With belts across the business world tightening, we have redoubled our efforts to educate clients to be in more control of their marketing spend dollars. We talk to concerned business owners every day about ways to improve usability, productivity of their web sites and to increase conversion performance. Here are a few helpful tips that apply to just about every business trying to leverage the power of online marketing to increase revenue.
Add content that uses terms searchers or new potential clients understand. You will have the opportunity to convert them over to the way your terminology later on specific product or service pages. But if you are a telemarketing company, but prefer to be known under demand generation and fill the content with everything but telemarketing…it makes it much harder to get those pages ranked under telemarketing.
Utilize Your URL In All Business Advertising. It surprises me when I see businesses advertising their businesses and omiting their URLs. Even if you are passing out pencils - your domain name should be prominently featured.
Testimonials. We can not emphasize the importance of communicating your customers experience working with your business enough. Actively solicit customer testimonials and continue adding them to your web site. Ask customers to provide you with a review in Google local, Yahoo Local or MSN Live Search (local). This plus word of mouth advertising is shown to increase business.
Press Releases. Included in our services for search engine optimization campaigns is submission of press releases on a regular basis. Keeping our clients names out there is a great way to increase branding, traffic and revenue.
Blogs. Does your company have a blog? Does someone in your company monitor blogs to see what’s being said about your business? Your business blog provides potential customers with fresh up to the minute content and provides an easy way for you to share industry insight and knowledge. Blogs can also be a good way to build credibility and expertise in your industry. We integrate blogging into our clients sites and make sure that the blogs are updated on a regular basis. It’s a great way to keep in the forefront of your business market and attract new qualified visitors to your site.
Linked In. Are you linked in? If not, then take a minute to join, (it’s free). Linked-In has developed into a nice social networking site that can be useful and potentially productive to businesses. You can find background information on potential clients, join groups in your area of expertise, find former colleagues and associates, easily request recommendations for your business or yourself. You will be amazed at how many people are connecting to this social media platform.
Control your dependency on PPC. There are other ways to get your company on page one of search engines other than buying ads via pay-per-click. Work with your search engine marketing company to get a balance between short term objectives (PPC) and long term gains (organic search marketing). If your PPC company does not offer organic search, then find a company that specializes in organic or natural search.
Monitor click fraud. Google tied up with Click Forensics trying to further address this issue. The latest reports say that the fraud levels on Pay per click campaigns have come down by 0.2 percent in this quarter of 2008, the bad news: Click Fraud Index calculated the fraud rate at 16.2 percent in September 2008.
Free Analytics. Watch out for so called “experts” in search marketing that provide you with only the free Urchin type stats. A quality search marketing company should be Investing in good analytics programs which today are critical in order to dig down and understand visitor patterns, seamlessly integrate PPC and organic statistics and provide vital information for their clients to understand the best ROAS and maximize their ROI.
Expect Business Via Your Web Site. At Top SEO Marketing Inc. we are committed to bringing our clients new business as a result of our efforts. We are transparent in our process and exacting in our collection of data that helps us manage our campaign and helps our clients build better web sites for user experience and conversions. If your web site is not providing you with a significant revenue stream, you should think about changing the way you manage your web site. The lack of productivity can be fixed before you spend money getting visitors to your site - take the time to make sure that you have the right information and calls to action to capture those visitors.
How can search engine marketing help your company compete in today’s business climate? If you are like most companies, you’re trying to get the most of your advertising dollars but you have trouble distinguishing between what works and what is just hype. It’s difficult when you are not familiar with the new online media and all the new options and buzzwords out there. Take some consolation in the fact that this is a significant problem for companies large and small.
See if any of these questions sound familiar:
What demand generation campaigns will net you the best ROAS?
Can we afford a long term solution?
How do you avoid the trap of pay per click dependency?
What is the best way to reach potential customers utilizing the internet?
How affective are directories?
What is social media?
Are Yellow Pages still a good way to spend our marketing dollars?
Will spending money to make videos increase my search engine rankings?
Should I shift my yellow pages ads to directories online?
The Old Versus The New
The Internet has definitely changed the way potential customers are finding new products and services for business and consumers. Gone are the days that people rely on the Yellow Pages to let their fingers do the walking. Today those fingers are walking over the keyboard, mobile phones typing queries into search engines. The amount of information given by phone books, looks outdated when compared with pulling up a web site full of the latest information, locations and products. Below are some revealing facts from the Kelsey Group.
74% of US households use the Internet as an information source when shopping.
Approximately 45% of searches had a buying intent.
The percentage of respondents who used yellow page directories decreased from 75% to 62%.
Today more than ever businesses need a company that can take them where they will be found online by new customers and keep them away from expensive submissions where there is no measurable return on investment.
Managed search engine marketing companies can provide analytics to track pay per click, organic campaigns that include social media, local search placement, press release distribution, copywriting in addition to optimization and email advertising without the additional cost of hiring a PR or ad agency.
If you are looking for an affordable solution to managing advertising spend, laying down a foundation for long term sustainable sales channel or seeking a company that will help you navigate the advertising options online, visit www.topseomarketing.com or give us a call at 214.288.0853.
Local consumers typically make up a large portion of a small business’s client base. Therefore, it is essential that small businesses target consumers residing near their business location. To gain local exposure, many small businesses utilize geographically driven advertising channels like radio, newspapers and business directories. Some of these businesses, however, have failed to recognize the importance of incorporating local search Web sites like, Yahoo! Local®, Google Maps® and ThinkLocal® into their marketing mix. What Is Local Search
Local search is a rather new and inexpensive – often free – advertising method that can effectively reach a large, well-defined audience. The local search audience is unique in that it is comprised of local consumers who request to see the business ads delivered to them and therefore, are receptive to the information they receive. Local search can strengthen any marketing mix because it gives businesses visibility among those who are most likely to purchase their products or services.
Local search Web sites shares the same model as paperbound business directories like the Yellow Pages®. In fact, they are sometimes referred to as online business directories. In addition to displaying a business’s name, location and phone number, many local search Web sites also provide additional tools such as maps, driving directions and quality ratings. Some also offer extra benefits like weather forecasts, local event calendars and forums.
Steps
Look for local search engines that consistently receive good amounts of traffic.High trafficked sites provide more visibility for your online business listing. Google Maps® for instance receives millions of visitors a day, and each visitor is searching a specific business or business type within a defined location. If you are listed on Google Maps, your business listing will receive a tremendous amount of exposure among local consumers who desire your offering.
Check to see if you are already listed.Many of online business directories like ThinkLocal® business listings purchased from data management companies. Because these lists are so long, the online business directories are not able to contact every business listed. As a result, many business owners are unaware that their businesses are listed.
If you find your listing, take ownership of the listing.You may take ownership by creating an account. Once you’ve created an account, edit your listing if necessary and enter information about your business wherever possible. The more information you provide, the more likely you will be able to sway an undecided consumer.
If you cannot find your listing, it simply means that you will have to create one.It’s not difficult to create a listing. All you need to do is set up an account and enter your business information. You may have to indicate the category and subcategory under which you would like your listing to appear. Simply choose the category that best describes your offering.
Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Use Local Search for Small Businesses. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.
I have a dear long time friend who has a young son with Downs Syndrome. Sometimes we get too caught up in the online marketing goals, fast paced changes and focus on business and lose sight of whats really important to us. Or should be important to all of us. In this case, my friend sent me a link to a page that provided the opportunity to donate money - specifically in exchange for Cheryl’s commitment to walk for donations to get funds to assist families with Downs Syndrome children.
From an SEO perspective, fundraising, 501C(3) organizations can be helped by utilizing our services. Only problem is that a lot of agencies don’t have the funds to pay for this type of work. A fully managed campaign would eat up the small budget of this particular organization - and even if I reduce the cost - it would be diverting money that is badly needed to help these families and kids. Fortunately I’m in a position to help - and am willing to work with these types of organizations, my friend’s in particular - to help them get the exposure they need.
Right now, I’m going to ask you to help as well. Below is the widget for Cheryl’s fundraising efforts. Even a small donation will help. Thank you.
Updating the content on your web site will achieve better search engine rankings more than you may expect.
Remember that adding new content will help in 2 ways:
1.Updating your content frequently for visitors gives them a reason to want to come back.
2.Update your content frequently for the search engines. If the search engines see that you’re updating your content every day or several times a week, then these search engines will spider your site much more often.
Your information needs to make the visitor feel as if they gained something good. Always watch for ways to work with adding both emotional content as well as informational content. Most people make their purchasing decisions using emotions and reasoning. A Search Engine Marketing Firm can help you to keep your site content rich. SEO companies will work with you to build content pages around keywords selected to drive target traffic to your site. Content Optimization is just one way to help your site achieve better rankings, using a SEO Company can provide this service as well as many other Managed Search Engine Marketing Optimization Services to help you to drive your site to the Top of the Search Engine mountains.
In today’s competitive business environment (and since when has it not been competitive) – often the deal is won in the details. Taking the time to make sure you’re site has the right geo targeting optimization: web pages that are focused on locations and content that addresses the geographic territory you cover – will help you stand out from the crowd.
One main difference between a site geo-targeting for new business opportunities or working on demand generation locally and companies hiring an SEO company to grow their business nationally or internationally is significant. It is not the same focus and should not be treated the same way.
A national campaign should be focused on the driving business leads and opportunities to their web site where specific actions will be taken by the visitor that will lead to a conversion. Local Search and to a large degree, Regional Search Marketing’s focus is to actually increase the traffic to not only the web site, but ideally to make the phone ring and for foot traffic to their brick and mortar business to increase.
You have to realize that people are looking online - not in the phone book - for local businesses. Being found in the results of major search engines, not expecting people to dig down into directories of cities, equals higher visibility and greater chances for that business to acquire new customers over their competitors who have stayed within traditional local media advertising.
