How Mom and Pop Shops Benefit from Internet Presence

“I’m just a small local shop. I don’t need presence on the internet.”

This can sometimes be true, to an extent. Most in business are constantly trying to increase that business. However there is a charm to a local mom and pop shop, well known by word of mouth because of the excellent product or service they specialize in.

If you’ve done the math, and have come to the conclusion shipping globally isn’t worth the effort and opening chain shops doesn’t appeal to you, you likely don’t need another sermon on how expanding your business via the internet and other methods is financially lucrative.

What every small business needs though, whether local or global, is internet presence. Even if you cater primarily to a local market, today most potential customers do not “ask their neighbor” or drive around town looking for a particular place, most people of all ages and backgrounds first search online, and most base their decision on the information found their.

There is a narrative of SEO that it must appeal to some global audience. This is incorrect. In fact as the saying goes “when you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one.”

SEO is made for a small niche. It is simpler, and companies consistently have more success when they focus on a narrow, either local or targeted market.

Perhaps you don’t want global online recognition. Maybe you’re looking only for a particular niche or more local business. Despite its reputation, SEO is perfectly suited for your situation. Most search engines today first display local results no matter what you may be searching for. So if you are in Phoenix and looking for a Chinese restaurant, the ones in your area will generally be on the first page. No matter the size of your business, showing up on the first page or so of a search in your local area is always beneficial.

Look for a talented SEO professional, do some research to make sure they are legitimate, and find out how internet presence can help your small or local business.

Author’s Bio: Jeffrey Gross is an Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Enthusiast who lives on Long Island, NY. Jeff’s Search Engine Optimization Company (nPromote) helps Long Island business owners (and business owners across the country) get their businesses to the top of the search engines. In his spare time Jeff teaches Search Engine Optimization to small business owners and enjoys lecturing at local colleges and other venues as well.

How Can Article Marketing Improve Your SEO

Article Marketing is among the most popular and most effective SEO tools in use today. However, most people don’t realize that this is also among the oldest forms of print marketing. Even before
advertisements were printed on a regular basis, publishers would include articles from local business leaders in their publications.

The founding fathers of America used this model to talk about their revolutionary ideas, but as an added benefit their businesses and skills would also occasionally be spread among the readers making them very popular business people.

Just as it was in the days of American independence, article marketing is a simple process. Average people write about what they know or what they are passionate about. Publishers then capitalize on their writing to gain readers and expand their distribution without having to pay writers. In exchange for the article, the author gets to list their name & company information. Then when the reader views the article, they also see this business listing and are made aware of the products or services of the author.

This approach is not limited to revolutionary leaders or future presidents. Average Joes have perfected this art for centuries. Regardless of your industry or education level, you too can take advantage of this marketing approach. To show two opposite ends of the spectrum I’ll list two examples: A mechanic down the road recently wrote a one pager teaching people how to change their own oil. On the other hand a major corporate CEO writes articles regularly about his experience leading people. Both attract people to the companies these individuals work for.

While the approach of writing articles is unchanged, the way you distribute the articles & their impact has changed dramatically, in ways that really benefit SEO practitioners. In today’s article marketing plans, the author posts their articles on internet based article directories. Search engines then see the link back to the corporate website in the article and consider it to be a vote for the company’s website.

These “votes” are the secret sauce in most SEO strategies. The more “votes” or links to a site the higher the search engine will rank them. When the link contains text that relates to the pages title or specific keywords, the vote has even a higher value. When the page containing the link is on a website like an article directory that already has a high rank, the vote is even more valuable. An SEO consultant can help you define a specific strategy for articles and linking, but you could get part of the way there on your own if you have the time to research article marketing and keyword strategies.

This approach can be so effective, that it even dwarves many of the paid forms of web marketing. Some sites even see a return on investment 5 times higher than what they get from paid search engine tools. That said, this is one of the most effective organic search engine optimization techniques in today’s market. However, obtaining those types of results can be rather challenging and is not the norm.

If you are brave enough to try for huge lift in your search engine rankings through article marketing, then you will need to get used to a few popular tools and then spend serious amounts of time writing.
First and foremost, you will need to leverage twitter, facebook, and other social networking sites. On these sites you can encourage people to read your article. Often times, they will like the article and pass it on to others through links or general buzz. That buzz is then registered as another form of vote on the search engine. Second, you will want to find several relevant article directories to publish your articles in as many unique places as possible. This will encourage a lot of linking and re-linking. Finally, you will need to write a lot. The more you write and distribute the more attention you can draw to your site.

In closing, Article Marketing is perhaps the most effective internet marketing tool at your disposal. It’s easy to use, doesn’t require extensive training to get started, and most importantly it can have real results quickly. Just remember to think through your article marketing strategy and plan out what you will write about so you can build a strong presence and ensure continued growth over time.

Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimizations (SEO)

Ranking high in Google’s search results can have a phenomenal impact on the success of your business.

You can either engage the expertise of a Search Engine Optimization company, or if you have the time, there are some changes you can make to your website yourself.

Step 1: Keyword Research

What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services?

A keyword can be one word (e.g. “optimization”) or more (e.g. “website optimization service”). But multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferred, because they are more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for.

Write down as many as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customer (e.g. “house cleaning Sydney”). Also, get some ideas from your competitors’ websites. Try to make a list of 20-30 keyword phrases.

Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings.  If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “insurance”, you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select at least two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business, but not that vague nor too competitive i.e. “car insurance Washington”.

But rather than try to guess the most searched keywords in your market, you can utilize a free tool called “Keyword Suggestion”. Read my post http://articlemarketingtomillions.com/blog/find-high-demand-market/

Once you’ve selected your two best keyword phrases, the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.

Step 2: Web Copy

Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords.  The more prominent they are, the better. (Keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.)

Here’s how you can increase each keyword’s prominence:

1. Place your keywords in headings, preferably at the beginning of the heading;
2. Include keywords towards the top of the page;
3. Bold or italicize keywords where appropriate;
4. Instead of having a link to another page that says “Click here to read more “, reword it to include your keywords, e.g. “Read more about how Instant Article Wizard can help you to write any articles on virtually any topics in less than 15 minutes”.

Another important tip is to also include these keywords in your HTML “title tag”. Use your content management system to make these changes yourself, or perhaps ask your web developer to do it if you’re unsure how.

Once you have fine-tuned your home page, consider adding new content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer, FAQs and informative articles about your products and services. (If you don’t want to write these yourself, they can be located for free on the internet – do a search for “articles directory”).

It’s also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Often web developers embed words in images to look better for website visitors or use Flash for animation, but this is a major impediment to search engines. If you want to put pictures on your website, make sure to use your selected keyword on its file name i.e. car_insurance_washington.jpeg or best_insurance.bmp , as this will help your site rank better.

Step 3: Website Link

Each link from another website to your website (not from your website) is considered by search engines as a vote of popularity for your business and will improve your rankings.

But it is the quality, not quantity, of the links that is crucial. The other websites should be relevant to your industry, and preferably highly regarded themselves. Ten quality links count far more than 500 links from arbitrary websites. In the same way your personal business network can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so too the online network you build on the internet.

Brainstorm all the relevant websites that could link to you, such as non-competing companies, and industry bodies and organisations. Write a friendly email to each describing the benefit their visitors would get in knowing about your business, and request them to create a link to your website. Most people will not respond first time round, so a follow-up phone call is usually required.

How do I monitor my results?

Monitor your rankings in Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and recording your ranking. Also look at your hosting reports to understand what search terms your visitors are using to find your website.

The above process can be also be repeated for each page of your website. Remember to keep updating your content, and continually increase the number of links to your website.

Visit http://SEODigger.com to speed up your task in monitoring your SEO campaign result. This free tool will help you to ‘reverse the search engine’ by displaying relevant keywords at which your website are ranked for. SEODigger only updates its database once in few months, means your displayed ranks are not the most update ones, so make sure check it regularly i.e. every 2 or 3 months. Trust me; this free tool will definitely make your life much easier.

As you see your rankings climb you should see a corresponding increase in web traffic and a substantial increase in sales enquiries. Be sure to record the source of your customer enquiries, so you can measure the success of your marketing efforts.

Remember, if you measure it, you can improve it.

Press Release Distribution and Article Syndication Services

Rumor has it that press releases are the next big thing in the SEO business, and many companies are spending top dollars trying to write the next big press release announcing the next big balloon breaking technology. But is this really the next big thing?

By definition, a Press Release is a kind of news item released by the company on whom the news is being reported. As such, you will have to compete with all the other press releases and hope that your will get picked up.

Why Will Your Press Release Be Trashed?
1) Unless you are writing a press release about Microsoft, Adobe, Sony or one of the other mega-companies, or at least about a company that is relatively well known, forget about it. Journalists and news editors receive thousands of press releases a day and there is no way that they will waste more than a quick glance. So why should you pay a company seven to eight hundred dollars for them sending your press release to thousands of editors and journalists when they are going to junk it anyway?

2) Unless you are announcing a truly revolutionary product or technology (which I assume you are not since you are only interested in using the professionally paid and written press release to boost your search engine rankings), whatever you make up or announce such as some new free deal or new portal offering something unique, your chances of being picked up are very slim. Yes, the PR companies will tell you that they have vast experience in writing Press Releases that will make yours stand out and get picked up but this is not accurate. The only way your PR is going to get picked up is if it truly is something out of the ordinary or something that no one has ever thought off.

3) Unless you plan to spend millions of dollars and then just by sheer volume your site will go ahead in the search engines, this is not a good option. Why? If you send a large number of press releases then these will be placed on the different PR companies websites main page. Since most of these home pages have a very high page rank, your site will get a boost. The question is whether this boost is worth the large amount of money you will put into the PR companies pocket. No it is not. Use that money to buy (though I do not recommend this) links from high-ranked websites and you will pay less and receive more benefit.

4) Any press release, even if it has been accepted, will remain on the different pages for just a short time, making the time and effort and even more so the amount of money you paid fruitless.

Conclusion:
A press release is useful if you wish to contact the press and maybe get some free publicity, but it is of no use if you wish to use it as a tool in order to advance your website in the search engines.

Alternative to Press Release Distribution:
So if your main objective is to get high ranking in Search Engine, then the best option is to go with Article Syndication services. With Article Syndication services, your articles (with one or two text-link point to your website) will be distributed to thousands of article directories, blogs or RSS announcers for a very low price. One of the best service in Article Distribution I personally used called isnare. It takes some times (range from 7-14 days) to get your articles approved and distributed in it’s network, but Trust me…its worth the wait. And it’s also very cheap, which only cost you around $0.83 to $2 per article distribution. One of my website’s popularity increase 4x in just 2 months of after submitting articles to isnare.

So Save your money from Press Release, and invest it in Article Syndication Service instead.