Internet Business U

Your Partner for Small Business Success

What is Your Local Visibility Online?

Posted on | July 10, 2010 | No Comments

Okay, so give me a hard time because I don’t post enough. ;-)

I’m going to try and change this with at least ONE weekly post… and possibly… a training video every month.

Let’s start with a quick check of your online presence using this nifty free online tool:

http://getlisted.org/

Just type in your business name and zip code and you’ll discover how good your online presence is for local customers. This is definitely ‘need to know’ information for local small business owners.

You need to be indexed and listed to be found. It’s the first step in grabbing your share of online consumers or clients. Get your website indexed in these directories right away. Sure, it takes some time… but then it is absolute critical when you consider over 70% of people use search engines to find local businesses.

Let me know what you think of the tool by leaving a comment. And while you’re at it, ask me any question about local search you want and I’ll give you my best answer!

All the best!
Mike

Category: Uncategorized

How Much is a Google First Page Listing Worth to Your Small Business?

Posted on | June 22, 2010 | No Comments

The answer is a lot! Just ask any business owner holding a top spot for a local search term (they may be reluctant to admit it though). But how much you make depends on several factors. Let’s examine this further…

The first question you need to ask yourself is what the value of a new customer is worth to you over the course of a few years. Depending on your industry this varies.

For example, a dry cleaner’s customer value is much lower, but the available customer base (and the online search volume) is much higher than compared to a more expensive service. An example  would be a house painter. The number of people searching for this service every month is much lower, but the cost of the service is much higher.

What it all boils down to is this: A dry cleaner will get more traffic from online search than a house painter. But in the end, they’ll still both make a healthy profit from a top 10 listing if their sales process is optimized.

The other factor to determine is the search volume online in for your area. You see, the whole online process starts with the keyword phrases your customers use to find what you’re selling. Unfortunately, this subject is too complicated to explain here. But I can say this…

Being listed in the top 10 positions for the best local keyword phrase search results means nothing unless you take advantage of all the traffic!

Successful Website Strategies You Need To Know

The first strategy revolves around your website copy and appearance. Make sure your website is easy to read and navigate.

More importantly, are you targeting your ideal customer and giving them a reason to stick around… and even better… remember you? This is so important because most prospects click around fairly quickly but will return to specific websites who manage to grab their attention. When I’m shopping, I do this — and I bet you do too, right?

Action Step One: Give then an irresistible offer so they come back!

Second, are you directing your visitors to take some sort of action? If they don’t know what to do, or they have to hunt around for instructions, you’ll lose them.

Action Step Two: Show them exactly what they need to do to get what they want!

The third factor depends on how you handle the leads being generated. Do you have a tested and proven system in place that handles these leads for maximum results?

Action Step Three: Get maximum conversions throughout your sales funnel by testing!

And the last element would be the keywords you are ranking for in the first page results. If these aren’t relevant or aren’t “buyer” keyword phrases the results won’t be very productive from an ROI standpoint.

Action Step Four: Do the research so you target only the best keyword phrases for your market!

As you can see, just having a website listed in the top 10 results for search phrases doesn’t automatically guarantee you tons of business. There are many pieces to the sales funnel puzzle that determine the outcome.

When you maximize the potential of each process you’ll be light-years ahead of your competitors, and grab the lions share of traffic, sales and profits with top search positions.

If you’re ready to get started check out my special Local SEO Trial Offer. You have nothing to lose!

Category: LSEO, Landing pages, Offline Strategies, SEO

Google Renames Local Business Center to “Places”

Posted on | April 21, 2010 | 1 Comment

I can see it now…

A couple of guys brainstormed this one in the Mountain View Googleplex while playing a game of foosball.

It must sound cooler… “places”. Kind of warm and fuzzy…

The good news is there is little change to the Local Business Center (LBC). They have added a $25 dollar monthly advertising option so a business can “tag” their listing with special offers, but that’s about it for now.

To give Google credit, they have been very good at giving small businesses exposure through the LBC. It’s a great service, easy to sign up, navigate and update. Hopefully, they’ll keep it that way and not complicate things to the point of uselessness (think Google Wave).

Just my opinion. ;-)

For the full scoop and new features go here:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/introducing-google-places.html

Category: LSEO

Small Business Internet Marketing – How Potential Customers Find You These Days…

Posted on | February 12, 2010 | No Comments

If you haven’t heard, more than 50% of your potential customers have abandoned the print yellow pages for online search. A vast majority of these buyers use Google Maps to find a local business in their area. Remember, these people are BUYERS. They are ready to spend their money NOW.

Here’s how they find you:

YouTube Preview Image

Do you have your local business listed on Google’s Local Business Center? If not, as you can see, you’re losing a lot of potential customers.

If you do, then you need to enhance it with as much information as possible. Fill out the information page completely. Add photo’s, video, specials, etc. Set yourself apart from your competition by using the Coupon feature. Get your satisfied customers to post reviews. The more information you provide the better because it will improve your ranking, results and profits!

What are you waiting for? It’s free.

Category: LSEO
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