About Summit Search Engine Optimization for Chambers of Commerce

LSB Advertising was founded by a Marketing & Advertising executive based on an original strategy of creating niche online Directories targeting small business verticals such as Dentists, Fence Contractors, Plumbers, etc. LSB immediately began due diligence to locate the best SEO technology provider possible. Only one technology-development company provided both Search Engine Optimization experience as well as applications development experience. That company, Stature Software, had recently developed an SEO solution put in use by Fortune 500 companies such as Monster.com, Verizon Wireless, and a handful of others.

LSB knew it now had the best online Directory product possible, but would the search engines rank the LSB Directories high in the results pages?

Having the best SEO technology in place was great, but now LSB needed to partner with an SEO theory Consultant. An SEO Consulting Firm was hired to answer the question - would the LSB Directories rank high in the results? Their major finding was simple and made perfect sense – search engines place an extremely high value regarding the authority of the data source. This was a major obstacle because LSB was not an authority on Dentists, Fence Contractors, Plumbers, or any other type of local small business. They then challenged LSB Advertising to identify a local business authority that knew more about local businesses than local online Yellow Pages like superpages.com and yellowpages.com did. The answer resulted in how/why LSB Advertising became a provider of online Directories to Chambers of Commerce, and only Chambers of Commerce.

For the LSB revenue-sharing business model to succeed, two unique events need to occur. Will the Chamber Members receive the most value and will the Chamber itself receive the second-most value? Your Chamber can qualify the LSB Directory solution by asking two simple questions. Will Chamber Members experience additional Member value if their business information is found on the major search engines instead of just on the Chamber website? If the Chamber conducts Google searches for Accountants, A/C and Heat Repair, Tree Service, etc. is the Chamber's Membership Directory on the first page or two of the Google results?

Chamber Members know that more potential customers look for local products and services on search engines like Google versus the Chamber website. Chamber Members surely can benefit if their business information is found on both.

The typical Chamber Online Member Directory is designed for users already on the Chamber website. Any Chamber can realize the incremental Member value and non-dues revenue opportunity by being listed higher in the search engine results. For example, please Google Accountants <chamber city> <chamber state>. Does your Chamber of Commerce website appear within the first 15 results? Now, Google search accountants Brandon fl. You will see a result that looks like this:

Accountants - Brandon, FL - Brandon Chamber of Commerce
Accountants in Brandon, FL - Detailed Accountants results sponsored by the Greater Brandon Chamber of Commerce, your local business authority.
www.brandondirectory.com/brandon-florida-fl/accountants

Now, review the next page five Google results pages and you will not find www.brandonchamber.com listed. This is the case with almost 95% of Chambers and LSB fixes that with $0 upfront cost to the Chamber.

So you now have a high-level of understanding of how it works, but still wonder why? it works. Directory search engine optimization is trickier than optimizing a single stand-alone website. SEO for online Directories requires on-page and off-page optimization.

On-page optimization requires proper URL structure, detailed title tags, descriptive H-1, and a bunch of other techie nerd stuff. Proper on-page techniques require a complete technology overhaul, and sometimes even the need to start completely from scratch. This is why SEO tends to get very expensive. Stature Software created a user-friendly technology tool to automate this entire process and allow Chambers to create effective on-page SEO without knowing they are even doing it. Stature invested almost $250,000 in this technology. This is only half of the equation however.

Off-page optimization drives authoritative links into your site, blogs special topics, increases your site's relevancy, and a hundred other theoretical tasks. This is where SEO gets very expensive as it is insanely labor-intensive. Since LSB uses a hosted Directory model, we can leverage the off-page tasks across all of our Chamber customers, drastically reducing costs.

By combining on-page technology with off-page theory, LSB can deliver a Chamber Directory unlike any other. In summary, LSB handles marketing, advertising, and implementation, while Stature is the technical brains behind the solution.

Implementation of the LSB Directory is quick and painless. We simply take your existing Member data (typically business name, phone number, email, address, business category, and website) and implement that into the LSB Directory tool. We then help the Chamber configure and customize the solution to fit the needs of the Members and Chamber alike. We provide training on how to use the Directory, how to create world-class content, and how to sell upgraded listings to those Members wanting to appear near the top.

LSB provides our patented IT technology to only Chambers of Commerce. LSB Advertising implements our patented Directory technology from two aspects - a content system unlike any other and SEO technology that cannot be duplicated. Rather than compete with existing Chambers, we partner with them and provide our technical platform in exchange for revenue sharing. This allows Chambers to increase their existing Directory traffic ten-fold without ANY upfront costs. Our custom site development is performed using Microsoft's ASP.net leveraging IIS and SQL Server back-end technology.