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Hey Joe,

For a local business you may want to look at building a lot of localized search terms.  I am helping a buddy of min e out with his osteopathic clinic, we are targeting all the suburbs around south yarra and of course these terms are very low competition, so it is easy to rank on the first page very quickly.

As an example of what I am talking about, we have targeted terms like: osteopath st kilda, osteo prahran etc.

Whilst the search volume is low, the conversion rate from the handful of people that do click through is very high and he gets a handful of clients each month, all of which continue to use him over the long term.  It's a value based strategy, servicing local clients and ensuring they return visit.

You should get in touch with a company called Jet Interactive.  They are a telco that have come up with a dynamic script that tracks phone calls from various channels such as SEM, SEO, Facebook etc.

They tie this into analytics to give you actual cost per lead/acquisition data.

When i was at Fairfax (SBU named Advantate) we use to have a two tiered pricing strategy $200/month for basic set it up and barely touch it or $495 for more advanced package including analytics and feedback.  The problem with this moidel is that it doesn't allow you the flexibility to offer holistic solutions.

Having been int he industry for many years since those initial SEM days, I now strongly believe in creating contracts that share the risk with the client.  Come up with goals that are easily trackable and 100% reliable.  Share the risk by offering a low monthly fee, but a bonus they need to pay if you hit these goals and even a higher reward if you smash them.

There are always chumps that will accept a few hundred dollars to set and forget, but is that really the business you want to run?  There are enough snake oil salesmen out there, don't be another one.

I've recommended it with the following comment:

"I use this for my SEO clients and on top of the terrific features, I'm learning every single day in an interactive community of people working towards the same goal."

Hey Phil,

This is an interesting way of measuring local traffic, whilst it seems plausible you are adding in a lot of assumptions (click through rates) which are going to vary widely.  If you want to test it, what I would do is choose one single keyword, write a good SEM ad and commit a single days budget (with a very high cpc set), then compare the impressions to the theory above.

let me know how it goes.

For a less scientific approach, here in Australia we have 7 states or variable size and population density.  To advertise here in Victoria I just take the local search volume and divide by 4.5.  Obviously it's not just a guide, but I don't really need to know more than that level to make smart decisions as long as all my numbers are treated by the same logic, then it's all relative.

Hey Derrick,

That is absolutely correct and for a couple of reasons.

1.) The onpage text supports all of those keywords

2.) Anchor text of inbound links can be exact match or partial match and benefit multiple terms therein (ask me if this doesn't make sense, there is a great whiteboard Friday session on this)

3.) As you improve your domain/page authority you will be mroe relevant in the eyes of Google and start ranking for more and more keywords you weren't even expecting to rank for.

One this I like to do is go through Google analytics and copy out all the keywords users have accessed our sites through, then throw them into the rank checker and keep an eye on the movements.  This tactic gives you a holistic view of how the website is improving as you work on it.

Josh

I use <cite>www.submiteaze.com and it is brilliant.</cite>

I highly recommend giving it a go, it will save a heap of time.

John is spot on.  You should also learn the concatenate function in excel

http://www.techonthenet.com/excel/formulas/concat.php

I've had a couple instances where that has happened.  It's not an answer you are going to love, but wait another 24 hours and let me know if it hasn't completed.

The first one is always the longest and after that it slots into a routine that you can bank on.

Hope that helps pal.

Instead of connecting Google Analytics into the SEOMOZ campaign monitor, is there a way to link Omniture or alter their output to plug into SEOMOZ?