If you have gotten far enough on the internet to be able to read an article, then chances are that you already realize that the internet is all about information. It is about giving information, sharing information, buying information, selling information and receiving information. Run from computers, everything that you see is actually the result of hundreds and thousands of pieces of information that are being interpreted and displayed for you in a form that you can use. Based upon binary code, which to the untrained eye, is nothing more than a series of ones and zeroes, computers and the internet are huge processors of information. When it comes to the internet, the thing to realize is that computers use those copious amounts of data to find the websites that you are looking for, every time that you do a search. A big part of that is the Meta data that is part of every web page on the internet.

Meta data is information that is not visible to the casual observer but that identifies what language a site is written in, what it is about and keywords that apply to that site to the search engines. Meta data can be viewed by looking at the source code of any website. To view the Meta data, go to “View” in your web browser and then click on “source”. A window will open with a huge amount of information, much of which makes no sense to the untrained eye. Toward the top of this, you will see many lines which start out with the word “meta”. This is information that identifies that a site is written in html or xhtml, what the site is about and what keywords are related to that site. Search engines use this information to attempt to provide the most accurate results for keyword searches that people perform.

Having the right Meta data in the header of your website can greatly improve your website traffic and help to eliminate visitors from getting to your site in error and immediately leaving. While all website traffic is good, traffic that stays and looks around is much more valuable to any website than visitors that immediately click away are. Your Meta data, or Meta tags as they are called, give you an excellent opportunity to identify and state the purpose of your site. One of these tags is your Meta description. This description will appear in search engine directories, as the description of what your website is about. Using that information, potential visitors can make an educated decision about whether your site is what they think it is, and whether or not they want to visit it.

Meta keywords are used to help search engines determine what your site is about, so that they will know if a keyword that someone searches on applies to your site or not. By matching the keywords in your Meta data to the keywords being searched for, the search engine can determine whether or not to display your site in the list of results. Unlike keywords which appear in your regular content, keywords in your Meta data do not need to be in sentences or any other type of text. They can be added in a long string in every possible combination that you believe someone might potentially search on to get to your site. For instance, if your site sells embroidered backpacks, you might use the words backpack, backpacks, embroidered backpack, embroidered backpacks, bookbag and bookbags to identify your site.

In some ways, opening an internet business is a lot like opening a store in the real world. You search out the perfect location to open your store, on the internet, that is your web address. You build a beautiful store that is welcoming and attractive.  On the internet, that is going to be your website. In both scenarios, you stock quality merchandise, and you wait for customers to start beating down your doors. And you wait. And sometimes, wait some more. And that is where the similarity ends.  If you had a store in the real world, you could at least hope for some traffic to come to you, just because the outside of your store looks interesting. For an internet store, there is no cozy Main Street location that people will notice as they drive by, on their way home from the gym. An internet store must bring traffic to itself, rather than waiting for traffic to happen, and that is where SEO for small business comes in.

If your store in the real world wasn’t getting enough business from the casual passersby, you would advertise to get people in, right? You would put up a billboard or two, get listed in your yellow pages, maybe take out an ad in the paper or even buy some commercial airtime on the local radio station. Before long, customers would be bound to stop in. By hitting your local area and getting the word out to all of your neighbors, you are bound to bring in some new business. On the internet, the world is your neighborhood. There is no street corner that you can put a sign up on, no local radio station to run a commercial on. If you want people to come to you, you will need them to find you when they type a keyword into a search engine, like Google, or Yahoo. They won’t be searching for your name; they will be searching for your product, so you need the search engines to find your site when people search for your keyword. SEO for small business is how you make this happen

Search engines aren’t like people. They aren’t drawn in by fancy decorations, or free food. They don’t care what color your carpet is or that you offer parking validation. Search engines scour the internet, looking for websites that most closely match the search terms that a user has entered. If someone searches for “edible camera cases”, you can bet that those search engines are looking for sites that reference edible camera cases. They will search the name of the websites – www.ediblecameracases.com? Sounds like a winner to a search engine! –, they will “read” through the content of the site – 101 Recipes for Edible Camera Cases? Score! -, they will look and see if there are links back to your site for that keyword phrase – linked on the Top 10 Edible Camera Case Companies in Des Moines? That’ll work! -, and then they rank their results and spit them out for the end user. The sites in the number one and number two spots might not be the best places to get an edible camera case at all, but they were the sites that had the best SEO for it. SEO for small business makes the difference between people finding you and you sitting in a room full of edible camera cases, all by yourself, wishing that you had gotten less of the banana flavored cases.

Chances are you want traffic.  To get traffic, you will need to optimize your site for the search engines. Once you have it optimized, you will want to keep it optimized.  Once you begin to understand that Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing marketing process, your website will start to achieve much improved traffic rankings and your bottom line will thank you!

If you have an e-commerce business, a blog or an informational or lead generation website,  it’s only logical that you’ll need plenty of traffic to be successful.   Strategies abound for driving traffic and finding buyers.  This post is focused specifically on a few key content marketing strategies.

Content is King. Content is King. Content is King.

Writing is a creative process, it takes a little time, but once written it will spread virally to hundreds, maybe thousands of other sites and the benefits are permanent. The links back to your website from creating remarkable content can also be permanent.  Google loves freshly baked content and your search engine optimization (SEO) will improve as well.

Getting Started with 3 Content Marketing Strategies:

1. Article Marketing

Very simple. Write excellent articles on subjects related to your area of expertise.  “How To” articles are always a great way to start.  Oh, and spend almost as much time creating a great Title as writing the article itself.  Your article title should be compelling and make people want to click through to see more.

Article Title tips:

• Answer a question you get asked frequently:  “How to Write an Effective “How To” Article in 5 Easy Steps.”
• Use numbers: “7 Quick Tips for Keeping the Weight off this Holiday Season.”
• Use a little fear: “Don’t Become a Victim of Your Own Ingorance: The 3 Hidden Dangers of Not Getting Your Annual Physical.”

After your article is written it’s time to get it out there for people to see.  Here’s what to do with it:

• Post it on your blog
• Post it on your social media sites (Facebook and LinkedIn)
• Tweet it to your followers
• Submit to article directories like EZineArticles, Self Growth and Article Base.

Make sure when submitting to article directories that you take some time to complete the Resource Box.  The resource box is the section at the end of the article where you can promote yourself a bit, provide a short bio and a link or two back to your website or blog.

Article marketing is an excellent method of building high quality one way links back to your site and building your credibility online.  Writing remarkable content not only stamps you as an expert in your filed but over time can create an enormous amount of traffic to your site with pre-sold visitors.

Next action: Start writing.

2. Blogging for Business

Blogging is another great way to drive traffic to your website.  Often taken for granted or deemed as not that important by those to unfamiliar with online marketing best practices.  The first recommendation I make to a new SEO consulting client is to get a blog integrated into their site if they don’t have one already.  It they do have one, my next recommendation is to start writing in it consistently.  Make the style all your own and don’t stress over getting everything perfect.

A couple of blog tips:

• Blog posts can be one sentence or two pages, it depends on your content and purpose.  Write concisely and build your post around one central theme.  Try to stay on track so you don’t lose your reader half way through the post.
• Blogs are not full length articles or EBooks.  Most blog posts are 300 to 700 words.  They can be longer (the one you’re reading certainly is!)  if the message you’re conveying simply takes more words to get across.  The point is to let the post be done when you’ve finished covering your topic. Don’t set measurements like, “I’m not gonna finish this post until I’ve written at least 800 words.”  When you’re done, you’re done.
• Make your blog easy for your readers to share (look in the upper right hand corner of this post for the “share/save” button) and also easy to subscribe to (now look to the right and you’ll see “Subscribe to RSS Feeds” and also “Find Us On Facebook.”

3. Participating and Getting Involved

Keeping your ear to the ground and being actively involved in the conversation has never been more important.  It turns out, whether you’re participating or not, the conversation about you, your company, product, service and competition is going on anyway.  Want some influence?  Get involved.

Here’s how:

• Start commenting on relevant blogs in your industry and/or where your prospective customers are hanging out.  You can find great blogs by visiting Technorati or Alltop and typing in related keywords to what you’re looking for.  Learn how to Claim your blog on Technorati by reading a previous post.
  • Become familiar with some of the higher authority blogs that allow comments by reading them for a week or two.  You’ll learn who you like and who you don’t pretty quickly.
  • When adding comments, what you don’t want to write is, “great post,” and that’s it.  Even worse is, “great post, now come look at what I’m selling by clicking here.”  What you DO want to do is add to the post; extend the conversation by adding your own thoughts and unique take on the author’s topic.  Even disagreeing or throwing in a little controversy is a great way to go, as long as you’re not being controversial just to get a rise out of everyone and you have a good reason for why you feel the way you do.

• Create Profiles and become active in a few social bookmarking sites.  Namely, Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious.  Reddit is also great.  Doing this will ensure that your website gets indexed by the search engines almost immediately if it hasn’t been already.  It also builds high quality, one way links back to your site which improves your SEO and can really drive a bunch of traffic as well.  Having unique and interesting content on your site will naturally earn you additional links from other websites and blogs that will want to link back to you.
• Create a Facebook Fan Page, optimize your profile and get involved in the LinkedIn community and start building a following on Twitter.  Each of these are immensely important to your success online but require much more time than we have here to go through in detail.  To start… get started.  Any questions on moving forward after that let me know and I’ll be happy to help.
• Use Twitter Search to type in keywords to find out what’s going on…right now. Again, participate in the conversation, comment, and get involved.  Twitter search is a great tool, take advantage of it.

For small business owners the world over, the Internet has proved to be a tremendous marketing tool for helping them find new customers.  Of course, that only applies if you are a small business owner that has taken advantage of this opportunity.  If you have not, it cannot possibly be due to budget constraints; internet marketing costs a fraction of traditional marketing and delivers much more targeted and measurable results.  The only obstacles to moving forward then, would be lack of knowledge, and time.

The single most important online marketing strategy a local business owner can employ to improve her website’s standing with the search engines and drive more traffic to her site is by encouraging complementary sites to link back to hers.  It does take a bit of time to do this, or you can hire a professional to do it for you for very little money and be sure it’s being done correctly.

Thanks to the World Wide Web, there are no more barriers to entry.  This article will provide you the basics of building links back to your site… so knowledge will no longer be an obstacle either.  Remember, the financial investment is minimal, if anything, and the time it takes to implement these strategies is small investment to make for growing your business in this new world of e-commerce.

A fundamental truth in online marketing: If your have unique quality content then other websites will naturally start linking to your website. Subsequently, the search engines (Google, Yahoo, AOL, others) will give a higher ranking to your website.  This attracts greater targeted traffic and a better prospective customer coming to your website.

Just waiting for others to link to your site is time consuming. Simple actions can be made to speed up the linking process.

Here are the five top strategies for building momentum in actively acquiring links to your site.

1. Optimize Your Website Copy

Make your website copy interesting, informative and interactive. You can divide your articles, or information pages into three sections.

• In the introductory paragraph tell your visitor what you are going to tell them. In other words, give a taste of what the page on your site is about it. Make them want to read more. Hook them right away so they are tuned into your message and curious about what they will learn by reading further.
• In the next two to three paragraphs, tell them what they expected to read after getting an overview in the first paragraph. This is extremely important. Your content must flow naturally and with relevancy from one paragraph to the next.  Also, keep in mind a good sales letter or web copy focuses on only one point at a time. Don’t try to talk about everything and sell the whole store on this one page. If you do, you’ll lose your customer. Keep the writing tight, concise and focused. Respect your reader’s time.
• Finally, sum up with a conclusion. Recommend a solution or specific next steps.

Simple, straightforward language appeals to all. Focus on one or two keywords per page. That’s it. For instance, if you are dealing with home insurance then focus on a one or two keywords related to your home insurance products on one page and if you sell auto insurance talk about that on a completely separate page. Do not combine the two.  Focusing on one idea per page makes your website friendly to Google.

Moreover, keep an eye on what is referred to as your keyword density. Though there is a difference of opinion regarding the keyword density somewhere between 2% and 5% works well.  What that means is the main keywords in your website copy should comprise about 5% of the total website.  If your page copy is 300 words, use your keywords about 15 times.  The placement of the key words is also important. Try to get your keywords used early on, towards the top of the page if possible.  It also helps to make use them in titles, with a bit bigger font and even use bold type face occasionally. Just don’t over do it.

2. Meta Data: Create an Effective Website Meta Title Tag, Meta Description Tag, and Keywords Meta Tag

A definition of Meta Tags: This is a special HTML tag that is used to store information about a Web page but is not displayed in a Web browser. For example, Meta tags provide information such as what program was used to create the page, a description of the page, and keywords that are relevant to the page. Many search engines use the information stored in Meta tags when they index Web pages.

A Meta Title tag is the most important part of any website and is like an ad copy since it is used by Google in its listings. A short, descriptive readable title limited to 10-12 words works best with Google. Use your main keywords in your title tag.

If your Meta Description Tag that tells your potential customers what they want to hear, you will definitely get an added advantage over others in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPS).

Keywords Meta Tags do not have near the impact that they once have but many industry insiders still believe using them help improve your overall search engine rankings.

3. Create Quality Back Links to Your Website

Top TIP:  More important than anything else is how many relevant, complementary websites have a link on their website linking back to yours.  A link from an authoritative site, such as a .edu or .org carry even more weight.  The more “link backs,” the more popular and credible Google will believe your website to be.  Search engine rankings are sometimes referred to as a popularity contest, and to make it simple the more other sites link back to yours, the more popular your site becomes.  Higher search rankings equal more traffic.
4. Use Local Directories Effectively

A website directory is a website that lists hundreds or thousands of subjects, along with links to Web sites about those subjects.  Directories are excellent ways to build quality one way links back to your website.  The Yahoo Directory is the most famous example and the Open Directory is the highest rated free directory submission site.

If your prospective customers are local, make excellent use of local directories. For example, if you are in San Francisco, then go to Google and search for, “directory” + “San Francisco.” A list of all the local directories in San Francisco will be displayed in a few seconds. You could even try searching for, “Dog food ” + “San Francisco,” if you are dealing with dog food.   Submit your website to all suitable directories.  Or, to save time, it is very cost effective to hire a professional internet marketing company to do this for you.  You can get listed in hundreds of directories, both local and national, in a very short time frame.

Another tip:  If you hire out the work, make sure the submissions are being done manually, not automatically.  This is extremely important to improve your chances of having your site accepted to the directory.
5. Create a Proper Site Map and Google Site Map

Site maps are a directory of all your site’s pages with links to every single page and should be updated whenever a new page is added.  Sitemaps are extremely useful for humans and for search engines alike it makes the task of navigating your site simple.   A Google Site Map allows Google to instantly “see” your site and evaluate it. It also works well in getting Google to index (crawl, review) your site faster than it would otherwise.

Using the above strategies yourself or hiring out the work to an internet marketing company will have a dramatic impact on your website.  Increased traffic, greater visibility and more popularity can be yours in a short period of time if you start now and take these strategies one at a time.  The benefits are well worth the time commitment.

With compelling content and the above link building strategies you can make Google, and your customers, fall in love with your website. And after all, isn’t that the whole idea?

Right, and you won’t.  There is an enormous difference between quantity vs quality in social media marketing.  The single biggest mistake you can make when you begin a Twitter account is to try to gain as many indiscriminate followers as possible.

Bragging rights do not contribute to your bottom line.

To be successful, first define what success means to you.  What are you trying to achieve?  What are your end goals?

Do you want to sell more products, drive more leads or RFI’s, bring awareness to a cause?  Excellent.  So, who do you want to follow you?

See, that’s the real question and what most people don’t think about.  Time and again, for example, I see people that sell boats with a 1000 followers in the boat selling business. Or, boat manufactures or boat accessory distributors.  Wrong people.  Easy followers to get but wrong audience.  A boat manufacturer is not going to buy any boats from you.

Who you need following you are boat lovers.  People that live on lakes and rivers.  Current boat owners. You get the idea. These people are prospective buyers.  If you find them, and they follow you, you’re half way there.

To get all the way there, you need to not try to sell them anything.  At least not right away.  The key is to offer your followers unique, interesting, quality, insightful, helpful content.

Some tips:

–Give away your expertise… your return will be far greater than what you are giving away.
–Don’t waste your follower’s time.  If you don’t even find your Tweets unique or interesting, why would the people following you?
–Be selective. To use our example, don’t retweet everything you happen to run across on boats.  Be a specialist. Be particular. Think like the reader.
–Remember you are competing with millions of other Tweeters out there. Some people get hundreds of updates a day.  How do your Tweets stand out.?   In a sea of non-stop Twitter updates, why is anyone going to stop on your name, or your update?   Why? Because you’ve earned their respect and attention through providing quality content.  They know you. They know you’re going to give them something good and not waste their time.
–It’s perfectly ok to promote yourself and your products and services.  But, not until you’ve earned the right to do so.  Give, then get.  Rembember Zig Ziglar’s Golden Rule:  Just help enough other people get what they want and you’ll get what you want.  When you do point people back to your products, the best way is through offering specials, sales, clearance, coupons, limited time deals, etc.  Make it special and exceptional.  Make it exciting!  Not just, we sell boats so for the hundredth time here’s a link to my home page, come check it out.  One method works. The other just turns off your followers.

In sum, look for followers for which you fill a need.  Then fill the need.  That’s it, happy tweeting.