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, we’ve heard what you say about blogging being a great way to increase your overall search presence, but we’re not sure where to start.  Blogger, WordPress.com and others offer free blogging platforms – is that a good way to get started?

- Mike

This is a great question, Mike.  I get this question in nearly every presentation I do.

In short, my answer is no, don’t use a free blogging service.  The entire reason that I preach blogging as such a great tool for SEO is that it generates content for your website – for your domain.  Ultimately you want to build your domain (website) up as the authority for your industry.

By using a free blogging service, you’re basically giving that content over to another company (another domain).  By blogging with them, you are ultimately ranking their domain for your keyphrases.  You are helping another business get traffic, not your own.

Don’t be confused, WordPress(.org) is a great blogging tool that you can download and install on your domain. That’s the way you should go.

Keep the great content, tips and how-to’s on your site. Grow it big and kick butt.

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.

Washer Games

I’m not completely sure if washers is a local Saint Louis or midwest game, or if it is known nationally.  I never got that far into the research to find out.  This company made some of the coolest washer games, complete with custom colors and special metal for just the right look and feel.  They were thinking of selling online, and had a nice advantage on their competition, but I never heard back from them.  Maybe they realized my mullet wasn’t long enough.

Land by the Foot

Had one guy who owned a development-type company that bought huge tracts of land and then chopped them up for builders.  He wasn’t in on the home building, just divvying up the land and making bucketloads of money.  He wanted to rank well for related terms so he could get the land off the books quicker.

Specialized Lumber

A client who first contacted me about 4 years back decided to come to one of my free classes last Fall gave me a call this year.  He was seeing the downturn in sales and wanted a life preserver.  He is already ranking well for decks and other construction-related queries in the Saint Louis area. We are now working on dominating the Midwest.

Time Shares

This one was more of a reputation management gig.  They hadn’t even launched a website yet, but were already worried about their employees quitting and putting out negative reviews about their biz.  Kinda makes ya wonder, doesn’t it?

STDs

Yeah, those.  A few very aggressive (or at least aggressive-talking) guys wanted to smash their competition.  They were so excited about taking over the top results simply as an act of revenge that I was a bit scared myself.  Nonetheless I submitted a modest proposal to overtake their apparent drug-taking and cheating competitors, but never heard another peep.  Probably for the best.

Window & Door Decorations

This one would have been fun.  A few local STL guys had a great idea for some holiday decorations that went in your window and lit up all cute-like at night.  During the day they let light through so it didn’t impede in that sense.  They apparently had several thousand (or more) of these ready to go, and no budget left to market them.

Artist

I tend to be a good ole Republican boy, not much in to the whole artsy-fartsy thing (as my stepfather would say).  But hey I try to be a bit open minded and help out.  Anyway, this artist guy apparently took pictures at an extremely magnified view and then framed and sold them.  With each print was a poem related to that particular photo.  At least that’s what I think he was trying to tell me.  I didn’t exactly understand it all, and maybe that’s why it never came to fruition.

Roofing

I’ve actually had several roofing companies contact me this year.  I’ve got a good friend who is pretty high up in a local roofing company, so I kinda had the inside scoop on some of these guys.  Nonetheless, several proposals out, none came back with a check.  That’s ok though, I’m launching a related site in the winter that’ll make them wish they had.

Pest Control

Another industry that I took a few calls from.  Since it’s an extremely local business, I can imagine that the first pest control to rank will do quite well.  I just don’t know who that’ll be… yet!

…and my favorite…

Funerals

My favorite of the year.  While the meeting didn’t last long, it was still insightful.  This particular funeral home also owned a florist, casket co and other ‘related’ industry shootoffs.  They wanted to be the one-stop shop for all your funeral needs.  Unfortunately the lady I met with was simply reporting what I told her to her boss.  Never heard back from them; dead end.

BY the way, it’d be dumb of me to write all of this and not offer my services to you.  If you’ve got a really cool or crazy business like one of these, or even if your business is boring and dull, I’d love to talk to you about increasing your market reach online.  Contact me and let’s kick some ass.

For the SEOs out there, what’s the craziest proposal you did this year?

As many of you know, I’m the moving force behind Market Saint Louis, a twice-a-year business conference that focuses on teaching local St Louis businesses the ways of online optimization, advertising and more.  Speakers from around the country fly in to share their expertise on various subjects, from SEO to Pay per Click and Analytics.  2010 is going to be even bigger, with the conferences featuring two separate tracks – one for beginners and one for businesses that are already in the game to some level.

The event isn’t cheap (although the pre-agenda tickets aren’t very expensive) and some small businesses may have a hard time shelling out several hundred dollars in this economy just to learn how to spend more time and money on the Internet.  But it’s crucial for every business to be online now.

To help quell the fears of those business owners, I’ve partnered up with the Jefferson County Library to teach a series of free classes (yes, I said free) on Online Marketing, Social Media and more.  This series of classes will run January through March, and will be very limited both in amount as well as seating.

If you’re wondering just how your competition gets their website to the top of Google searches for items you sell, you’ll learn. If you know your business needs to be on Twitter or Facebook, but you don’t know how to use these tools, you’ll learn.  And if you want to grow your online sales, you’ll learn.

Scheduled Dates

Twitter Basics and Tips

Jan 14 – 9:30AM to Noon or March 4 – 6:00PM to 8:30PM
Learn how to set up a Twitter account and how to ‘tweet’.  You’ll learn about some great tools that will help you get more followers, find great information about your interests, and how to utilize some ‘behind the scenes’ tricks to get the most out of your new account.

Marketing Your Business Website

Feb 4 – 9:30 AM to Noon  or Mar 25 – 6:00PM to 8:30PM
Do you wonder why your website isn’t listed on Yahoo! or other search engines? Are you clueless about search marketing techniques that can draw customers to your site? We will cover topics such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), online advertising tips and avenues, along with ways to increase your website traffic along with other offline marketing ideas.

Social Media for Business – Leverage Community to Build Your Brand

Feb 11 – 6:00PM to 8:30PM
Learn how to leverage blogging, video and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to grow your business.

Download the flyer / schedule

Sign Up Now

All classes have very limited seating and will be at the Arnold branch of the Jefferson County Library.  To sign up, call 636-296-5171.

These will be the only classes offered this Spring.  For more information on the upcoming Market Saint Louis conference (and to get the cheap ticket price) visit MarketSTL.com

Pretty cool, huh?

Several things are going on here, which I think you can use for your business.

Niche it, Baby

I’ve never heard of the JQA diaries until today, and most likely neither have you.  Thanks to some graduate student for mentioning that it looked like a Twitter feed, another person for acting on that observation, a Historical Society with a look-forward approach  (and a NY Times writer), now you have.  As of today, this account now has over 6000 followers. This little niche of history buffs is just the audience that the Massachesetts Historical Society wants, and they’ve found a way to “promote their wares” via Twitter.

Lesson: Find a topic that interests people.  Provide updates on a consistent basis, and you’ve got an immediate audience.  People will tell others, and in no time you’ll have a nice following of warm leads.

The Old is New

While reading a 200 year old diary isn’t exactly exciting to everyone, it is to some.  And that “some” is very interested in what is said by the account holder.  Old news is in demand, and over 6000 people are eagerly awaiting the next tweet, whether it’s about rough seas or card playing.

Lesson: Take information in your industry that you think everyone knows, and post about it.  Or blog about it.  You’ll increase your followers, RSS subscriptions, and website traffic because no one else is doing it.

Be Afraid Aware, Very Aware

Every day we are exposed to mundane and boring things in our industry.  We see them all the time, and pay no attention or give no second thought to them.  But smart business owners are taking those simple things and writing about them.  They are showing the behind-the-scenes to their business, or posting updates to their ‘boring’ day and people are interested.

For instance, I have a customer that sells memory foam mattresses.  One day I was at Target returning an item.  In front of me was a lady who was returning one of those mattress-topper memory foam things.  You roll them out on your mattress and they supposedly make it more comfortable to sleep on.  Well, I listened to her go on about how lumpy it made her bed, how it didn’t help her sleep, etc. so I mentioned it to my client.  He wrote up a blog post about these toppers (and their problems), and today it is one of his most popular posts ever.

Lesson: Watch what’s going on around you daily.  What things do you take for granted that your audience might find really useful?  Do you do something to each of your products to make it unique? Do you meet interesting people in your industry that others may find interesting as well?

Integration

The JQA diary posts also integrate with maps, making it even more interesting.  Even though the voyage took place  200 years ago, you can follow along today as if it were happening in real time.  You can see where in the ocean JQA is, and experience just what he was.

Lance Armstrong is a great user of integration, often posting his ‘view from the office’ pictures on TwitPic.  Bicyclers, cancer survivors and just fans love these updates.  They are interesting to his readers, and it helps him increase and identify his brand.

Lesson: Use technology to show what you do and who you are.  Become a real face to an otherwise faceless business identity.

You can learn a lot from a president that sailed the seas 200 years ago.  And you can take those things, along with the actions of some smart people, and apply them to your business.  How are you using similar tactics and posts to increase your business?