A Review of the 5 Common Local Business Internet Marketing ...

What do I know?

Do a search for ?internet marketing and advertising gurus , and it would seem like there are more ?experts? telling you how to do it than there are folks really doing it.? Internet marketing and advertising has become a cottage industry not unlike the hundreds of thousands of individuals who sold ?Selling 101? tapes in the ?70s .?

That being explained, I do not ?think myself a expert.? I merely base what I know about Internet advertising and marketing on the past 16 years of trial and error, start and re-start, good results and failures.? The culmination of my practical experience has led to the founding of a ?incredibly (and surprisingly) effective?Local Search?business.?

My work now is to help local, small businesses to ?optimize their internet ?marketing efforts so as to handle expenditures while offering quantifiable results.? After working with literally hundreds of small, local businesses I?ve been able to ?build? a list of what undoubtedly works ? and what certainly doesn?t.? Here is that checklist:

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?Five Best ?Internet Marketing and Advertising ?Strategies for Small, Local Businesses

1. Claim your ??Local Business? listings and make sure they are ?optimized properly for maximum publicity ? There are essentially three principal web sites that present companies the opportunity to claim ?local? listings: Google, Yahoo! and Bing. By claiming a listing and setting it up properly and business can possibly gain more exposure locally than a 50-foot sign out front. We?ve worked with small business owners who constantly report that the Google Maps listing alone is responsible for up to 50% of their new client contacts. Pretty powerful stuff from a cost-free program.
2. Optimize your enterprise for local search ? We?re not talking about a business website here (we?ll get to that later in the checklist). We?re talking about placing a company in the third-party directories, data centers and Internet Yellow Pages that ?commonly figure ?heavily in the search engines.

The majority of ALL searches for anything commence in one place ? Google. With the fast growth of local factors in searches, this has supplied easily the biggest opportunity for small organizations to make an impact.

Showing on the first page of Google can be practically impossible on a small business budget when you think about the, for lack of a far better word, size of the World wide web. Having said that, we can shrink the field considerably by focusing exclusively on local. Type in a search for ?business card printing? and Google ?provides in excess of 21 million results. Add a local factor like ?business card printing Highland Village , TX? and the variety of results shrinks to a mere 125,000 or so. The ?challenge is far less daunting now.

The method of optimizing a organization for local search requires a bit of knowledge in terms of how the World wide web works, but it does not call for a degree from ?Yale One thing is for sure, a business would be much better suited to have a specialized firm do this for them, but ? and this is vital ? the program should entail a one-time setup and no monthly costs or contracts. Once the listings are in place there is very little a company can do to further improve them over time ? if they are done properly to begin with.

3. Create a internet site that is truly designed particularly for local exposure ? Why is a site #3 on this checklist? Simple. A company site is just one site and there surely is no guarantee that having a site will lead to new ?clients . However, if a business goes through the expense and time of developing a web page it is essential that they do it properly. Local SEO is not the same as regular SEO despite what the ??experts? will try to sell?er?tell you. I?ve covered the techniques of local SEO in other posts, so I?ll conserve the space here.

4. IF you have a web page, spread the word. The web address should be on every little thing created in conjunction with your business enterprise. Your web page?address ?should? be on every business card, sign, invoice, check, advertisement, and email that exists for your business enterprise.

This specific ?statement may not appear important, but think of it like this ? if a client is referring you to another person do you think they are more likely to recall your site or your phone number?

5. ?Actively ask for online reviews for your organization ? A lot of local search algorithms, including Google?s, take reviews into account. Sadly, only the top 2% of your happiest customers will leave a testimonial without being prompted, but almost 100% of unhappy consumers will do the same. The only way to battle these statistics is to solicit reviews from your clients. Offer them an incentive and make it effortless for them.

As part of our Optimized Local Search Services, we frequently?generate a document for exhibit that lists the top web-sites that accept testimonials that can affect a businesses search engine ?ranking? . The method works. The more testimonials you solicit the more good reviews you get. In many searches, businesses with testimonials will show over businesses without. When a client views your listing, they?ll be able to read all the constructive reviews and they are much more likely to call or visit your organization.

The testimonial matter may seem like an apparent point, but quite frankly the vast majority of local business owners we work with do not fully notice the influence that it can have.

Feel free to contact me with your ideas.?? As I said in the beginning, I?m not ?an expert .? I?m just a person who has tried ?virtually everything ?more than once. ?Check out additional posts on our local search internet?marketing?site.?Coming soon: Bottom 5 ?Internet advertising and marketing strategies for Small, Local Businesses.

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