Author: Tony

Do you need local marketing, regional marketing, or national marketing?

Every business has its own unique market area, and regardless if that area is local or national, every business benefits from the right online marketing strategy. What is the right strategy for your business?

Local Marketing
Businesses that need to have their customers physically walk in their door in order to complete the business transaction benefit from local online marketing. Think of dentists as a good example. A tooth cannot be filled if it’s not in the dentist’s office. Territorial businesses are also a good example of only needing local marketing. If it is not possible for someone outside of your territory to buy from you, local is your only option.

Keyword Strategy for Local Marketing
Make sure that you’re keywords are heavily targeted to your city or suburb. This includes any pay-per-click campaigns that you are using. You will get a bigger bang for your buck by adding your city, your suburb, your neighborhood, and even your local slang (if applicable) as part of your keywords. When you don’t include a localizer, you put yourself in competition with every similar business on the internet. Reducing your competition increases your chances of moving your website to the top of the list.

Regional Marketing
Businesses that have a few states in their territory would need regional marketing. Other good examples of regional marketing would be car dealerships. It is not uncommon for customers that don’t live in town to travel in to see a particular vehicle they’re interested in. It is realistic to think someone would travel a few hundred miles for a vehicle, but it’s not realistic for the average customer to come from across the country. Regional businesses don’t necessarily need their customer to step into their office, but they’re restricted in delivery area or consumer area.

Keyword Strategy for Regional Marketing
Like local marketing, when you’re customer area is a multiple city, multiple state area, you will get better traffic by geo-targeting your keywords to those areas as if you are local to each of the cities and states you target. In addition to adding keywords for those areas, your website content must also include each city or state you’ve added into your keywords. You will get better results if the search engine sees those keywords on the page, and not solely in the meta data. Adding this content can be as simple as adding an “Areas of Service” paragraph at the bottom of your home page with a list of each of the targeted cities and states. Once again, you’re narrowing your search competition and increasing your chances of moving to the top of the search.

National Marketing
Businesses that deliver anywhere in the country benefit the most from national marketing. If your product or service could be delivered anywhere, then national marketing would help you the most. A great example is software companies or retail consumer products.

Keyword Strategy for National Marketing
Believe it or not, on a national scale, geo-targeting your keywords will increase your search traffic. People search local. If you sell to consumers in Citrus County Fl, even though you are located in Wyoming, targeting your site’s keywords to include Nashville will get better results than leaving the local out of your keywords. Try searching for your product without a locator in your keywords. Look at the number of website results. Now try the same search with a locator in the keywords. The number of website results will be significantly smaller. It is easier to compete with a few hundred thousand other sites than tens of millions. You can target multiple states and multiple cities. If your website is correctly optimized, you can even change regions at will.

Pay-per-click campaigns are especially important to geo-target. You’ll pay less per click for a targeted keyword than for a general keyword. The general keywords have more people playing, so you have to bid more per click just to get placed in a decent spot. Besides, there is so much click fraud out there that it would be a shame to pay $10 for a fraudulent click on a national scale than $.50 for a localized click. You reduce budget waste by purchasing less expensive clicks.

To manage your online marketing, first, make sure you have an optimized website and great traffic analytics. Visit my website for more tips and advice.

What is mobile-friendly design

More than half of all cell phone users have a smart-phone generation phone. This means your customers are also finding products and services on the phone’s internet, not just at their computer. Does your website translate well on the mobile web? Make sure it does with either a mobile web app or a mobile website.

Think about your customer’s experience. If they’re searching on their phone, chances are they need your service or directions to your location right then. You need to make sure your information is fast, organized and designed just for the mobile internet. Remember, the mobile user is constrained by the speed of the network they are on or the strength of the wi-fi they’re using. Chances are, they’re not using a 20MB download connection, so you must give them a user-friendly option or risk their impatience and quick retreat from a slow or unusable site. Can you afford to take this chance?

Can your business benefit from a mobile app? Not every business can justify a mobile app, but for those that can, creating an app can give you recurring clients, quick response to specials, or valuable user behavior data that can help you grow and measure success.

Let our creative team help you think of an app that is beneficial to your clients. We can guide you through all the obvious cheesy app ideas that, frankly no one will download, and come up with a true tool for you and your business and your customers.

What is custom web design

If you are concerned with getting local search results, the best thing to start with is a custom website that is built specifically for your market. Custom websites are no longer just about capturing your branding online. There is no need for a branded website if it doesn’t show up in your customer’s search results. We build our websites with your target market as a priority and your branding as a guide. All of our custom sites are fully SEO’d, down to the server we put it on.

Did you know that the download speed of your website is also a major factor in your search engine placement? Most hosting services don’t allow for optimal SEO due to the fact that it’s probably shared hosting. We can explain more when you call us.

The difference between a custom website and using a website builder services can be the difference between getting results and paying a lot of money in the future to SEO the impossible. Most website builders allow you to add keywords and metadata, but that’s not full SEO. If you’re using a template, they’re often filled with extra lines of code to explain the features of the template to anyone who’s using it. That code could slow your results. And with a site builder service and with templates, there are many other websites out there that look just like yours. Is that what you need?

Call us today for a free consultation and quote. Stand apart from the crowd!

What is SEO

Search Engine Optimization gives your website an edge over your competition. Search Engines determine where your website is found online based on their unique algorithms. If your site follows what search engines want to see, your website will receive better results. This could mean adjusting many different things from the keywords to the speed of the server hosting your website.

SEO can be an ongoing process for websites that continually have new information or it can be a one time thing for a website that is in a less competitive industry. Don’t be fooled by SEO companies that tell you have to pay a monthly fee if you’re not in a very competitive market. But also keep in mind that Search Engines are continually refining their algorithms to keep up with the changes in the market and to stay ahead of spammers who find holes to exploit within the algorithm. It is important to know your market and the weight of your competition online. We will help you decide if you need a little help or a lot – and we’ll help you to know the difference.

What would SEO do for your website?
Proper SEO would give search engines all the information they need to categorize your website as relevant to your local target searches. SEO would find holes in meta data like missing keywords or missing alt text. Full SEO will even work on the speed of a website which can give you just enough of an edge over your competition.

Contact us today for an SEO consultation. SEO could be the difference between growing your business and staying right where you are. Come find out what could be. Call today

What is Local Search

More than 80% of people search locally first for products or services online. That means that your business needs to be found on the front page of the search results for your area. There are multiple resources that may help you land there. Each search engine has a maps type of tool that can include a profile for your business. There are directories that sometimes sneak to the first page, and there are SEO techniques that can be done to your website to help with natural search placement. The bottom line is that we can get you there.

Google Places
It is necessary for every business to have a Google places listing. Ever since mid 2010, Google’s search tools default to the user’s local area first, as a result, the emphasis on making sure your business pays attention to its local search results must be a priority. We make sure your Google places listing is posted, verified, and accurate, and will work hard to remove any multiple listings that may exist from past attempts at adding your business to Google maps.

There are features to take advantage of with Google places, such as adding photos, adding video, encouraging reviews of your business, and more. We can manage your Google Places paid activities too, such as the download features or adding menus. Let us optimize your Google Places page so we can help you take advantage of all the features available to you.

Plus there are more places to add your business information:
Yahoo Local
Bing Local Business Portal
Manta
Local Directories
And Much More…

Let us give you the best chance possible of customers finding your business. Our own business has been at the top of the natural search results since we opened up shop. We have a proven track record for local and national search. I know you want to work with a company that knows search placement. That is definitely us. Call today!