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.

I’m a fan of information and opinion.  In fact, when it comes to search engine marketing most true learning experiences come from golden nuggets of information in interviews, blogs and articles.  Dr. Ralph Wilson, of WebMarketingToday has a fun way of getting interesting perspectives from people he interviews.  My suggestion to him is to upgrade his video camera, but some of the people he allows to share insights (and sell their own services) do share “golden nuggets” of information. 

Feeling overwhelmed with all the things to learn about SEO, PPC, SEM, Social Media, Blogging, Reputation Management and any other term you know you need to understand better, means you don’t apply it to your business.  As a small business owner, the key is to figure out how this information helps your business in your industry at this time.  Many SEOs talk in general terms which means they cover a lot of area without specifics.  That’s because optimization isn’t about doing the same thing for every site but identifying the best tool in your toolbelt of information to maximize your own site in your own industry.

Dr. Wilson’s interview about Reputation Management with Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim, offers some useful insight into some ideas that can easily be implemented by any small business.  Watch it, learn from it and figure out what 2 things in the interview can help your business this week.  Don’t overwhelm yourself with all the information out there, list 2 things you can do this week to help improve your own site in your own industry.  Then you’ll start to see results!

It’s no secret that links are important.  The big topics of conversation are buying links, natural links, relevant links, reciprocal links and just plain links.  The reason search engine optimizationers (I like adding “ers”) can be so valuable to a small business is the magic behind link building.  I’d like to take this opportunity to say “be creative and you’ll get links”.

 I’m reminded of a great session at WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon when a San Diego Chiropractor talked about what he had done over the last year to get his website to the top for the his keywords.  David Klein shared some great strategies about getting links and the overwhelming message was to go have fun, be creative and of course people will link to your site.

 When the California fires hit in late 2007 he took his team out to help the tired firefighters with alignments.  Of course that generated buzz but he also took pictures of it and added them to the website.  He didn’t do service because he’d get publicity but he also didn’t miss the opportunity to get links (by posting pictures of his company helping with the fires).  He also took pictures of individuals at a Chiropractor summit and of course people will link to their own pictures on his site.  All in all it was great and honest insight on the effectiveness of remembering the human side of seo and using creativity to drive traffic and get the all important SEO Link.

Sometimes the internet marketing community is so focused on beating the system that they forget that people are the ones who add real value to a site and business.  The point here is to get creative in what you like to do and remember the SEO Link opportunities.  Step outside the box and experience the rankings of someone with friends!

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.

I’m reminded over and over by business people from within the search industry and from outside the search industry that SEO is a shady business.  How do I beat Google?  How do I get my site up tomorrow?  If I do x will I get hurt by Google?

 I’d like to take this time to remind everyone that it’s search engine optimization and not manipulation.  The whole point of learning, reading and doing search engine optimization is to clearly understand the details in a site that really make a difference and then execute on the guidelines given by the search engines to make your site as relevant and valuable as it can be.  When you do that, you will be rewarded by the search powers that be and given top placements on a variety of terms.  If you aren’t ranking, maybe you should evaluate the purpose of your site and make sure that you actually adding value to the world wide web and aren’t simply abusing the world wide web and hoping the crap you throw on the wall will be construed as art, and thus rewarded with value.

 The great reason Local search engine marketing is so wonderful and especially the search engine optimization piece is because too many small businesses don’t do the little things to stand out online.  Their title tag is index.html and their sites are images or flash with no content.  They never tell anyone about their site because it’s so bad AND thus never receive link love from customer reviews etc.  Sad but true.

The simple message needs to be and this is a great reminder from anyone involved with search engine optimization.  It’s about optimization, not manipulation!  Happy holidays.