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Big Discount for Upcoming St Louis Business Conference

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

On April 1st I’ll be speaking at the Market Saint Louis conference about how any business can dominate their local area in search results. Along with myself are some other awesome speakers including Jason Tinnin from Saint Louis-based SimpleFlame and Derek Chew, former SEO lead at Yahoo!.

The conference only happens once a year, and there are only 100 tickets sold.  It’s a perfect fit for  small and medium business owners/execs.  There are two tracks – a beginner and an advanced, so no matter what you’re expertise level, you’ll learn a lot.

The tickets are $249 each, but I’ve been given the green light to offer a pretty sweet deal.  From now until tickets sell out, all purchases are Buy One Get One Free!  But that’s not even the best part – if you use the promo code ‘SPEAKER‘ you’ll get $50 off of the ticket price.  That means 2 tickets to this premier conference will only cost you $199!

How cool is that?

Like I said, this deal only lasts until all the tickets are sold out.

As if I need to sweeten it any more, the tickets also get you admission to the conference’s pre-event mixer on March 31st at 7PM.  You’ll get a few free drinks and will be able to meet the speakers and mingle with all the other business owners.

It’s going to be so cool.  I hope you can make it!

Details
Market Saint Louis
http://www.MarketSTL.com
April 1, 8am-4pm

Mixer (free with ticket purchase – sponsored by SimpleFlame)
HoteLumiere
March 31, 7pm

List of freebies: http://www.marketstl.com/register/freebies/

Posted in Marketing, St Louis, conferences, small business | No Responses »
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Your Most Important Post

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Many times when we come up with great inspiration for a blog post or twitter status update, we take it straight to the web and start typing.  Since numbers and analytics data are what drive many of us, (perhaps we should call it egolytics), we’re always on the lookout for that one great post that drives a huge amount of traffic.Most Important

…and to you it seems like the most important post of your career.  This is the one.  You’ve got some great info and you’re ready to bust on the scene with a groundbreaking update.

It may be good info, it may bring you a ton of traffic, and get lots of inbound links, but it’s not your most important post.
Click to continue »

Posted in reputation, small business, social media | 3 Responses »

I Need SEO, Now What?

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

I’m having a blast with the free Internet Marketing series I’m teaching here in Saint Louis.  The room has been packed at each session and the one I’m teaching tonight is no doubt going to be the same.

Tonight will be the final of three awesome classes.  Of the three, I enjoy teaching Marketing Your Business Website the most.  It’s basically a ten thousand-foot view of Internet Marketing, including pointers on good domain names, design and of course SEO.

I’ve been teaching this particular class for over four years now, and the expression of people’s faces as I close out the curriculum is nearly always the same.

Shock.  Surprise.

“We had no idea there was so much involved in getting our site to rank.”

“This is a ton of work and we’re already busy running our business.”

“We’ve got to do this but can’t believe all that’s involved.”

The realizations are always about the same.  There’s a lot to do to get your site moving towards the top.  There’s more than just coming up with a list of twenty keywords that you think are important (because your web guy asked you for them).  Lots more.  Not to mention social media, PPC or blogging.

So what do you do from here?

Click to continue »

Posted in beginner sem, site ranking, small business, web design | No Responses »

Listed Locally: Needed Now More Than Ever

Monday, January 11th, 2010

If you’ve got a business that caters to a predominantly local market, and you aren’t active in your online strategy, you’re about to be left behind in a big way.

Late last week Google announced a new feature for their mobile search where you can find businesses near you.  This little feature, which rolled out to all iPhone and Droid users can have a huge impact on your local foot traffic.

In order to be listed in what we call the 7 pack, you’ve got to have your businesses listed in the Google Local Business Listings (LBL).  Even if your business doesn’t have a website, you can still list it in there.
Businessman looking at his smartphone
There are two main impacts by this simple change:

  • Those businesses that are listed in the LBL are going to see an increase in walk-in traffic.  Over time as the service is rolled out to more and more smartphones, it will only increase this walk-in traffic.  Since smartphones continue to get cheaper, more and more people are going to have them.  It won’t be long before most cell phones are smart/data run.
  • Not being listed in the LBL is only going to continue to hurt businesses that won’t get with the times.  It’s like ignoring the Yellow Pages 50 years ago.  It’s like saying the television fad will quietly pass.

Now, don’t forget that Google is already showing local/map results for generic queries.  That’s something they rolled out way back around March of 2009.  So it goes without saying that having a strong SEO presence in the search engines is becoming more and more mandatory.  Having your site verified in Google Webmaster tools is no longer an option.

Read other posts on Google Maps and local marketing

Oh – and once you’re listed, don’t forget to keep an eye on your listing.

Posted in Google Maps, local marketing, small business | No Responses »
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