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Internet Marketing Tips For Local Business

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Internet marketing Tips

The Internet has now become an important medium for showcasing product and services. Almost every company that can afford print, radio and TV advertisements have also ventured into using the Internet as one of the main marketing strategy’s to drive business growth.

But with thousands of websites out there being visited by thousands of local browsers each month, how can you make sure that your website can be found by your target customers? Here are a few Internet Marketing Tips.

1. Make sure your website is optimized for visitors and search engines. The process that is most commonly known to achieve this is called SEO (Search engine Optimization). The fact is that unless you know how to make your website highly popular on the internet it will float around in cyber-space, not being seen or visited by anyone, except for a few die-hard browsers who like to do hours of research on a product or service. However, 90% of people won’t look past the first page of Google and out of those 90% on average they’ll only look at 3 websites before making a decision. That’s way it’s SO important to get found fast and frequently on the internet and SEO is the best way to make that happen.

2. Claim your Google Places listing. Google Places is another way to get your website found on the front-page of Google by local visitors. It’s free, anyone can claim one and will help drive a truck-load of targeted free traffic to your website. The other option is to get an Internet marketing company to help you with setting it up. The reason being that if you don’t do it the right way, it may not appear in Google for months, whereas an Online Marketing Specialists will make sure it get’s set-up properly.

3. Pay-per-click (PPC) is also a good method in Internet Marketing. You will only need to pay for the ad if the link is clicked. If you prefer this method of advertisement, make sure that you are using services that set limits on daily expenses. There are also services that help you determine effective keywords and monitor the PPC results.

4. Choose your domain name wisely. It is still being debated if domain names matter when it comes to search engine placement. Whether it does or not, having product related domain names help consumers remember your domain, that they can go back to your site even without the links.

5. Make sure you have useful content on your sites. While keyword density is important in search engine placement, having useless information or annoying repetition of keywords will not increase your customer’s confidence in your site. It may even affect your sites traffic and can get your site removed from search engines. So make sure that keywords are used strategically.

6. When thinking of keywords, think like your target customers. What do you think are they going to search so they can get to your site? Also, use specific keywords or key phrases. Submitting a single word or a very general phrase to a search engine will not get you to the top of the search results compared to submitting specific keywords that describe your product and services perfectly.

One final tip on marketing products and services is to sell the benefits.

It will help your marketing strategies a lot if you highlight the benefits of choosing your products and services instead of merely discussing the product specifications. Product specifications may not mean much to customers, unless they know what these stand for (how these specifications affect the quality of the product or service).

Many people say getting to the top of search engine results is difficult since millions of websites exist, which can be using the same keywords. While this is true, this doesn’t mean that your website has to stacked under your competitors’ websites when presenting search engine results. Just by using the strategies above your website can dominate the search results, leave your competitors in the dust and build a solid source of highly target leads day-after-day to your business.

These are just a few of the key internet marketing tips that will help your business to be more successful on the Internet.

To get a free SEO and Google Places Analysis for your website and find out where your site is currently positioned in Google then…
click here now and simply fill in the short form at the top of the page.

How Do I Get My Website To Perform

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Getting your website out there is very similar to setting up and running your own business. Like any successful operational business, you need some form of ongoing marketing. There are a number of different marketing options available including word of mouth, referrals, newspaper ads, direct mail, radio advertising and a range of other effective methods.

Any business that wants to move forward through the internet needs to have more than just a website … they also need some sort of Internet Strategy, whether it is SEO, PPC, Video or Social Media.

Let me back that up with an explanation …

Why aren’t I getting any enquiries through my website?

The ‘Numero Uno’ comment I hear from business owners today is – “When my web designer built my site I thought it would instantly bring in visitors and make me money”. Not only do web designers need to be more upfront about what the result (and lack of) will be from their web design, it can be very disheartening for a business owner that has already gone through all the struggle of building their website only to find no-body knows of its existence or is even using it.

Many website owners end up loosing interest and push it aside. When the rare visitor eventually stumbles on the site it lacks the true feel of what your business has to offer and could end up sending the wrong message to your potential client.

My Own Embarrassing Experience

Like Michael Jordan, I’ve made more mistakes than I’ve had successes. Fortunately; every mistake I’ve made has lead to an even greater success. My first journey into self employment was in hospitality; more specifically I purchased a restaurant.

Before I opened the doors I did the hard yards. I chose my menu, fixtures and fittings, hired a team of people and all the other fun tasks in setting up your own business. I spent literally hundreds of hours getting everything ready, squeezing every ounce of my heart and soul into small details of the business. I was very excited on my very first day when we opened the doors, expecting a horde of people to come piling in to order meals and coffees.

Within the first day reality kicked in as I stood there for most of the day to make a cracker sum of $50.00 (most of which was my family coming to visit). I truly felt sick by the end of my first day when the impending embarrassment kicked in. I honestly thought I would just build it and they would come.

Why You Need To Market Your Website

My ego was hit like a tonne of bricks when I realised the hard work I had invested meant nothing without marketing activity.

My first experience in business mirrors the harsh reality for a lot of website owners. The reality is unless you have some form of Internet Strategy in place, you’ll end up with an underperforming website that could have the potential to bring in a large majority of business… that is, if people knew of its existence and were able to locate it.

How Can I Let Visitors Know About My Website?

Whatever your strategy if you would like your website to supply you with sales and/or leads it’s critical to have a strategy in place to achieve that result. Like my naïve restaurant story, if you build it they simply don’t come.

Obviously I am biased and am going to say an SEO company is the best way to achieve that result, yet there are times when SEO isn’t necessary the best solution. Seeking advice of an experienced professional will ensure you are on the right track and will assist you in the construction of a solid online presence to rake in those visitors to boost that bottom line.

Google Adwords Goldmine

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Google-Adwords-PPCIf you haven’t tried Google’s Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engine marketing service yet (aka Google Adwords), I’d recommend doing it soon.

More and more online businesses are realizing that — done right — a PPC campaign can be a fabulous source of cheap, instant, highly qualified traffic.

PPC listings are the ‘Sponsored Links’ that appear in the TOP 3 positions and on the right-hand-side column of the front-page of Google.

They work like an online auction where the advertiser pays a certain amount of money (let’s say $1.00 as an example) every time someone clicks on the ad that is showing to visit your website.

This is determined by how much you are willing to bid for your ad to appear on the front-page and in which position.

The benefit of this advertising is that it enables your business to get found on the front page of Google where 98% of all browsers go to find products or services first these days.

Not only that but you also get to :

1. Choose your daily budget

2. Select what geographic areas you want your site to get found by. For example, if you are a local dentist and you only want to target people in a certain part of the city, then you can select that option for your campaign.

3. Select what page on your website to direct traffic to. many business owners build specific ‘landing-pages’ just for their PPC campaigns to maximize enquiries.

4. Work out your ROI (return on investment) real quickly

5. Know exactly how many people visit your site and what actions they take when they get there

6. Have a non-stop flood of highly targeted leads going to your website for less than a cup of coffee in some cases

7. Become a dominant player in your industry on the Internet virtually overnight.

8. and so much more…

So, this is the upside, what is the downside you might ask?

Well, after running hundreds of PPC campaigns for hundreds of local businesses I can tell you that the biggest mistake I see people make with this type of advertising is trying to do it themselves, without the proper training or experience and wasting time and money getting no results.

Click here to enquire about our Google Adwords programs

But if you were to try doing it yourself here is what I recommend:

  • Bid on lots of cheap, targeted keywords and phrases, including misspellings — and avoid the expensive general words that everyone is bidding on.
  • Never bid more per click than what a single visitor is worth to your site — it’s the best way to make sure your ads remain profitable.
  • Get listed in the “other” PPC search engines — you may be able to bid on popular terms you can’t afford in  Google AdWords.
  • Target your ads as much as possible. Write “custom” ads for each keyword and use the various bid management and targeting tools offered by the different PPC search engines to reduce your costs and increase your clicks.
  • Design your landing pages so they convert qualified visitors to buyers. If your ads promise “cat toys with bells,” makesure they actually direct visitors to a page where it’s easy for them to buy these items!

Then, if after you’ve been running your campaign for awhile and it’s still not delivering you the results you were after, please seek the help of an Adwords trained professional.

If you would like to find out more about our PPC programs and how we can start delivering you highly targeted traffic to your website within a few days from now then Click Here to enquire about our Google Adwords programs