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Local Internet Marketing Conference Wrapup

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

Yesterday the folks at the Main Street Marketing Community put on a conference for small business owners in Saint Louis that wanted to learn more about building their business through online measures.  The conference was at the Hilton Frontenac, and it seems that all of the feedback was very positive.  Here is a wrap-up of the days events with a few nuggets thrown in.

Session One – Keyword Research

Russ Henneberry and myself presented a quick 30 minute session on keyword research.  We covered the basics of keyword research such as various keyword tools (AdWords, WordTracker, Google Instant, Yahoo Suggest and SEOBook) then went in and showed how to seed the keyword tool and get back a ton of results.  We talked about the Long Tail of search, geographic indicators (such as St Louis, Saint Louis , STL) and then mentioned the keyword tracking tool called AWR.  Russ followed that up with a quick mention of Google Analytics and we were done.

We were hoping to help the attendees understand that keyword research is the foundation of any online campaign, whether you do PPC, SEO or even a mobile campaign. Click to continue »

Posted in conferences, Saint Louis | 7 Responses »

If I Were A…St. Louis Dentist

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Today is part one of a series called “If I Were A…” – in which I’ll take various professions throughout the Saint Louis area and show just what I’d do from an online strategy perspective.  First up – a dentist.

Prerequisites

There are some assumptions we’ve got to make here.  The dentist should already have:

  • An office
  • Existing patients
  • A website

Step One – Find A Keyword Niche

toothbrushesCurrently the search term ‘dentist st louis‘ comes up with just 860,000 results.  While this may seem like a lot, in reality it’s not.  Any result under a million is worth looking in to, and possibly ranking for.  According to the Google Keyword Tool, 4,400 people searched this phrase last month.

Switching the phrase around to ‘st louis dentist‘ results in 1.1 Million results.  Slightly more competition for nearly the same phrase. But check this out – this phrase gets twice as many (9,900) average searches a month!

And thirdly, the phrase ‘dentist saint louis‘ yields an incredible 2.7 Million results, yet only shows around 12,100 per month.  Which is a better deal? Click to continue »

Posted in local marketing, Marketing, St Louis | 2 Responses »

Lost and Found – 7 Steps Showing Why Found is Better

Monday, February 7th, 2011

The following is a post by Tim Biden. Tim runs an SEO firm based in Los Angeles, California.  His contact info is at the end of today’s post – make sure you check out his website and follow him on the Twitter!

So you have a website but you’re not seeing the business roll in like you keep hearing that it should. There could be a number of reasons for that but today we’re simply going to focus on being found by your prospective clients. This part of the equation is simple enough… If they go to Google, Bing, or Yahoo and your website doesn’t come up in the first page of the results, you’re not going to get their business.

Your website is not a farm in the middle of nowhere and the Internet is not the “Field of Dreams”. You need build it, and apply the principles of SEO, before they will come.

With that being said, please allow me to ask you a few questions. Write down the answers on a piece of paper. We’ll be wrapping everything up at the end.
Click to continue »

Posted in local marketing, SEO, small business | No Responses »

Knee Jerk Advertising Won’t Grow Your Business

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

Are you feeling the crunch of the economy? Seeing less and less customers come through your door?  Tons of great businesses have closed up shop, and others have been forced to put the little emergency marketing budgets they have into use.

Yesterday I heard a commercial for a small steel company in town and found myself wondering why they’d spend a few thousands on a radio campaign.  I think it’s simply that they don’t know.  They’re feeling the crunch just like the rest of us, and probably listen to that particular station.  So they put together an ad about how great they are, and paid the radio sales piper.

Reactive instead of proactive. Click to continue »

Posted in Marketing, offline advertising, SEO, small business | 2 Responses »

Outsourcing the Small Stuff

Monday, January 17th, 2011

When you first start out as a business owner, doing everything is fun. Cracking open Quickbooks and trying to learn it is a little exciting (and daunting). Getting a proposal together is fun. Doing small things makes you feel like you’re really growing.

But as you get more and more clients, the small things start to really take up more of your time than you’d like.  Working on these details continue to suck up your time, except now they’re exponentially growing because your client list is growing. They have become a burden.
Click to continue »

Posted in small business | 2 Responses »
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Inbound Link Expansion

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Inbound links are the most overlooked and probably misunderstood part of building a successful presence on the web.  Many small business owners put big effort into building their website up nice, have lots of great content, and spend a lot of time and money doing so.  But when it comes to getting links, they have no idea how to do it – beyond calling a few friends and vendors and asking for them.
Click to continue »

Posted in link building | 5 Responses »
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Case Study: Business Blogging for Revenue

Monday, December 20th, 2010

If you’ve ever taken one of my classes or heard me speak, you’ve probably hear me say this:

Blogging is one of the best things you can do for your business.

While most people think blogging is just about what you ate yesterday or how cute your baby is, there’s a lot more to it for business.  A lot more.

Beyond the Brochure

By now I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase Content is King more than once.  It’s definitely true – creating new content on a consistent basis is one of the best ways to gain the search engines’ attention.  And attention turns into ranking.  And ranking turns into customers.

But let’s be frank – your website probably sucks.  It’s a boring brochure, laden with the must-have’s such as an About Us page, a contact form, and of course a list of products or services.
Click to continue »

Posted in business blogging, small business | 2 Responses »

How To Make It Easy for Customers to Give You Money

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

One of the best things I got out of last week’s Pubcon conference was from the Ecommerce Optimization session – Make it easy for people to give you money.

And that pretty much sums up the session by Rob Snell and a few others. Optimizing your website so the most visitors can purchase with ease is a must-do in today’s world. In fact, if you aren’t already on an ecommerce model, what are you waiting for? Your competitors? (Hint: They may already be working on it)
Click to continue »

Posted in customer service | 2 Responses »

Beginner’s Guide to Pubcon

Sunday, November 14th, 2010

Pubcon is one of the nation’s biggest SEO-related conferences, with upwards of 3000 people attending it’s Vegas event yearly. It has been going for many years, and hosts some of the most terrific panels on everything from social media to video. I’ve never been to a big conference like Pubcon, so I didn’t know what to expect.

Before the event, I tweeted that I was wondering if there was a list of things that are suggested to bring, but no one stepped up and sent me any links. So I had to make some assumptions and do the best I could.
Click to continue »

Posted in conferences | 1 Response »
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Can You Control the Way Your Listing Looks in Google?

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

File this one under: Huh! I didn’t know I could do that!

Many business owners don’t realize that they can actually influence and control the way their listing looks on the search engines.  Changing a few things on your website can dramatically increase ranking, click-throughs and of course website traffic.  For purpose of example, I’m going to use a site that I built a while back: FloatMissouri.com (for those of you that don’t know what a float trip is, this site will enlighten you)
Click to continue »

Posted in programming, SERM, web design | 1 Response »

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