Business Email List Building – What is Your Irresistible Offer? 30 minutes hot and fresh or it’s free! So which company do you think of when you hear this catchphrase? If you guessed Dominoes Pizza, then you’d be right. It was the catchphrase that launched the small pizza business into something that eventually became the biggest pizza chain in the world. Why , well because it wasn’t simply a catchy catchphrase, it also served them well as something called an ‘irresistible offer’.  And  this is something I want to talk more about today.  So What is an ‘Irresistible Offer and Why is it Important to My Business Email List Building? Have you ever come across something be it an advertisement, pamphlet, or signpost that has just caught your attention within the first few seconds of you seeing it? If you can remember such a thing, then you have been the recipient of someone’s ‘irresistible offer’. Now if this company had had a business email list building system in place, then chances are you would be on their business email list. If  you can’t remember  such an offer, then imagine coming across a chiropractor that offers a free massage with every consultation or a vet who can hypnotically suggest to your cat that it won’t shed anymore hair over the sofa as it goes for it’s yearly injections (I wish!). Basically an irresistible offer is something that looks so cool, you immediately decide that you need to have it then and there – simple. You may have in your time come across many offers that weren’t so irresistible such as ‘free measure and quote’, or buy two and get the third one free (although depending on what that is and how much value you’re getting, that may actually be irresistible, but anyway my point here is that: Irresistible offers are crucial to business email list building.    And they can make or break the popularity of your business So what do we do with offers in terms of internet marketing?? Well for one thing, they are great for getting people to join your business email list. One thing  I always tell people is that they should have something irresistible ready for visitors to your site to download every time someone new arrives on your page. Examples of Irresistible Offers Generally, irresistible offers work best when you offer something related to your main product for free so a free teeth cleaning/whitening is idea for cosmetic dental procedures. If you don’t want to offer something for free, give them a coupon. If you don’t have anything you can offer  for  free, pay someone else to offer a service. For example, a chiropractor can pay a massage therapist or a builder can pay a painter to provide a service for free or at a heavily discounted rate. My Big Tip for making Irresistible Offers Work Business email list building works best when an offer is tangible. You may wish to provide financial services but make sure people understand exactly what they are going to get. It it a one-hour consultation for free? Are you writing a guide to help people better maximise their tax return? How quickly can they start seeing results? 30 days? One week? Use metrics wherever possible so it is easier for people to really feel the benefit and how it will impact their lives. For example, ‘Lose weight fast’ is not as effective as ‘Drop two dress sizes in two weeks’. If you would like to know more about how  to increase your local businesses bottom line with irresistible offers, then you can click here to see the webinar by Russell Brunson in which gives more detail on how irresistible offers work plus other small business list building tips that will help bring your business to the next level. Also don’T forget to click her efor my free 21-point website self-analysis checklist or here for another free gift, a guide to unleashing Google +. Cheers and see you in the next post. Don’t forget to hit ‘like’, retweet or leave a comment (or whatever else we have to do these days to sty ahead of the game) Cheers Linda    

Business Email List Building – What is Your Irresistible Offer?

30 minutes hot and fresh or it’s free!

So which company do you think of when you hear this catchphrase?

If you guessed Dominoes Pizza, then you’d be right. It was the catchphrase that launched the small pizza business into something that eventually became the biggest pizza chain in the world.

Why , well because it wasn’t simply a catchy catchphrase, it also served them well as something called an ‘irresistible offer’.  And  this is something I want to talk more about today.

business email list building

 So What is an ‘Irresistible Offer and Why is it Important to My Business Email List Building?

Have you ever come across something be it an advertisement, pamphlet, or signpost that has just caught your attention within the first few seconds of you seeing it? If you can remember such a thing, then you have been the recipient of someone’s ‘irresistible offer’. Now if this company had had a business email list building system in place, then chances are you would be on their business email list.

If  you can’t remember  such an offer, then imagine coming across a chiropractor that offers a free massage with every consultation or a vet who can hypnotically suggest to your cat that it won’t shed anymore hair over the sofa as it goes for it’s yearly injections (I wish!).

Basically an irresistible offer is something that looks so cool, you immediately decide that you need to have it then and there – simple.

You may have in your time come across many offers that weren’t so irresistible such as ‘free measure and quote’, or buy two and get the third one free (although depending on what that is and how much value you’re getting, that may actually be irresistible, but anyway my point here is that:

Irresistible offers are crucial to business email list building. 

 

And they can make or break the popularity of your business

So what do we do with offers in terms of internet marketing??

Well for one thing, they are great for getting people to join your business email list.

One thing  I always tell people is that they should have something irresistible ready for visitors to your site to download every time someone new arrives on your page.

Examples of Irresistible Offers

Generally, irresistible offers work best when you offer something related to your main product for free so a free teeth cleaning/whitening is idea for cosmetic dental procedures. If you don’t want to offer something for free, give them a coupon. If youbusiness email list building don’t have anything you can offer  for  free, pay someone else to offer a service. For example, a chiropractor can pay a massage therapist or a builder can pay a painter to provide a service for free or at a heavily discounted rate.

My Big Tip for making Irresistible Offers Work

Business email list building works best when an offer is tangible. You may wish to provide financial services but make sure people understand exactly what they are going to get. It it a one-hour consultation for free? Are you writing a guide to help people better maximise their tax return? How quickly can they start seeing results? 30 days? One week? Use metrics wherever possible so it is easier for people to really feel the benefit and how it will impact their lives. For example,

‘Lose weight fast’ is not as effective as ‘Drop two dress sizes in two weeks’.

If you would like to know more about how  to increase your local businesses bottom line with irresistible offers, then you can click here to see the webinar by Russell Brunson in which gives more detail on how irresistible offers work plus other small business list building tips that will help bring your business to the next level.

Also don’T forget to click her efor my free 21-point website self-analysis checklist or here for another free gift, a guide to unleashing Google +.

Cheers and see you in the next post. Don’t forget to hit ‘like’, retweet or leave a comment (or whatever else we have to do these days to sty ahead of the game)

Cheers

Linda

 

 

Small Business Marketing Resources – Five Ways to Maximise Your Fanpage So unless you have been living in a very remote part of the world, you would know by now that facebook is one of the best small business marketing resources there is. Lets face it, all of your customers and potential customers are already on it and all you have to do is learn how to leverage it for your benefit. Ah, but here is where most business owners get it wrong – they have no idea how exactly to add facebook to their arsenal of small business marketing resources. I have recently been doing a bit of research on this myself and have come up with a few ways to increase the effectiveness of fan pages and here are the top five things I have learned over the last week. 1) Make sure your page is search engine optimised Remember keywords? those little search phrases that should be dispersed all through your content and blog posts. Weeell – they are just as important for facebook as well (in fact all social media posting you do should be maximising them). There are a couple of ways to do this. Firstly, you should ensure that when you set up your page you choose a name that has a keyword phrase in it. That way if people have never heard of your business, they can still find it by searching for specific keywords on facebook. So if your business is about making origami ducks and you know that this is a popular search term then there is nothing wrong with using this as the name of the page. Also make sure you put keyword phrases anywhere where there is text. Search engines such as Google do take notice of facebook pages so make sure you don’t waste this opportunity. 2) Get Your Timing Right Often, the most effective small business marketing resources are those that are based on timing and facebook is no exception. Did you realise that there is an optimum time to make posts? Well there is and that time is between the hours of 8.00 – 10.00 AM and between 6.00 to 9.00 PM. So make sure you are posting between these times. If you are living in a different country from your main reader base, make sure you check the international time zones so you can make sure you are getting your audience at these key times. 3) Use the Question Feature One of the best way to engage with followers is to ask them for their opinion on something and you can do this you need to use the question feature which can be found when you press the home tab. Questions are important because they encourage people to leave likes, responses and comments, which in case you didn’t know, are brilliant for earning you good edgerank ( a system by which facebook measures the popularity of your page by the number of interactions it has) and thereby puts your page in front of many more people. So go to your home tab, select the questions tab and make sure you phrase a question that could have multiple answers (a bit like the old multiple choice questions in old high school exams) and then select as many options as you need for answers so your question should look like this: People check whichever answer they agree with and away you go… 4)  Build A Fangate A what??  OK, basically a fangate is something like a shadow box that makes sure people hit the like button before they proceed to the main part of your page usually for some goodies like a free download or video (so make sure you have one ready). And when someone enters your page it will look like this: The first thing they will see is the like button in the foreground with the rest of the content being a blur. Once they hit like, the page opens up to them. Fangates can be created easily by visiting ‘faceitpages.com’ or if you want to spend a little money getting your page just right, you can always use Brian Moran’s ‘get 10,000 fans’ and get a professional-looking fangate done in 5 minutes. Either way, fangates are one of those small business marketing resources you really can’t afford to be without. 5) Use Insights It’s not that we don’t already love those facebook designers. But anyway, I’m going to give us all another reason. And that is Insights. In case you don’t know, Insights  is a free service that has access to all the data  from your fan page and can produce a nifty little report which it delivers to you once a week. This way you always know what your page is doing in terms of ‘likes’, ‘users’ and all of that good stuff. You have to have 30 fans for insights to kick in but I’m sure after all you have red here, you won’t have trouble gathering those. Soooo, for heaven’s sakes use this info. See how people respond to your posts. Which ones are the most popular? How many people liked a particular comment and make sure you continue to keep the fans satisfied…. Well that about finishes my top 5 tips for  leveraging facebook fanpages. Now lets get started! Oh and while we are on the subject of facebook, don’t forget to hit the ‘like’ button etc and lets get this conent shared around. Also, if you would like more small business marketing resources, then don’t forget to download your free guide to using Google+ or download your copy of the 21-point checklist which will help point you in the right direction. Cheers Linda

Small Business Marketing Resources – Five Ways to Maximise Your Fanpage

So unless you have been living in a very remote part of the world, you would know by now that facebook is one of the best small business marketing resources there is. Lets face it, all of your customers and potential customers are already on it and all you have to do is learn how to leverage it for your benefit. Ah, but here is where most business owners get it wrong – they have no idea how exactly to add facebook to their arsenal of small business marketing resources.

I have recently been doing a bit of research on this myself and have come up with a few ways to increase the effectiveness of fan pages and here are the top five things I have learned over the last week.

1) Make sure your page is search engine optimised

Remember keywords? those little search phrases that should be dispersed all through your content and blog posts. Weeell – they are just as important for facebook as well (in fact all social media posting you do should be maximising them). There are a couple of ways to do this. Firstly, you should ensure that when you set up your page you choose a name that has a keyword phrase in it. That way if people have never heard of your business, they can still find it by searching for specific keywords on facebook. So if your business is about making origami ducks and you know that this is a popular search term then there is nothing wrong with using this as the name of the page. Also make sure you put keyword phrases anywhere where there is text. Search engines such as Google do take notice of facebook pages so make sure you don’t waste this opportunity.

2) Get Your Timing Right

Often, the most effective small business marketing resources are those that are based on timing and facebook is no exception. Did you realise that there is an optimum time to make posts? Well there is and that time is between the hours of 8.00 – 10.00 AM and between 6.00 to 9.00 PM. So make sure you are posting between these times. If you are living in a different country from your main reader base, make sure you check the international time zones so you can make sure you are getting your audience at these key times.

3) Use the Question Feature

One of the best way to engage with followers is to ask them for their opinion on something and you can do this you need to use the question feature which can be found when you press the home tab. Questions are important because they encourage people to leave likes, responses and comments, which in case you didn’t know, are brilliant for earning you good edgerank ( a system by which facebook measures the popularity of your page by the number of interactions it has) and thereby puts your page in front of many more people.

So go to your home tab, select the questions tab and make sure you phrase a question that could have multiple answers (a bit like the old multiple choice questions in old high school exams) and then select as many options as you need for answers so your question should look like this:

People check whichever answer they agree with and away you go…

4)  Build A Fangate

A what??  OK, basically a fangate is something like a shadow box that makes sure people hit the like button before they proceed to the main part of your page usually for some goodies like a free download or video (so make sure you have one ready). And when someone enters your page it will look like this:

The first thing they will see is the like button in the foreground with the rest of the content being a blur. Once they hit like, the page opens up to them. Fangates can be created easily by visiting ‘faceitpages.com’ or if you want to spend a little money getting your page just right, you can always use Brian Moran’s ‘get 10,000 fans’ and get a professional-looking fangate done in 5 minutes. Either way, fangates are one of those small business marketing resources you really can’t afford to be without.

5) Use Insights

It’s not that we don’t already love those facebook designers. But anyway, I’m going to give us all another reason. And that is Insights. In case you don’t know, Insights  is a free service that has access to all the data  from your fan page and can produce a nifty little report which it delivers to you once a week. This way you always know what your page is doing in terms of ‘likes’, ‘users’ and all of that good stuff. You have to have 30 fans for insights to kick in but I’m sure after all you have red here, you won’t have trouble gathering those.

Soooo, for heaven’s sakes use this info. See how people respond to your posts. Which ones are the most popular? How many people liked a particular comment and make sure you continue to keep the fans satisfied….

Well that about finishes my top 5 tips for  leveraging facebook fanpages. Now lets get started!

Oh and while we are on the subject of facebook, don’t forget to hit the ‘like’ button etc and lets get this conent shared around.

Also, if you would like more small business marketing resources, then don’t forget to download your free guide to using Google+ or download your copy of the 21-point checklist which will help point you in the right direction.

Cheers

Linda

Small Business Marketing Resources – Five Ways to Maximise Your Fanpage So unless you have been living in a very remote part of the world, you would know by now that facebook is one of the best small business marketing resources there is. Lets face it, all of your customers and potential customers are already on it and all you have to do is learn how to leverage it for your benefit. Ah, but here is where most business owners get it wrong – they have no idea how exactly to add facebook to their arsenal of small business marketing resources. I have recently been doing a bit of research on this myself and have come up with a few ways to increase the effectiveness of fan pages and here are the top five things I have learned over the last week. 1) Make sure your page is search engine optimised Remember keywords? those little search phrases that should be dispersed all through your content and blog posts. Weeell – they are just as important for facebook as well (in fact all social media posting you do should be maximising them). There are a couple of ways to do this. Firstly, you should ensure that when you set up your page you choose a name that has a keyword phrase in it. That way if people have never heard of your business, they can still find it by searching for specific keywords on facebook. So if your business is about making origami ducks and you know that this is a popular search term then there is nothing wrong with using this as the name of the page. Also make sure you put keyword phrases anywhere where there is text. Search engines such as Google do take notice of facebook pages so make sure you don’t waste this opportunity. 2) Get Your Timing Right Often, the most effective small business marketing resources are those that are based on timing and facebook is no exception. Did you realise that there is an optimum time to make posts? Well there is and that time is between the hours of 8.00 – 10.00 AM and between 6.00 to 9.00 PM. So make sure you are posting between these times. If you are living in a different country from your main reader base, make sure you check the international time zones so you can make sure you are getting your audience at these key times. 3) Use the Question Feature One of the best way to engage with followers is to ask them for their opinion on something and you can do this you need to use the question feature which can be found when you press the home tab. Questions are important because they encourage people to leave likes, responses and comments, which in case you didn’t know, are brilliant for earning you good edgerank ( a system by which facebook measures the popularity of your page by the number of interactions it has) and thereby puts your page in front of many more people. So go to your home tab, select the questions tab and make sure you phrase a question that could have multiple answers (a bit like the old multiple choice questions in old high school exams) and then select as many options as you need for answers so your question should look like this: People check whichever answer they agree with and away you go… 4)  Build A Fangate A what??  OK, basically a fangate is something like a shadow box that makes sure people hit the like button before they proceed to the main part of your page usually for some goodies like a free download or video (so make sure you have one ready). And when someone enters your page it will look like this: The first thing they will see is the like button in the foreground with the rest of the content being a blur. Once they hit like, the page opens up to them. Fangates can be created easily by visiting ‘faceitpages.com’ or if you want to spend a little money getting your page just right, you can always use Brian Moran’s ‘get 10,000 fans’ and get a professional-looking fangate done in 5 minutes. Either way, fangates are one of those small business marketing resources you really can’t afford to be without. 5) Use Insights It’s not that we don’t already love those facebook designers. But anyway, I’m going to give us all another reason. And that is Insights. In case you don’t know, Insights  is a free service that has access to all the data  from your fan page and can produce a nifty little report which it delivers to you once a week. This way you always know what your page is doing in terms of ‘likes’, ‘users’ and all of that good stuff. You have to have 30 fans for insights to kick in but I’m sure after all you have red here, you won’t have trouble gathering those. Soooo, for heaven’s sakes use this info. See how people respond to your posts. Which ones are the most popular? How many people liked a particular comment and make sure you continue to keep the fans satisfied…. Well that about finishes my top 5 tips for  leveraging facebook fanpages. Now lets get started! Oh and while we are on the subject of facebook, don’t forget to hit the ‘like’ button etc and lets get this conent shared around. Also, if you would like more small business marketing resources, then don’t forget to download your free guide to using Google+ or download your copy of the 21-point checklist which will help point you in the right direction. Cheers Linda

Small Business Marketing Resources – Five Ways to Maximise Your Fanpage

So unless you have been living in a very remote part of the world, you would know by now that facebook is one of the best small business marketing resources there is. Lets face it, all of your customers and potential customers are already on it and all you have to do is learn how to leverage it for your benefit. Ah, but here is where most business owners get it wrong – they have no idea how exactly to add facebook to their arsenal of small business marketing resources.

I have recently been doing a bit of research on this myself and have come up with a few ways to increase the effectiveness of fan pages and here are the top five things I have learned over the last week.

1) Make sure your page is search engine optimised

Remember keywords? those little search phrases that should be dispersed all through your content and blog posts. Weeell – they are just as important for facebook as well (in fact all social media posting you do should be maximising them). There are a couple of ways to do this. Firstly, you should ensure that when you set up your page you choose a name that has a keyword phrase in it. That way if people have never heard of your business, they can still find it by searching for specific keywords on facebook. So if your business is about making origami ducks and you know that this is a popular search term then there is nothing wrong with using this as the name of the page. Also make sure you put keyword phrases anywhere where there is text. Search engines such as Google do take notice of facebook pages so make sure you don’t waste this opportunity.

2) Get Your Timing Right

Often, the most effective small business marketing resources are those that are based on timing and facebook is no exception. Did you realise that there is an optimum time to make posts? Well there is and that time is between the hours of 8.00 – 10.00 AM and between 6.00 to 9.00 PM. So make sure you are posting between these times. If you are living in a different country from your main reader base, make sure you check the international time zones so you can make sure you are getting your audience at these key times.

3) Use the Question Feature

One of the best way to engage with followers is to ask them for their opinion on something and you can do this you need to use the question feature which can be found when you press the home tab. Questions are important because they encourage people to leave likes, responses and comments, which in case you didn’t know, are brilliant for earning you good edgerank ( a system by which facebook measures the popularity of your page by the number of interactions it has) and thereby puts your page in front of many more people.

So go to your home tab, select the questions tab and make sure you phrase a question that could have multiple answers (a bit like the old multiple choice questions in old high school exams) and then select as many options as you need for answers so your question should look like this:

People check whichever answer they agree with and away you go…

4)  Build A Fangate

A what??  OK, basically a fangate is something like a shadow box that makes sure people hit the like button before they proceed to the main part of your page usually for some goodies like a free download or video (so make sure you have one ready). And when someone enters your page it will look like this:

The first thing they will see is the like button in the foreground with the rest of the content being a blur. Once they hit like, the page opens up to them. Fangates can be created easily by visiting ‘faceitpages.com’ or if you want to spend a little money getting your page just right, you can always use Brian Moran’s ‘get 10,000 fans’ and get a professional-looking fangate done in 5 minutes. Either way, fangates are one of those small business marketing resources you really can’t afford to be without.

5) Use Insights

It’s not that we don’t already love those facebook designers. But anyway, I’m going to give us all another reason. And that is Insights. In case you don’t know, Insights  is a free service that has access to all the data  from your fan page and can produce a nifty little report which it delivers to you once a week. This way you always know what your page is doing in terms of ‘likes’, ‘users’ and all of that good stuff. You have to have 30 fans for insights to kick in but I’m sure after all you have red here, you won’t have trouble gathering those.

Soooo, for heaven’s sakes use this info. See how people respond to your posts. Which ones are the most popular? How many people liked a particular comment and make sure you continue to keep the fans satisfied….

Well that about finishes my top 5 tips for  leveraging facebook fanpages. Now lets get started!

Oh and while we are on the subject of facebook, don’t forget to hit the ‘like’ button etc and lets get this conent shared around.

Also, if you would like more small business marketing resources, then don’t forget to download your free guide to using Google+ or download your copy of the 21-point checklist which will help point you in the right direction.

Cheers

Linda

Eight Must-Have Plugins For Every WordPress Site I had a couple of spare hours today so I decided to do what any self-respecting blogger does and check out a few plugins. Now I know that’s not everybody’s idea of fun but I reckon it’s something that is essential for every blogger to do from time to time. Those of you who have been operating your own site for a while will most likely already have a deep appreciation for the wonder of plugins but if you are a new site owner or you haven’t taken the time to really explore the benefits of plugins on your site then you need to read on. Because plugins are extremely easy to use and when used correctly can do things for your site that not only make the user experience a lot better, actually improve how your site ranks on the search engines. Yep, they’re that good. Now here is the tricky part: there are so many weird and wonderful plugins out there that it is easy for a newbie to become overwhelmed by all of the fancy gadgets (a bit like being  kid in a toystore). e thing I like most about this plugin is that you don’t have to be an SEO expert to make it work. Anyone can use it. And experienced bloggers will love the way it takes all the guesswork out of SEO. SEO pressor costs $47 for a single-site license or there is the option to get a multi-site license for $97 and I do believe it is absolutely worth the money. 2) Google XML Sitemap Generator 3) Google Analytics for WordPress: his plugin allows you to track and analyse activity happening on your blog by giving you feedback in the form of actual statisitcs and graphic data. It’s great for when you are serious about getting results and you need to know what is attracting visitors, clickthroughs etc. and what isn’t. Installation is simple and done using an API key. Simply authenticate and select the site you want to track and let the plugin do all the work. For those of you who are into split testing, the plugin gives you the option to test according to variables such as catagory, author and post type so you can focus your efforts on what gets the best results and not waste your time on what doesn’t. This is for sure one of my personal favourites. TIP: make sure you watch the instructional videos made by the plugin’s creator so that you maximise your usage of it. 4) W3 Total Cache Where other plugins may focus on the content of your site, W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your blog by improving your server performance and caching every aspect of your site. This is the go-to plugin for reducing download time and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration. You may not know this but site performance and usability affects the way that Google views your site so things like how long your pages take to download can actually affect your rankings and this nifty little plugin takes care of all of that. And it’s freeeeeee. Definitely worth installing! 5) Comment Luv One thing I love as a blogger is when people leave comments under my posts. But not everybody takes the time to do this so what to do??? Well one of the best things you can do is to install this great plugin. Basically, it encourages people to leave a comment by allowing them to place a link to their latest blog post under their comment. Now I know that when I see CL on someone’s site I reckon I’m about 10x more likely to leave a comment than on non-loved sites. This creates great rapport with your readers as you are actually rewarding them for their feedback. The more comments, the more social proof and the more popular your blog looks. And, as you can see,  it looks really friendly once it’s installed.     There is a free basic version but if you want to take advantage of all of the features, then I would go for one of the paid versions ($67 for a single site and $97 for multiple sites). 6) Shareaholic: This is the one that you can see at the bottom of my post which has all of the different social media sharing options under it. This is free and dead easy to use and basically encourages people to share your posts and well, it doesn’t get much better than that! I’m using ‘sharing is caring’ bookmarks but there is classy and sassy as well. 7) Akismet I think just about everybody knows about this one already but if you don’t then this is the plugin that keeps all of the spam comments out of your queue. I f you have ever woken up in the morning to discover that your inbox is full of notifications that there are comments waiting for your moderation only to discover that you are the victim of large amounts of SPAM then this plugin is your new best friend. This is a subscription plugin but saves you so much time it is absolutely worth the fee. You will need to get an API key to install it but it’s very easy to use. All In One SEO This is one of the most-used plug-ins. Bloggers just love and why not as, just like SEO pressor, it takes much of the guesswork out of the whole SEO experience. Actually, this plugin goes further than SEO pressor because it  helps to optimize the title, meta description, meta keyword of your blog and individual post and articles. Customize in your own way to yield maximum results. Some people only use this and don’t worry about SEO pressor but in my opinion, they are two very different plugins and yes, they can be used side by side without the script crashing. There is a paid version of All In One but by most reports, it doesn’t seem to do very much so if I were you don’t be sucked into paying the $39 asking fee. The free version is all you need. So there you have it. Eight essential wordpress plugins which will improve the overall performance of your blog. In my next post I would like to introduce you to another plugin which, while not essential, will increase the visual appeal of your posts. So don’t forget to join me for that. Have a great day and remember if you haven’t done already, you can download your free guide to using google plus by clicking here or download my 21-point checklist. Linda       No comments yet Sign in and Free E-Report Name: Email: We respect your email privacy Email Marketing by AWeber Download your free copy of the e-book ‘Uncovering Google Plus - the Next Social Media Monster’ Join the Conversation Linda Paull LindaPaull1 LindaPaull1 definitive list of essential wordpress plugins..http://lindapaull.com/blog/eight-must-have-plugins-for-every-wordpress-site/ about 1 hour ago · reply · retweet · favorite LindaPaull1 It’s amazing what people will do for five bucks. the Friend You Never Knew You Had….. - goo.gl/UX1Wy via @Shareaholic 18 days ago · reply · retweet · favorite LindaPaull1 LinkedIn Groups and Answers | Wordtracker bit.ly/H1mHgj 23 days ago · reply · retweet · favorite LindaPaull1 The LinkedIn Blog » 5 ways to get more from your LinkedIn Groups blog.linkedin.com/2009/03/31/5-w… 25 days ago · reply · retweet · favorite Join the conversation Copyright © Powered by OptimizePress Website Self-Analysis Free Webinar Download Free E-Book Work With Linda SEO Powered By SEOPressor Linda Paull Dashboard Edit Post Add New Comments 2 Appearance Updates 3 Shortlink Performance

Eight Must-Have Plugins For Every WordPress Site

I had a couple of spare hours today so I decided to do what any self-respecting blogger does and check out a few plugins. Now I know that’s not everybody’s idea of fun but I reckon it’s something that is essential for every blogger to do from time to time.

Those of you who have been operating your own site for a while will most likely already have a deep appreciation for the wonder of plugins but if you are a new site owner or you haven’t taken the time to really explore the benefits of plugins on your site then you need to read on. Because plugins are extremely easy to use and when used correctly can do things for your site that not only make the user experience a lot better, actually improve how your site ranks on the search engines. Yep, they’re that good.

Now here is the tricky part: there are so many weird and wonderful plugins out there that it is easy for a newbie to become overwhelmed by all of the fancy gadgets (a bit like being  kid in a toystore).

e thing I like most about this plugin is that you don’t have to be an SEO expert to make it work. Anyone can use it. And experienced bloggers will love the way it takes all the guesswork out of SEO.

SEO pressor costs $47 for a single-site license or there is the option to get a multi-site license for $97 and I do believe it is absolutely worth the money.

2) Google XML Sitemap Generator

3) Google Analytics for WordPress:

his plugin allows you to track and analyse activity happening on your blog by giving you feedback in the form of actual statisitcs and graphic data. It’s great for when you are serious about getting results and you need to know what is attracting visitors, clickthroughs etc. and what isn’t.

Installation is simple and done using an API key. Simply authenticate and select the site you want to track and let the plugin do all the work.

For those of you who are into split testing, the plugin gives you the option to test according to variables such as catagory, author and post type so you can focus your efforts on what gets the best results and not waste your time on what doesn’t.

This is for sure one of my personal favourites. TIP: make sure you watch the instructional videos made by the plugin’s creator so that you maximise your usage of it.

4) W3 Total Cache

Where other plugins may focus on the content of your site, W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your blog by improving your server performance and caching every aspect of your site. This is the go-to plugin for reducing download time and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration. You may not know this but site performance and usability affects the way that Google views your site so things like how long your pages take to download can actually affect your rankings and this nifty little plugin takes care of all of that. And it’s freeeeeee. Definitely worth installing!

5) Comment Luv

One thing I love as a blogger is when people leave comments under my posts. But not everybody takes the time to do this so what to do??? Well one of the best things you can do is to install this great plugin. Basically, it encourages people to leave a comment by allowing them to place a link to their latest blog post under their comment.

Now I know that when I see CL on someone’s site I reckon I’m about 10x more likely to leave a comment than on non-loved sites. This creates great rapport with your readers as you are actually rewarding them for their feedback. The more comments, the more social proof and the more popular your blog looks. And, as you can see,  it looks really friendly once it’s installed.

 

 

There is a free basic version but if you want to take advantage of all of the features, then I would go for one of the paid versions ($67 for a single site and $97 for multiple sites).

6) Shareaholic:

This is the one that you can see at the bottom of my post which has all of the different social media sharing options under it. This is free and dead easy to use and basically encourages people to share your posts and well, it doesn’t get much better than that! I’m using ‘sharing is caring’ bookmarks but there is classy and sassy as well.

7) Akismet

I think just about everybody knows about this one already but if you don’t then this is the plugin that keeps all of the spam comments out of your queue. I f you have ever woken up in the morning to discover that your inbox is full of notifications that there are comments waiting for your moderation only to discover that you are the victim of large amounts of SPAM then this plugin is your new best friend. This is a subscription plugin but saves you so much time it is absolutely worth the fee. You will need to get an API key to install it but it’s very easy to use.

8) All In One SEO

This is one of the most-used plug-ins. Bloggers just love and why not as, just like SEO pressor, it takes much of the guesswork out of the whole SEO experience. Actually, this plugin goes further than SEO pressor because it  helps to optimize the title, meta description, meta keyword of your blog and individual post and articles. Customize in your own way to yield maximum results. Some people only use this and don’t worry about SEO pressor but in my opinion, they are two very different plugins and yes, they can be used side by side without the script crashing.

There is a paid version of All In One but by most reports, it doesn’t seem to do very much so if I were you don’t be sucked into paying the $39 asking fee. The free version is all you need.

So there you have it. Eight essential wordpress plugins which will improve the overall performance of your blog. In my next post I would like to introduce you to another plugin which, while not essential, will increase the visual appeal of your posts. So don’t forget to join me for that.

Have a great day and remember if you haven’t done already, you can download your free guide to using google plus by clicking here or download my 21-point checklist.

Linda

 

 

 

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LindaPaull1 definitive list of essential wordpress plugins..http://lindapaull.com/blog/eight-must-have-plugins-for-every-wordpress-site/ about 1 hour ago · reply · retweet · favorite

LindaPaull1 It’s amazing what people will do for five bucks. the Friend You Never Knew You Had….. - goo.gl/UX1Wy via @Shareaholic 18 days ago · reply · retweet · favorite

LindaPaull1 LinkedIn Groups and Answers | Wordtracker bit.ly/H1mHgj 23 days ago · reply · retweet · favorite

LindaPaull1 The LinkedIn Blog » 5 ways to get more from your LinkedIn Groups blog.linkedin.com/2009/03/31/5-w… 25 days ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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How To Become A Trusted Authority In Your Niche What do Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson and Deepak Chopra have in common? They are all percieved as the ‘trusted authority‘ in their field. One of the biggest local marketing strategies you need to master is the ability to have yourself recognised as a trusted authority. Why? Because there are hundreds of sites on the net pushing the same product or service as you, so how do potential customers recognise you as being the one they should go with? Well that’s easy. They go with the person who they can trust and the one who seems to be the most knowledgable on a subject – in ther words, they go with the ‘trusted authority‘. And the benefits are awesome. When you are the ‘trusted authority’, you can charge more for your services and you will have people coming to you and you won’t have to spend so much money marketing products. So What is a ‘Trusted Authority’ and How Do You Become One? In order to be a trusted authority, you need to be able to connect with others on a deep level. You need to reach out and share your knowledge with others and you need to do it by identifying what problems your target buyers are and produce chunks of information that addresses it. That chunk could be a blog post, a link to something that you’ve heard, a video or a webinar. But the central message here is show that you know what type of problems people’s are having and give evidence that you know how to help them to solve it. You Can Become A Trusted Authority by: 1) WRITING ARTICLES Article marketing is still the best way to build backlinks and gain credibility towards the public AND Google all in one go! What the question on most people’s lips is ‘What should I write?’ By the far the most efficient way to utilise article marketing is the good old ‘how to’ article and make sure it includes these magic words: ‘how to’, ‘tips’, ‘ways to’, ‘the top 5′. These are easy to write – you can use bullet points plus because they tend to have a lot of white space, they are ideal for people to read from their computers. Keep the sentences short and sweet, the title catchy and you have a winner. After you write the article you need to submit it to an article sharing site. The most important of these sites is Ezine articles, but there’s also Articles Base, Buzzle,  Go articles, Articles dashboard. Actually, there are thousands of article directories out there but 90% of them are useless in tems of the quality of link you will get. You can also purchase software that automatically submits your articles to thousands of directories. There is a danger though and that is that it may build up too many links too quickly. (read more about this in my other article about backlinks and link velocity). I do mine manually and I recommend you do the same. One final note. If you want to sound more like a trusted authority, make sure you create an authoritative-sounding author’s sig box. Include a couple of backlinks in the sig box and you’re away. 2) WRITING PRESS RELEASES A step up from writing articles is writing press releases. But be careful, press releases are different from articles and the submission sites are looking for particular types of content that is newsworthy, not just general information about your business. I wouldn’t do them constantly but they are a great way to make announcements about new things that may be happening in your business or industry. Check WikiHow for a fantastic article on how to write a good press release and look up some press release submission sites on Google. There are some which may be relevant to your niche and others which are more general. The great thing about press releases is that they can get you some high-quality backlinks. 3) HAVING A FREE E-BOOK OR REPORT TO GIVE AWAY God, I love free e-books, and so do a lot of other people so make sure you have one on your site that people can download. Don’t think you can wite a book? No problem. Just go to google and look for ‘free brandable e-books’ and see what comes up. I like ‘thebestofwww.com’. You should be able to find something that suits your business and if you re-create the cover and put your link in it, then make it available for people to download once they leave their name and email address in your auto-responder, it’ll make you look like a published author and there’s no better way to become a trusted authority than that. 4) TAKING PART IN FORUMS Forums are a great way to get in there and spread some of your knowledge around. The best thing here is that there are heaps of people who have problems and who are looking for answers so there are plenty of chances for you to help someone to solve a problem. But forums usually have a few rules and people who monitor them to make sure everybody is following the rules. This is how I recommend you use forums: Create a really professional-looking profile with a photo. If you take your time to do this in forums, then the monitors won’t think you are just there to spam the forum with posts about your business. Introduce yourself to other members if there is a way to do this. Go through the various discussions to see whether you can answer anyone’s problems. And give constructive answers to these questions. Also leave comments and generally interact. The more you do this, the more you can leave your signature and this can help you with backlinks. If they have a blog, use it but don’t crowd it with useless information. Start a group within that forum and use it to connect with people that share similar interests. 5) DOING A WEBINAR People often freak out at the thought of doing a webinar, but don’t because webinars are one of THE best ways to establish yourself as a trusted authority on a subject. And they are lot easier to do than you think. One of the best resources is something called ‘Go to Webinar’ and it allows you to create marketing tools, information and training events. And because it is so cost-effective (think no trade show booth rental or staff costs), the ROI is excellent. Go To Webinar has a 30-day trial which you can get for free so you can hone in on your webinar skills plus it allows the novice to practise presenting their webinar. 6) GET THE PLUGIN Not only do your customers care that you are a trusted authority but Google does as well. It knows that people like to get their information from authority sites and so ranks those that are percieved to have a high level of authority a lot higher than those which don’t. So how does Google know which sites are the ‘authority’ sites and which sites aren’t? Well one way is to count the number of backlinks the site has. Another way is to look at the number of features that site has. In other words, Google looks for things like social/viral engagement buttons, sharing features, advanced security, and full integration with Facebook/Twitter/etc. Now I can understand where Google is coming from here. Wouldn’t you agree that site owners who take the time to place all of those advanced features on their sites have a higher likelihood of providing quality information than those that don’t. If the owner is not a professional, they wouldn’t bother to have all of these features on their site. Lucky for you, you don’t really have to know what all of these sophisticated techie features are, you can just get the plugin and it does all the work for you (well you still have to install it). The point of it is this. When Google sees that you have lots of different features enabled, it will  treat you with more respect and ultimately rank you higher because it also percieves you to be a trusted authority. Just go to www.authorityemulator.com and grab a copy. Anyway, so that’s my advice for today. Don’t forget to ‘tweet’ or ‘like’ or ‘plus’ this article if you have enjoyed reading it. And also don’t forget to download your free gift or my 21-point checklist so you can see how efficiently your site is working. Cheers Linda

How To Become A Trusted Authority In Your Niche

What do Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson and Deepak Chopra have in common? They are all percieved as the ‘trusted authority‘ in their field. One of the biggest local marketing strategies you need to master is the ability to have yourself recognised as a trusted authority. Why? Because there are hundreds of sites on the net pushing the same product or service as you, so how do potential customers recognise you as being the one they should go with? Well that’s easy. They go with the person who they can trust and the one who seems to be the most knowledgable on a subject – in ther words, they go with the ‘trusted authority‘.

And the benefits are awesome. When you are the ‘trusted authority’, you can charge more for your services and you will have people coming to you and you won’t have to spend so much money marketing products.

So What is a ‘Trusted Authority’ and How Do You Become One?

In order to be a trusted authority, you need to be able to connect with others on a deep level. You need to reach out and share your knowledge with others and you need to do it by identifying what problems your target buyers are and produce chunks of information that addresses it. That chunk could be a blog post, a link to something that you’ve heard, a video or a webinar. But the central message here is show that you know what type of problems people’s are having and give evidence that you know how to help them to solve it.

You Can Become A Trusted Authority by:

1) WRITING ARTICLES

Article marketing is still the best way to build backlinks and gain credibility towards the public AND Google all in one go! What the question on most people’s lips is ‘What should I write?’

By the far the most efficient way to utilise article marketing is the good old ‘how to’ article and make sure it includes these magic words: ‘how to’, ‘tips’, ‘ways to’, ‘the top 5′. These are easy to write – you can use bullet points plus because they tend to have a lot of white space, they are ideal for people to read from their computers. Keep the sentences short and sweet, the title catchy and you have a winner.

After you write the article you need to submit it to an article sharing site. The most important of these sites is Ezine articles, but there’s also Articles Base, Buzzle,  Go articles, Articles dashboard.

Actually, there are thousands of article directories out there but 90% of them are useless in tems of the quality of link you will get. You can also purchase software that automatically submits your articles to thousands of directories. There is a danger though and that is that it may build up too many links too quickly. (read more about this in my other article about backlinks and link velocity). I do mine manually and I recommend you do the same.

One final note. If you want to sound more like a trusted authority, make sure you create an authoritative-sounding author’s sig box. Include a couple of backlinks in the sig box and you’re away.

2) WRITING PRESS RELEASES

A step up from writing articles is writing press releases. But be careful, press releases are different from articles and the submission sites are looking for particular types of content that is newsworthy, not just general information about your business. I wouldn’t do them constantly but they are a great way to make announcements about new things that may be happening in your business or industry. Check WikiHow for a fantastic article on how to write a good press release and look up some press release submission sites on Google. There are some which may be relevant to your niche and others which are more general. The great thing about press releases is that they can get you some high-quality backlinks.

3) HAVING A FREE E-BOOK OR REPORT TO GIVE AWAY

God, I love free e-books, and so do a lot of other people so make sure you have one on your site that people can download. Don’t think you can wite a book? No problem. Just go to google and look for ‘free brandable e-books’ and see what comes up. I like ‘thebestofwww.com’. You should be able to find something that suits your business and if you re-create the cover and put your link in it, then make it available for people to download once they leave their name and email address in your auto-responder, it’ll make you look like a published author and there’s no better way to become a trusted authority than that.

4) TAKING PART IN FORUMS

Forums are a great way to get in there and spread some of your knowledge around. The best thing here is that there are heaps of people who have problems and who are looking for answers so there are plenty of chances for you to help someone to solve a problem. But forums usually have a few rules and people who monitor them to make sure everybody is following the rules. This is how I recommend you use forums:

  • Create a really professional-looking profile with a photo. If you take your time to do this in forums, then the monitors won’t think you are just there to spam the forum with posts about your business.
  • Introduce yourself to other members if there is a way to do this.
  • Go through the various discussions to see whether you can answer anyone’s problems. And give constructive answers to these questions. Also leave comments and generally interact. The more you do this, the more you can leave your signature and this can help you with backlinks.
  • If they have a blog, use it but don’t crowd it with useless information.
  • Start a group within that forum and use it to connect with people that share similar interests.

5) DOING A WEBINAR

People often freak out at the thought of doing a webinar, but don’t because webinars are one of THE best ways to establish yourself as a trusted authority on a subject. And they are lot easier to do than you think. One of the best resources is something called ‘Go to Webinar’ and it allows you to create marketing tools, information and training events. And because it is so cost-effective (think no trade show booth rental or staff costs), the ROI is excellent.

Go To Webinar has a 30-day trial which you can get for free so you can hone in on your webinar skills plus it allows the novice to practise presenting their webinar.

6) GET THE PLUGIN

Not only do your customers care that you are a trusted authority but Google does as well. It knows that people like to get their information from authority sites and so ranks those that are percieved to have a high level of authority a lot higher than those which don’t. So how does Google know which sites are the ‘authority’ sites and which sites aren’t? Well one way is to count the number of backlinks the site has. Another way is to look at the number of features that site has. In other words, Google looks for things like social/viral engagement buttons, sharing features, advanced security, and full integration with Facebook/Twitter/etc.

Now I can understand where Google is coming from here. Wouldn’t you agree that site owners who take the time to place all of those advanced features on their sites have a higher likelihood of providing quality information than those that don’t. If the owner is not a professional, they wouldn’t bother to have all of these features on their site.

Lucky for you, you don’t really have to know what all of these sophisticated techie features are, you can just get the plugin and it does all the work for you (well you still have to install it). The point of it is this. When Google sees that you have lots of different features enabled, it will  treat you with more respect and ultimately rank you higher because it also percieves you to be a trusted authority. Just go to www.authorityemulator.com and grab a copy.

Anyway, so that’s my advice for today. Don’t forget to ‘tweet’ or ‘like’ or ‘plus’ this article if you have enjoyed reading it. And also don’t forget to download your free gift or my 21-point checklist so you can see how efficiently your site is working.

Cheers

Linda

The 4 Basic Pillars of Local Marketing Strategies When attempting to create effective local marketing strategies, I’ve heard it said so many times that the biggest challenges  for local businesses  are  ‘time’ and ‘money’. Small business owners are consumed with what they do best; operating their business and making sure their customers are satisfied. In addition, many owner/operators also manage the marketing direction for their companies and do not have substantial budgets for advertising and outside marketing services. There are still local businesses that have haven’t even thought about local marketing strategies, but most have tried at least a few forms of online marketing. But most of their local marketing strategies would consist of having a website, built by a neighbor’s son or the local web design company and may have even set up a Facebook page. Perhaps they even have one of the large PPC (Pay-Per-Click) firms running a Google campaign for their company. Most small business owners have put together their online local marketing strategies over a period of months or even years and have purchased a few services along the way from outside marketing companies. As any good business person would do, they try to keep the parts that are working and get rid of the parts that are not yielding results.   The inherent problem with these types of “hit or miss” local marketing strategies is that the   success or failure of an individual online marketing strategy is often interdependent on the strengths or weakness of other parts of your online presence. Let’s discuss the four main components of a local online marketing plan. Local Marketing Strategies  -The Four Basic Pillars Local Marketing Strategies Pillar One: Targeted Web Traffic Having a business website posted on the web is not going to create traffic from prospective customers all by itself. Websites need to be marketed in order to generate a steady flow of traffic for your business. Many business owners have the common misconception that having the prettiest website is somehow going to translate into a successful website. But as far as local marketing strategies go, This is pretty weak. If I had to choose between a gorgeous website not positioned to gather traffic versus a simple, perhaps even ‘ugly’ website, that is positioned properly to gather significant local web traffic, I would choose the latter. What is Targeted Web Traffic? Local business websites can receive targeted web traffic from a variety of sources and methods. Let’s first discuss what the term targeted traffic means. In the most basic sense, targeted web traffic could be defined as a web user who visits your site that possesses at least one criteria or characteristic that you believe would fit within your definition of a potential customer. An example could be as simple as their location. If your business sells pizza or dental services, you might be interested in any consumers that live within 5-10 miles of your business, but you would not be interested in consumers that live 1,000 miles from your business location. Another example of a targeted web user is someone that is specifically searching for your product or service or has previously expressed an interest. The point we are making is that your goal as a local business marketer, is to position your website to receive traffic from local consumers that have (or are likely to have) interest in your products or services. Paid versus Free Web Traffic Local web traffic comes from a variety of sources and all of them should play a role in driving targeted traffic to your business. There are some sources that you need to pay for on a per click basis or per impression basis and others that can be free, provided that you do the necessary legwork to position your website to take advantage. Developing an efficient mix of web traffic for your business will take time but this is the first part of a local marketing plan. The purpose of this article is not to delve too deep into the benefits or pitfalls associated with any specific source of targeted web traffic but rather to demonstrate that traffic is only one part of an overall marketing plan. Web traffic is only valuable to your business if your website has the ability to effectively engage with visitors and provide a mutually beneficial experience. If your web visitors reach your site and leave within 5 seconds, there isn’t much benefit to either party. Local Marketing Strategies Pillar Two: Websites that Engage and Convert Your Customers The manner in which your website presents your business to web visitors has a profound effect on how efficiently your site will help potential customers take the next step in engaging with your business. Website visitors will typically decide in a manner of seconds if they are on a page or site that can satisfy their needs. Most websites will fail this first test and lose potentially valuable traffic before ‘the game’ even begins. This is often referred to as ‘relevancy’. Simple, if your site doesn’t instantly appear to provide the information, services, products etc. that the web user is interested in, they will move on to a site that does. The second and equally important requirement for a successful local business website is ‘engagement’. Visitors must be enticed to take the ‘next steps’ with your business. This can be accomplished with a variety of simple techniques and is also a topic that will not be covered in great depth in this article. The point we are stressing is that the quality of your website design, from a marketing perspective, plays a significant role in the success a local business will have in converting web traffic into new customers. Local Marketing Strategies Pillar Three: Tracking, Analytics and Tweaking Internet marketing is part science and part art, but the results are pure math. Your business pays real money to engage in internet and offline marketing efforts and you are expecting new customers that pay you real money as a result. The entire marketing process needs to be measured, tracked and periodically studied. This is the only way to make adjustments to your marketing plan in order to make as cost effective as possible. A few basic procedures can be implemented on your website and in your business workflow to give business owners the tools to monitor how well marketing efforts are performing and where change can and should be made. Tools can be used to help determine how well your traffic is performing, how well your website is performing and even how well your staff is performing. When you spot a weak part, you at least know where to make some tweaks. In addition, if you are using an outside marketing professional, they should be able to provide assistance with this, as opposed to just selling you one piece of the puzzle. The cost of a click or an impression may not mean that much to your business, but the value of web lead, a customer phone call or a store visit that results in new business is meaningful. The bottom line is you must have some concrete method to measure your marketing outcomes in order to determine if you are spending your money wisely. Local Marketing Strategies Pillar Four: Customer Communication The internet has made inexpensive and free tools available for even the smallest local business owner to engage in an ongoing conversation with potential and existing customers. Businesses that are not taking advantage of these tools are leaving too much money on the table and certainly not maximizing the benefit (e.g. new business) they can extract from web visitors. Direct response may be your business’s primary goal, but not every potential customer you engage with is ready to make a buying decision immediately; but they may be ready in the near future. You will want to make sure your business is on “the top of their mind’ when they decide to move forward. Tools such as email, social media and even your website can be used to maintain an ongoing conversation with your prospects, so when the time comes for them to make a purchase, your business is positioned as a top choice and is easily accessible. To make this a reality, your web traffic, your website and your tracking need to be in sync with each other. Successful local marketing plans are built over time and are not about the latest “fad” or “get rich quick” scheme. Creating a winning formula for your business and one that can have staying power can be achieved by first understanding the basic components of success. This article only covers this “tips” of the four essential “icebergs” you will need to explore, but successful business plans must be laid upon solid foundations. ıf you found these local marketing strategies useful, please tweet, plus or like them and I’ll see you again in the next post which will give you even more useful tips. Just visit http://lindapaull.com/blog/the-4-basic-pillars-of-local-marketing-strategies/>local marketing strategies</a> Also, if you would like some more great local marketing strategies, then don’t forget to register for the free webinar. Or download the e-book ‘Unleashing Google +‘. Jamie Keane is a local marketing expert and one of the writers and producers of a series of instructional videos that teach local online marketing for small and medium sized businesses. Local Marketing Internet Secrets teaches local business owners how to do many internet marketing tasks in-house saving them money. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jamie_Keane Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4939983

The 4 Basic Pillars of Local Marketing Strategies

When attempting to create effective local marketing strategies, I’ve heard it said so many times that the biggest challenges  for local businesses  are  ‘time’ and ‘money’. Small business owners are consumed with what they do best; operating their business and making sure their customers are satisfied. In addition, many owner/operators also manage the marketing direction for their companies and do not have substantial budgets for advertising and outside marketing services.

There are still local businesses that have haven’t even thought about local marketing strategies, but most have tried at least a few forms of online marketing. But most of their local marketing strategies would consist of having a website, built by a neighbor’s son or the local web design company and may have even set up a Facebook page. Perhaps they even have one of the large PPC (Pay-Per-Click) firms running a Google campaign for their company. Most small business owners have put together their online local marketing strategies over a period of months or even years and have purchased a few services along the way from outside marketing companies. As any good business person would do, they try to keep the parts that are working and get rid of the parts that are not yielding results.

  The inherent problem with these types of “hit or miss” local marketing strategies is that the   success or failure of an individual online marketing strategy is often interdependent on the strengths or weakness of other parts of your online presence. Let’s discuss the four main components of a local online marketing plan.

Local Marketing Strategies  -The Four Basic Pillars

Local Marketing Strategies Pillar One: Targeted Web Traffic

Having a business website posted on the web is not going to create traffic from prospective customers all by itself. Websites need to be marketed in order to generate a steady flow of traffic for your business. Many business owners have the common misconception that having the prettiest website is somehow going to translate into a successful website. But as far as local marketing strategies go, This is pretty weak. If I had to choose between a gorgeous website not positioned to gather traffic versus a simple, perhaps even ‘ugly’ website, that is positioned properly to gather significant local web traffic, I would choose the latter.

What is Targeted Web Traffic?

Local business websites can receive targeted web traffic from a variety of sources and methods. Let’s first discuss what the term targeted traffic means. In the most basic sense, targeted web traffic could be defined as a web user who visits your site that possesses at least one criteria or characteristic that you believe would fit within your definition of a potential customer. An example could be as simple as their location. If your business sells pizza or dental services, you might be interested in any consumers that live within 5-10 miles of your business, but you would not be interested in consumers that live 1,000 miles from your business location. Another example of a targeted web user is someone that is specifically searching for your product or service or has previously expressed an interest. The point we are making is that your goal as a local business marketer, is to position your website to receive traffic from local consumers that have (or are likely to have) interest in your products or services.

Paid versus Free Web Traffic

Local web traffic comes from a variety of sources and all of them should play a role in driving targeted traffic to your business. There are some sources that you need to pay for on a per click basis or per impression basis and others that can be free, provided that you do the necessary legwork to position your website to take advantage. Developing an efficient mix of web traffic for your business will take time but this is the first part of a local marketing plan. The purpose of this article is not to delve too deep into the benefits or pitfalls associated with any specific source of targeted web traffic but rather to demonstrate that traffic is only one part of an overall marketing plan. Web traffic is only valuable to your business if your website has the ability to effectively engage with visitors and provide a mutually beneficial experience. If your web visitors reach your site and leave within 5 seconds, there isn’t much benefit to either party.

Local Marketing Strategies Pillar Two: Websites that Engage and Convert Your Customers

The manner in which your website presents your business to web visitors has a profound effect on how efficiently your site will help potential customers take the next step in engaging with your business. Website visitors will typically decide in a manner of seconds if they are on a page or site that can satisfy their needs. Most websites will fail this first test and lose potentially valuable traffic before ‘the game’ even begins. This is often referred to as ‘relevancy’. Simple, if your site doesn’t instantly appear to provide the information, services, products etc. that the web user is interested in, they will move on to a site that does. The second and equally important requirement for a successful local business website is ‘engagement’. Visitors must be enticed to take the ‘next steps’ with your business. This can be accomplished with a variety of simple techniques and is also a topic that will not be covered in great depth in this article. The point we are stressing is that the quality of your website design, from a marketing perspective, plays a significant role in the success a local business will have in converting web traffic into new customers.

Local Marketing Strategies Pillar Three: Tracking, Analytics and Tweaking

Internet marketing is part science and part art, but the results are pure math. Your business pays real money to engage in internet and offline marketing efforts and you are expecting new customers that pay you real money as a result. The entire marketing process needs to be measured, tracked and periodically studied. This is the only way to make adjustments to your marketing plan in order to make as cost effective as possible. A few basic procedures can be implemented on your website and in your business workflow to give business owners the tools to monitor how well marketing efforts are performing and where change can and should be made. Tools can be used to help determine how well your traffic is performing, how well your website is performing and even how well your staff is performing. When you spot a weak part, you at least know where to make some tweaks. In addition, if you are using an outside marketing professional, they should be able to provide assistance with this, as opposed to just selling you one piece of the puzzle. The cost of a click or an impression may not mean that much to your business, but the value of web lead, a customer phone call or a store visit that results in new business is meaningful. The bottom line is you must have some concrete method to measure your marketing outcomes in order to determine if you are spending your money wisely.

Local Marketing Strategies Pillar Four: Customer Communication

The internet has made inexpensive and free tools available for even the smallest local business owner to engage in an ongoing conversation with potential and existing customers. Businesses that are not taking advantage of these tools are leaving too much money on the table and certainly not maximizing the benefit (e.g. new business) they can extract from web visitors. Direct response may be your business’s primary goal, but not every potential customer you engage with is ready to make a buying decision immediately; but they may be ready in the near future. You will want to make sure your business is on “the top of their mind’ when they decide to move forward. Tools such as email, social media and even your website can be used to maintain an ongoing conversation with your prospects, so when the time comes for them to make a purchase, your business is positioned as a top choice and is easily accessible. To make this a reality, your web traffic, your website and your tracking need to be in sync with each other.

Successful local marketing plans are built over time and are not about the latest “fad” or “get rich quick” scheme. Creating a winning formula for your business and one that can have staying power can be achieved by first understanding the basic components of success. This article only covers this “tips” of the four essential “icebergs” you will need to explore, but successful business plans must be laid upon solid foundations.

ıf you found these local marketing strategies useful, please tweet, plus or like them and I’ll see you again in the next post which will give you even more useful tips.

Just visit http://lindapaull.com/blog/the-4-basic-pillars-of-local-marketing-strategies/>local marketing strategies</a>

Also, if you would like some more great local marketing strategies, then don’t forget to register for the free webinar.

Or download the e-book ‘Unleashing Google +‘.

Jamie Keane is a local marketing expert and one of the writers and producers of a series of instructional videos that teach local online marketing for small and medium sized businesses. Local Marketing Internet Secrets teaches local business owners how to do many internet marketing tasks in-house saving them money.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jamie_Keane

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4939983

The 4 Basic Pillars of Local Marketing Strategies When attempting to create effective local marketing strategies, I’ve heard it said so many times that the biggest challenges  for local businesses  are  ‘time’ and ‘money’. Small business owners are consumed with what they do best; operating their business and making sure their customers are satisfied. In addition, many owner/operators also manage the marketing direction for their companies and do not have substantial budgets for advertising and outside marketing services. There are still local businesses that have haven’t even thought about local marketing strategies, but most have tried at least a few forms of online marketing. But most of their local marketing strategies would consist of having a website, built by a neighbor’s son or the local web design company and may have even set up a Facebook page. Perhaps they even have one of the large PPC (Pay-Per-Click) firms running a Google campaign for their company. Most small business owners have put together their online local marketing strategies over a period of months or even years and have purchased a few services along the way from outside marketing companies. As any good business person would do, they try to keep the parts that are working and get rid of the parts that are not yielding results.   The inherent problem with these types of “hit or miss” local marketing strategies is that the   success or failure of an individual online marketing strategy is often interdependent on the strengths or weakness of other parts of your online presence. Let’s discuss the four main components of a local online marketing plan. Local Marketing Strategies  -The Four Basic Pillars Local Marketing Strategies Pillar One: Targeted Web Traffic Having a business website posted on the web is not going to create traffic from prospective customers all by itself. Websites need to be marketed in order to generate a steady flow of traffic for your business. Many business owners have the common misconception that having the prettiest website is somehow going to translate into a successful website. But as far as local marketing strategies go, This is pretty weak. If I had to choose between a gorgeous website not positioned to gather traffic versus a simple, perhaps even ‘ugly’ website, that is positioned properly to gather significant local web traffic, I would choose the latter. What is Targeted Web Traffic? Local business websites can receive targeted web traffic from a variety of sources and methods. Let’s first discuss what the term targeted traffic means. In the most basic sense, targeted web traffic could be defined as a web user who visits your site that possesses at least one criteria or characteristic that you believe would fit within your definition of a potential customer. An example could be as simple as their location. If your business sells pizza or dental services, you might be interested in any consumers that live within 5-10 miles of your business, but you would not be interested in consumers that live 1,000 miles from your business location. Another example of a targeted web user is someone that is specifically searching for your product or service or has previously expressed an interest. The point we are making is that your goal as a local business marketer, is to position your website to receive traffic from local consumers that have (or are likely to have) interest in your products or services. Paid versus Free Web Traffic Local web traffic comes from a variety of sources and all of them should play a role in driving targeted traffic to your business. There are some sources that you need to pay for on a per click basis or per impression basis and others that can be free, provided that you do the necessary legwork to position your website to take advantage. Developing an efficient mix of web traffic for your business will take time but this is the first part of a local marketing plan. The purpose of this article is not to delve too deep into the benefits or pitfalls associated with any specific source of targeted web traffic but rather to demonstrate that traffic is only one part of an overall marketing plan. Web traffic is only valuable to your business if your website has the ability to effectively engage with visitors and provide a mutually beneficial experience. If your web visitors reach your site and leave within 5 seconds, there isn’t much benefit to either party. Local Marketing Strategies Pillar Two: Websites that Engage and Convert Your Customers The manner in which your website presents your business to web visitors has a profound effect on how efficiently your site will help potential customers take the next step in engaging with your business. Website visitors will typically decide in a manner of seconds if they are on a page or site that can satisfy their needs. Most websites will fail this first test and lose potentially valuable traffic before ‘the game’ even begins. This is often referred to as ‘relevancy’. Simple, if your site doesn’t instantly appear to provide the information, services, products etc. that the web user is interested in, they will move on to a site that does. The second and equally important requirement for a successful local business website is ‘engagement’. Visitors must be enticed to take the ‘next steps’ with your business. This can be accomplished with a variety of simple techniques and is also a topic that will not be covered in great depth in this article. The point we are stressing is that the quality of your website design, from a marketing perspective, plays a significant role in the success a local business will have in converting web traffic into new customers. Local Marketing Strategies Pillar Three: Tracking, Analytics and Tweaking Internet marketing is part science and part art, but the results are pure math. Your business pays real money to engage in internet and offline marketing efforts and you are expecting new customers that pay you real money as a result. The entire marketing process needs to be measured, tracked and periodically studied. This is the only way to make adjustments to your marketing plan in order to make as cost effective as possible. A few basic procedures can be implemented on your website and in your business workflow to give business owners the tools to monitor how well marketing efforts are performing and where change can and should be made. Tools can be used to help determine how well your traffic is performing, how well your website is performing and even how well your staff is performing. When you spot a weak part, you at least know where to make some tweaks. In addition, if you are using an outside marketing professional, they should be able to provide assistance with this, as opposed to just selling you one piece of the puzzle. The cost of a click or an impression may not mean that much to your business, but the value of web lead, a customer phone call or a store visit that results in new business is meaningful. The bottom line is you must have some concrete method to measure your marketing outcomes in order to determine if you are spending your money wisely. Local Marketing Strategies Pillar Four: Customer Communication The internet has made inexpensive and free tools available for even the smallest local business owner to engage in an ongoing conversation with potential and existing customers. Businesses that are not taking advantage of these tools are leaving too much money on the table and certainly not maximizing the benefit (e.g. new business) they can extract from web visitors. Direct response may be your business’s primary goal, but not every potential customer you engage with is ready to make a buying decision immediately; but they may be ready in the near future. You will want to make sure your business is on “the top of their mind’ when they decide to move forward. Tools such as email, social media and even your website can be used to maintain an ongoing conversation with your prospects, so when the time comes for them to make a purchase, your business is positioned as a top choice and is easily accessible. To make this a reality, your web traffic, your website and your tracking need to be in sync with each other. Successful local marketing plans are built over time and are not about the latest “fad” or “get rich quick” scheme. Creating a winning formula for your business and one that can have staying power can be achieved by first understanding the basic components of success. This article only covers this “tips” of the four essential “icebergs” you will need to explore, but successful business plans must be laid upon solid foundations. ıf you found these local marketing strategies useful, please tweet, plus or like them and I’ll see you again in the next post which will give you even more useful tips. Also, if you would like some more great local marketing strategies, then don’t forget to register for the free webinar. Or download the e-book ‘Unleashing Google +‘. Jamie Keane is a local marketing expert and one of the writers and producers of a series of instructional videos that teach local online marketing for small and medium sized businesses. Local Marketing Internet Secrets teaches local business owners how to do many internet marketing tasks in-house saving them money. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jamie_Keane Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4939983

The 4 Basic Pillars of Local Marketing Strategies

When attempting to create effective local marketing strategies, I’ve heard it said so many times that the biggest challenges  for local businesses  are  ‘time’ and ‘money’. Small business owners are consumed with what they do best; operating their business and making sure their customers are satisfied. In addition, many owner/operators also manage the marketing direction for their companies and do not have substantial budgets for advertising and outside marketing services.

There are still local businesses that have haven’t even thought about local marketing strategies, but most have tried at least a few forms of online marketing. But most of their local marketing strategies would consist of having a website, built by a neighbor’s son or the local web design company and may have even set up a Facebook page. Perhaps they even have one of the large PPC (Pay-Per-Click) firms running a Google campaign for their company. Most small business owners have put together their online local marketing strategies over a period of months or even years and have purchased a few services along the way from outside marketing companies. As any good business person would do, they try to keep the parts that are working and get rid of the parts that are not yielding results.

  The inherent problem with these types of “hit or miss” local marketing strategies is that the   success or failure of an individual online marketing strategy is often interdependent on the strengths or weakness of other parts of your online presence. Let’s discuss the four main components of a local online marketing plan.

Local Marketing Strategies  -The Four Basic Pillars

Local Marketing Strategies Pillar One: Targeted Web Traffic

Having a business website posted on the web is not going to create traffic from prospective customers all by itself. Websites need to be marketed in order to generate a steady flow of traffic for your business. Many business owners have the common misconception that having the prettiest website is somehow going to translate into a successful website. But as far as local marketing strategies go, This is pretty weak. If I had to choose between a gorgeous website not positioned to gather traffic versus a simple, perhaps even ‘ugly’ website, that is positioned properly to gather significant local web traffic, I would choose the latter.

What is Targeted Web Traffic?

Local business websites can receive targeted web traffic from a variety of sources and methods. Let’s first discuss what the term targeted traffic means. In the most basic sense, targeted web traffic could be defined as a web user who visits your site that possesses at least one criteria or characteristic that you believe would fit within your definition of a potential customer. An example could be as simple as their location. If your business sells pizza or dental services, you might be interested in any consumers that live within 5-10 miles of your business, but you would not be interested in consumers that live 1,000 miles from your business location. Another example of a targeted web user is someone that is specifically searching for your product or service or has previously expressed an interest. The point we are making is that your goal as a local business marketer, is to position your website to receive traffic from local consumers that have (or are likely to have) interest in your products or services.

Paid versus Free Web Traffic

Local web traffic comes from a variety of sources and all of them should play a role in driving targeted traffic to your business. There are some sources that you need to pay for on a per click basis or per impression basis and others that can be free, provided that you do the necessary legwork to position your website to take advantage. Developing an efficient mix of web traffic for your business will take time but this is the first part of a local marketing plan. The purpose of this article is not to delve too deep into the benefits or pitfalls associated with any specific source of targeted web traffic but rather to demonstrate that traffic is only one part of an overall marketing plan. Web traffic is only valuable to your business if your website has the ability to effectively engage with visitors and provide a mutually beneficial experience. If your web visitors reach your site and leave within 5 seconds, there isn’t much benefit to either party.

Local Marketing Strategies Pillar Two: Websites that Engage and Convert Your Customers

The manner in which your website presents your business to web visitors has a profound effect on how efficiently your site will help potential customers take the next step in engaging with your business. Website visitors will typically decide in a manner of seconds if they are on a page or site that can satisfy their needs. Most websites will fail this first test and lose potentially valuable traffic before ‘the game’ even begins. This is often referred to as ‘relevancy’. Simple, if your site doesn’t instantly appear to provide the information, services, products etc. that the web user is interested in, they will move on to a site that does. The second and equally important requirement for a successful local business website is ‘engagement’. Visitors must be enticed to take the ‘next steps’ with your business. This can be accomplished with a variety of simple techniques and is also a topic that will not be covered in great depth in this article. The point we are stressing is that the quality of your website design, from a marketing perspective, plays a significant role in the success a local business will have in converting web traffic into new customers.

Local Marketing Strategies Pillar Three: Tracking, Analytics and Tweaking

Internet marketing is part science and part art, but the results are pure math. Your business pays real money to engage in internet and offline marketing efforts and you are expecting new customers that pay you real money as a result. The entire marketing process needs to be measured, tracked and periodically studied. This is the only way to make adjustments to your marketing plan in order to make as cost effective as possible. A few basic procedures can be implemented on your website and in your business workflow to give business owners the tools to monitor how well marketing efforts are performing and where change can and should be made. Tools can be used to help determine how well your traffic is performing, how well your website is performing and even how well your staff is performing. When you spot a weak part, you at least know where to make some tweaks. In addition, if you are using an outside marketing professional, they should be able to provide assistance with this, as opposed to just selling you one piece of the puzzle. The cost of a click or an impression may not mean that much to your business, but the value of web lead, a customer phone call or a store visit that results in new business is meaningful. The bottom line is you must have some concrete method to measure your marketing outcomes in order to determine if you are spending your money wisely.

Local Marketing Strategies Pillar Four: Customer Communication

The internet has made inexpensive and free tools available for even the smallest local business owner to engage in an ongoing conversation with potential and existing customers. Businesses that are not taking advantage of these tools are leaving too much money on the table and certainly not maximizing the benefit (e.g. new business) they can extract from web visitors. Direct response may be your business’s primary goal, but not every potential customer you engage with is ready to make a buying decision immediately; but they may be ready in the near future. You will want to make sure your business is on “the top of their mind’ when they decide to move forward. Tools such as email, social media and even your website can be used to maintain an ongoing conversation with your prospects, so when the time comes for them to make a purchase, your business is positioned as a top choice and is easily accessible. To make this a reality, your web traffic, your website and your tracking need to be in sync with each other.

Successful local marketing plans are built over time and are not about the latest “fad” or “get rich quick” scheme. Creating a winning formula for your business and one that can have staying power can be achieved by first understanding the basic components of success. This article only covers this “tips” of the four essential “icebergs” you will need to explore, but successful business plans must be laid upon solid foundations.

ıf you found these local marketing strategies useful, please tweet, plus or like them and I’ll see you again in the next post which will give you even more useful tips.

Also, if you would like some more great local marketing strategies, then don’t forget to register for the free webinar.

Or download the e-book ‘Unleashing Google +‘.

Jamie Keane is a local marketing expert and one of the writers and producers of a series of instructional videos that teach local online marketing for small and medium sized businesses. Local Marketing Internet Secrets teaches local business owners how to do many internet marketing tasks in-house saving them money.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jamie_Keane

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4939983

Local Business SEO - Three Must-Know Backlinking Strategies Anyone who owns a site knows that they must have a solidlocal business SEO strategy that will help their site rank well. This strategy needs to combine on page seo, backlinks and social media. Probably the least fun part of local business SEO is developing backlinks. But, you need to make sure that you do backlinks the right way  because Google loves to rank sites that have a lot of good-quality backlinks and like everything else in life, it’s all about strategy. The three biggest mistakes you can make are: Not having enough baclinks to get your site ranked anywhere Having backlinks from low-quality or irrelevant sites, and Building links too quickly so that they appear contrived or fake  So if you are a beginner to the backlinking process, read on because backlinking is one of the most important aspects of local business SEO. This post will tell you how to create a backlink and then to distribute backlinks throughout the internet so that your site will rank well in the search engines. Local Business SEO –  Five Simple Link Building Tips for Beginners 1) LINK SYNTAX Just like composing a grammatically correct sentence, there is a right way to compose a link. Many people when they put a link in somewhere will simply put something like this: http://www.lindapaull.com They may put a forward slash an a page reference but generally, this is the standard formula. Many people forget, though, that it’s important to tell Google which key words you are trying to rank for. For example, in this link, I am trying to rank for the term ‘small business marketing resources’, so for this reason, I will add that term to the end of the link, surrounded by the appropriate html tags like this: small business marketing resources This lets Google know that I am specifically trying to rank for this key phrase and makes it easier for their algorithms to decide that my site is an appropriate fit for this particular keyword phrase and and the link is a high-quality backlink. Backlinks will be recognised by Google and as they recognise more and more links, then they will recognise your site as being an ‘authority’ site. What that means is that your site will be a ‘go to’ site that Google trusts to send its readers to when somebody types in an appropriate key phrase. 2) LINK VELOCITY The rate at which you need to create links back to your site is really important.  Links need to be built continually and consistently as Google is very suspicious of sites that get hundreds or thousands of links all of a sudden. In order to maximise your local business SEO, try to do it in a natural way and if you are going to step up the number of back links to your pages, make sure you do it in a consistent way. As you do it, make sure you vary the key words and phrases, three different variables is a good idea as this keeps things balanced. 3) YOUR RSS FEED RSS basically stands for Real Simple Syndication and it is one of the best tools for local business seo. If you have a wordpress site (which you most probably do), then you will automatically have an RSS feed. It’s easy to find, simply  go to your browser, type in your site’s URL and then type this   /blog/rss. For example, my rss feed’s address is http://www.lindapaull.com/blog/rss. You’ll know you’re on the right page when you see a page with code on it that looks like this: <rss version=”0.92″> <channel> <title>lindapaull.com</title> <link>http://lindapaull.com/blog</link> <description>internet marketing assistance for local businesses</description> <lastBuildDate>Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:33:41 +0000</lastBuildDate> <docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss092</docs> <language>en</language> <!– generator=”WordPress/3.2.1″ –> <item> <title> Youtube – One of the Best Small Business Marketing Resources There Is. </title> <description> <![CDATA[ You’ll be able to see all of your articles on the page as well. Now don’t let it scare you, it’s simply some html code that you don’t have to worry about. The only thing you need to do is copy and paste the RSS Fedd’s url. Why is an RSS feed great for local business seo? RSS feed’s urls are great because once you have copied the rss feed’s url, you are ready to submit it to the RSS feed directories. I use an RSS submitter called bulkping, which can be found at www.bulkping.com. The page you need to go to in order to submit your feed is this one: http://www.bulkping.com/free-rss-submit-online/index.php. It will ask you to name your feed title so use an important keyword here, then just type in your feed url, site url and a brief description of your site and hit submit.  That one step just earned me over 100 backlinks and it only took a few minutes. So there you go….three simple things you need to know about link building for local business SEO. If you found this article useful, please ‘like’ or retweet or plus it. Also, if you would like to know how I can help you to market your small business online using other small business marketing resources, then don’t forget to register for the free webinar. Or download the e-book ‘Unleashing Google +‘. Have a great day Linda

Local Business SEO - Three Must-Know Backlinking Strategies

Anyone who owns a site knows that they must have a solidlocal business SEO strategy that will help their site rank well. This strategy needs to combine on page seo, backlinks and social media.

Probably the least fun part of local business SEO is developing backlinks.

But, you need to make sure that you do backlinks the right way  because Google loves to rank sites that have a lot of good-quality backlinks and like everything else in life, it’s all about strategy.

The three biggest mistakes you can make are:

  • Not having enough baclinks to get your site ranked anywhere
  • Having backlinks from low-quality or irrelevant sites, and
  • Building links too quickly so that they appear contrived or fake

 So if you are a beginner to the backlinking process, read on because backlinking is one of the most important aspects of local business SEO. This post will tell you how to create a backlink and then to distribute backlinks throughout the internet so that your site will rank well in the search engines.

Local Business SEO –  Five Simple Link Building Tips for Beginners

1) LINK SYNTAX

Just like composing a grammatically correct sentence, there is a right way to compose a link. Many people when they put a link in somewhere will simply put something like this:

http://www.lindapaull.com

They may put a forward slash an a page reference but generally, this is the standard formula. Many people forget, though, that it’s important to tell Google which key words you are trying to rank for. For example, in this link, I am trying to rank for the term ‘small business marketing resources’, so for this reason, I will add that term to the end of the link, surrounded by the appropriate html tags like this:

small business marketing resources

This lets Google know that I am specifically trying to rank for this key phrase and makes it easier for their algorithms to decide that my site is an appropriate fit for this particular keyword phrase and and the link is a high-quality backlink.

Backlinks will be recognised by Google and as they recognise more and more links, then they will recognise your site as being an ‘authority’ site. What that means is that your site will be a ‘go to’ site that Google trusts to send its readers to when somebody types in an appropriate key phrase.

2) LINK VELOCITY

The rate at which you need to create links back to your site is really important.  Links need to be built continually and consistently as Google is very suspicious of sites that get hundreds or thousands of links all of a sudden. In order to maximise your local business SEO, try to do it in a natural way and if you are going to step up the number of back links to your pages, make sure you do it in a consistent way. As you do it, make sure you vary the key words and phrases, three different variables is a good idea as this keeps things balanced.

3) YOUR RSS FEED

RSS basically stands for Real Simple Syndication and it is one of the best tools for local business seo. If you have a wordpress site (which you most probably do), then you will automatically have an RSS feed. It’s easy to find, simply  go to your browser, type in your site’s URL and then type this   /blog/rss. For example, my rss feed’s address is http://www.lindapaull.com/blog/rss.

You’ll know you’re on the right page when you see a page with code on it that looks like this:

<rss version=”0.92″>

<channel>

<title>lindapaull.com</title>

<link>http://lindapaull.com/blog</link>

<description>internet marketing assistance for local businesses</description>

<lastBuildDate>Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:33:41 +0000</lastBuildDate>

<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss092</docs>

<language>en</language>

<!– generator=”WordPress/3.2.1″ –>

<item>

<title>

Youtube – One of the Best Small Business Marketing Resources There Is.

</title>

<description>

<![CDATA[

You’ll be able to see all of your articles on the page as well.

Now don’t let it scare you, it’s simply some html code that you don’t have to worry about. The only thing you need to do is copy and paste the RSS Fedd’s url.

Why is an RSS feed great for local business seo?

RSS feed’s urls are great because once you have copied the rss feed’s url, you are ready to submit it to the RSS feed directories.

I use an RSS submitter called bulkping, which can be found at www.bulkping.com. The page you need to go to in order to submit your feed is this one: http://www.bulkping.com/free-rss-submit-online/index.php.

It will ask you to name your feed title so use an important keyword here, then just type in your feed url, site url and a brief description of your site and hit submit.  That one step just earned me over 100 backlinks and it only took a few minutes.

So there you go….three simple things you need to know about link building for local business SEO.

If you found this article useful, please ‘like’ or retweet or plus it.

Also, if you would like to know how I can help you to market your small business online using other small business marketing resources, then don’t forget to register for the free webinar.

Or download the e-book ‘Unleashing Google +‘.

Have a great day

Linda

Youtube – One of the Best Small Business Marketing Resources There Is. The other day I was lucky enough to get my hands on a guide to leveraging Youtube and how you can  this internet giant into one of the best small business marketing resources there is. Before I begin telling you all about how you can go about starting to maximise your results on this giant site, I just want to share some amazing statisitics with you. For example, did you know that…….. YouTube accounts for well over 60% of all video online On alexa.com YouTube is ranked the 3rd most popular site on the internet only to be outdone by Yahoo and Google Almost 20% of internet  users visit Youtube Now think about this; video marketing via sites such as YouTube is tipped to be one of the fastest-growing methods of advertising for businesses big and small and if you get in there now, while the competition is light, you can have a big advantage before this method of promotion becomes too competitive.  There are literally thousands of videos getting top rankings for hot keywords almost by accident. Now here’s another reason Youtube is one of the best small business marketing resources there is. You can market ANYTHING on Youtube from simple downloadable materials such as e-books to big-ticket items such as real estate AND Youtube is one of the best tools you can use for personal branding. So I hereby present a few of my top tips for maximising your success on this great small business marketing resource. 1) KEYWORD OPTIMISE YOUR SUBMISSIONS: Just as you would include keywords and phrases in your articles, you can keyword-optimise your video submissions. After you upload your video, Youtube will ask you to enter some information about it and it will ask for the following things:  title, description and tags. Now this is your chance to optimise your video with the same keywords and phrases that you would use in a normal blog post. People generally use the same search terms for all search engines and Youtube is another search engine just with video content (which is in fact owned by Google). Add a couple of links back to your site and you have gained some visitors. 2) Make sure you have and opening and closing screen which shows your site’s address: If you are using Movie Maker, which I assume you would be if you are using a PC, then you have the option to create opening and closing credits. Don’t waste this. It’s your chance to have your site’s address slowly revealed across a page before the viewer sees the film. Similarly, you can put another one at the end with a message such as ‘Download your coupons by visiting www.yoursite.com’. 3) MAKE VIDEOS WORTH WATCHING AND SHARING: As you would already know, there are hundreds of completely worthless videos on Youtube which, for some unknown reason, get hundreds of viewers. But I’m sure that the reason they get viewers is that they  are easy to find. Another reasons these videos are watched is that they contain at least one of the following elements: cuteness humour information shock value connection to some current event weirdness Now I’m not saying that you should start cracking jokes on all of your videos or showing us pictures of your new puppy (although that would be great), but I am saying that if you can find any way to include at least one of the above elements in your vid, it’ll most likely be more of a hit. It’s no surprise that videos of puppies, kittens, aliens, the end of the world or some other weird and wonderful topics are so popular. When all else fails, do a ‘how to’ that is linked to your business somehow. If you are a vet, have a video showing how to give a cat a tablet (those of you without cats will not appreciate what a torrid task this is!), or if you are a beautician, make us a how to on how to apply eye shadow. ‘How to’ videos are a great small business marketing resource.  Make it fun and snappy and you have a great video you can share around. 4) DON’T INCLUDE RELATED VIDEOS If you have used Youtube videos before, or even if you have watched them, you would have seen a bunch of  ’related videos’ show up at the end. Youtube does this to make it easy for you to stay on the site longer by presenting you with videos similar to the one you just watched. This is great if you are planning to hangout on Youtube for a while but if you are planning to entice people to stay on your blog, it’s definitely not a good idea to include related videos that can draw their attention away from your blog and over to someone’s else’s video. So how do you stop this from happening? Simple.  Before copying the embed code from the video’s watch page, click the little blue gear that appears just below the video’s description. Deselect the option for “include related videos” and then copy the code from the embed code box. 5) USE A VIDEO SHARING TOOL LIKE TUBE MOGUL: If you have begun to use video marketing at all, you would have realised that there are more video sharing sites than just Youtube. There are actually a dozen major ones which you should be uploading videos to. So wouldn’t it be great if you could save yourself some time and effort by using just one toll that takes care of the lot?? Enter Tubemogul. Tube Mogul is basically a website where you can upload videos and then share them to multiple video sharing sites simultaneously. And the best part is that you can sign up for free. So there you have it – some easy tips that will help you to take advantage of one of the BESTsmall business marketing resources around. If you would like to know more about how to leverage the internet to get more leads for your business, then click here for the free webinar ’100 customers in 100 days’ or click here to download my 21-point checklist. And don’t forget to ‘like’ and ‘tweet’ this post. Thanks Linda  

Youtube – One of the Best Small Business Marketing Resources There Is.

The other day I was lucky enough to get my hands on a guide to leveraging Youtube and how you can  this internet giant into one of the best small business marketing resources there is.

Before I begin telling you all about how you can go about starting to maximise your results on this giant site, I just want to share some amazing statisitics with you. For example, did you know that……..

  • YouTube accounts for well over 60% of all video online
  • On alexa.com YouTube is ranked the 3rd most popular site on the internet only to be outdone by Yahoo and Google
  • Almost 20% of internet  users visit Youtube
Now think about this; video marketing via sites such as YouTube is tipped to be one of the fastest-growing methods of advertising for businesses big and small and if you get in there now, while the competition is light, you can have a big advantage before this method of promotion becomes too competitive.  There are literally thousands of videos getting top rankings for hot keywords almost by accident.

Now here’s another reason Youtube is one of the best small business marketing resources there is.

You can market ANYTHING on Youtube from simple downloadable materials such as e-books to big-ticket items such as real estate AND Youtube is one of the best tools you can use for personal branding.

So I hereby present a few of my top tips for maximising your success on this great small business marketing resource.

1) KEYWORD OPTIMISE YOUR SUBMISSIONS:

Just as you would include keywords and phrases in your articles, you can keyword-optimise your video submissions. After you upload your video, Youtube will ask you to enter some information about it and it will ask for the following things:  title, description and tags. Now this is your chance to optimise your video with the same keywords and phrases that you would use in a normal blog post. People generally use the same search terms for all search engines and Youtube is another search engine just with video content (which is in fact owned by Google). Add a couple of links back to your site and you have gained some visitors.

2) Make sure you have and opening and closing screen which shows your site’s address:

If you are using Movie Maker, which I assume you would be if you are using a PC, then you have the option to create opening and closing credits. Don’t waste this. It’s your chance to have your site’s address slowly revealed across a page before the viewer sees the film. Similarly, you can put another one at the end with a message such as ‘Download your coupons by visiting www.yoursite.com’.

small business marketing resources

3) MAKE VIDEOS WORTH WATCHING AND SHARING:

As you would already know, there are hundreds of completely worthless videos on Youtube which, for some unknown reason, get hundreds of viewers. But I’m sure that the reason they get viewers is that they  are easy to find. Another reasons these videos are watched is that they contain at least one of the following elements:

  • cuteness
  • humour
  • information
  • shock value
  • connection to some current event
  • weirdness

Now I’m not saying that you should start cracking jokes on all of your videos or showing us pictures of your new puppy (although that would be great), but I am saying that if you can find any way to include at least one of the above elements in your vid, it’ll most likely be more of a hit. It’s no surprise that videos of puppies, kittens, aliens, the end of the world or some other weird and wonderful topics are so popular. When all else fails, do a ‘how to’ that is linked to your business somehow. If you are a vet, have a video showing how to give a cat a tablet (those of you without cats will not appreciate what a torrid task this is!), or if you are a beautician, make us a how to on how to apply eye shadow. ‘How to’ videos are a great small business marketing resource.  Make it fun and snappy and you have a great video you can share around.

4) DON’T INCLUDE RELATED VIDEOS

If you have used Youtube videos before, or even if you have watched them, you would have seen a bunch of  ’related videos’ show up at the end. Youtube does this to make it easy for you to stay on the site longer by presenting you with videos similar to the one you just watched. This is great if you are planning to hangout on Youtube for a while but if you are planning to entice people to stay on your blog, it’s definitely not a good idea to include related videos that can draw their attention away from your blog and over to someone’s else’s video. So how do you stop this from happening? Simple.  Before copying the embed code from the video’s watch page, click the little blue gear that appears just below the video’s description. Deselect the option for “include related videos” and then copy the code from the embed code box.

5) USE A VIDEO SHARING TOOL LIKE TUBE MOGUL:

small business marketing resources

If you have begun to use video marketing at all, you would have realised that there are more video sharing sites than just Youtube. There are actually a dozen major ones which you should be uploading videos to. So wouldn’t it be great if you could save yourself some time and effort by using just one toll that takes care of the lot?? Enter Tubemogul.

Tube Mogul is basically a website where you can upload videos and then share them to multiple video sharing sites simultaneously.

And the best part is that you can sign up for free.

So there you have it – some easy tips that will help you to take advantage of one of the BESTsmall business marketing resources around.

If you would like to know more about how to leverage the internet to get more leads for your business, then click here for the free webinar ’100 customers in 100 days’ or click here to download my 21-point checklist.

And don’t forget to ‘like’ and ‘tweet’ this post.

Thanks

Linda

 

Personal Branding – The First Rule of Internet Marketing Why is it that so many people just don’t ‘get’ how to market a small business? Well, I’m sure there are many reasons but here’s one example that I want to share with you of an entrepreneur that just doesn’t get it. The other day I was chatting with an acquaintance of mine who has a medium-sized business. I spent some time quizzing him about what sort of business he owned and how he went about marketing it. And, not surprisingly, he went on and on about the services and how great they were (it was an education and training business) and naturally, after about ten minutes I was ready to doze off. To top it off, he started going on and on about the importance of selling and strategies he uses to make customers buy. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with talking about your products and services – of course, it is necessary to be able to describe your products and services to people who are interested in them, just as it is important to understand something about sales strategies and what makes customers buy but the whole time he was talking to me, I just got this impression of somebody who had just graduated from business school. It wasn’t until he said, ‘Trust me, I studied economics’, that I suddenly realised what was happening……….he was suffering from ‘graduate-speak’ and regurgitating all of these theories that he had learned over ten years ago and was trying to apply them to his small business today. Now here’s the thing…. Marketing over the years has changed……and the biggest agent for change is the internet. But many business owners haven’t caught on to how to leverage the internet to market their small business. And there’s one concept in particular that passes just about everybody by and that is for small to medium-sized local business owners, the most important thing is PERSONAL BRANDING. Look, the stuff that was taught to at university is designed to make you become a part of the corporate machine. It’s great but it just doesn’t work for small business. There are better models out there that are designed to help you do what small business owners should be doing: trying to be percieved as a trusted authority giving great value, and reaching out and connecting with people on a more personal level I will talk more about the first two points in later posts but firstly, I want to share some tips and tools that will help you to connect with your customers on a more personal level. 1) Blogging: this my favourite and I think it is the no.1 way to get your message across on a more personal level. Blogs work because they send out a personal message from the owner of the business and your topics don’t have to be purely business-related. It’s your story. You write it any way you want. 2) Use social media to interact with your community and customers: this is so simple yet so effective, I’m surprised not everyone is doing it. Go to some of my other web posts to read up a bit more on how to use tools like Google +, Linked In and Facebook to reach out and interact with your target customers. 3) Take advantage of some of the newest web 2.0 tools available. Here’s one that I reckon everyone can use. I found out about it at a teacher development day I attended and I love it. It’s called animoto and you just upload pictures of yourself, your family, your business, your pets….whatever, onto the application, make some text modules, arrange them the way you want them by a simple ‘drag and drop’, select some music and you have yourself a moving advertisement that you can upload onto your facebook, twitter and other social profiles or use as a welcome message on your blog. Here’s a sample of one I made for my business: So small business owners take note.  Make the most of the fact that there is nobody else out there like you and use it as an advantage. The more human you are, the more your customers will relate to you and recognise you as someone who stands out from the crowd. And for a small business owner, there’s nothing more important than this. If you would like to know more about how to leverage the internet to get more leads for your business, then click here for the free webinar ’100 customers in 100 days’ or click here to download my 21-point checklist. And don’t forget to ‘like’ and ‘tweet’ this post. Thanks Linda

Personal Branding – The First Rule of Internet Marketing

Why is it that so many people just don’t ‘get’ how to market a small business?

Well, I’m sure there are many reasons but here’s one example that I want to share with you of an entrepreneur that just doesn’t get it.

The other day I was chatting with an acquaintance of mine who has a medium-sized business. I spent some time quizzing him about what sort of business he owned and how he went about marketing it. And, not surprisingly, he went on and on about the services and how great they were (it was an education and training business) and naturally, after about ten minutes I was ready to doze off. To top it off, he started going on and on about the importance of selling and strategies he uses to make customers buy.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with talking about your products and services – of course, it is necessary to be able to describe your products and services to people who are interested in them, just as it is important to understand something about sales strategies and what makes customers buy but the whole time he was talking to me, I just got this impression of somebody who had just graduated from business school. It wasn’t until he said, ‘Trust me, I studied economics’, that I suddenly realised what was happening……….he was suffering from ‘graduate-speak’ and regurgitating all of these theories that he had learned over ten years ago and was trying to apply them to his small business today. Now here’s the thing….

Marketing over the years has changed……and the biggest agent for change is the internet. But many business owners haven’t caught on to how to leverage the internet to market their small business. And there’s one concept in particular that passes just about everybody by and that is for small to medium-sized local business owners, the most important thing is PERSONAL BRANDING.

Look, the stuff that was taught to at university is designed to make you become a part of the corporate machine. It’s great but it just doesn’t work for small business. There are better models out there that are designed to help you do what small business owners should be doing:

  • trying to be percieved as a trusted authority
  • giving great value, and
  • reaching out and connecting with people on a more personal level

I will talk more about the first two points in later posts but firstly, I want to share some tips and tools that will help you to connect with your customers on a more personal level.

1) Blogging: this my favourite and I think it is the no.1 way to get your message across on a more personal level. Blogs work because they send out a personal message from the owner of the business and your topics don’t have to be purely business-related. It’s your story. You write it any way you want.

2) Use social media to interact with your community and customers: this is so simple yet so effective, I’m surprised not everyone is doing it. Go to some of my other web posts to read up a bit more on how to use tools like Google +, Linked In and Facebook to reach out and interact with your target customers.

3) Take advantage of some of the newest web 2.0 tools available. Here’s one that I reckon everyone can use. I found out about it at a teacher development day I attended and I love it. It’s called animoto and you just upload pictures of yourself, your family, your business, your pets….whatever, onto the application, make some text modules, arrange them the way you want them by a simple ‘drag and drop’, select some music and you have yourself a moving advertisement that you can upload onto your facebook, twitter and other social profiles or use as a welcome message on your blog. Here’s a sample of one I made for my business:

So small business owners take note.  Make the most of the fact that there is nobody else out there like you and use it as an advantage. The more human you are, the more your customers will relate to you and recognise you as someone who stands out from the crowd. And for a small business owner, there’s nothing more important than this.

If you would like to know more about how to leverage the internet to get more leads for your business, then click here for the free webinar ’100 customers in 100 days’ or click here to download my 21-point checklist.

And don’t forget to ‘like’ and ‘tweet’ this post.

Thanks

Linda

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