Discover Houston SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) is the art and science of getting a website to rank well for it's target keywords. Because such a vast majority of people begin their search for a new product or service using search engines, and because more than 2 out of 3 people click on the first few results, dominating your keyword niche is highly desirable and valuable.

Placing #1 for your key words can be incredibly valuable! We'll get to a real world example in a minute. It's important to note that not only will you be receiving more traffic than everyone else on the page, ranking number instantly conveys a sense of trust before that person ever lands on your website. In other words, people don't just click the top result because it's the easiest thing to click on - they do it subconsciously believing you'll be able to solve their problem better than anyone else.

So how do you measure the value of SEO?

The easiest way is by example! Let's see how much ranking #1 in Google as a Houston DWI Lawyer would be.

First, we need to select a key phrase to work with. Search engines show different results for each phrase, which is why it is important to target all of the keywords people use to find your products and services. For now, we'll just look at "Houston DWI Lawyer" to keep it simple.

Next, we need to find out how many people are searching for this term each month. According to Google, there are about 3,600.

So how much are these searches worth? A tried and true way is to see what other people are willing to pay when they advertise on Google AdWords (the highlighted-yellow, advertisement part of the search results). The average "bid" for this keyword is $14.97. In other words, if every click was paid for, this search term would be worth $53,892 each month.

Now that we know how much that entire keyword niche is worth, let's see what ranking #1 would do. According to comScore, nearly 42% of all clicks go to the first result. So that's around 1,500 clicks each month, or $22,634 of advertising they don't have to pay for.

Of course, clicks and free advertising are great -- if they generate business. So how much business could you potentially get with this keyword?

First, some assumptions: the average case for dwi costs around $5,000. The average website converts around 1.5% of its traffic into new customers.

So, in this scenario, the lawyer's website would generate around 22 new cases each month, or about $112,500 worth of business. Of course, it's incredibly unlikely one person could handle 22 cases - but being at the top of the food chain has its perks, and raising your prices is one of them.

Learn more about Houston SEO.

1. Claim your profile.
   Google Places, Bing Local and Yahoo Local each allow you to build and verify your local business profile.


2. Ask for Feedback Online
   Many local sites are fine with you telling your customers to review you. Do it. On your website, on invoices, on emails, make a point to say "Hey we'd love it if you gave our business a review on { insert website here }" These reviews, good or bad, make your business more credable to future customers.


3. Use a local phone number on your website, and make sure it's text (not an image).


4. Have a full physical mailing address on all pages of your website.


5. Add pictures to your local pages!
   They don't even have to look professional. Adding images to local listings makes them POP out from all of the other noise.