Local SEO and Natural SEO

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is vital to the implementation of your online marketing plan. While this is a part of the 5 one-time things you must do to get your plan started successfully, it must also be monitored and updated, so that your local business results and your natural search results remain ranked near or at the top.

Local Business Results

Local business results will impact not only the traffic to your website, but also the phone at your place of business. Because your phone number is listed in the local business results you will find that once your business is successfully located at the top of these results your phone will ring much more often.

Submit your business to the three major local business results sites. Monitor and update listings regularly to secure top spots. Make sure that your listings are search engine optimized. The three sites you must be on are:

• Google—the most important one as it owns 2/3 of online traffic
• Yahoo—also very important
• MSN/Bing—growing in importance, but not as prominent as Google and Yahoo

These local business results each pick up on select keywords and use different location modifiers when ranking listings. However, most listings include address, phone number, directions to your physical address, website and customer reviews. The ones with the best reviews containing targeted keywords, in addition to location modifiers will find their way to the top of the search results.

In order to be listed in the top 10 search results, follow these 7 tips:

1. Optimize every aspect of your listing with strategic keywords.
2. Get reviews from clients.
3. Obtain backlinks from local online directories.
4. Strategically choose the areas you want optimized even establishing different addresses and phone numbers for other areas.
5. Get listed in about 4 to5 categories related to your business for your business results listing.
6. Place coupons with the listing to increase conversion rates.
7. Use YouTube Videos and photographs with your keyword in the title.

After listing in the top local business listings, seek out other directory listings to use such as Kudzu, City Search, cmac.ws, Best of the Web local and more.

Track the changes you make, so that you can keep the listing as relevant as possible. It will also help you monitor what works and what doesn’t. Be patient, it sometimes takes 3-4 weeks to see your listing appear.

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Making Changes to Your Online Marketing Methods

In order to make the changes to your online marketing methods there are a variety of things that you should know.

First the potential to grow your business using online marketing is phenomenal, no matter what industry you are in. You just need to cultivate it.

There are 5 extremely useful Internet marketing techniques that no one is doing.  Learn them and put them into practice and you will outperform all your competitors quickly.

You need to achieve local online domination. It is a 4 step process. Focus on it to get the results you want.

There is a simple online marketing plan that you can follow to make sure you get all the tasks done in order to get to the top of the search results and get more new clients to your site.

Before implementing your new marketing plan, take the time to thoroughly analyze what you are already doing, so you know where to go from here and so you can have a baseline to measure against.

Make your tasks more reasonable by breaking them down. Start with the tasks that are one-time jobs, as they provide the foundation for your marketing plan, and you will have the pleasure of checking things off your list.

Only when the one-time tasks are completed should you begin the tasks that repeat. These are long-term commitments that will require monthly, weekly or even daily attention.

You should consider seeking out subcontractors for a portion of or the entire online marketing plan, for the sake of expediency and skill. There are many who can take on select tasks to facilitate the process for you.

You will conclude the implementation of your marketing plan with an increase in your business income.

Please comment on this post and tell us what you think.

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Finding the Ideal Customer

Finding the ideal customer for your business is a one-time job. You are probably thinking that any customer at all is ideal. However, there are some that are much better than others. Knowing how to identify them and who to stay away from will make your business run more smoothly. In addition, your marketing campaign will be much more effective because you will be able to target that customer precisely with the very keywords they use when they search for goods and services.
In order to uncover your ideal customer you will need to conduct keyword research by analyzing the different markets that you serve. This will also help you to determine which niches you should target with your products or services. Often marketing campaigns fail because this crucial step was not taken prior to implementing marketing strategies. Even setting up a website without doing this step is a waste of your time and money.
Do It Now!
The very first step in your marketing strategy is to do your research right away so that you get started properly.
Identify the buyers of your products and services. What problem does what you offer solve for them?

The 4 Quadrants of Business

When it comes to identifying your ideal customer, it is necessary to analyze the 4 quadrants of business. This will help your determine which types of clients you should focus on attracting. The 4 quadrants of business are based on the combination of two factors:

·         Customer Value: How much is a client worth? If a client will be worth little to your bottom line, you need to spend less time trying to attract him or her. More time and energy should be devoted to attracting those who make sizeable purchases.

·         Search Volume: Are there lots of people searching for the product or service you are offering? If you have multiple services or products in your business, concentrate your marketing strategies on the ones that more people are actually searching for.

The 4 quadrants of business, when it comes to Internet marketing, are:

1.      Low customer value, low search volume: a poor choice to target.

2.      Low customer value, high search volume: better, but not great.

3.      High customer value, low search volume: even better but not ideal.

4.      High customer value, high search volume: the best.

If you pinpoint the customers who have high customer value and high search volume you can feel confident that those people are very good ones to target. Make sure they also have buying intent, which is also very important.

While all customers are valuable, the others who are not high customer value and high search volume will likely come across your business as you are advertising to that target group. Marketing specifically to the group that has the most potential simply makes good business sense. 

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Do Onsite Search Engine Optimization Updates.

This one-time activity will transform your website from whatever it is presently to a search engine optimized version that is much more attractive to web crawlers. This is extremely important in getting your website ranked as high as possible on the search engine results.  The things that are appealing to a search engine are not the same as those things that are esthetically pleasing on a website. In many cases such fancy programming on a site is a negative for search engines.
Analyze What You Have
First you will need to begin by analyzing your current site, so look at these things:

• The look and feel of the site
• Is the site optimized for visitors?
• Is the site optimized for search engines?
• Does the site work for multiple browsers?

Critical Components of a Good Website

In most cases, websites are lacking in some of these areas. In order to make your website appealing to human visitors and search engines, and be effective in its purposes, you will need to go through and make sure the following things are in place. If they are not, you need to include them for the best results possible.

• Easy navigation: Make sure the site is easy to use and straightforward.
• Most important info “above the fold”: Make sure all the important information is visible when a visitor first arrives at the home page. A good number of people will not scroll down to find the important information.
• All links working: Don’t frustrate visitors or the search engines with broken links.
• Home Page, Products Page, Service Page, Testimonials, About, and Contact Form.
• Lead visitors through the site: Make sure you are taking visitors exactly where you want them to go on your site.
• Specific instructions.
• Multiple calls to action: Call now, buy now, etc.
• Pictures used correctly: This includes proper sizing of pictures as well as using captions to explain what the pictures represent.
• Non-distracting design: This goes for a background that is too distracting as well as crazy fonts, italics and underlines.
• Centered layout that has dark text on a light background.
• Multiple ways to contact with the phone number on the top right, side and bottom, and the address only at the bottom.
• Trust factors like BBB and awards clearly on the front page.
• Testimonials on the front page.
• Personal branding: This includes pictures of you and your staff, branded vehicles, audio and video messages, and links to any social networking site like Facebook or Twitter.
• Optimization for keywords: Using good keywords is huge for search engines and you must take some time to do keyword research before you can determine if keywords are optimized properly.
• Relevancy: Search engines love websites that show relevancy. This is done by starting broad and then drilling down in themes. Always optimize for one keyword per page instead of multiple keywords per page.

·         Make sure that your keywords are in your title tags, meta tags, the URL, the headers and description of a web page.

·         Good content: Ensure that all text on your website is search engine optimized with strategic use of keywords and avoid duplicate content.

• Avoid Flash and frames. 

With the onsite SEO updates completed, your website should naturally move closer to the top of search engine results. However, you cannot rely on this alone. You must also continue with your online marketing plan and maintain a blog, do other Web 2.0 applications and submit articles with links back to your website in order to increase traffic and quality one-way links that will help you get to the very top of the results like you want and need.




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Add a Lead Capture System to the Website.

By adding a lead capture system to your website you are taking the destiny of your business into your own hands. No longer are you simply a passive participant who casts a line and waits for the fish to come to you.
With a lead capture system you have the opportunity to get the names and contact information of people who visit your site for any reason. This means that you can now build a database of potential customers that you can market to. When you need more business you market to those people and you can create cash on demand.
All types of sales are dependent on leads. Therefore having a lead capture system is a wise move in your online marketing strategy. It gives you something tangible to work from when you need more sales. And who doesn’t need more sales?
Lead Capture Systems Defined
A lead capture system is simply an opt-in box that offers more information, an e-newsletter subscription, a free report or some other freebie in exchange for simple contact information. Typically the information requested is just a name and email address, but some systems do ask for a mailing address and/or a phone number. Try to refrain from requesting too much information.
Because these people have actually come to your site and then opted to get on your email list, you can feel confident that they are actually interested in your products or services. This makes them likely customers.
Once the lead capture system is in place on your website, you will need to do lead nurturing. This means you must stay in contact with these people.

-          Send newsletters regularly, but not too frequently.

-          Keep them up to date on new offerings and sales.

-          Offer special deals for those on your email list. This is a very good way to generate business when things are slow.

As a part of this process you will need to do some of the things that were mentioned in the “5 Things No One Is Doing” section. You will need to put autoresponders in place, so that as people opt in, they are greeted, welcomed and introduced to your products or services through a series of letters. If you haven’t used a free report to get them to join your email list, offer it now.
By building your email list and marketing to it regularly with useful information, you will get the power of having a bigger customer base and being able to generate cash on demand. 






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Do Personal Branding Changes

By doing one-time personal branding changes, you can effect the kind of change you want in the results you get from your website. You want your website to have a certain kind of feel to it so that you give the impression to visitors that you are indeed a trusted expert in your local market. By tapping into the unique resources the Internet offers, you can help do that and increase traffic and buying customers at the same time.

You are trying to appeal to a sophisticated audience. They are savvy to the things marketers throw at them. They research purchases much more than ever before. However, their attention spans are relatively short and they make decisions quickly. They are not completely at ease doing business online yet and question whether or not they should trust what they find there. When they come across your website they want to be sure that it is the right source for what they are seeking. They want to know about your company, your commitment to service and your trustworthiness.
By putting the right content on your site you can build your personal brand and reassure your clients that you can offer what they are looking for. You want to personalize the process for new clients. They want to know about you and your business. Therefore, get personal and let them know who they are doing business with.
Stay away from the “stuffy” corporate sounding websites. No one wants to do business with a big company. They want to do business with neighbors they can trust. Some tweaks to your site can give that impression and help increase sales for you.
Some of the things to include on your website to help you create this personal touch include:

·         Photographs of the owner and staff and information about them

·         Expert articles you’ve written

·         Reviews

·         Awards

·         Professional associations

·         Business groups you are a member of

·         References from other businesses

·         Audio or video message from the owner

·         Audio or video testimonials from clients

You and your business need to be perceived as friendly, not stuffy. By taking the time to invest in personal branding, you will attract more and more buying customers. You will be gaining the trust needed to succeed in the online marketplace. 

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Article Marketing

Article marketing is simply the writing of approximately 500 word articles on a subject that is somehow related to your business or industry. These content-rich articles are then published online through a variety of article submission sites. The resource box typically found at the bottom of the article is how readers find your company information and are directed to your website. Article marketing is so simple that many people overlook its power and effectiveness.

The Importance of Article Marketing

Article marketing is one of the absolute best ways to put Internet marketing to work for your business. By strategically writing articles that are relevant to your industry and submitting them to online article submission sites you will create a direct path to your website for anyone who does a search for information that relates to your business.

Remember that an article is not a sales pitch. It needs to be full of relevant information that is actually useful and/or entertaining. It must also be written using Search Engine Optimization techniques. Be careful not to keyword stuff your articles. Never plagiarize content from anywhere else.

Once you write good articles that actually teach your customers something while establishing yourself as a go-to expert in the industry you will need to get the articles published in a variety of places. EzineArticles.com and Squidoo are two excellent locations for publishing such articles, but ideally you will want to submit your articles to hundreds of websites. Article submission sites can help you do that. Be sure to avoid using duplicate content from your website as this may affect the ranking of your article and your site.

Articles are vital to your Internet marketing plan. Therefore you will need to produce them regularly. This is where those seeking your keywords will stumble across your company, thanks to the resource box that is always included at the end of your articles. However, they actually have to get to the bottom of the page to get that information. That means you had better have a captivating article written to keep their attention!

Regular article publication will set you apart from many of your competitors, but you must be consistent. You must create multiple articles each month in order to keep traffic flowing to your site. Luckily, this is a very easy task to subcontract out.

Articles are meant to attract people to your site. They are published on other websites with backlinks to your site, creating an added bonus for you, because as discussed before, the more backlinks to your site the better.

Use Articles to Create Interest and Reach All Potential Clients

To pique the interest of a wide variety of different possible clients, you will need to write a variety of articles, targeting a variety of subjects. Make sure you write articles that touch on every use of your product or service. Some great article ideas are listed below.

Write about

-          tips on the use of your product

-          reasons why someone would want to use your service

-          unconventional uses for your product or service

-          frequently asked questions

-          individual products and services

-          how to choose the best provider of your type or service or product

-          things to look out for when purchasing

-          the advantages of using your product or service

-          the disadvantages of not using your product or service

-          how to…

-          things you shouldn’t do

-          evaluations of different options

-          steps for using your products or services

-          how your products or services help people

-          little known facts

-          explanations

-          how to avoid a problem

-          tips on responding to a challenge

Once you have chosen a subject for an article, it should be in the 400-750 word range. Make sure it is well-written and flows naturally, in order to keep people reading. Nothing turns a reader off faster than poor grammar and confusing sentences.

The simple formula for article writing as an online marketing technique:

• Do your keyword research
• Get your content written
• Submit it to article directories

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