How a Local Business Can Take the First Steps in Online Marketing

As a local business, it can be difficult to get started in the online realm with a new marketing tactic. One of the most important aspects of online marketing is getting found in the search engines for local results. It’s important to take care of your SEO, but unless you specifically target your city you still won’t have a lot of luck pulling in local traffic who can visit your store in person. Don’t get me wrong – SEO is still vitally important for getting noticed online, but there are specific ways to get noticed by the local crowd that can really propel your business to the forefront of your regional scene.

Collaborate with Thought Leaders

One technique that will have a lasting impact on the success of your business is building relationships with current thought leaders in your industry. A thought leader is somebody who brings new and innovative ideas to the table in any particular market or industry. An obvious example of this would be somebody like Steve Jobs, who was a thought leader in the computer industry.

Of course, you don’t need to reach that high to take advantage of this technique. Do you currently read any blogs that have a wide following? Those bloggers are thought leaders because they create content that people wish to learn more about, and forming a collaboration with them can bring some of that popularity down on your own business. The easiest way to get in touch with them is to send them an email offering some ideas for a collaboration on online content.

Just be honest and explain who you are, what you do, and what you are trying to get out of this relationship. High profile bloggers receive requests like this all the time and they’ll instantly see through any pretenses that you aren’t doing it for personal gain. What’s the benefit of going this route? Well, for one you can pull in some of their traffic for yourself, but you will also gain a local reputation, a “buzz,” among the people in your area who research a company before making any purchases. Finally, at the very least you’ll get the benefit of receiving a few high quality backlinks to your website or blog.

Work with GPS Marketing Services

GPS is becoming a standard feature in most smart phones, and businesses are using that to appeal to the local traffic in their city or town. A lot of the apps that use GPS make it easy to find local businesses, restaurants, or hotels. There’s a type of mobile marketing for local businesses known as Geo-fencing, in which you create a digital “fence” around your business. When somebody who is subscribed to you enters this perimeter, they will receive a short ad from your business. This is incredibly beneficial because it allows you to appeal directly to an audience that’s already in close proximity to your business.

Getting Started with On-Site SEO

It’s extremely important to make sure you have a solid off-site SEO strategy, but you shouldn’t neglect the on-site SEO, because in its own way it’s just as important. While off-site SEO takes place across the internet on other sites, your on-site SEO needs to happen right at home, on your own website.

For the most part, this includes optimizing your site content, titles, URL, image “alt” tags, and sub-headers. We’ll look at what all that means in just a second.

The main idea with on-site SEO is to get your keyword density right; that’s all that matters in the end. Too few keywords, and your site gets missed by search engines, but too much and you might get flagged for keyword stuffing.

Choosing Your Main Keyword

The best results come from optimizing each page for a specific keyword. You can have several pages optimized for the same keyword, but try not to have too many keywords stuffed into one page. It sounds confusing, but look at this example: Let’s say you want to optimize your Home page for the keyword “cheap auto loans.”

You would then place that specific phrase – cheap auto loans – into the text as many times as it makes sense. That’s important; some site owners make the mistake of compromising the flow of their content so they can stuff the keyword in as many times as possible. Search engines will spot that in an instant and boot you down in the rankings.

Another common mistake is trying to rank for multiple keywords on one page. With the same example, you might throw in “cheap car loans,” “best auto loans”and“car loan help” in addition to the main keyword on the same page. Search engines see this and have trouble figuring out what the page is actually about, and as a result it ranks poorly for all of the keywords.

So where do you put the keywords on the page? Here are the most important areas of your site to focus on:

Content – Self explanatory really; all the normal written content on your site should be optimized for keywords.

Titles – The main header on your page uses the <h1> tag, which is where search engines look first to determine a site’s relevance. Whenever possible, put the keyword right in the title or header.

Sub-headers – It’s a good idea to place sub-headers throughout your site content for two reasons: 1) It’s easier for visitors to read, and 2) The header tag (<h2> or <h3>) will be picked up by search engines.

URL – Whenever you add a new page, most hosting interfaces will automatically make the URL the same as the title, with the option for you to change it. For example, the Home page on your site has a URL of yoursite.com/home. If you have a page dealing mostly with cheap auto loans, change the URL to yoursite.com/cheap-auto-loans for better search visibility.

Image “alt” tags – Since search engines can’t see images, they read the “alt” tags instead, which are a description of the image. Whenever you upload a picture, go into the HTML and change the “alt” to one of your keywords (as long as it matches the picture).

Off-Site SEO Tips for Redcliffe Small Business Owners

No matter how you spin it, the main goal of just about every website these days is reaching the top of the search engine rankings. Internet marketers make millions of dollars selling their services to up-and-coming small businesses which are just beginning to venture into the online market. But before you take any steps towards optimizing your website, you have to understand the basics.

When you search for a phrase in Google or Yahoo, or any other search engine, you receive a list of relevant results. If you are like most people, your first inclination is to click on one of the links offered on the first page. I mean, those must be the most relevant results, right?

Not necessarily – you see, most websites use search engine optimization, or SEO, to artificially boost the chance of their website coming up in the first few pages of search engine results. While on-site SEO is very important, the major difference comes from how you utilize off-site SEO.

Off-Site SEO Basics

Essentially, the main thing you want with your off-site SEO is inbound links (also known as backlinks). Inbound links are hyperlinks that point back to your website from another domain. The favorite term in the industry for the effect of these links is “link juice.” The better the link, the more “juice” it sends your site. If a link is coming from a popular, well respected website, you”ll get more juice from that link. If the link is coming from a free blog that was set up a week ago, you”ll receive less juice.

For example, if the Huffington Post links back to your website or one of your blog posts, you”re getting a very high quality link. Since most major sites like this won”t allow you to simply plaster links on their pages, you have to use different methods to bring in those high quality inbound links.

Tips For Getting More Links

Posting good content is without a doubt the number one way to bring in links. The better your content is, the more likely it is to be shared by your viewers. Other blogs will take notice and begin posting links back to your website. This method has a slow start, but is ultimately the most powerful and effective. Think of it like a snowball rolling down a mountain; by the time it gets to the bottom it”s an avalanche.

Of course, to speed that up a little you can always write guest posts for other blogs and websites. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement because you can put a link in the post back to your website, and the other site gets free content. Everybody comes out ahead.

Simultaneously, you should always submit your site (or blog) to search directories. There are hundreds out there, and it only takes a minute to do. Technorati is a great directory for business blogs, but there are plenty of others as well.

Setting Up Your Virtual Storefront: Why You NEED to Have a Website in 2012

Everybody knows that it”s vital these days for a business to have a website. Developing a strong online presence is important for any type of business or enterprise in any industry. Despite this, it”s surprising to find out that a lot of small businesses still haven”t made the leap to the online world. It”s actually estimated that as many as 40% of small businesses are operating without a website.

The truth is, no matter what your market niche may be, a website offers a valuable window for new customers. It”s not enough to just set up a social media profile, such as a Facebook fan page, and call it quits. As we edge further into 2012, it”s more vital than ever that you build a virtual storefront for your business.

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Of course, simply setting up a website isn”t the end of the road either. Even among the businesses that do have a website, there are plenty of people who haven”t set it up to optimize their online endeavors. What I mean is, you may have a website already, but if you haven”t engaged in the right type of promotion you”re probably looking at meager traffic statistics. The goal behind setting up a website in the first place is that it will ideally become a powerful inbound marketing opportunity for you business.

A quick look at the internet in 2012 shows it to be much different than the way it was in 2003 or 2004. Back then, just having a website was sometimes all you needed. These days, the success of a company website depends on its surrounding network of connections. You need to make use of search algorithms, strong blogging techniques, engaging content and social media interaction in order to bring your website to the largest possible audience.

The reason the online arena has changed so drastically is because the behavior of the buyers has changed. Most customers now want to have the freedom to choose – they need to choose how, when, and where they make a purchase, all without a pushy salesperson badgering them to get on with it. This shift in psychology basically means that a customer wants to be given information during their online experience, not have it shoved down their throats. It”s a self-service community.

Interactive content – blog posts, social media, podcasts – now make up the majority of all online sales, showing that inbound marketing is on the rise while outbound sales – direct mailers, telemarketing – are on the decline both in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. The bottom line is that a virtual storefront set up for inbound marketing is cheaper, easier, and more cost effective than any of the sales gimmicks that used to be so popular. Your website will form the front line for leads, sales, and increased conversions.