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When you are a small business, your marketing is one of the toughest things you will have to tackle. When every dollar you spend on marketing comes directly out of your pocket, decisions can be tough to make. You have to maximize your return on investment or at the very least be able to track your spend. Traditional advertising outside of using traceable 800 numbers offers very little tracking. Taking out a billboard, a newspaper ad, or yellow pages ad makes it very difficult to trace impressions, and in our world becomes known as “spray and pray” marketing (since you just shoot something out and pray for results). Internet marketing was traditionally thought of as something for big businesses and pure online companies.

The fact of the matter is that Google and other search engines are amazing when it comes to local type searches, and there is a shift in the way people are looking for businesses from traditional sources like phone books to online. Having a good mix of search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, a great website and email marketing is now a necessity.

Search Engine Optimization

For most local businesses, we serve a strong push for roughly 12 months, and continued upkeep can keep your business outranking your competition on your choice of keywords providing they use a local identifier like “plumber Chicago.” We have found that, in most market niches, competition is limited to just a few players (except in highly competitive areas like personal injury law, where the competition is a little stiffer). Still, most competitors in these markets will be overtaken in time.

It is important that your current and potential clients find your business in the organic search results. This instantly provides a feeling of authoritativeness and trust. It says, “Google says my site is the most relevant,” and these customers will be typically more likely to do business with you. It takes time to rise in the organic search results, but if you go about it the right way your rankings will be fortified against your competition.

Pay Per Click Advertising

This is typically known as the ads that appear on the right hand side bar of the search results. They often appear on the top as well. For small businesses, this can be a pesky thing to handle. You will really need someone to work with you and make sure you have landing pages, tracking 800 numbers and conversion tracking working properly.

That said, even the smallest business in the smallest town should be running pay per click advertising. It is literally the one form of advertising that is 100% traceable and attaches directly to the bottom line. Bidding on terms related to your business, your business name and even the name of your top competitors will all drive significant traffic to your website and eventually to your office.

Email Marketing & Website Design

These are two areas local businesses sorely lack. From our experiences, we think the reason is that too many crummy vendors wanting to charge $10,000 for a website. The fact is that most website we build look very professional, do everything they need to do and are built for under 3K. With that said, there are good web design companies out there that aren’t trying to rip people off. We are not trying to make a living selling websites, and we are not trying to turn this into a sales pitch.

Businesses will spend tons of money on a nice showroom or billboard, but they let their website look terrible. Your website is your business. It is what people will associate with you. If you have a professional, clean looking website with loads of information, customers will be much more likely to do business with you and spend more money.

As far as email marketing goes, it’s just a small thing, but it helps build value with your current and prospective clients. Don’t just blast them with sales and buy now offers. The key is to add value, show them you care and earn their trust. As small business owners, you already know how important trust is and know how much easier a sale is when you have this key element.

The point is that small businesses, no matter how small, don’t have to be the little guy (nor should they act that way). The internet is the great equalizer, a place where you can compete with the national chains and big box stores by showing your potential clients a first class experience on the web.

It is easy as a small business owner or entrepreneur to start a website and then forget about it for a long period of time. It is also just as easy for someone to put a lot of work into their businesses’ website in the first month and then forget about it. After sitting for a while there is a lot of momentum lost, and it can be very difficult to get back. There are millions of websites on the web (maybe billions) with hundreds of thousands going up daily, if you let your site slip into hibernation it is easy for Google – and, more importantly, your potential clients – to forget about it. Here are some items below that should help get things headed in the right direction again. (This is typically what I do in the first week of SEO services).

* Optimization of Title Tags - The title tags are the titles of each page that show up on the top of the internet browser and as the title of the site page in search engine results. I will go through all the pages on the site and rewrite the title tags to include accurate, descriptive titles of the page content as well as important keywords relevant to the webpage. This makes visitors more likely to click on the site in search engine results. It also makes the search engines rank the site higher for keyword search terms.

* Optimization of Meta Descriptions – The Meta descriptions are the descriptions of webpages that show up under the title in the search engine result pages. Similar to the title tags, I rewrite the Metadescriptions of every page to include more detailed descriptions of what the page is about and make the site more attractive to visitors.

* Optimization of Existing Site Content –I also go through all of the site’s pages to optimize content with strong keywords, anchor text (internal links), html heading tags and more. I review the content and check for grammar and vocabulary errors. I don’t change the actual information of the text content unless it’s necessary to fix grammatical errors.

* Repairing All Broken Links on the Site – I will go through the site and repair all the broken links so that the entire site displays efficiently.

* Setting Up a 301 Redirect – A 301 redirect will automatically direct visitors who land on http://yoursite.com to the “www.” version of the URL, http://www.yoursite.com

* Correcting URL structure issues – If possible, I will rename page files to shorten URL addresses of pages and include descriptive keyword in the file names. At the beginning there may be many different folders to navigate through to get to pages, so I try to shorten URLs without interfering with site functionality. This makes the site easy for search engines and visitors to navigate.

Adding 10-15 new pages of quality content also helps, and the practice of continually adding said content will “trains” Google and other search engines to see that your site is not neglected and is a source of great, authoritative content that is updated consistently.

It also makes sense to sumit your site to high quality, authoritative directories. The best ones to list your site in are:

* Yahoo! Directory
* DMOZ
* Business.com
* WhatUSeek
* Best of the Web
* JoeAnt

Make a commitment to adding new, fresh content to your site at least twice a week. Finding topics to write about can be difficult. One method I suggest is using the Google Keyword Tool to generate some ideas. If you type in a word related to your business, look for related words that make a good article, for example:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Using the keyword: “central vac systems” as an example we see several interesting article options.

Keywords:

central vacuum systems

central vac systems

central vacuums systems

central vac system

beam central vac systems

central vac systems in

for central vac systems

air vac central vacuum systems

vac central vacuum systems

There won’t always be article ideas that jump out, but you could write a few articles about “beam central vac systems” or “air vac.” The keyword tool will automatically sort the words that get the most traffic, so you should work your way down that list. If you are a local business working on your own internet marketing, make sure if you search for keywords revolving around your city. For example, you could research “Central Vac Systems Chicago” to get a good list of local keywords to write about. Make sure to incorporate keyword phrases that include your city’s name in your new content.

If you let your website sit stagnant for too long, it can be difficult to get the ball rolling again. It will take a recommitment to your site, spending at least a few days a week on it. Once you get into the habit of things, the work isn’t really difficult. If you are a small business doing your own internet marketing, it is important to make this a part of your weekly schedule or hire someone to do so. Allowing a site to gather dust can be an expensive and time consuming mistake to reverse.

Learn how to list your local business on Google local business center. Listing in Local Business Center will help give your business instant visibility online whether you have a physical address or not. There are a lot of things you can do once you have submitted your business to make sure it ranks well within the Google Local results. Whenever people search for a business in your area they are likely to be served Google Local results and having your business there is huge. Here is how.

There is a a great way to get your local business to the top of the search engine results pages. It will take you about 15 minutes of your time, and at most 10 minutes of planning, but the amazing amount of instant value it provides makes it one thing every single business owner should do regardless of their size. If you have a physical address, adding your business to Google, Yahoo, & MSN local will help your current and potential customers easily find your companies information regardless of if you even have a website.

How To List Your Business On Local Business Centers

Google Local Business:
Start by setting up your Google account
here. Then make sure to be as descriptive as possible about your business can be. This will help increase the odds of your local business ad showing up when people are searching. Make sure and include all hours and payment information. Google local business ad’s will have the most power of the three and can really generate a lot of results within Google. Many times it will simple be people searching for your specific business but there is a lot to be said for making things easy on them. The easier you are to find the better.

MSN Local Business:
To add your local business to the MSN local business center you will follow a similar procedure except it’s a little quicker. Start by heading over to this link and start signing up. As with Google local business you will want to be as detailed as possible and take the time to list everything right. Going back to make changes later can be very difficult especially on the MSN Local Business Center.

Yahoo Local Business:
Yahoo Local Business can also send your company lot’s of great traffic. The first step to doing that is heading over to this link. Like the other 2 take enough time to be very specific in your business listing. Going back to edit these listings later can be a total pain. That said, once you have completed the yahoo local business center ad you will be complete. The entire process will take you less than one hour and drive tons of phone calls and website traffic.

We realize that this method of online advertising certainly isn’t groundbreaking. That said, it is free and pretty much the most effective free advertising you could possibly do online. Before listing your website on any of these sites make sure to place your companies address clearly on your website, usually in the footer. This will also help your website get more local traffic.