November 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Small Business Marketing Strategies

Think about this question for a moment. What is your business?

Did you answer “Marketing Business?” Well you should have. That’s right; you’re not in the chiropractic business, real estate business, coaching business or whatever happens to be profession. You are in the business of marketing your products or services.

You see, without marketing, you don’t have a business at all. To be successful in business, your business needs to be based around your marketing. To fully grasp this concept, I highly recommend checking out The Duct Tape Marketing Complete Small Business Marketing System.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Probably the #1 question I get asked is, “how do I get found on the search engines?” Most of the time, it’s just a matter of researching the right keywords. Learn how to organically position yourself in the search engines.
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Pay Per Click (PPC)

Where SEO is organic or natural search engine marketing, PPC is the paid sector of SEM. PPC advertising can be a highly effective and quick way to get targeted traffic to your site. You can also blow your whole marketing budget if not done correctly! Find out how to build a profitable PPC program.
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Postcard Marketing

Postcard marketing may seem a bit antiquated with so much emphasis on the internet today but postcard marketing, when done right, can produce excellent leads and sales.

Social Networking

Social networking is basically socializing online. This can be a very effective, and fun, tool in your internet marketing arsenal. Find out how to incorporate social networking into your business.

Email Marketing

The importance of having your own email list cannot be overstated. Virtually every visitor that comes to your site the first time is not going to buy anything. You worked hard to get them to your site, doesn’t it make sense to capture their contact info so you can try to sell to them again? There’s really only one thing you need to do to get them to hand over their email address.

Relationship Marketing

Social networking and email marketing are essentially list building tools, but what you do with your list is what counts. Cultivating strong relationships is key to building a strong sustainable business. Learn how relationship marketing can transform your business.

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October 19, 2009 By 1 Comment

Website Content Development

Now that you know what people are searching for, it’s time to write content around those keywords. When you plan out your content, each page should be focused on one keyword – called keyword focused content pages. Then sprinkle a few “long-tail” keyword phrases in your content.

Ok, let’s take the “wilmington nc storage” example from above. I want to build a page that targets the big number which happens to be “wilmington nc storage.” That’s what most people are searching for so that’s going to be our main keyword or keyword phrase. Then I want to take 3-5 supporting keywords and add them to the content.

My keyword focused content page plan may look something like this:

I’ve got my main keyword and 3 supporting keywords for my one page therefore capitalizing on not just the potential traffic of my main keyword but of 4 others as well. Properly optimized, that one page could show up on the first page of Google 2,850 times a month! That’s just ONE page. Now what if you had a hundred or more content pages on your site?

Are you starting to see why content is king?

You may be wondering if there is some magic ratio of keywords and actual content. Short answer is no. Back in the 90’s you could stuff your content full of nothing but keywords and you’d rank at the top. But search engine algorithms are so sophisticated these days that they can smell a spammy site from a mile away.

So when you’re writing, write for the human reader first, the search engine spiders second. Don’t force a keyword to fit where it just reads unnaturally.

In the storage example I’d probably write about 300-500 words with the main keyword showing up 3-4 times including the title, and each supporting keyword just once or twice.

Other places your keyword needs to show up are in the URL, title tag, and the H1 tag in the HTML of your content. Here’s a diagram illustrating how keywords can show up in your content and the other areas outside of the content that I recommend you add your keywords.

Here’s the HTML of that same page so you can actually see where those HTML tags exist.

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October 19, 2009 By 1 Comment

Small Business Search Engine Optimization

The marketing question I get asked about above any others is, “How do I get traffic from the search engines?” like there’s some quick magical answer. So now I can just say go to my site and look up Search Engine Optimization. :)

The answer: It takes work! I know, bummer right?!

Getting your website ranked in the search engines is a combination of art and science, skill and research. It’s really not difficult and depending on your niche, it might be easy. But you are going to have to work for it.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short is made up of 3 basic ingredients:

  • Keyword research
  • Content
  • Link building

You may or may not have heard the expression “Content is King.” This is a widely debated topic within the SEO community. What they are talking about is the content on your site is #1 above all else. The other side says that links are more important. Links are how many sites point to your site.

Bottom line is this, both are important! However, if you have no content on your site, I don’t care what anyone says, you’re not going to rank nearly as well or, maybe even more importantly, for as many keywords as if you did.

I’ve broken it down for you in detail with these three tutorials:

Keyword Research

Before you start writing your content, it’s a good idea to know what people are searching for. Remember how you search for your business and how others search for your business could be two completely different things.
learn more

Content

Now that you know what people are searching for, it’s time to write content around those keywords. When you plan out your content, each page should be focused on one keyword – called keyword focused content pages.
learn more

Link Building

The next component of SEO is link building. This is where you get as many websites to link to you as possible. Think of these links as “votes” of credibility.
learn more

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October 19, 2009 By 1 Comment

Keyword Research

Before you start writing your content, it’s a good idea to know what people are searching for. Remember how you search for your business and how others search for your business could be two completely different things. This is because you know the jargon whereas your potential customer my not.

A really good quick way to do some simple keyword research is to use the Google Adwords Tool. This will give you a good representation of how people are searching for your product or service.

Here’s a search I did for “wilmington nc storage.” This shows you what keywords are being searched and how many searches are being made on Google.

Just that one main keyword has produced potentially a dozen keyword phrases (multiple keywords) that you can now write content on.

Think of keywords as fish hooks in the water. The more keywords your site is optimized for, the better chance of getting a bite.

Take a look for a moment at the Advertiser Competition column. This is based on how many people are bidding on those keywords within Google Adwords, which is where you pay for search engine traffic from Google. Learn more about that here.

This does sometimes translate into how competitive the keyword is in the organic (free) search results. The more competitive a keyword, the more work you’re going to have to do to rank for it.

For more advanced keyword research, check out Wordtracker. You can create massive keyword lists, know exactly how many sites are competing for your keywords, plus uncover even more keywords through their research tools.

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October 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

11 Ways to Build Quality Links

Here are 11 legitimate ways to build quality links to your site:

  • Article Marketing – where you write and publish articles to article directories.
  • Directories – does your town have any websites that list local businesses? Also search for directories specifically for your niche; real estate, automotive, plumbing, storage, etc.
  • Press Releases – most press release distributors will allow a link, sometimes with an extra fee, but it’s worth it.
  • Association Sites – Does your Chamber of Commerce post the links of their members’ websites?
  • Social Media – Facebook, Digg, Delicious are all great places your site should be although not all will count towards SEO.
  • Link to Others – gets their attention and they may reciprocate.
  • Make Contact – yep, good old fashion asking. Ask colleagues, associates, family and friends to put your site in their blogroll, please.
  • Blog Comments – Comment on other blogs most allow you to post a link. Again, not all will count towards your SEO but some will and it will get the attention.
  • Forum Posts – Along the same lines as blog comments but your link is included in the signature file of your posts.
  • Guest Posts – See if you can do a guest article for blogs that would benefit from your information.
  • Hub Sites – Create pages on sites like Squidoo, Hubsites.
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October 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Link Building 101

A main component of SEO is link building. This is where you get as many websites to link to you as possible. You can use online directories, article marketing, associations you are a member of, get people to write on their blogs about you, etc.

There are many ways to try to do this but it is tough. Ask yourself, “Why would somebody link to my website?” Sometimes people will link to your site if you provide quality content or something of value.

The search engines look at links pointing to your website as a “vote” for your site. So the more votes you have, the more authority it must carry. Like any other SEO method, link building has been tried to be manipulated as well. Search engines are getting smarter all the time, so even if you think you’ve pulled one over on Google, don’t count on it to work for long.

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