The Guide to Small Business Internet Marketing
[divider]
Content Marketing for Small Business
[divider]
[two_third]
[colored_box bgColor=”#ffffff” textColor=”#333333″]
The core of any small business internet marketing strategy is content. Content marketing involves creating resources like web pages, blog posts, and YouTube videos that are relevant and valuable to your prospective customers. The content that your business creates should be smart, informative, engaging and sharable.
Content marketing is a massive departure from traditional interruption marketing techniques like TV and print advertising. The goal is to be found via search engines and social media when your prospect searches for terms (or keywords) that are related to the problems that your product or service solves. To understand content marketing, you must have a strong understanding of how search engines work and how to use social media for business.
Topics like social media, search marketing, and content strategy are vast and intertwined. They are also, in my opinion, still the wild frontier. There are very good books, videos, tools, and blog posts about all of these topics. This page will give hopefully give you an overview about how they all work together – practically – to drive new customers to your business.
[/colored_box]
[/two_third]
[one_third_last]
[margin30]
Content Marketing
A marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
[/one_third_last]
Recommended Reading
[two_third]
[colored_box bgColor=”#ffffff” textColor=”#333333″]
The New Rules of Marketing & PR
How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly
[divider]
Content Rules
How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Ebooks, Webinars and More That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business.
[/colored_box]
[/two_third]
[one_third_last]
[/one_third_last]
[divider]
Understanding Search Engines, SEO & SEM
[divider]
[two_third]
[colored_box bgColor=”#ffffff” textColor=”#333333″]
Search Engine Optimization
The first step to understanding content marketing is understanding how search engines work. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a two step process.
1. On-page SEO – deals with picking the correct keywords, organizing content in a search friendly way, and making sure that search engines can properly index your site’s web pages.
2. Off-page SEO – deals with building back links to your website’s content from reputable sources to improve an individual page’s chances of ranking for a given keyword.
Search Engine Marketing
Understanding Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is also essential. Some refer to SEO as a sub-category of Search Engine Marketing but much of the industry uses SEM to cover topics like PPC advertising. Here I’ll use SEO to refer to on-page and off-page optimization and SEM to refer to paid search activities like Google Adwords. Note: I use SEM (Google AdWords’ text and display ads and Facebook advertising) to support and compliment SEO strategies.
The Difference Between SEO & SEM
The biggest difference between SEO and SEM for small business is that SEO affects your organic search results and SEM pays to have your business’ results show up in “Sponsored” results for keywords you pick. Over a long period of time, SEO and SEM can be compared to renting a property vs. purchasing a home. The thumbnail to the right shows a search engine results page, or SERP, for the keyword phrase “tubas for sale”. The yellow box at the top, the images underneath labeled “sponsored, and the results down the right-hand side of the page are all paid placements. They amount to less than 20% of the total clicks for any given search phrase.
[/colored_box]
[/two_third]
[one_third_last]
[margin20]
Learn SEO
with
Rand Fishkin
of SEOMoz.org
Learn SEO
This 15 minute video explains how search engines work, what long-tail keywords are, and is probably the smartest thing you’ll watch today.
[/one_third_last]
[divider]
[two_third]
[warning_box]Avoiding Common On-Page SEO Issues
- Duplicate Home Page Content – This is the most common error I run into with small business websites. Make sure that Google only displays one version of your home page. A quick test to see if you’re home page is alright: Type the url of your website into a browser.
[margin10]
Example: try typing “www.PowersBusiness.com” into a browser and you will automatically be redirected to the URL “PowersBusiness.com”. If you type “www.YourBusiness.com” and “YourBusiness.com” into a browser and both individual URL’s are shown without one redirecting to the other, you’re hurting your organic search results. Do this test with the “Home” button on your website. If you have a “www.YourBusiness.com” home page and the exact same result at “www.YourBusiness.com/index”, you’re crippling your most important web page’s search results. - Duplicate Content On Your WordPress Website – If you use WordPress for your business’ website and have posted any content to the blog portion of your site, you should install either Yoast’s SEO Tool or the All In One SEO Pack. Both are free. Go into the settings and make sure that your category and tags are set to no-index. This will keep your blog posts’ search rankings from being negatively affected due to duplicate content instances.
- Use Your Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, and H1 Tags Properly – Every page of your website should target an individual keyword. Making proper use of your page title, meta descriptions, and h1 tags are essential to ranking for your target keywords.
[margin10]
[/warning_box]
[/two_third]
[one_third_last]
[divider]
Link Building Resources
[divider]
Link Building Strategies
The Complete List
[divider]
5 Link Building Tactics
To Improve Local SEO
[divider]
The Complete Guide
To Link Building for Local Events
[/one_third_last]
[divider]
[two_third]
[colored_box bgColor=”#ffffff” textColor=”#333333″]
SEOMoz.org – 30 Day Free Trial
SEOMoz.org’s software will crawl your website and give you detailed information about crawl errors, duplicate website content, who is currently linking to your website, the strength of your website and it’s individual pages, how well your pages are optimized for a given keyword term and how difficult it is to rank for a given keyword term. It will also track your rankings over time and can be integrated with Google Analytics, your Facebook page and your Twitter account. You can try for free for 30 days but after that the software costs $99 per month.
[/colored_box]
[/two_third]
[one_third_last]
[/one_third_last]
[divider]
Developing Awesome Content – Hint: It’s Not About You
[divider]
Developing awesome content isn’t easy. It takes hard work. You need to have a very strong understanding of who your customers are. You need to be able to put yourself in their shoes and understand their pain. Then you need to develop and provide content that helps to ease their pain. Not self-serving sales pitches. Not a website that talks about how great your company is. But content that helps to explain, educate, and engage.
[two_third]
A Tired, Old Example – Boring Content, PPC Advertising & A Call to Action
Let’s say that your business sells windows. You can spend $20 per click to advertise to anyone that searches for terms like “window replacement company” in the Maryland area. Once that visitor hits your website you can tell them how great you are and encourage them to schedule a free estimate. This approach used to work. But as more and more companies tried to compete for that limited audience the price of each click grew dramatically. And every company that is taking this approach is attempting to score a quick sale without truly building any context with the prospect. In this case, the goal is to have a customer leave their name, phone number and email address to schedule a free estimate.
[/two_third]
[one_third_last]
[/one_third_last]
[two_third]
A Newer, Better Example – Helpful, Sharable, Social & Search Friendly
Now take the same business and put the focus on the prospective customer. Ask yourself, or your sales people, what the most common customer questions are that are asked during free estimates. Create a list of as many questions as possible and then answer each question as simply BUT in as much detail as possible. You’ve just created a windows buyer’s guide that you can turn into multiple web pages and a downloadable PDF. Make the windows buyer’s guide available for free and make a SERIOUS effort to be as useful as possible without making a sales pitch. Share links to the web pages via social media. Share the document with prospective customers on sales visits. Bring copies to your next trade show. Make the printable PDF available for download in exchange for an email address that you will send the link to. You’ve now built context with your customer. You’ve created search friendly content that will be indexed and that you can get regular traffic from without the cost associated with PPC. You involved your sales people in the process and gave them a voice in your organization. AND you created content that will be more likely to be “liked” and “shared” via social media.
[/two_third]
[one_third_last]
[/one_third_last]
[divider]
Using Landing Pages & Increasing Conversions
[divider]
[one_third]
There are any number of reasons to use landing pages to increase conversions in our internet marketing efforts. One of the most common is for PPC advertising. Keep in mind that for every audience segment you are targeting using PPC advertising you should have at least two landing pages(an A page and B page for testing copy, offers, images, etc.)
Formstack.com created an infographic titled The Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page that does a very good job of breaking down landing pages.
[/one_third]
[two_third_last]
[/two_third_last]
[divider]
Using Social Media Effectively
[divider]
[two_third]
I see more businesses using social media the wrong way than businesses doing social right. Here’s a quick list of things you shouldn’t be doing:
- Trust the management of these accounts to interns and 20 year old’s – Social Media is the new PR for small businesses. You can communicate directly with consumers. Have your content picked up by media sources. And wreck your entire business in a heartbeat if you’re not careful.
- Spamming your friends and family – they’re most likely not your customers or your target. If they’ve “liked” your business, it’s equally likely that they’ve hidden your posts from their news feed.
- Go on endlessly about your products or services – Nobody cares. Honestly. So give it a rest.
- Tag people in posts that aren’t actually about them – Congratulations. You’re now in the category of discount shoe spammers and night club managers.
- Automatically post your Facebook status to your Twitter account or vice versa – They are all individual forms of communication with their own specific voice. Think of each like the difference between a text message, a phone call, an email, and a written letter.
- TYPE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS – It doesn’t convey urgency. It conveys an inability to effectively communicate.
Now for some things you should be doing on Social Media:
- Researching your community, industry and competition – Like these pages. Follow what they’re saying. Interact and engage with them where it’s appropriate. Use Twitter’s search feature to see what twitter is saying about your industry.
- Develop awesome content for your website and share with your followers – When you post a link to your awesome content, call out very specific problems and solutions and use those as your headlines.
- Ask your followers questions and engage them in conversations – This is what social media is for. Not to be used as a bullhorn for your sales message. To engage in conversation with your customers and your prospects.
- Be mindful of random affinities – If you sell canoes, you’re going to have a difficult time talking about canoes on Facebook every day for the foreseeable future. Your canoe-buying audience will probably not want to hear that canoe-buying message constantly. But they are also interested in hiking, camping, renewable energy, green products. Follow the companies that cater to these random affinities and find new ideas for items to share, content to create, partnerships to foster.
I highly recommend
that you read The Oatmeal’s
How To Get More Facebook Likes.
[/one_third_last]
Google Analytics & Google Webmaster Tools
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a small business owner’s best friend. It’s completely free. It will tell you where your website’s visitors live, how they got to your website, how long they spent on your site and what pages they viewed, and if they came via search engine – what keywords they used to find you.
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is equally important. You can submit a sitemap to Google encouraging Google’s robots to crawl your site. You can easily keep track of all the websites that Google finds linking to your website. You can access critical errors to your site – these are problems that are preventing Google from indexing your content. And the list goes on.
Pay Per Click Advertising
Google Webmaster Tools PPC advertising can be a very smart addition to your internet marketing plan. Especially when your competition is bigger than you. If you find that it’s difficult to rank organically for a specific term, targeting that phrase with Google Adwords might be the right option. Make sure to develop ads specific to individual groups of related keywords and dont run display ads & text ads in the same campaign. Create a unique campaign for each.
[colored_box bgColor=”#f8f8f8″ textColor=”#333333″]
Note: I will be adding to this list of resources regularly. If you’d like to receive notice when I make an update, follow me on Twitter or send me an email.
[/colored_box]
[colored_box bgColor=”#ffffff” textColor=”#333333″]
Found something useful? Do us a solid and tell a friend!
[googleplusone size=”medium”]
[tweet username=”shanepowers” layout=”horizontal” text=”The Guide to Small Business Internet Marketing” url=”http://ow.ly/eVJL9″]
[fblike layout=”standard”]
[/colored_box]