Welcome, and thanks so much for considering the Delaware SEO Guy’s services!

We are the Delaware and Mid-Atlantic region’s premier SEO agency, ready to help bolster your business and website rankings to give you the edge that is necessary to compete successfully in today’s virtual market.

We offer not only consultation in website design, but search engine marketing, pay-per-click strategies, social media management, and more.

Here on this page, we’ll look at the following:

1. Why “local” shopping is important.
2. What is SEO?
3. About “Local SEO”
4. Differences between “Local” and “Generic” SEO Strategies
5. What is “NAP” in the Search Engines?
6. We get to KNOW you; YOU get to know US.
7. What is your particular situation or issue?
8. A bit about Pay per Click advertising.
9. Mobile Marketing
10. Marketing YOUR Special Deals

Let’s look at why you might need our help.

Why should a business in Delaware hire a Delaware SEO professional instead of one in, say, New York or New Jersey? This is the internet after all and the world they are working in is all online. Clients can even talk with consultants without being in the same room using video conference calls and live chat.

Is it a big deal if a company in New Castle or Newark, Delaware uses out-of-state services? That depends on the value of local in your SEO lexicon.

Why You Should Value Local

In almost every instance, consumers should be trying to shop local if they can. Sure, sometimes companies in other cities, states, or countries charge less. We all understand that, on a budget, you have to get value for money. Are you getting value, though? What if something goes wrong? And how about living in a town where the businesses are going bankrupt?

Consumers walk around scratching their heads and going “I don’t understand it.”

Well, the answer to why there are ghost towns is clear: people don’t shop locally for their groceries, magazines, electronics, or SEO services. You might pay a little bit more because US standards are higher than those in some countries and so are the taxes and other fees that go with them. You could be paying for higher quality services, the higher cost of living in an area, or for customer service. Overseas or cross-state shopping is not so bad as long as nothing goes wrong, but when help is needed, shopping local will turn out to have been advantageous. Back to Top

What Is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization represents a big box of internet tools experts use to help consumers find their clients. SEO clients run businesses, non-profit organizations, and write blogs. Mostly, their clients are commercial because SEO costs money, but big organizations will pay for SEO services too if they think the public is not reading education information that could prevent suicide, teen pregnancy, or the spread of disease.

SEO is a means of increasing the chance that when a consumer types a command into a search engine, this command guides him or her to a client’s website or social media account. Think of it like facilitating a reverse search. When you know what company to search for, all you want is details like when they are open and where they are located.

If you know what you want but are unacquainted with the companies that supply it, type the details you have into a search engine and this will reveal associated businesses. This is the reverse type of search. Back to Top

What about Local SEO?

How does a local Delaware SEO agency help your business more than one in Pittsburgh? For a small or medium-sized business or one which serves clients within a limited radius, local services are ideal. Businesses in this line include plumbers, electricians, swimming pool and hot tub maintenance people, emergency locksmiths, and veterinarians.

Their clients are based in the regional area, somewhere in Delaware so their SEO service professionals should know what these people are looking for. A family won’t drive their sick dog 500 miles to the best vet according to internet rankings. They need the local guy who cares about them and their pets.

Picture a sales person coming to town and knocking on the doors of various homes in a new subdivision with his selection of carpet cleaning supplies. Local sales people know that all the houses built here contain only hardwood and laminate flooring. The sales guy from out of town is wasting his time, residents’ time, and the company’s time and resources.

That’s what local services are all about; making the most of their efforts and yours, not just applying generic systems and strategies that will potentially improve traffic but not conversions. To ensure that conversions go up (traffic turned into sales), tactics must apply to customers. With e-commerce, local Search Engine Optimization is not necessarily as useful, but it is essential when you are dealing with physical services provided in person. Back to Top

What Does Delaware SEO Look Like?

How do local tactics differ from generic ones? For one thing, an expert will recommend creating a website that appeals to people in the area. They might suggest uploading at least some photos of employees because these are individuals whom customers are familiar with; neighbors, former students, and parents on the sidelines at their kids’ soccer games.

When you know a guy, you want to support him and his family. How would you feel having to confess that you got your furnace serviced by a guy over the state line? That would be embarrassing and distressing, especially if the local HVAC expert went out of business in spite of offering fair rates and doing high-quality work. Add pictures or even video where employees or the boss himself talks about why you should hire him to fix your plumbing. Back to Top

What is “NAP” in the Search Engines?

A local site prominently features what is known as NAP: Name, Address, and Phone Number. The company makes it impossible to say “but, wait, where are they?” or to wonder if, indeed, these people are really local. A number of firms promote their businesses by using local key words but Google seems to be sorting that out. Their algorithms recognize false “local” hits. These same algorithms reward NAP when it is used legitimately by firms in Newark, Wilmington, Smyrna, etc.

Firms from the region are up-to-date with Delaware regulations, by-laws, etc. These don’t apply where many businesses are concerned, but it’s worth realizing that sometimes a firm from outside of Delaware will apply what he knows about regulations to the services he is providing. They might not be the same and this could invalidate insurance or cause problems with regulatory agencies. You’d have to pay for work to be done again by someone in the state anyway.

Local SEO content is written in such a way that the people in your area know a product is for them. Blog articles and social media comments discuss the local weather, what happens during tourist season, seasonal events, and all of it is specific to just one part of the country or even a particular city. Consumers appreciate the personal touch. Back to Top

The Delaware SEO Guy Gets to Know Clients

While you are busy reviewing the benefits of hiring a certain SEO service provider (that would be us), that same professional or team of professionals is looking at data and instructions supplied by a customer they have right now.

This firm – perhaps yours – has asked Search Engine Optimization specialists to get involved with their internet marketing strategy for a reason: what is that? How do they hope that the Delaware SEO Guy can help them? It is not always a matter of merely getting to the top of page one. A specific problem might have arisen and the pros need to know what it is.

In fact, we will wish to know some background about your firm: what you do, your mission, what you offer, and how you go about that. Are there some things you simply will not do (PPC ads, for instance) or is the budget really limited, meaning the approach must be tightly focused? Their goal is to determine how best SEO can improve the situation. Back to Top

What is Your Particular Situation or Issue?

Many firms are simply invisible to Google and other search engines. They have a website, but virtually no content or this content is not well organized and focused to attract a search engine’s notice. When clients type terms into a search box using keywords, those words are not represented on the website, a single-page entity and the only measure of web-based marketing a firm has engaged in. It’s amazing how many small businesses haven’t invested in social media or mobile accessibility.

A company could be all over the internet, but a couple of bad reviews have created a problem. There is nothing to balance out the bad; no good reviews, although word of mouth suggests this business is solid. SEO can help improve one’s reputation online using ethical methods.

Account books paint a grim picture: e-commerce is not working out the way they had expected. Analytics show that they are selling poorly on the internet, especially compared with other firms. Their brick-and-mortar sales are down too. It seems like people know they are there but revenue suggests otherwise.

Firms can learn to identify and use keywords to create content that directs a search engine’s gaze. They are also taught to encourage paid traffic; paid-for campaigns which can bring in more wealth than they cost. Back to Top

Paid Traffic

We’ll cover the idea of paid traffic a little more in a separate article, but “traffic” on the internet merely means “how many people visited a website.” They have to stay on for more than a few seconds to count as “traffic.” When they buy a product online through your e-tail portal, traffic becomes “conversion.”

If you are not attracting traffic, people will not see what you are selling and buy it. Attracting traffic from people who want what you sell is even better, so small numbers of viewers have the potential to yield larger amounts of revenue after all. A PPC ad will contribute to more visitors and to conversion rates if you use this tool effectively. An expert will show you how.

PPC or Pay Per Click advertisements are small ads containing about as much as one would place on a business card as far as information is concerned. One arranges with a website to post this ad for a period of time or until a certain number of “clicks” is reached. There are two approaches: use a site with a very specific audience which is naturally interested in the item or work you are selling, or use a big site with lots of visitors and get more people visiting your web page but not as many whose interest is related to the subject. They are merely curious.

With PPC ads, local connections are obvious allies. It makes sense to place an ad on almost any website related to services in your area. There is a natural connection, but it is still not as natural as the local connection which relates to your services. For instance, a coffee shop carries a brand of coffee roasted in Delaware. That brand of coffee places a PPC ad on the coffee shop’s website or social media link. Now, readers who are from that town or who are visiting know that they can get this coffee at a certain shop and, when they click on the ad, it takes them straight to a website for the coffee roasting business. Visitors are already inclined to buy this coffee if they have an affection for the town, its people, and a certain café. Back to Top

Mobile Marketing

Is it possible that visitors to town come and go without realizing you are there? After a solid week in the area, having stopped by every other business (or so they thought), yours was overlooked. The secret to the other firms’ success apart from an ideal location in the city center is that they made their websites mobile-friendly. Shops tucked away into shadowy corners, along rural roads heading out of town, or down back streets need a little more help.

We know that the future is mobile. Your company must reach this audience or perish commercially. More and more websites offer a mobile-friendly version, even secure mobile shopping online. There are also apps for smartphones which can tell when the user is in a location, thanks to GPS and, while there, lets a smartphone user know about savings nearby. In order for this technology to benefit a business, they have to be connected into the app’s system. They also have to be busy on the net running specials and deals which the app will pick up on and advertise automatically to a consumer. Back to Top

Marketing Your Special Deals

You do not need a mobile phone to realize how valuable coupons and specials can be to your customers – especially if you are a local restaurant or service. You can market your special deals on your site, to your Facebook followers, and on Instagram and more!

Maybe you don’t know how to do that yet, or perhaps you doubt how effective such connections can be, but we do, and we look forward to being YOUR marketing agency.

Give me, your Delaware SEO Guy a call for a consultation on how I and my team can help you! Back to Top