaigns with your contact list and schedule the dates. However, just a protip before going into this method, make sure the email you are using is not the primary domain you would rely on for business. This is because with enough spam reports and email bounces, your email domains could possibly be flagged as spam, thus losing its credibility forever. Before sending to your customer contacts, we suggest running the emails through an email verification just in case some clients have deleted their domains which could ruin your deliverability.

Text Message/ SMS Blasts

Texts are a more direct method and can be more personable than emails. Sending text blasts also promotes a more immediate response from the customer and also promotes friendly connections. We strongly recommend using this method for rarer promotions and do not spam with high frequency. Messages should be conversational and with good reason. See this blog from simpletexting to learn more. Other sms services we recommend are eztexting and twilio.

Ringless Voice Drop

The most personable and intimate promotional method besides calling or visiting your past clients would be the ringless voice drop method. This method allows you to leave voicemails in voicemail boxes without the phone ever ringing. With a voice behind the message, additional dimensions are added to the promotion and are much more personable. Craft a welcoming and direct message to your customer to boost your call back frequency. But keep in mind that ringless voicemails are treated the same as phone calls. Double check the numbers to ensure that the numbers are not listed on the do not call list before leaving a voicemail!

Learn more about ringless voice drop here:

https://salespype.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-ringless-voicemail-marketing/

At LSL, we utilize these three core methods to spark interest with past business once again, in addition to other methods. Contact us now if you think this is something worth looking into for your business or your business has not had the success you were hoping to achieve from similar methods. Oftentimes it is the method used or the copy writing, so give us a shout and let us see what are the most effective ways to collect missed opportunities that have been waiting for you to take!

5 Pro Tips To Setting Up Your Homepage

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Sat, 16 Apr 2022 00:22:11 GMT

Your Simple Homepage Check List

Happy Good Friday everyone!

There are a few must-dos to meet certain minimum requirements before Google even considers you as a valid entity on the web. So today I would like to share a few pro tips on how to set up your homepage. An Easter gift from me to you :)

Homepage Content

As for content, we know that Google marks all pages less than 300 words as a “thin” page. This means that if your page doesn’t have enough words or alt text content to describe what your website is about, Google will consider you as not worthy to serve up to organic traffic. For your homepage however, meeting that minimum is not enough when following industry standards. Commonly at SEO agencies, 1000 word homepages are the standard. At Local Spear Leads, we highly recommend hitting 1500 words for your homepage to thoroughly describe your service and set a good foundation. However, do try to watch out for keyword stuffing. Our rule of thumb is to stay within 1% to 2% of keywords per page. So if you have 1500 words, try not to have to have keywords over 2% of that content.

H1 text

I had covered this in the Contractor SEO guidelines, your H1 text is the title of your page. This text should be something related to your page and topic. However, many times we see that clients have a phone number, city, or promotion as their H1 text. So be sure that the H1 is something relevant and permanent. For example you can use the name of your company or “local [blank] service near you”. If you want to have your number displayed first without changing the layout of your site, one trick you can use is to change the phone number to a picture instead of text.

Contact Form

A rookie mistake for homepages is when there isn't immediate access to contact information or way to capture data. Make sure there is a simple and clear way to contact your business, considering if the goal of your website is to generate business through contacts.

Load Speed

This may be technical but even as a simple page build, don’t try to cram high data files onto the first page. Slower loading speeds will deter Google from showing your website because it would cause lesser satisfaction to searchers. Try to keep things simple and leave the pictures or imported videos to a minimum or on a separate page.

Index Pages/ Internal linking

Lastly, to maximize SEO, build out other pages and have them link from your homepage. These pages do not have to be shown on your menu or have to be visible from anywhere else. Having extra pages linked from your homepage will show Google that your homepage is not just a landing page. It will be a much more convincing argument to them that your page is legitimate and has real content to serve to online searchers.

By executing these tips we have found that even small local pages can rank within the top 5 of their town. So make sure to check through these topics and make the change as soon as possible. If you don’t see any immediate improvements, just know that Google crawlers take months to adjust to website changes. So be patient or give a shout and we’ll provide a free audit of your homepage for you!

I wish everyone a Good Friday and a Happy Easter!

Demand Harvesting VS Demand Generation - Factors To Determine Your Advertising Budget

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 23:04:05 GMT

What's Your Budget? What's Your Rate? How We Stop The Stand Off Between Agency and Client.

Happy Friday everyone,

The other day I saw a TikTok of a short skit that seems to perfectly portray the interactions between an advertising agency and its client. (As an owner of the advertising agency, you cannot imagine how niche my fyp is) The skit shows a western shoot off on main street. “What’s your budget?” the agency would say. Then the client would counter with “Well what’s your rate?”. “Well our service rate adjusts to fit your budget…”. I thought this was hilarious in its accuracy but I think it would be great to address these situations and provide our “rate” and why I am on the team of what’s-your-budget.

When it comes to advertising, it ultimately breaks down to two major categories that I have mentioned in the previous blogs , demand harvesting and demand generation. The leads gathered from these two categories differ greatly and should be a factor when discussing ad spend.

Demand Harvesting

As the word suggests, harvesting means you are gathering what is already made available. An example of demand harvesting is using google ads. This advertising method is gaining the attention of searcher who already have the intent to buy. So typically it is used for advertising clients who have smaller budgets and/or more common services.

Demand Generation

This is ultimately the trickier strategy and often requires more skill to optimize. Demand Generation is the process of creating new interests and generating new demand. An example would be using facebook ads. The user is typically targeted through their cookie history with similar or relevant searches, then the ad is proposed to the user to take action. This advertising method is typically used for clients who have higher budgets to promote new business or very niche products/services that are not commonly known to be searched for.

Now that the two categories are defined. Put yourself in the shoes of an advertiser. If a small time contractor that can provide a variety of services from common repairs to big custom installations. How would you provide your advertising rates to the client? Of course it would depend on the route the client wishes to take, but ultimately it does come down to the budget for you to know if you want to take on the job or not.

At Local Spear Leads, we are flipping the agenda . Starting at $1000/ month we will provide a money back guaranteed amount of leads up front. This way our clients have a min budget that they are aware of and a starting point to try out the service. This way action is taken and no more western standoffs are a true thing of the past.

Get Started or Call Now!

832-400-3121

Drop us a line and we’ll get back to you!

4 Things To Consider When Using A SEO Provider

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 22:57:55 GMT

Can SEO Be Trusted?

Hello everyone, hope you are all having a great day today.

Last month I ran into a few cases of what I would consider as ill intentioned SEO service. As my team and I was going through our free SEO audit offer, we came across 3 cases where the client claims to have SEO done on their website previously. However, from our search, we found that the backlinking was either taken away or never done in the first place.

In the foreground they provided regular content to post but were not doing the background chores. In many cases, we saw that to cover their tracks for neglecting background work, they create traffic generating advertisement unknown to the client so simulate organic traffic. When the client decides to leave the service provider, either the backlinks are taken away or organic traffic simulating ads are stopped. Both leaving the client back to ground 0, exactly where they had started. So in today's post I will cover some of the regular check ups you should do when using a SEO service.

Ask For Reports:

SEO providers should periodically provide reports of what is going on in the background such as change in keyword ranking, and include what they have done about it within the report. Also within the report, ask for them to share the backlink reference URL. This will prevent service providers from simulating organic traffic from advertisement.

Contract Agreement Backlinks:

When it comes to SEO providers taking back the backlinks, read the fine prints on the ownership of these valuable assets. Make sure that once the backlinks are applied, who do they truly belong to. I personally do not recommend buying a backlink that does not permanently belong to you unless it is only for temporary purposes.

Backlink Domain Authority:

If you see on your backlink report that you indeed have backlinks for your desired keyword, but for some reason you cannot compete with your competitors. In this instance, ask for a report regarding the domain authority of the reference domains being used. This is usually signs for low cost or even free backlinks being utilized. Which can negatively affect your website for being spam or untrustworthy.

3rd party audit:

you might have guessed it, but getting a third party to audit is the best method to ensure SEO service performance. Oftentimes service providers will provide a report free of charge in hopes for you to change provider. I recommend using a 3rd party who actually offer audit services, free or not. This is to prevent falsified reports in an attempt to convince you to change provider. It would also be good to inform your SEO provider that you will be conducting 3rd party audits to ensure best practices.

I am hopeful that SEO audits become more pervasive as SEO slowly gains its popularity. It is disheartening to see others in the same industry provide such immoral practices, when it is our job to help other businesses thrive. If you are currently using an SEO service, I urge you to consider having a periodic 3rd party audit. This will ensure the growth of your business and push our society to have more honest service providers.

Click here to contact us now for a complimentary SEO audit with no obligations.

8 Free Must Have Citations For Your Business To Be On Equal Playing Field

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 23:00:00 GMT

Step By Step Citation Cheat Sheet For Every Business

Hello everyone,

Today I would like to share a few things that I have learned from a webinar I attended this week. The topic of the webinar was regarding what are some of the best practices to obtain citations for local businesses. When it comes to the top 4 ranking factors for websites, citations are ranked as the 3rd most important variable. Keep in mind that the top 4 ranking factors are what our community of SEO service professionals have identified from thousands of ranking factors. It should by no means be neglected or underestimated.

In this particular post, I would like to give you the best practices to secure the most common yet strong citations for your business. It may seem obvious, however it is essential that these tasks are carried out as the bare minimum to compete in your local industry.

When you create a business website, one of the first actions should be to validate the authenticity of your business and its connection to the domain. Simply speaking, citations are call outs from other platforms that cite your business with its address, domain, phone number, and name. So when search engines crawl through the web, it validates the existence of your business. Because it is similar to a physical validation, citations are also a key factor for Google My Business rankings.

I personally recommend creating a google business page first, followed by the accounts mentioned below not in any particular order:

Yelp

YouTube

Yellow Pages

FB Fan page

Instagram

Twitter

When these accounts are created, be sure to fill out all the information possible, especially address, domain, phone number, and name of business. If you do not have a physical location, city location also works. After you have created these accounts, the next step is to intertwine the different platforms and linking them to one another. For example, on LinkedIn, make sure to add the other platforms links to your profile or fill in the boxes that LinkedIn provides for your other accounts.

On YouTube, post two quick introductory videos that explain your service or business. These can be 30 sec videos. The goal is to post so that Google, who owns YouTube, will further authenticate that you are indeed a business and are looking for more exposure. A neat tie-in is to also include links to your other social media accounts within the description of the video.

Then, rinse and repeat the process until you have at minimum posted 2 times on each platform with some mention of your service and links to other platforms. In doing this, you should have 8 citations including google business. This should boost the authenticity of your business and promote your business to appear in search results.

As a bonus note, I personally suggest keeping up with Facebook and LinkedIn posts at a minimum frequency of 2 times a week. It would increase the relevancy of your business, along with a positive effect for ranking. At LSL, we provide citation services starting at 100 citations besides the mentioned platforms at an affordable price! to Contact us now to evaluate your competitors and learn how you can stay ahead them on number of citations.

What Do You Think Google Wants? SEO Game Theory Between Mentor and Student

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 22:51:34 GMT

Think What Would Google Want To See.

Happy Friday everyone!

I had a conversation with my mentor the other day and we discussed the general topic of game theory and Google. I thought it would be an interesting topic to create new thoughts and give our audience a better understanding of how SEO operates on a fundamental level. Even though the google ranking algorithm is never disclosed, we know that over all the thousands of ranking factors from google, the number one ranking factor is content. But how do we know this and what kind of content ranks best?

Not to go too deeply into game theory, I want you to imagine if you are in the position of Google. What are your primary deliverables for someone who is using your service? When a searcher is searching for a specific phrase or word, I think we would all unanimously agree that google is incentivized to deliver the most relevant content that is closely associated with the search term to ensure customer satisfaction. They are incentivized to do this so satisfied searchers will continue to use google and continue visiting their platform. So in a way, anyone associated with an online space with authority to change or add content is an "employee" Google. We all deliver some kind of content to the searchers, so in short, we are all search results.

Now, the key is to determine what kind of content Google likes the most. Because if you can determine what kind of content Google is in favor of, the better you will be served to the searchers. With confidence, my mentor and I believe new and interesting content would be the most sought after for any search engine. With new and consistent content, they will take notice from each web index with their crawl bots. As you build on more and more unique content, search engines will start to categorize you in a bracket similar to that of a thought leader position, ranking your site in high positions to encourage you to continue creating new content. Of course assuming your new content is still relevant to the searches.

An interesting example my mentor used was the popularity comparisons of Connor McGreggor and Mr.Beast. Using Google keyword trends , you can see that the two celebrities have very different types of search trends. Connor’s trends are in big spikes before his matches, while Mr.Beast’s are more consistent in predictable waves before his new videos are released. This comparison may not be relevant to searches, but with certain topics it could be interesting to bring up, such as topics about modern fame or “Youtube career vs Athletic Career”.

So next time when you are considering adding more content to your website, spend a few minutes to think about what the search engine would like to see. What is something they may not expect and the audience might also find interesting.

At local spear leads, we provide keyword targeted content creation services that add unique and consistent content to your website. For more information and to rank your online real estate, contact us now to find out more!

One Paragraph Explanation of Google PPC and Facebook PPC

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 01:54:47 GMT

What is PPC and why is Google and FB PPC so important?

Happy Friday! :)

Today’s topic we will briefly discuss the two PPC advertising giants, Google and Facebook. PPC or Pay Per Click is a method of advertising by buying each click that the advertisement generates. Using this method, you are able to advertise according to your budget. However, this does not mean your advertisement is working. Clicks do not equal conversion.

We will start by differentiating the two into lead generation and demand harvesting. Google being a search engine, is categorized as a demand harvesting advertisement strategy. By listing ads on the first search, you will gather people who are already interested and are typically further down the sales funnel compared to Facebook advertising. With Facebook, it is considered as lead generation because the strategy is to generate new interest and brand new clients from the ads.

Google PPC

Learning about google PPC is by far the most important skill for any business no matter the budget. Google allows specific keyword targeting and area targeting to narrow down the traffic for maximum conversion. The click ads work off of a bidding strategy. The bids determine how your ads are going to be shown from the top of the search. The highest bid wins the top position. This is not as simple as listing your highest bid however, algorithms and functions can be used to adjust bids to beat your competition, bids can be customized for the time of day, location, and device as well. Using our algorithm to bid for maximum conversion, we ensure our customer’s budget is used as its maximum efficiency. One unique feature to pay attention to for google ads is that by adding more details to your google ads and building out different sections of the ad, you are also increasing the real estate of the ad. Meaning the amount of space the ad takes up on the search also increases. Allowing searchers to pay more attention.

Facebook PPC

When it comes to Facebook ppc, great interest driving copywriting is required. This copy writing method should entice the reader with a hook to go learn more about the deal. Facebook ads can target audiences down to their search and typical behavioral patterns. FB ads also allow retargeting of the audience that has visited your ad at least once. In my experience, the riches are always in the follow-up. The drawback is that the budget for Facebook ads may require much more to gain conversions. This being because Facebook users are not actively looking to make a purchase, therefore if they were to click on the link, the lead is still cold compared to the interest driven google ads.

This is just my one two take of the giants in the industry for those who have no prior knowledge of the difference. There are great classes you can take online on udemy for these two advertising methods. Isaac’s class covers google ads in great detail including the algorithms. I highly recommend it, it is also very affordable.

4 General Guidelines for Contractor SEO

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Sat, 05 Mar 2022 00:56:56 GMT

Our Advice to Contractor SEO - With a Bonus Tip!

Happy Friday everyone!

I was talking to a contractor earlier this week and noticed something. I often get contractors who are interested in SEO and would like to promote their organic traffic but I hear comments every now and then that I imagine their customers would say as well, “I could do that myself!”. And of course there’s always some truth to that, everyone can learn a specific skill with enough time, but the phrase is generally addressing to things that are considered “simple tasks”. So in this blog, I hope to cover a couple of tips and quick changes that I think a contractor without any prior knowledge or skill to SEO can do to optimize their website.

Your H1 text.

Every page has a H1 text, this is your main headline for the page. Google uses your H1 to determine what your page is about. A common mistake I often see within contractor pages is that the H1 is a phone number or address instead of a relevant text. One of the easiest ways to determine what your H1 is would be to click and drag to highlight over texts starting from the top left corner of your page. Google reads pages from top down, left to right. Do this and see if you are able to highlight the first texts that appear. If you did not have prior knowledge to this setting, it is likely that the first result is your H1. To replace your H1, you have the option to use your company name, or my suggestion would be something that would describe your business. Lastly, remember that the H1 is on every page. Meaning if you had to make the change for your homepage, you may have to reevaluate every page of your website.

Quantity of your content

Recent report says that Google has thousands of ranking factors but content is always the number one ranking factor. Relevant content for the searcher promotes the user to stay and continue using the web. When we understand this fact, it’s easy to see that it would be in Google's best interest to serve websites with the best and most relevant content to its users. When it comes to homepages, the milestone for the quantity of content is 300 words. Any less would be labeled as a “thin” page and have much less authority to rank. In industry standards, the average content is 1000 words, however at LSL we provide our customers with 1500 relevant and quality content to be above majority competition.

Keyword Stuffing

Content quantity and quality comes hand in hand. When it comes to writing content, the general industry rule is to avoid a 1% to 2% frequency of targeted keywords to avoid keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is when targeted terms are overused in writing on the same page. This may trigger a flag from Google, invalidating the ranking authority of your site. At LSL we try to best keep just below the 1% mark. This allows a bit more freedom and flexibility with other keywords for the content. A good rule of thumb we use is to have no more than 10 keywords in a 1500 word count webpage. If there are difficulties, try using synonyms or talk about other services you may provide. You may be thinking, “but my main service is this”, which we fully understand, but homepages should be a generalization of what your website is about, and to allow users to navigate to their desired page. We suggest creating a dedicated service page where you can talk about your service in detail following the same rules.

Branding Doesn’t Generate Traffic

This is fairly straightforward and logical, however this is commonly seen across service based websites. Of course brand promotion is great, but in terms of search engine optimization, it does not have any benefits since users are already searching your brand. In that sense, it would be illogical to optimize for users who are already searching for your website destination. We suggest instead to use more keywords and promote services that you can provide.

Bonus Tip - Backlinks from Colleagues

If you have read our other blogs, you may have learned about reference pages and the importance of backlinks. If you are a contractor and have others that you frequently work in tangent with, for example a home inspector and a plumber, consider asking for reference backlinks. Direct backlink trades are frowned upon unless the two parties are genuinely endorsing each other’s business with relevant content. It is acceptable however, to ask for backlinking and in return link to a separate site. Simply reference from their website to your websites using keywords as the anchor texts you want. Use the NoFollow tool mentioned in the keyword article to ensure it is working. But do keep in mind that this is a method without using SEO tools. No two backlinks are equal in value, for it to be done correctly, consider contacting us now for a free consultation!

4 Main Ranking Factors For Your Website

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 22:05:52 GMT

What variables are considered when ranking your website?

Happy Friday everyone!

So, there are actually over 200 identified factors when it comes to ranking a website but with combined experience of a several decades at LSL, we have determined 4 major factors that determine the rank and authority of a website. These 4 factors are content, trust flow, citation, and age. Google algorithms are difficult to crack and no one really knows the scale of the factors, but through our experience, the mentioned order is what we believe to be the hierarchy of the factors from greatest to least.

1. Content:

The content is by far the most important factor without a doubt because google ultimately wants quality content on the web. Content not only helps googles determine what the page is about, it is in essence what the users want on the internet. If you have enough quality content, google is more inclined to display your page for its users. In our practice, pages under 500 words are considered as “thin” in content. Agencies recommend a word count of 700-1000 words for your home page. At Local Spear Leads, we recommend 1500 words just to be above and beyond the competition. If you are interested in building a new website, we offer quality and SEO optimized content for our website builds, contact now to find out more!

2. Trust Flow

This is more of a technical term in the SEO industry. Trust flow is a numerical rating we at LSL use to determine the trust rating of a website, using the Majestic SEO tool. This numeric value is graded by evaluating the authority of the referencing domains that the site has. So having a higher trust flow equals having stronger reference sources.

3. Citation

When google crawls the entire interweb, citations are made each time they find a business with its correlating address, website, phone number, and company name. This ensures search engines that the business is real and valid. This verification is an important factor because without any citation, it is hard for search engines to determine if a business or website is a real entity. To make citations, it can be as easy as posting business information on directories.

4. Age

Fairly self explanatory, age is the age of when the website is made and linked to the proper domain. This is an uncontrollable factor when you are ranking against competition with older pages, but the reality is that the more history the website has, it is considered as proportional to trustworthiness.

In conclusion, if you are thinking about building a website, my personal suggestion would be to not further delay with analysis paralysis and get started today. Make the website as soon as possible to let the website age as you build upon it. Content can then follow with a few hours of writing, and the rest can be done slowly as you build. If you have any questions or inquiries, go ahead and send me an email or call now . I would be happy to help :)

Alexander Li

Every Lead with Spear Precision

What is Anchor Text?

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 23:39:52 GMT

How you can create your own anchor text.

If you have read the previous blog regarding keywords, you will have learned that the ranking of a website is determined differently by the search term. But how do you go about ranking for a keyword? In this blog we will quickly go over what anchor texts are and how it would affect your website, along with some creative methods to do this even on your own.

An anchor text put simply, is the term used on a clickable term to take the user to another page. For example, the word SEO is hyperlinked to the SEO article. An anchor text not only helps the writer navigate the user to another source, it also helps google identify the page it is linking to. In this example, google will expect the hyperlinked word SEO to take the user to a page about this topic. Now this will affect the authority of the page’s rank, because now google will see that the page has been given a shoutout and will promote the page to others who are searching the same terms.

So the more common the anchor text is used to cite a page, in general it increases the authority of the page for that keyword. However, there are other variables in play, one major factor would be if the hyperlink has the authority to give credit to the page it is linking to. This is called a Follow or NoFollow link. When a link is a “Follow” link, it gives credibility to the page it links to, sharing some of its own credibility from the page (Internal linking to other pages within the same domain has limited credibility). This credibility variable is closely monitored by companies because the more credit you give, the less your page will have and also risk being flagged by google as an referral farming site. However, the more credibility you have, the higher your site will rank for that anchor.

When it comes to creating valuable anchor text for your site, SEO agencies generally use one of two methods. The links are created either by citing from other domains they own or pay other sites to create the references. But fear not, there are still other creative DIY methods! Below are two methods of making cost free reference texts, but first it would be wise to first get a tool to help you differentiate a Follow from a NoFollow link:

Method 1: Page commenting.

A creative method of referencing from other sites is to comment on posts or papers and hyperlinking your site within the comment. Most comment sections are defaulted to NoFollow links but they are still a reference to your site.

Method 2: Trade links.

Another method is to contact other sites that are interested in trading hyperlinks and negotiations can be made on if the links are to be Follow or NoFollow links!

For more detailed information on anchor text and the different types of link references that can be made, you can find it here at a major SEO service tool provider Semrush .

Alexander Li

Every Lead with Spear Precision

Choosing The Right Keywords For Your SEO

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 22:42:48 GMT

How to choose your keywords.

Happy Friday everyone, to start this new knowledge, let’s first define what are keywords then you will learn the correct way of determining search terms for your business.

Keywords are search words that are used when searchers look for specific products or services. For example, if the user is looking for SEO services, the key words used will likely be “SEO services near me” or “SEO”. Now if I were to ask you, which terms would you want your business to show up when others are searching, highly used keywords or uncommonly used keywords, which do you think is the correct answer? Technically either answer would be correct, it all depends on your time and budget.

When determining keywords for your business, you want to first establish your budget and what are common search words used for your business. Then, start researching the search words, there are many tools available, www.spyfu.com is a great tool for this research. While researching the difficulty of the keywords, you will notice two key variables, difficulty scale and monthly volume. Take notes of the difficulty and how it reflects the volume.

After researching the commonly used, competitive search terms, look into more specific or less commonly used search terms that would still be relevant for your business. For example, instead of the commonly used “SEO” try being more in depth such as “rank higher on google” or “website optimization”. Make sure to take notes of the difficulty and volume for this too.

What you will find is that the difficulty and volume is commonly a proportional relationship . Now is when the budget comes into play, consider talking to a few search engine optimization providers to evaluate the difficulty and cost. The goal here would be to rank the highest for each keyword you target and maximize volume. Consider the costs and time required for each search term.

For Example ( data below are not real numbers, used for this example only ):

“SEO” search volume 100k, difficulty scale 80/100, cost = $3000/month, 12 months.

“website optimization“ search volume 2k, difficulty scale 34, cost = $1200/month, 6 months.

“rank higher on google” search volume 500, difficulty scale 5, cost = $400/month, 4 months.

If the above example is your research data, consider your budget and determine which best fits your need to optimize volume. If your budget is $800/month maybe you want to select two terms with similar difficulty to “rank higher on google” and rank number 1 in 4 months, generating ~1k organic traffic from then on. You may also consider choosing “website optimization“ and extending the rank time to 8 months for a better search term, generating about the same amount in 8 month period.

Now that your keywords are determined, we suggest consulting with your SEO provider before continuing further.

Let us know if you have any questions! At Local Spear Leads, we offer free SEO evaluation upon a form submission here , or call now at (832)-400-3121 !

Alexander Li

Every Lead with Spear Precision

What is SEO?

alexanderli1993@yahoo.com (Alexander R Li) — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 00:08:48 GMT

Determining the use of your online real estate.

SEO, also known as search engine optimization, is the process of establishing and optimizing the presence of your online real estate so that search engines will rank your website higher than others, depending on keywords . The goal is to generate organic traffic to the website. However, SEO services can be costly and take time to see the increase in traffic. On average it takes months for google to reflect the new optimization changes. So it is important to first ask yourself, how do I plan to use your online real estate?

After learning about SEO, most would think that it would be a necessity for every website. After all, every website is only made for others to visit. But contrary to that belief, there are many exceptions when considering what search engine optimization does. For example, if the website was only made for a one-time promotional event. In this case, even after months of ranking for the interested keywords, the site will no longer be valid after the event. An advertising campaign to generate traffic to the website will be a much better suited way to spend the capital.

So when thinking about a search engine optimization, make sure to analyze it as a long term investment. Ask questions like:

Using one or two words, what is a key product or service I provide?

What is my unique niche within my service?

What is my company known for?

How often do my products or service categories change?

Is brand building important for my website? (How often are recurring customers?)

Once these questions have been answered, you will have a general idea of what your keywords will be. However, if these questions are difficult to answer, you may need to rethink if search engine optimization is a cost effective investment to generate traffic to your website.

At Local Spear Leads, we believe in having clear 1 to 1 communication and determining the most cost efficient method to generate leads for our clients. If you would like to learn more about this topic or would like to see how your keywords are compared to your competitors, contact us now and let’s see if SEO is suitable for you!

Alexander Li

Every Lead with Spear Precision