Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Imagine a World Where Customers Come to You

Aperio Marketing

With all due respect to John Lennon, I’d like you to imagine a world where you don’t have to look for new customers; instead, they find you. It isn’t hard to do.

Imagine, too, that you can track the effectiveness of your ads within hours of putting them out there. And by track, I mean you know exactly how many people have seen the ads, how many took action on it, and which ads brought in the best customers.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but this is the reality of advertising today, at least in the online world. That’s right, I’m talking about Google AdWords, and similar services from Yahoo, Microsoft, and others.

At this point you might be thinking, “This is a great idea, but it won’t work for my business; we do things differently.” Perhaps. But consider this: A dog daycare, in Oakland, California, gets 90% of their business from online leads. A yacht chartering business increased their monthly revenue by 100%. A garage specializing in converting cars to run on vegetable oil finds 95% of its business online.

Their clientele are not computer geeks, they are regular, everyday people. These are not companies that sell and ship products from an online store. They provide real, everyday services to people in very specific geographical areas. They are not interested in doing international business, per se. They just need to get people in the local area informed about what they have to offer. And they are doing it online.

One of the reasons why online marketing is so effective is that you control how much you spend; you won’t spend more than you budget. No minimums, no maximums. This is not the case with many other advertising media.

Another reason more local businesses should utilize online advertising is because it is very easy to track and measure results. In some instances results can be seen in hours.

This provides for very quick feedback on what’s working, allowing you the flexibility to tweak and optimize your message in a non-threatening environment. Once you find a message that’s working, you can take it to other media, such as direct mail post cards, email campaigns, or print environments.

If you want to continue to throw your marketing dollars to the wind, hoping for the best, buy advertising based on the selling points the sales person tells you. If you want to make sure your marketing dollars are invested in productive, results-oriented media, start with online advertising. It’s not just for online businesses. It’s for any company that wants to grow and keep their marketing efforts accountable.

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Quick and Clean SEO

Orange Soda

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a complex science, resulting in consultants that get away with charging thousands of dollars per month for just a few hours of consultation. The really good ones can charge tens of thousands per month and have no shortage of clients begging them for their help.

That some companies are willing to spend so much shows you just how important SEO is for an online business. A vital part of any internet marketer’s repertoire, properly managed SEO can get you listed at the top of every major search engine for the keywords of your choosing. For some keywords, being listed at the top can mean a difference between glorious success and a meager existence.

On the other hand, bad SEO can result in low rankings or even get you banned from the search engines. Getting blacklisted is enough to put some companies completely out of business.

Not everybody has the skills necessary to implement proper SEO. Good SEO means staying on top of things; getting to know industry insiders and constant vigilant testing of the search engines as you watch for changes in ranking algorithms.

However, there are a few quick, yet clean, SEO techniques that you can implement immediately to improve your search engine rankings.

Use Keywords in Headlines

Search engines figure that if something is in a headline, it must be important. Sub-headlines are also considered important, but to a lesser degree.

A headline is recognized as such with the following HTML headline tags:

· <h1> … </h1>

· <h2> … </h2>

· <h3> … </h3>

Headline tags go all the way down to level six (H6) with H1 being the largest headline, and thus receiving the highest importance. If you want to optimize a page for the term “hiking boots”, then you should have that term between H1 tags.

If using a term in a sub-headline (H2, H3, and lower), then including those same keywords in a bulleted list immediately after will help give those keywords the same level of importance as keywords in a main (H1) headline.

Bold Keywords Throughout a Page

Bolding keywords throughout a webpage will increase the relevance a search engine gives those specific keywords. The preferred method of bolding keywords is with STRONG tags:

· <strong> … </strong>

Optimize for Less Popular Keywords and Phrases

Getting top ranking for the key phrase “hiking boots” can be tough because it’s a very popular term with a lot of competition. It can be done, but would require a lot of time and effort. And since this article is about speed and simplicity, we won’t discuss what would go into a campaign to get ranked for such a competitive term.

For quicker and easier ranking, go after more specific, less competitive key phrases. For example, instead of “hiking boots” try combining the term with brand names, designs, material used, manufacturing process, and so forth:

· Brand name: Joe’s Super Sweet hiking boots

· Design: elegant elf-toe hiking boots

· Material used: NASA approved space-leather hiking boots

· Manufacturing process: hiking boots manufactured through the new “circular frog stamp” technique

You get the idea. While you won’t get as much traffic as a similar rank for a more popular phrase, you will get ranked much easier and faster. The traffic you get will also be more highly targeted and more likely to convert into a sale.

The tactics that we’ve discussed in these articles can be very easily and quickly implemented into just about any website. Keep in mind, however, that you don’t want to get carried away by cramming a page full of keyword-stuffed headlines, bolding half your page, or overusing a particular key phrase so much that nothing on your webpage makes sense.

Search engines are savvy enough to spot such attempts to get ranked, and most will penalize you for doing so. Also, don’t forget who your target market is… people. Stuffing a webpage full of keywords might help you get ranked higher (at least temporarily), but if a visitor can’t make sense of it, they’ll just leave your website anyway and your efforts will have been wasted.

So remember to keep it clean, keep it simple, and you’ll be happy with the results.

Related Topics: Branding, Business, Computers, Internet, Technology    1 Comment