Confidential “Insiders Report” Internet Marketing
Confidential “Insiders Report” Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
by Paul Bagorio http://www.SEOandSEMmarketing.com
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
Disclaimers / Legal Information All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations for the purpose of writing critical articles or reviews. Notice of Liability The author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information herein. However, the information contained in this book is presented without warranty, either express or implied. Trademark Notice Rather than indicating every occurrence of a trademarked name as such, this book uses the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Copyright Information ©2010 Paul Bagorio
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
Table of Contents
Introduction……………………………………………………………… Page 4
What Is Internet Marketing Anyway?..…………………….……….. Page 5
Don’t Have A Website? You Still Have Options…………….…….. Page 6
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics………………………….. Page 8
On-page SEO Tactics for Internet Marketing..………………….. Page 10
Off-page SEO Tactics for Internet Marketing..…………………… Page 12
Traffic Generation Strategies for Internet Marketing………… Page 14
Where Do We Go From Here?…………………………………………… Page 15
About The Author…………………………………………………………..… Page 16
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
Introduction
As a fellow business owner, you already know that marketing and Internet Marketing is important for business growth and in today’s climate that’s especially true.
More and more, your prospects are turning to the Internet to locate businesses in their own backyard for internet marketing. In fact, according to a Piper Jaffray 2008 research paper, 30 percent of all search engine queries contain a city, state or zip code. With approximately 2.6 billion local searches performed each month, the Internet has now surpassed print Yellow Pages and newspapers as a primary source for local consumer service information and that trend is on the rise. The popularity of web-enabled phones (like the iPhone) will only add to these numbers as 27 percent of all mobile searches are for local information. It’s for this reason that I wrote “Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners.” To give you a clear understanding of what “Internet Marketing” is and why it’s something you should care about.
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
What Is Internet Marketing Anyway?
The term, “Internet Marketing,” can be somewhat hard to define as many firms use this term rather loosely. So, instead of attempting to give you an “all-inclusive” definition, I’ll just tell you what it means to me and my firm. To us, Internet Marketing means to simply market your business via the internet. This could include helping you to build a website for your business, helping you get more traffic to the one you already have or helping you leverage other “web properties” (like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.). There are literally hundreds of different ways that a local business might benefit from an increase in internet exposure but most local businesses will get best results from a small handful of these (see sections to follow).
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
Don’t Have A Website? You Still Have Options…
While we would strongly recommend that you build a website for your business, there are some great ways to get “internet marketing exposure” without one. In our experience, two of the best (and fastest) ways to get in front of your targeted audience is either by creating a custom Facebook Fanpage for your business or by taking advantage of the “local business listings” being offered by Google, Yahoo! And Bing.
First, I’ll cover Facebook Fanpages. The graphic below shows you a portion of the custom “Fanpage” used by the Toyota Company. If you already have a fanpage for your business, you’ll notice that this one has a number of features not found in the default layout. Facebook allows businesses to customize their fanpages in a number of ways and doing so is a great idea! You can add custom graphics to build your brand, videos that excite your visitors and deliver your message in a fresh, new way or even add the ability to capture email leads direct from your fanpage!
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
As Facebook is now getting as much (and in some cases more) internet traffic to its site from internet marketing, there has never been a better time to harness the power of Facebook! Besides Facebook, you can also get exposure (and new business) direct from Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Each offers the ability to build a “local business listing” for your business even if you don’t have a website! Each works a little bit differently but they are pretty similar. You start by going to the respective search engine and filling out their online forms. Once you are done, you submit the form and then go through their verification process. It may take a few weeks for your listing to appear but in time, it will. The biggest trick to the whole process knows how to optimize your listings such that they will appear on the first page for terms meaningful to your business. Here is a screen-shot graphic of the “local business results” for the term, “pizza restaurant Los Angeles” on Google.com Note: The “Local Business Results” (next to the large map image) won’t always be right at the top of the search results page but they often are.
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics:
If you have a website, you are likely interested in getting more website traffic. While there are a variety of ways to increase website traffic with internet marketing (like buying Paid Advertising, Social Media Marketing, etc.) most local businesses could benefit by having their websites optimized better for the search engines. Search Engine Optimization (aka SEO or Search Engine Marketing) is the process of getting one’s website ranked high in the search engines (with a primary emphasis on Google as they get the “lions-share” of search activity). As nearly all search engines sell “Sponsored Ad Space,” it is important to note that SEO is designed to help improve your “organic rankings” (aka the placement you get for free).
In the example, above, I’ve done a search using Google.com for the term, “small business accountant.” The areas denoted by the letter, “A,” are “Sponsored Links” and are therefore not affected by Search Engine Optimization. They are what are referred to as “Pay-per-click” ads (aka PPC). The businesses you see listed are paying Google a pre-defined amount for every “click” (i.e. visitor) they receive.
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
The area denoted by the letter, “B,” is the start of the “organic search engine listings” and this area IS controlled by search engine optimization techniques. While there is nothing wrong with buying Pay-per-click ads, and it is something I recommend you consider, it is very important that your website/web pages rank well in the organic search engine listings as this can bring you lots of qualified website traffic completely free of charge. There are two main aspects to search engine optimization. The first is referred to as “on-page SEO tactics” and the second, “off-page SEO tactics.” In the next section, we’ll discuss the basics of “on-page” search engine optimization for internet marketing.
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
On-page SEO Tactics On-page SEO is primarily technical in nature and needs to be applied to every page of your website. Websites are not optimized as a whole but rather one page at a time (but with a global perspective of what is trying to be achieved). I’m not going to go into great detail as to what is specifically done to each page but I am going to give you a good overall understanding. Basically, you’re on-page SEO should accomplish three main objectives:
Your website’s code (illustrated by the code from Walmart.com above) should be well-coded. By this, I mean that it should be easily read and understood by search engines for the best internet marketing strategy.
Each page of your website should be built around “intelligent keyword phrases” that are likely to draw targeted visitors to your page/site.
Your site’s design should be attractive and your content found useful to visitors so as to encourage them to stay as long as possible on your site.
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
One on-page SEO tactic that isn’t even widely discussed it what is called “Visitor Experience Optimization.” (Aka VEO) Google (and other search engines) have the ability to track how long the average visitor stays on your website and gives added benefit to sites that have a longer than average “visitor duration.” It stands to reason, right? If the majority of your website visitors hit the “BACK” button after being on your site for only three seconds, it could be assumed that they either didn’t like what they saw or they didn’t find something they felt was relevant to what they were searching for. However, if your visitors stay on your site for 1-3 minutes (or more), the search engines will give you a boost in the search engine rankings as your visitors have “spoken.” They obviously have liked something about your site long enough to hang around and therefore, your site is believed to contain “valuable” content. This is one of the reasons that it’s wise to consider adding an “involvement device” to your website. This could include getting your visitor to sign-up for your company newsletter (to receive a coupon or other free gift), adding video to your website or simply allowing them to comment on the content you’ve posted. All three options help your visitors connect with you in a more personal way than just having the ability to read your website’s content and can help you bring you more business in addition to helping your site rank better in the search engines.
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
Off-page SEO Tactics for internet marketing. There are a number of “off-page SEO tactics” but the most important one is how many links your site has “pointing at it” from other websites/pages across the internet. If you’d like to get a general idea of how many links the search engines have found for your site, do this…
1. Go to Yahoo.com and enter the following into the search box: link:www.yourdomain.com (replacing “yourdomain.com” with your actual domain name).
2. Click the button to conduct your search.
3. This will take you to the “Yahoo Site Explorer” as shown above. Once on this page, select “Except from this domain” from the “Show In links” drop-down menu so Yahoo will only show you the links it found from the other sites that are linking to you.
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
The more links your site has, the better. This is because each link can be thought of as a “vote” for your site. The search engines figure that if others like your site well enough to link to it, then it probably contains valuable information. This is why we use Article Marketing, Web 2.0 Strategies and a variety of other techniques to continually build links for our clients.
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
Traffic Generation Strategies
Even the most attractive of websites is useless without visitors and that’s why we utilize many different traffic generation strategies on behalf of our clients. We do our best to help you dominate the search engine results in an effort to bring you targeted traffic that is meaningful to your business. Just a few of these strategies include…
Search Engine Optimization (both on-page and off)
Article Marketing
Press Releases
Blogging/RSS Feed Syndication
Social Bookmarking
Utilizing “Web 2.0″ properties (like Facebook.com, Twitter.com etc.)
Video Marketing (like YouTube.com, Viddler.com, etc.)
Online Classifieds (like Craigslist.org, Kijiji.com, etc.)
And a whole lot more!
Whether you are looking to make direct sales from your website, build leads or encourage your visitors to stop by your store or office, we can develop a traffic generation strategy to meet your objectives.
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
Where Do We Go From Here? If you’re ready to build a solid online presence and attract new business, we’d love to discuss your individual needs.
To get started, give us a call at: (480) 233–1529 or visit: http://www.SEOandSEmmarketing.com/contact/ and complete our online form to request an appointment.
We’ll set an appointment at a time that’s convenient for you (typically 30 minutes in length) to learn more about your business and tell you how we can help.
Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business Owners
About The Author Paul Bagorio is the President/CEO of SEO and SEM Marketing.com which Specializes in helping local Businesses build a meaningful online presence. He has this experience/background; to over deliver to make sure you are happy with your online presence to get you the customers that will bring you more customers and more profit through internet marketing.
