The AgentMapIt Blog

Getting traffic from the search engines has always been the rationale for spending time, energy and money on search engine optimization.

But if you have a website promoting local services (such as a local real estate site) it is difficult to compete with search engine optimization experts who have built sites targeting your most important keywords. These “experts” have no interest in serving your market with useful information. What they want is to gain local ranking so Google will send searchers to click on their pay per click ads.

It’s a free world, so people can do whatever they want with their websites. But it’s too bad Google has to reward website owners who play the game this way.

Is Google really changing things?

Recently, Google has indicated they intend to change the rules. For instance, according to this post about changes in Google rankings, we will soon see more emphasis placed on the quality of a site’s traffic, and the use of rich content such as video. We will also begin to see the gradual introduction of personalized search results based on user patterns and interests.

This is good because it could potentially reduce the influence of bogus SEO tactics, and give local websites a better chance at higher rankings based on the quality of their content and their efforts at generating legitimate traffic from sources other than the search engines themselves.

In other words, if a local site owner can tap into the local market and drum up more “natural” traffic from sources other than the search engines, that will actually enhance that site’s rankings in the SEs.

So, for example, if you own a limousine service in New Jersey, Google will give your site more credit (and better rankings) if it contains content that actually attracts traffic. Google will know where your traffic comes from because if you are serious about impressing Google you will have enrolled in a tracking service such as Google Analytics.

That means relying less on the search engines as a primary means of attracting traffic, and more on things like email marketing, social networking, blogging, videos, article writing, and whatever else you can think of as a way of getting attention from your primary target market.

Incidentally, that is exactly why we have developed the Blog and Mail program: to go directly after the people who have the most obvious interest in what you have to offer: your contacts, prospects, former customers – the people looking for the kind of information and services you provide.