See you there! (Links are below)

Sign up for the webinar here

Register for the meetup (in Saint Louis MO) here

If you missed this one, you missed a good one.  Don’t miss any more webinars, sign up for them now.

Webinar Summary (aka What You Missed)

Have you had a website for a while but aren’t making a lot of money from it? Content marketing guru Russ Henneberry showed us that no matter how much or how little traffic your site gets, there are things we could do TODAY that will help grow our bottom line.

We learned:

•  How to generate sales from your existing website traffic, no matter how much you are getting
•  The simple 3-step process you must master to begin generating cash from your website
•  The “head-smackingly” simple reason that most websites are leaving money on the table

Questions from the audience:

• Kenneth asked: Does your LinkedIn connections qualify as a quality list?
• Bill asked: What should a business owner do if they are “technically chllenged”?
• Sherry asked: What about the last stage in the ARC method? The stage called Convert.
• and I had a question for Russ too: What are some ways to build a bigger list?

The Internet is a giant research tool.  Your customers are becoming more and more savvy as each day goes by, researching products, features, benefits and of course prices.  If you aren’t taking advantage of that trend, you’re missing out.

SEO

One of the best ways to build more traffic to your website is to take advantage of search engine optimization.  Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing your website for keywords that your customers are using every day when they do their research. 

Optimizing your website design is a good place to start.  Make sure your website is clear and concise, and every visitor understands just where they are (with your branding and logo) and isn’t cluttered with useless boxes or animations.

Each page on your site should target a single keyword or keyphrase.  Make sure you have a nice headline (with your keyword in it, of course) and your copy for that page includes the keyword a few times.

Don’t overdo it, though.  The copy should still be in ‘normal English’ and not marketer-speak.

Content

One of the best things you can do for your website is to add a blog.  And I don’t mean your daily diary of what you eat and how your Mom is doing.  I mean real meaty content – things that are affecting your industry and answer questions that your customers always ask.  The kind of stuff that makes you sound like an expert.

Why?

Because you’ll sound like an expert.  And people love dealing with experts.

There are probably a hundred or a thousand people right now that know what you know about your industry.  But I’d be willing to bet that less than a handful of them are leveraging that expertise online.

There’s a huge harvest of customers out there just looking for a solution to a problem, and you can be the one that solves it for them.  Writing a weekly blog post that answers a question you hear all the time will not only portray you as the expert, but it will also create links from other websites back to yours.  And every link is like a vote.

Video

The last thing that you can do to get more traffic is to start dabbling in the world of video.  Did you know that the number two search engine isn’t Yahoo!, Bing, or AOL?  It’s YouTube.

If I were to ask my kids today to go look something up online, there’s a good chance they’d go to YouTube to start looking.

Nearly 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute of the day.  While that seems like a lot, there is still only a small amount of videos that are actually optimized for certain keywords and keyphrases.  And Google is working hard to optimize those videos with use of voice recognition software.

Between Google’s voice recognition and your brief description of the video when you upload it, you’ll rank in the search engines quick.  And with Google’s new universal search, your video will not only show up as a search result, but it could also potentially push a competitors’ website off the first page – giving you even more traffic.

Summary

The smart use of search engine optimization techniques, creating quality content and video will thrust your website traffic past your competitors in no time.

Along with these changes, business owners – particularly those in the service industry – have been given a great opportunity to really dominate their local landscape.

To take advantage of that potential, small business owners are doing what they think is obvious when it comes to getting that hyper-local traffic.  Following are some tips on getting your business noticed in local searches.

Location in Title Tag

In most cases, this is a no-brainer.  I’ve posted many times before on the importance of a title tag, and this one is no different.  Adding your main targeted city in the title tag will improve your rankings for related searches.

Method: Keyword | Keyphrase | City
Example: Dentist | Dental Care | St Louis

Claim Your Google Places Listing

Just the other day I was visiting a local client of mine who sells items for the home.  While visiting, he received a phone call about one of his items, and at the end of the call he asked where they found his number.  Their reply – Google Maps (ie Google Places).

The last time I read stats on this, only 12% of all businesses had claimed their business listing.  Of those 12%, only about 4% of them have done a full optimization of their Google Places listing.  With over 50% of the US population now carrying smart phones, this is another no-brainer.  Claim your listing.  Optimize it to its full potential.  Now.

Map on Your Home Page

Because a map takes up a significant amount of room, I’d say it’s a bad idea to put one on your home page.  Home page real estate is very valuable, and that real estate should be used for more important SEO-related things, such as text, calls to action, and featured items/products/services/sales.

There are exceptions, or course.  If the majority of your visitors are simply searching for a location to visit, and not expecting to shop online, a map may be a good idea.  For instance, if you ran a business that did STD testing in Chicago, you may want to have a map that listed the locations where people can visit.  There is no physical product being sold, and a testing location is all the visitor really needs.

Mention Landmarks

One of the many algorithms that the search engines use is related to something called Latent Symantic Indexing (LSI).  Without going into detail, LSI looks for related words in a website or web page that helps it determine if it is worthy of moving up in the rankings.

For example, if you own an Italian restaurant, the LSI system would look for words like ‘pasta’ and ‘fork’ and ‘sauce’ – words you’d probably use in a normal conversation when talking about that restaurant.

Same goes for local-related websites.  If you simply pepper the pages with St Louis, that may not be enough.  But mentioning landmarks such as the Gateway Arch, Ted Drewes and Art Hill, you’re more likely to see better results and rankings.

Get Reviews

My wife loves to read reviews.  When she’s researching a company, a hotel, or a restaurant, she’ll always read through the reviews – and will base her conceptions of the business upon them.

Your follow up strategy with every customer needs to include getting reviews.  It’s becoming more and more a must-have – and it doesn’t really matter if you ignore this advice – people are probably already writing reviews about your company anyway.

In your follow up email, point your customer to a page where they can review your business.  This page could be your Google Places page, your Yelp page or any variety of others.  Or – you can build a page that gives them several options.  In my opinion, this is a better idea, because the reviews will be somewhat randomly placed throughout the Internet, and not all in one place.  For an example, check out the “Review Us” page at Sunshine Drapery.

Citations

In the world of SEO, we say that Content is King and Links are Queen.  In the world of hyper-local SEO, another phrase needs to be added – something like Citations are the Prince.  While good content and a good linking strategy is very important for your business, getting citations is not to be ignored.

A citation is simply a business listing – a mention of your business name, address and phone number – somewhere on the web.  These mentions are noticed by the search engines, and influence where your business is listed in things like the 7 pack.  The more citations you have, the better you’ll rank.

Your Address in the Footer

Putting your address in the footer of every page on your website is a smart idea.  Not everyone goes to your Contact Us page to find your information.  On top of that, putting your address on your website will help sites like Google Places believe you have a real location.

Of course, if you work out of your home, this may not be a great idea.  In that case, I’d recommend a UPS box or other physical location where you can collect mail (no PO Boxes though).