The Internet is a giant research tool.  Your customers are becoming more and more savvy as each day goes by, researching products, features, benefits and of course prices.  If you aren’t taking advantage of that trend, you’re missing out.

SEO

One of the best ways to build more traffic to your website is to take advantage of search engine optimization.  Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing your website for keywords that your customers are using every day when they do their research. 

Optimizing your website design is a good place to start.  Make sure your website is clear and concise, and every visitor understands just where they are (with your branding and logo) and isn’t cluttered with useless boxes or animations.

Each page on your site should target a single keyword or keyphrase.  Make sure you have a nice headline (with your keyword in it, of course) and your copy for that page includes the keyword a few times.

Don’t overdo it, though.  The copy should still be in ‘normal English’ and not marketer-speak.

Content

One of the best things you can do for your website is to add a blog.  And I don’t mean your daily diary of what you eat and how your Mom is doing.  I mean real meaty content – things that are affecting your industry and answer questions that your customers always ask.  The kind of stuff that makes you sound like an expert.

Why?

Because you’ll sound like an expert.  And people love dealing with experts.

There are probably a hundred or a thousand people right now that know what you know about your industry.  But I’d be willing to bet that less than a handful of them are leveraging that expertise online.

There’s a huge harvest of customers out there just looking for a solution to a problem, and you can be the one that solves it for them.  Writing a weekly blog post that answers a question you hear all the time will not only portray you as the expert, but it will also create links from other websites back to yours.  And every link is like a vote.

Video

The last thing that you can do to get more traffic is to start dabbling in the world of video.  Did you know that the number two search engine isn’t Yahoo!, Bing, or AOL?  It’s YouTube.

If I were to ask my kids today to go look something up online, there’s a good chance they’d go to YouTube to start looking.

Nearly 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute of the day.  While that seems like a lot, there is still only a small amount of videos that are actually optimized for certain keywords and keyphrases.  And Google is working hard to optimize those videos with use of voice recognition software.

Between Google’s voice recognition and your brief description of the video when you upload it, you’ll rank in the search engines quick.  And with Google’s new universal search, your video will not only show up as a search result, but it could also potentially push a competitors’ website off the first page – giving you even more traffic.

Summary

The smart use of search engine optimization techniques, creating quality content and video will thrust your website traffic past your competitors in no time.

Today I stumbled upon a press release about a local real estate company that hired a lead generation company to help them generate more customers (in theory).  The lead generation company’s website gives four easy steps to generating leads:

How Lead Generation Sites Work

1. Customer searches for your service in Google/Yahoo!/Bing.
2. Customer finds your microsite.
3. Customer learns about your business and decides to buy.
4. Customer contacts you directly and you make the sale!

Well, put bluntly, I have a problem with this formula – in particular step #2.

In theory, the idea is great.  You get a call from a lead generation company like this and they promise great traffic.  They’ll simply send traffic to ‘your’ website and a portion of the visitors will either fill out a form on your site or give you a call.  A decent portion of those leads will turn into customers, and you’ll be happy.

More customers means more revenue, right?  It sure does.  But there’s a problem with the process.

The Trap

One of the things I often preach to my kids is that you need to invest in something today that will make some future day more enjoyable.  Don’t think short term – and that’s what this process does.

When a business owner hires one of these companies, the company purchases a keyword-rich domain name and then creates an exact duplicate of your website on that domain name.  They then purchase your keywords in one of many various PPC websites, sending traffic to your website clone (not your website).

If they’re any good at SEO, they may even rank their clone website above yours in the organic rankings – thus sending more customers to you, but through their system. They may say they are doing SEO, but you are paying them to do it for their site, not yours.

And just like PPC, if you decide to stop paying them, your leads disappear, your traffic disappears, and your revenue dries up.  Yet you’ve given them all of your good converting keyword data, which they can then use to woo in one of your competitors.

The Fix

The fix is easy – don’t do it.  Invest that same amount of money into something long term like a good quality website, a content strategy or SEO, and you won’t be slave to some company’s website clone or short term PPC tactics.  Invest in building your website as the authority for your keywords.  Start writing content on your site and building backlinks.  Months from now you’ll reap from these things and so will your bank account.

But I Need Customers RIGHT NOW

I understand – you are getting ready to close up shop if something doesn’t change today.  You’re not interested in a long term investment for your business – you just need the phone to ring NOW.  Got it.  With that in mind, here are a few questions I recommend you ask the lead gen company.

1. Are you going to duplicate my website, or send traffic directly to my URL?
   If the answer to this question is that they’ll duplicate your site, or a portion of it, or they’ll create a ‘landing page’ on their own URL, I recommend you stop right there.
2. Do you offer any sort of call tracking that will help me differentiate my calls from the ones you’ve generated?
   If they are sending traffic right to your URL, then you’ll want a way to tell which calls are coming from traffic that they’ve generated vs traffic that you’ve acquired ‘naturally’ – through your organic rankings, handing out business cards, etc.
3. Do I have access to your data?
   Will they provide some sort of way to track website visitors that they generate vs those that you’ve acquired naturally?  Will they be able to show where your money is going?
4. Do you offer this same service to my competitors?
   Ethically, how can they help generate you traffic and your competition as well?  They can’t.  Just like I can’t ethically do SEO for two businesses in the same industry.  I couldn’t sleep at night if I knew I was taking money from two businesses while making the exact same promise to both – position #1.

By now you’ve probably lost the salesman or they’ve given up on selling to you.  I recommend you go back and read the part of this article under The Fix and apply it to your business.  You’ll see that the long term approach is the better way to your business’s online success.

What are some lead generation companies?

• ReachLocal
• Prospect Genius
• eLocal
• Service Magic
• Yellow Pages

St Louis isn’t a huge town.  It’s not like New York or LA where limos are seen every day.  If you see one here, chances are it was rented for some sort of event, not because a famous person is cruising by.  And this isn’t Vegas, where they’re waiting by the hundreds at the airport.

I imagine that owning a limo rental company can be a bit stressful.  Those rides aren’t cheap, they have a somewhat high need for maintenance (especially cleaning) and need to be on the road more often than not.  So keeping the limos booked is a huge priority.  The following is a few things I’d do if I owned such a company.

First and foremost, I’d get a website. I’d fill it with pictures of people having fun, enjoying a night on the town.  I’d have a wedding specials section with pictures of brides laughing with their girlfriends, toasting with champagne.  Pricing would be easy to find, and pictures of each limo would be available.  I’d create special pages for certain events.  Weddings is the obvious one, but so are birthdays, bachelor and bachelorette parties, Girl’s Night Out and even Father-Daughter dances.

I’d also make the limo pages easy to share.  When people are thinking about getting one, often they email their friends and tell them to take a look.  Or choose between a few different ones.  “Should we get the Hummer or the Cadillac?”  Share buttons on these pages would be mandatory.  The buttons could be one-click posts.  When they click on the Facebook button, it automatically creates a post to the brides facebook page and has a thumbnail and link back to the site.  A really smart limo company could even build a ‘Help Me Choose’ page that compared two limos on a page, listing all of their benefits, accessories and prices.  Then that page could be shared amongst friends.

A search for limos in St Louis brings back only 5 organic results – and only two of those are actual limo companies in St. Louis.  One is a pagerank 2, the other a 0.  That means a nicely SEO’d website could climb to a page one ranking fairly quickly.

We can’t forget to add the site to the Google LBC, either.  This is pretty crucial nowadays.  Fill in the profile completely and create a few special categories.  Be careful not to put geographic-related words in those categories, though, as it is against Google’s guidelines and will surely get your submission rejected.  Don’t forget to geotag any pictures you upload, and get your listing verified as quickly as possible.

Video is another great tool you could take advantage of.  Make a few video interviews of your (still sober) guests at the end of the night and post them on a ‘memories page’ (at an additional cost, perhaps).  Use some of the good videos on your LBC page as well.

You could also give video tours of each limo, highlighting the special things about each.

A limo driver blog would be a great linkbait and content tool.  Post funny stories about things that you’ve seen as a driver, interesting facts about driving such a long vehicle, and use the blog to post content around the job in general.  A well written and consistent blog specifically about driving a limo would start to get comments from other drivers, thus increasing your overall content.  Be careful of local competitors who’d try to spam comment your blog, but let them comment if they don’t link out in every post.

Lead Generation

Now let’s talk about getting those limos full every night.  Beyond having an SEO’d website, there definitely needs to be plenty of ‘Call to Action’ buttons on the site.  Have them big and obvious.  Reserve this Limo Now or Compare this Limo.

Consider advertising on websites that have your same target audience, for instance St. Louis Weddings.  The rates aren’t that bad and they’ve already got a captive audience.

Team up with local florists and have them give out your cards, perhaps with a $25 discount attached.  Do the same for DJ places and funeral homes.

Target Facebook ads to groups related to brides, grooms and weddings in general.  Offer a Facebook Discount that they can only get by Liking your page.  Have a monthly contest for a free 4 hour limo ride (driver’s tip not included).

Find some local What to Do in St Louis type websites and get a listing there.  See the Arch from a limo might attract some families with an adventurous side (and it’d have your limos running during daytime hours).

The web is ripe in St. Louis for a limo company that’s ready to pounce.  There’s little to no online competition, and a well executed online marketing plan could net some serious money for one that’s willing to jump in headfirst.

There are tons of ideas for an industry like this – what are some I missed?

Back in May, I spoke to the St. Louis Small Business Meetup Group about getting traffic, climbing the search engine rankings and beyond.  It was a great meetup in a small restaurant in Kirkwood – a terrific atmosphere and I think you’ll enjoy this video.  In it you’ll learn:

• Why Shotgun Marketing is a think of the past
• Why You need a CMS
• What Google Thinks About Your Site
• How to Spy on Your Competitors
• Plenty More Tips

Will, I’m doing alright on clients right now, but by this summer I know it’s going to dry up a bit, so I’m thinking about doing PPC or a link building campaign.  Which do you recommend?

- Jon

I’m not a huge fan of PPC.  While I know it works, and works quite well for some businesses, it’s overall a very short-sighted strategy.  If you have the budget, pay per click is an easy way to the front page for many terms.  Problem is, most small business owners don’t have the budget they need in order to get or stay near the top.  Plus, once that budget runs out, the ads immediately disappear and you are literally back to where you were when you wrote this email.

PPC is fairly easy to set up, it’s quick, and gets you traffic right away.  If you are a short-term thinker, this may be the way to go.  Just realize that there are no long term benefits – it’s money spent and gone.

Link building, on the other hand, is not fast.  Since some sites are not crawled for up to six weeks at a time, a link placed on one of those today may not influence your rankings for two months.  And even then, if you’re on page five for a result, and the search engine finds your link, and it influences the rankings, you may jump to page two or three – still no significant increase in traffic.

But link building has a long-time effect on your overall rankings.  If you were to build 300 links over the course of a month, you’ll see that effort come back to you in increased rankings over time for multiple keywords and keyphrases.

Obviously the rankings you achieve by starting a link building campaign depend on the keywords you choose.  Selecting some that have little competition, such as geotargeted phrases, are more likely to rank on page one quickly.

So it pretty much depends on your end goal.  If you want to put money into PPC every summer, and see no benefit from it during the other three seasons, then by all means do it.  But if you want to get to the top of the organic rankings, a steady push at link building is the way to go.

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.

What is your website address?

That is the thing that looks like http://www.localbusiness.com. If there is an @ symbol in it, it’s an email address and not what you’re looking for.

What is your business?

What do you make, sell or provide? Do you sell cow bells to rock drummers? Do you sell shoes to old ladies? You know your business so you know what you do.  Write down 20 things that you sell and who you sell them to. Order them by either how profitable they are or which are the most popular.

How do people describe the products or services you provide?

Do they call them comfort shoes or orthopedic shoes? I don’t give a damn what the real name or technical term is. You aren’t selling your products to professionals in your own industry, you’re selling to the general public and you have to sell to them on their level so start by using the same terms that they use. Write down 20 terms that you hear people use to describe your products and services.

What city or cities do you do business in?

Do you work in St Louis, Los Angeles or somewhere in between? Write down the names of all the areas that your clients come from. If you are a mobile service, write down the areas that you are willing to travel to.

What other businesses in your list of cities have websites?

Do your friends have business websites? Do your kids have their own blogs? Write down any website owner that you can think of that you’re friendly with or if they’re in a similar industry. That will help a bit down the road.

What professional or civic organizations do you belong to?

Again, write them down, each and every one of them. If you don’t belong to any, you’d better join some. We’ll talk about that shortly.

How many links are there coming into your website?

If you’re asking what a link is, don’t worry. Many business owners don’t know and very few know how many links they have coming into their site. So let’s get educated. A link is the picture or text on a web page that you click on to move to another page. You need as many of those links as you can get. They should be coming from other websites and linking to yours. In case you’re wondering why you need links, links are power and currency in the popularity contest that is the Internet. The more incoming links you have, the more important Google thinks you are, therefore the higher they are going to rank you. If you have no links, you’re just like the fat kid in gym class. Got it?

Now that we have the major questions out of the way, let’s put it all together.

1.      Your website address is the address that they need to link to you. Memorize it!

2.      Now look at the list of items that you sell. Pick the 3 most important ones and number them. These are what people search for and what makes you the most money.

3.      Look over the words that people use to describe your products or services and see which ones describe your top 3 items. These are your keywords and you tell people that these are the words that you want them to link to you with. Some people will do it. Others won’t. Don’t worry if they don’t. It’s just an added feather in your cap if they do.

4.      Now for the city or cities that you work in. Those are alternate keywords or additions to your previous list of keywords.

5.      Look at your list of friendly website owners and tell yourself “I am going to call 5 of these people per day and ask them for links from their website to mine”. Then act upon it! Give these people your website address and the keywords that you want them to link to you with.

6.      Find out who the webmasters are for your professional and civic organizations and ask if they will give you a link on their “Members” page.

7.      Keep track of everyone that you ask for a link. You’ll want to check back every month or 2, just to be certain that your links are still there. Some people may want a link back to their site and that is okay. It is better if you get a 1-way link but a reciprocal link is better than none.

With these 7 steps, you are ready to hit the ground running and building links from local businesses. Remember, the Internet is a popularity contest and you want to win it, but you have to do it honestly without buying links. The search engines are smart enough to know when you bought the Prom King/Queen election and they will smack your site back down below where it was before.

Tim Biden is a Los Angeles SEO Professional and the owner of Village Ads. You can follow his nonsensical ramblings on twitter: @villageadsseo.