Mark Faggiano

Website consultant who loves helping others build online companies. Sold @beelya & @filelater. Working on my next cash machine: @taxjar. Crazy about golf & sports. Connect with me on Google+

Picking the Best Domain for Your New Business

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We posted another free SEO tip to our Search Engine Resources section. This latest post covers the keys to picking the best domain name for a startup.

A lot of startups spin their wheels trying to think of the most creative or cool Web 2.0 name possible. The truth is that names like Google and Twitter are one-in-a-million. The safe play is to follow some basic SEO practices (discussed in the article) to help you pick the best (i.e. most valuable) domain for your business. This can mean the difference between starting from scratch or hitting the SEO ground running.

Be sure to check it out and be sure to read some of our other free tips about search engine optimization.

Submit Your Business to Bing Local Search

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Have all of you business owners out there noticed the buzz about Bing Local? Have you even tried it? If so, did your business appear in the search results?

The SEO experts want to debate whether Bing Local will ever surpass Google’s local search. Probably not. It would take an astronomical shift in search behavior. But that’s not to say that Bing Local doesn’t have some cool features that your customers might find appealing.

Regardless of whether or not you think it will ever become #1, there’s a quick SEO task that all business owners should be doing – submitting their sites to Bing Local.

It’s easy to do (takes less than 15 minutes) and it’s FREE. Basically, there’s no reason not to do it.

Here are the steps you’ll need to go through to get listed:

  1. Go to Bing Local’s Listing Center.
  2. Make sure you don’t already have a listing.
  3. Setup a Windows ID (If you don’t already have one)
  4. Enter your business info (description, tagline, specialties) as wells as contact info.
  5. Select as many as 6 categories in which you want your website listed (this is great for being associated with your top keywords). [SEE SCREENSHOT BELOW]
  6. Provide details about specific features of your business.
  7. Verify your location on a map.
  8. Submit

bingcategoriesWhether you know a lot about search engine optimization or not, this is a very simple process. When you weigh the potential of Bing Local, you can’t afford to ignore the possibility to gain additional qualified traffic.

Be sure to set a side a little time and get your business listed in Bing Local right away.

Free Search Engine Evaluation – Do it!

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A lot of business owners know they need help with search engine optimization, but they don’t know where to start.  The good news is that there are a ton of search engine optimization companies out there looking for clients.

A valuable way for both sides to feel each other out are free evaluations, just like the one we offer to potential clients.

A lot of companies with search engine optimization services will offer such an analysis to try and soften the sales process (because understanding the ins-and-outs of SEO can be difficult for biz owners)  and win your business.  My advice is to take them up on their offer. Where else can you get something for free?

The real value is the learning you get from it. The best SEO firms will give you a very clear snapshot of your current search situation and tell you how they think it can be fixed. Not only will you learn something about SEO, but you’ll get a good sense of the company’s ability to deliver.

I’ve seen many free SEO evaluations. A large percentage of them don’t do a good job of giving business owners a justification for their costs. Frankly, that’s probably because that search firm doesn’t know what they are doing.

So, if you are just warming up to the idea of hiring an SEO expert, do yourself a favor and take some search engine optimization companies up on their free offer. You’ll learn a lot about your website’s search engine needs and it will help you choose the right partner for your business.

Bing Grabs Market Share. SEO Beware?

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Bing is here. Are you using it? The numbers show that people are at least trying it. comScore says that it’s gaining market share.

Bottom line: it’s early. But it does raise som interesting possibilities for those of us in SEO.

Chances are people are hearing about Bing or seeing their multitude of ads and are giving it a try. Do the early results mean that Google needs to start worrying? They may lose some market share, but it’s hard to imagine Bing becoming the most used search engine.

If Bing adoption does take off, this would obviously mean a change in the search engine optimization and search engine marketing business. At that point, instead of companies obsessing about how their website perform on Google, they’ll also want to increase their exposure on another search engine.

From my experience with Brand5, demanding outstanding organic performance would be a new phenomenon. An overwhelming amount of business owners that come to us for SEO services are concerned about their performance on Google (and I can’t say I blame them, at least for organic search results). Our services are proven to help how their website ranks on all major search engines (both paid and organic), but ultimately it’s how their site ranks on Google that makes them feel like they are getting good ROI on their search engine optimization spend.

Bing is probably a long way from changing the way the average business owner views the importance of anything other than Google. But if the growth trends continue, look for Bing search engine optimization to become more popular amongst search engine optimization companies.