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!

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?

For small business owners the internet has proven to be extremely beneficial.  Unlike traditional forms of advertising and marketing the internet provides several advantages that help small businesses reach more potential customers.

While traditional advertising requires organizations to spend thousands of dollars on branding and promotional activities, online advertising and effective search engine optimization (SEO) yield better results can be achieved with a much smaller investemnt. Moreover, results achieved online offer more lasting benefits than conventional promotions.

More than 80% of people searching for goods and services start their search online. Therefore, if a small business can attract just a fraction of these potential customers to its website and convert then into buyers it will increase its revenues significantly.

Internet marketing, which includes SEO and SEM, requires formulating and implementing effective strategies to draw more targeted traffic that can eventually be converted into customers. Although every business must optimize their websites in the search engines, for an e-commerce website it is an ‘absolute must’. An e-commerce site is a website specifically built for the purpose of transacting business online.

Small business enterprises engaged in e-commerce face fierce competition today. To stay ahead of the competition they need to be visible to their audience and quickly draw their attention.

Ranking higher in the search engines is the first major task, followed by a successful branding/PR campaign. Internet marketing is a direct response medium. Branding is important, but improving your site popularity and getting more visitors to your landing pages is much more crucial in the beginning.

For a small business owner to achieve her highest and best return on investment, it is crucial to first formulate a strategy before starting an internet marketing campaign.

Only after a well thought out strategy and budget are in place should you then move forward with your SEO and SEM marketing plan. Never has it been more important to “measure twice, cut once”.

5 Steps to Online Marketing Success:

1. Know your Audience. This is the most important task since your entire internet marketing campaign is directed towards your niche audience. If you fail to know your audience you will target the wrong people and subsequently lose business. Keeping your ear to the ground and doing a little research will help you find the right strategy and make good decisions from the outset.

2. Set a Goal. Unless you have a well-defined goal, you won’t have any direction. As Tony Robbins writes, “it is no use climbing to the top of the ladder only to find out your ladder is leaning against the wrong house.”

Once you have your goals clear and know your desired outcome you can choose the optimal amount of resources and channel your efforts in the right direction. The budget for small business marketing can be estimated once the goal is set.

Goal Setting Questions to Answer before you begin:

* How many visitors do I need to get to my site to reach my financial goals? How many am I getting now?
* What is a good “Click Through Rate” for my industry?
* Are my website pages, products and services properly optimized on my site before I begin an off site campaign?
* What should I consider a successful return on investment?
* What percentage of my online marketing plan will be “organic,” or natural and what percentage will be paid search (i.e. Google Adwords PPC)? This is an extremely important question to consider as it will determine the specific internet marketing initiatives you will take. See number 3.

3. Select the right SEO techniques. There are several SEO techniques that will prove helpful for your internet marketing efforts. A mix of various techniques is necessary to have a balanced SEO campaign. Basic SEO will include a balanced combination of Niche Directory Submissions, Social Media Marketing, On Page optimization through effective Meta title and description tags, great SEO content, a working internal link structure and a site map to name just a few.

Other important techniques include link building campaigns and excellent Press Release and article marketing strategies.

Finally, and just as important, don’t forget to monitor your competition! Google your keyword search terms and see who ranks highest for your competition. Then, study everything about them.

-What are they doing differently than you?
-What’s working for them and where can you make changes to your strategy to achieve similar results?
-Use Alexa (www.alexa.com) and other traffic/competitive measurement tools to check up on your competition.
-How is their home page and product pages different than yours?
-What Keywords are they using that you are not?
-What Meta Tags are they using?

4. Measure the Results. Without measuring the results and properly analyzing how your website is performing you won’t know if your marketing efforts are bringing positive results.

However, keep in mind it can sometimes take 3 to 6 months to get tangible results from an organic online advertising and marketing campaign. Measuring the results periodically will help you identify if anything is wrong in your strategy or if you need to intensify your campaign.

Keep what works, change what doesn’t. Simple, I know, but you would be surprised how few companies and even SEO firms actually do this for their clients. I also strongly recommend incorporating a measurement tool such as Google Analytics to provide the tools necessary to measure your results.

5. Make proper adjustments. After measuring your results to determine what’s working and what’s not you will need to make adjustments. Again, internet marketing is a direct response medium and A/B testing is crucial for success.

Make changes to improve your results. This will be an ongoing process, not a one time deal. Google, Yahoo and even the smaller search engines continually change their search algorithms. So, what worked one month may not work as well the next. Simple testing and making minor adjustments when needed will keep you ahead of the curve.

Now, more than ever you need to have an effective Internet Marketing campaign in place. Traditional advertising continues to lose market share while online marketing continues to grow at a staggering pace.

If you’re not making excellent use of your online opportunities, I can assure you that your competition is. Stay on top of your game by following the ideas outlined in this article lead your company to new heights this year.