Local Internet Marketing - Local Search

There were two great, and I mean great, conversion focused blog posts that went out today and they are focused on improving a small businesses online marketing conversion rates.  Alex Cleanthous at Search Engine Journal shared 7 proven strategies for improving conversion rate and made a very great numbers statement. 

As business owners it’s important to only spend marketing money when we know we are making it and more money back.  Branding, Direct, Pull and Push marketing all need to quantified to be of value and one of the great things about internet marketing is the ability to make small changes and see great results.  Thus the post above and the follow up by myself.

Alex points out that:

“For example, let’s say you are spending $1,000 per month on search engine optimization and $5,000 per month on paid advertising (making a total monthly online marketing investment of $6,000). You’re receiving 10,000 visitors per month to your website and you’re converting 1% of those visitors, generating $15,000 in revenue.”

“If you just increased your website’s conversion rate to 2%, you would be generating $30,000 in revenue for no additional advertising cost. And because your advertising costs have already been covered by the original $15,000 revenue, your profitability has just skyrocketed!”

The way this applies to a local business is highlighted by another post by David Reeve at DMNews.  He shared a 2006 study that showed how customers used the web to find local businesses and how they contacted those business owners.  Some highlights include How do customers use the website to contact the business:

and the offline marketing follow up detail that 35 percent saved the phone number after visiting the site.  By implementing any of the suggestions above your conversion rate WILL increase and you don’t have to increase your marketing budget to do it.  If you’ve already implemented the above changes try moving the location of each “conversion” point and watch for increases.  Moving the phone number to a more prominent position could increase calls, customers and sales. 

Internet Marketing has to be about conversions and the two posts highlighted above share some great insight into how and why to improve conversions.  Enjoy and let me know how it works for you.

Keywords are the corner stone of search engine marketing.  They are literally everything.  Search, no matter what, is all about words people use to describe what they want.  SEO revolves around key phrases (keywords) used to describe a product, service or business and the same keywords have prices associated with them via pay-per-click.

So with all the value and importance on the key words used to describe and successfully market a website, what tools are the best to help me as a new business owner understand how someone goes to Google and searches for what I have to offer? 

Remember the “IT” commercials that ebay had running last year, and even this year, I think.  Not only can you get “IT” on ebay but whatever words your customers use to describe “IT” should be your focus in search engine marketing.  I think the common response and creation process for keywords is to bid on the official name and variations of the official name and call it good.  I’m a dentist so I need to bid on city dentist.  Well what about dental, family dental, wisdom teeth, broken tooth, tooth doctor (yes some people still search for tooth doctor) or city state service type keyword phrases.

 Google has a great tool to help get you thinking but don’t let it be your only resource and don’t assume Broad match will cover everything you want to cover.  In fact, practice not using Broad match at all and see how you do.  Here are some other FREE and/or inexpensive outside tools to help you with your keyword creation process.

Keyword Discovery - Free search tool helps to get you started and should do for most small businesses.

Coolest Keyword Tool - Pulls a lot of data from Word Tracker and is another excellent, free tool from Mr. SEO - Adam Wall

Good Keywords - This is a useful windows software offering that I use to help me organize and create better groups.

Google Keyword Tool - Thank you Google for offering a keyword tool to everyone that is accessible outside of Adwords.  You can have them spider your site to make suggestions or use it like the other tools - enter keyword - get suggestions.

Excel Spreadsheet - Never underestimate the power of an excel spreadsheet and your own brain.  Sometimes this is the best way to get a quality keyword list.

One of my very favorite things about internet marketing is the almighty KEYWORD LIST.  I love the creativity, the research, the competitive analysis, the tools available, the tools that aren’t available and all things keyword list creation related.  Whenver I’m building a keyword list I always make sure to bid on my domain name and variations of my domain name.  Now that the secret is out, I’m happily (but reluctantly) going to point out that many small businesses forget that part of online marketing or don’t see the value of paying for placement on their name.

 The latest search numbers from Google are that roughly 65% of clicks go to the organic listings and 35% of clicks go to the paid listings.  Even if I’m showing up #1 organically for a keyword search or my business name, making sure that I own my name on paid and organic is a no brainer (and should be for any business owner).  It validates that you are really in business and greatly improves your ability to get the click (especially if they are looking for you:).  Plus, the fact of the matter is, you are trying to build your brand and hopefully people will begin using your brand name to search for you.  Even if you are a brand new site, people will look for reviews of your business, your BBB record etc. and when you show up for all those searches in the paid search category the trust level goes up.  Since the point to online marketing is conversions, owning your name has got to be one of the highest converting keywords you can bid on.

 So the whole point here is to remember that whether you are using Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing or any other pay per click search provider, make sure to bid on your name (with a space and without a space).  It’s well worth the money and only ads about 10 seconds to your account set up.  Or longer if you are still on dial up

With all the cool tools out there to track site traffic (Google Analytics, Omniture, Statcounter etc.) and the talk of more and more data being available for marketers to track site users, page metrics, heat sensors, conversions, etc. I started thinking, when is all this data too much?  Seriously, can data overload lead to bad decisions?

 I have a few different websites that I regularly check stats for (one site I use www.statcounter.com and the other I use Google Analytics).  The other sites I just make sure that my sales are more than my marketing expenses and call the difference PROFIT.  That’s the beauty of any business.  PROFIT.  So what if I spend all my time analyzing the traffic that I get to my site and realize that not all visitors buy.  Because I’ve been at this for a while I understand that not everyone will buy.  In fact, a 1-3% conversion rate is really quite splendid for many industries.  I know the data is great and I actually find it quite fun to see all the places and all the keywords people use to find my products BUT I also understand why so many small and local businesses are afraid of internet marketing.  You can improve conversion very easily by analyzing the data but don’t spend all your time getting caught up in the little things if you site is doing what you want it to do.  m

 My advice for this blog entry, don’t forget what’s keeps you in business.  As nice as it is to have people come by your store or to have people call your business with questions, you can’t stay in business unless people use your business (I mean really pay for something).  Whether you stick with the yellow pages or make the move to online marketing, please, please, please remember that the bottom line is sales and no matter what the data shows, if you aren’t selling you aren’t in business.

 p.s. If you aren’t currently using tracking on your site then you need to fix that!  www.statcounter.com OR www.google.com/analytics/ are my recommendations.

Now it’s no secret, to those I’ve told, that I’m not a big fan of Microsoft’s AdCenter.  Yes, I’ve seen a great conversion rate and less competition than Yahoo Search Marketing or Google but I still don’t like anything about AdCenter.  That said, the bug that’s been costing advertisers hundreds and thousands of dollars over the last day or so is Fixed

WebMasterWorld forums have been lighting up with some users writing about being charged over $800 per click on keywords with .44 bids.  WOW!  I’m sure Google is taking the Microsoft search threat really seriously now.  I know I’m certainly taking a close look at all my campaigns.