When you’re marketing a small business online, one of the most important steps that you take in putting together a marketing campaign will be choosing the right keywords. Small business search engine marketing is all about targeting the right keywords, because if you get that step right, you can help to bring in the right kind of qualified traffic to the website.

Of course, when picking keywords for any website, keyword research is where it all begins. When you first are preparing to promote a new site, you need to dig out the keyword tools like Google’s External Keyword Tool and start doing some research. You want to find keywords that are related to the industry but which are specific enough that there aren’t hundreds of thousands of searches for them monthly, or the competition will be far too high to rank highly. You want to find the terms that you think that you can reasonably expect to rank for in a reasonable amount of time.

Another important part of keyword research is looking into what keywords the competition might be using. You can do this in part by just looking at their site and going through some of their online marketing materials, but there are also some keyword research tools that are designed specifically to investigate what keywords the competition is using. This might give you some inspiration for your own keyword choice. You could try to directly compete with them on those keywords, or instead focus on appropriate volume keywords that your closest competitor is not paying much attention to yet.

It’s important when doing your keyword selection that you remember to focus on long tail keywords as well as shorter key phrases. Long tail key phrases are the phrases that people might search for that are four or more words long, instead of the usual one or two that most people put into the search engines. The reason that these can be good to focus on is because people who search with a long tail key phrase tend to have something very specific in mind that they are looking for. If you can rank highly for that key phrase and they visit your site, there is a good chance that they will be a highly qualified visitor.

Of course, when focusing on long tail key phrase, you should also focus on long tail key phrases that incorporate local search terms. This means targeting some of your SEO efforts on keywords that include the location of the store that you are promoting. These keywords can be very specific, but there is still a good reason to target them. As with all SEO efforts, the ultimate goal is quality qualified traffic. This means that the person that clicks the link is someone that would actually potentially buy a product from that company.

The concept of qualified traffic is something to always keep in mind when you are selecting keywords for any business. Basically, unless a person is ultimately a potential customer, you don’t stand to gain much by having them visit the website. So, in the case of a local business, especially one that only sells products through their physical store, there is not much to gain by attracting searchers from the web at large. However, attracting visitors from the local area can be very valuable. By focusing your keywords on local search terms, you can help ensure that everyone that ends up clicking through to the site either lives or is currently close enough to the store to actually walk in and make a purchase. This is a strategic way to search engine optimize a site for small business.

Watch Local Internet Marketing blow up

I’m writing this post while visiting my parent’s home in Canada for the Christmas holidays in 2010.  While I’m reflecting on our accomplishments of 2010, our vision for 2011, the changes in 2010 and what the future might hold, I was surprised when my father picked up the phone book to find the phone number to a local establishment to order some grub.  I let him find the right page in the yellow pages before I opened my computer screen, and the race was on. It took me less than 15 seconds to open my computer, navigate to Google.com and type in the name of the business, hit enter and read the information out loud before he could find the listing on the page, that he was already on.

Why in 2010, someone who was managing a Computerland retail chain in 1984, owns a brand spankin new iMac and MacBook Pro, an XP laptop and XP desktop and a windows 7 laptop….still uses the darn phone book!  Oh yeah, they’re owners of some fancy wireless devices as well. So the question becomes, why are we moving into 2011, 19 years after the inception of the public Internet, that it’s still so common to use the phone book?  Even worse, why are less than 10% of SME’s in North America adopting Internet Marketing practices? What’s even more surprising, a recent study by BIA/Kelsey reveals that, get this

97% of consumers research products online

Sure, these are people that are already online, but 77% of Americans are online, increasing at an average rate of almost 5% increase year over year for the last 10 years. Yet it still gets better!  Kelsey has also reported, in 2010, that 90% on local consumers are using search engines (Google has a whooping 66%) 48% use Online Yellow Pages, 42% use comparison shopping and 25% are using vertical websites.

In addition, over the years, consumers are using 7.9 different sources to find information about local products and services! To add to this, the Google-Groupon failed deal of $6 billion left many people wonder what the heck Groupon knew that other’s didn’t, why they’d turn away $6 billion for a two year old company generating $600 million in revenue. What the heck is going on???  Are you seeing what’s going on here?  This reminds me of the milk industry in the early 80′s.  Farmers around the country needed to sell more milk, so they created a demand for calcium.

Still in 2010, most offline business owners are clueless to the opportunities online.

Running into a Google Employee at lunch

They may not be an online business, but their customers are online!  Plain and simple.  There are tremendous opportunities online for SME, small business, local business, brick and mortars, whatever you want to call them. This is definitely a surprise for me though.  Why did we have to wait until 2011 for this to be the top rated trend of 2011 by one of the top leading Search Marketing websites?  yeah, our friends at Search Engine Land rated this.  I would say they are right, by a long shot.

However, as a brick and mortar myself, I reflect back to 6 years ago when I got my first brick and mortar to #1 for a lucrative keyword with a geomod. I mean, concepts like NAPAREX emerged in many local markets quickly even in 2008.  What about 2011?  Well, open up the Yellow Pages in my town in Lake in the Hills, IL and I find two full pages for a local dentist…hmmm, maybe $1500 a month for this ad?  How come if they are reviewed online, searched online and decided upon online, they don’t show up on the first SERP for their top keyword (Dentist) with their Geomods? Bottom line is that local companies are operating in the most dangerous quadrant of the circle of knowledge.

These business owners DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY DON’T KNOW! That is scary!  So what is being done?  Well, let’s consider the behemoth of Internet Marketers…Google!  In mid 2010, the Google Small Business Blog was introduced.

The fourth quarter we saw Google Boost introduced.  We saw the integration of Google Places into the main SERPs.  We saw test after test after test after test in the local SERPs (follow Mike Blumenthals).  We saw Yelp saw a 50% increase in traffic and practically DOUBLED the number of reviews in one year.  We witnessed the previously mentioned company called Groupon, who generated more than $600M in revenue in 2010 (prorated for 12/10).

We saw the introduction of Local Internet Marketing education like Local Marketing Source, Nitro Marketing, Traffic Geyser and IM leadership among several  others emerge.  We saw introductions of new advertising mediums like Google TV in our living rooms, Mobile OS’s skyrockets and smartphone usage exploded past laptop usage among executives!

We learned Google was actually calling local businesses to verify listings!  Google couldn’t even crack the automated local business code and needed to get some human power in to garner the best online database.  To your left, was a Google employee I met on a business trip in Buffalo, when I learned in October 2010 that they were taking pictures of companies on the inside.  Here’s a link to get them to come to your local business.

I could go on with the changes in 2010, but this one is the blatantly obvious move by the 800 pound gorilla as to what is really going on here.  Check this out, our favorite Internet Marketer resorts to direct mail!!!  Google mails 50,000 businesses information about being a favorite place! Alright, so is the picture being painted here?  I hope I’ve provided enough evidence to demonstrate exactly what the message is here.

Local Business don’t yet get it, but the rest of the world does!

For a variety of reasons, many of which could take up a entire post, brick and mortars haven’t yet jumped on.  This is great, adoption or change takes time, right?  Well, this is the perfect storm for local Internet Marketing.  There is no doubt that 2011 and 2012 are going to be massive years for brick and mortars getting online to gain more business.

Oh yeah, aren’t we in the greatest recession of our lifetime?  Isn’t that further motivation for a local company to explore a new avenue of revenue in Q1 2011?

You decide, I’m already convinced.

If you are a local business owner, grab this free report from my marketing agency here.  No Opt-in, direct download!

If you are marketer who aspires to provide these services to local companies, opt-in to grab out free introductory report here!

Useful links related to using Google Places

Link to Google Places account login page.

Link to Google Places User Guide.

Business listings in Google Places must have correct information about physical, local businesses, as they appear in the real world. Adhere to these guidelines for best results.

These are the items you need to comply with to avoid issues with Google such as denial of access, removal of one or all of your listings, being blacklisted from adding future listings, or deletion of your Google Account.

Useful resources from Google for business owners and consultants working with Google Places.

Guide to reporting and correcting incorrect listings and/or data within a listing.

Link to the YouTube channel for Google Places.

Link to the Google Places help form.

Link to known issues with Google Places.

Details and application instructions for getting Google business photos.

Includes hundreds of studies, videos and webinars about local business industries for Mobile and Search

There are an almost limitless number of ways that you can drive traffic to a business website online. The problem is that it can be difficult for the beginner to know where to start. With so many options available to them, the beginning online marketer, without any real internet marketing training, can easily become overwhelmed by the number of options that they have available to them. The other problem is that the ways for getting traffic range from the extremely simple to the extremely complicated. In order to make it easier for beginning small business marketers to get started, the following is a summary of some simple traffic strategies that even the total internet beginner can try.

First, you should engage in some basic SEO on your website. SEO stands for search engine optimization. In order to get your site to show up in search engines like Google when people search for certain phrases, there are a few things you’re going to need to do. These strategies also range from the extremely complicated to the simple, but the simple ones are easy enough that anyone can do them.

First, it can be very beneficial if you include your keywords in the page titles of your website. If you’re not programming your site yourself, you should mention that to your web designer. Next, you should make sure that your keywords are liberally sprinkled throughout the content of your site. Finally, you should make sure that your site is updated with useful information regularly, as the search engines like sites that have new content added regularly.

The next thing that any beginner can do is submit themselves to some directories to try and get their sites listed. This provides backlinks, which are links back to your own page from other websites. Some of these are free, like DMOZ, while others, like the Yahoo! business directory, you may have to pay for. Directory submissions are very simple though, and serve the double benefit of providing you with a listing that people may follow directly to your site. You will also get a back link which will boost your performance in the search engines.

Another very simple way to start getting traffic to your website is to include a link to your website in all of your emails. Most people send several emails every day, but there is a good chance that many of the people that you send emails to have probably never visited your business website before. The easiest way to include the link is to simply build a signature into your email program so that, with every email that you send, a link to your website will be included at the bottom of the message.

The social networking sites are also a very good source of traffic. The great thing about using sites like Twitter and Facebook as business promotion sites is that most people are already familiar with them through personal use. Unlike learning the ins and outs of SEO or PPC advertising, promoting your site through the social networks doesn’t require any additional expertise. Also, if you have a large personal network built on those sites, you can use your personal profile to suggest that friends follow or like your new business profiles. This can, in turn, drive traffic to your actual business site.

A final easy way to drive traffic to a small business website is by starting a blog. Blogs are easy to set up, and easy to update. Even completely new users to the internet can figure out how to run a blog quickly. Blogs can quickly build up a following which can drive substantial traffic to your site, as well as earn you valuable back links.

Any local business is going to have to turn to the internet in order to find ways to thrive today. However, when you’re trying to promote your new local business opportunity online, it can be very easy to become completely overwhelmed by all the options you have when it comes to how to go about marketing your business. There are SEO, Social, Content, and Email options to consider, along with many more. Of all of the available means, they all work in one way or another and perhaps work best in combination. The one method that you absolutely can’t afford to ignore, though, is email marketing.

The reason that email marketing is so important is because it has consistently demonstrated the highest rate of return out of all the various areas of online marketing. With such a huge ROI possible through email marketing, you simply can’t afford to ignore it. The more time and money that you spend on email marketing, the quickly you can start generating some big returns for your local business.

Email marketing is all about generating a list. You need to capture as many email addresses as you possible can in order to create a mass emailing list that you can send messages to about your business. Now, when building this list, there are several important things to remember, but the most important is that you familiarize yourself with, and follow, all of the applicable CAN-SPAM regulations. You don’t ever want to be accused of spamming, or it could have a very negative effect on your business.

There are lots of ways that you can gather email addresses in order to build your list. The most common way is to put a sign up form for your list or newsletter on your website. However, you’re going to need a way to convince visitors to actually sign up. What most successful email marketers do is offer their customers something in return for signing up for the list. A good example is when a company offers a free report or eBook to those who sign up. Using an incentive is the surest way to grow your list quickly.

However you build your list, the larger it grows, the more powerful a marketing tool you have at your disposal. The important thing to remember is to not just send your list sales message after sales message. The best results typically come when someone structures their list like a newsletter. Share news and events with your subscribers, and offer them some genuinely useful content in all the emails that you send. This will make them much more likely to open the emails. If you just make every email a direct sales message, you will quickly find that people start to lose interest in opening your mails. If you make them interesting though, they will open them. This leaves you the perfect opportunity for a small mention of a product for sale, for example, something which you’re offering a special on for that week. That is how successful email marketing works.

When getting ready to embark on an email marketing campaign, you’re going to need to set yourself up with some sort of an auto responder program so that you have all the tools for managing your new list. The best programs, like Aweber and iContact, include all the tools you need for creating and managing a double opt in list. They provide people with a way to unsubscribe from your list, and help you make sure that you’re not sending out any emails which could be considered spam. You can also use them to generate an easy to use sign up form for your website.

You happen to receive a phone call from someone that identifies himself or herself as being a Google representative. Don’t jump to the conclusion that it’s a phone scam. It has been confirmed by Mike Blumenthal (of Google) that these phone calls are an element in Google’s venture to tidy up local business records and information. Certain facets are worth identifying.

I’m confident that everyone can appreciate Google’s attempt to tidy up the issues of spam in Google Places and Maps. The implementation of these phone calls originates from the verification policy which is meant to ensure that all community changes that are made to your business listing are, indeed, accurate. In other words, if someone attempts to edit your listing, Google may call you directly to ensure the accuracy of the changes. This is astonishing that Google is going to such great lengths as to provide business owners with this level of security. This is a good thing, right? Of course, but as with most other things…where good comes, bad will follow.

Once word spreads that Google is making phone calls to businesses, scammers will indeed capitalize on this scenario. As a bad guy scammer, it would be easy to simply pretend that they are calling on behalf of Google and easily obtain data from unsuspicious business owners. This could be really bad.

In fact, Google prohibits their reps of providing call back numbers and contact information to local business owners. Google reps and employees are not required to provide any identification! So much for a sense of trust in the authenticity of phone calls. It’s become common knowledge that certain business entities will never contact you with the purpose of obtaining certain (confidential) information. In fact, online banks provide clear warnings to their clients that as a client, you will never be asked to provide account details via email. PayPal follows the same model. Suspicious emails have become so widespread that business owners have learned to instinctually ignore them.

For years Google has instilled their reputation of remaining a silent body and that nobody will ever directly hear from them. This abrupt shift in Google’s behavior by phoning the public has potential to be a great thing. However, I would insist that Google implement a verification policy of some kind in order for business owners to substantiate the legitimacy of the phone call. Google hasn’t spoken too much about this new activity, but having read this, and in the event that you receive one of these calls from Google, I highly suggest that you take advantage of this extraordinary occasion. Solicit as much information as you can in regards to Google Maps and Google Places.

When you’re selling products, whether only online, or in the real world, reviews are important. If you’re trying to sell SEO services for example, before anyone buys your service, one of the first things they are going to do is try and Google reviews for your particular service. This allows them to get firsthand information regarding your services and is a strong incentive for a person to purchase, or not purchase, any particular service. The problem is, when you’re just starting out, there likely won’t be any reviews for your business online. So you need to know how to start generating some review activity on your products or services in order to have that resource available online for when potential customers want to learn more about your organization.

There are many different ways to get reviews. If you’re selling products, the first thing that you need to do is set up a review page as part of your shopping system. Amazon is perhaps the greatest example of just how effective a method this can be. When you give your customers an open forum to comment and review your products, many will take advantage of this. When you allow them to comment without censoring them, and are willing to take the good reviews with the bad, it also shows your potential upcoming customers that you’re confident in the strength of your products, even in the face of a few bad reviews.

Encourage customers to review your products. When you sell something online, you should always follow up with an email which asks customers to review your products. Sometimes, companies will even send a series of emails over a longer course of time after the initial product has been purchased in order to attempt to get a review. Others may incentivize it. Some companies will offer a small discount on a future purchase if a full review is made of a product.

There are other ways to get reviews outside of those that you get on your own website, and these can be among the most effective in getting customers to choose to purchase your products. When a website which focuses on reviews examines your product, you can be sure that it is a review that people will pay attention to. The problem is that you need to make websites and blogs that review products aware of your particular product in order to get them to actually review it.

In order to get bloggers and review sites to do a write up on your product, you’re going to need to send them review copies. This is a commonly established practice, and one that you’re going to have to engage in if you want to get the kind of coverage that you’re hoping for in regards to your product. Sending out free review copies to influential bloggers and review sites can cost you a bit of money in the short term, but if you have a great product and any of those sites which see massive amounts of traffic provide it with a positive review, you will more than pay yourself back for that cost.

Product reviews are an important part of showing people that they can trust your company. That is why you can’t censor reviews, and why you also don’t need to immediately go on the defensive if someone provides a negative review towards one of your products. Instead, you should genuinely think about their concerns. There may be an opportunity contained in their negative review for opening a dialogue about where you can improve your products. Nothing is ever perfect, and reviews can help us to see where we need to focus future energies.

When small businesses are looking for new ideas to create more traffic for their website, their marketing team is more likely to consider new methods of search engine optimization to make their website appear more often when certain phrases are punched into the search engines.  This is not an uncommon small business marketing idea, and often is also considered by even larger corporations.

When sites use SEO, links from those sites and other places where their business is mentioned is weighted against that of other sites; thus determining where it ranks compared to the competition.  Each search engine has their own formula for determining the ranking of sites, but recently Google and Yahoo have been changing the way that SEO affects different sites in their ranking.

Recently, citation has also been affecting the way that different business sites are ranked in a search.  For businesses that are unfamiliar with citation, this is not using certain keywords or phrases, but rather the use of a business’s name, address, and phone number.  Commonly, this information is found in sources such as the yellow pages, white pages, and other directories that are not linked to the original website.

For those considering new small business marketing ideas, this has been intriguing since these citations tend to rank equally with other sites, even though they are not connected to the business.  This has lead many SEO writers to consider changing their own views on small business marketing ideas. It is also encouraging employers to also post information on different resources that may not be directly connected to their business.

Many businesses that have had high search results seem to have more citations than inbound links.  This is proving that Google and Yahoo are webbing their search to smaller sites in keyword and geographic niches; giving sites with more geographic citations more weight.

Proof of this has brought some change to small business marketing ideas, making it beneficial for businesses to look at posting information in more local forums and blogs to help increase their chance of being noticed by the search engines.

Before, many who study small business marketing ideas thought that this technique was a waste of most business’ time since this information had little weight in search results.  Through experimentation, however, it is proving that this is no longer the case.

With the new development of these citations, it is becoming beneficial for sites to interact more with organizations in their community.  A popular small business marketing idea that is occurring with citations is businesses joining different organizations in their community for free or creating organizations that place their geographic information on websites.  Much of this is still experimental, but it is proving to so far be beneficial to those SEO writers who are willing to experiment with this new small business marketing idea.

It is unsure where this will lead in the feature, but it is believed that Google is starting a trend that will soon branch into other search engines, since Google and Yahoo have already been confirmed to cross reference citations and links across one another for accuracy.  This is good news for many small businesses and ultimately means more traffic for them in the very near future.

For all companies, it is an exciting day when their website makes its debut to the World Wide Web.  Confidence is soaring as they wait with anticipation for leads to start appearing, but alas, a week may pass with few to no leads.  Anger and frustration soon replace anticipation for this business as they try to understand what went wrong…until they realize that their issue was a lack of website conversation.

For those who are selling online marketing services, website conversion is especially crucial.  Creating a website that produces quality leads takes more than just creating a website loaded with search engine optimization keywords, but guaranteeing that your site creates confidence and is content heavy.  Many business sites seem to have a lack of understanding of what is necessary for creating a website that fits their needs; making it beneficial to look for companies that are selling online marketing techniques to improve their sales.

Another reason website conversion is typically overlooked is a lack of understanding of what is necessary for selling online marketing over the Internet.  Many businesses are excited to tell future clientele all about their product, feeling this is the most important content that they can deliver to their client to guarantee that their product or their pitch for selling online marketing services is a success.

What can unfortunately happen is the company forgetting to put emphasis on other information that can put the client at ease about doing business with these sites.  Many of these websites forget to give detailed information about their company, their experience with selling online marketing, and contact information, which makes the client feel the company will not scam them out of their money.  This information is crucial to any company’s success, making website conversation a necessity for a product or improving a company’s skill at selling online marketing.

It is easy to understand why most websites can easily overlook this information.  When companies were first moving their business to the internet, there were very few proven techniques that were guaranteed to bring business to a website.  Most of these techniques were learned through trial and error; making it nearly impossible for a company to determine what was truly necessary to bring the most business to their site.  Today, however, proper website conversion is critical for getting the most leads from the resources available to a business online.  For the amateur, it is crucial that they find a company to build their website with experience in selling online marketing to get the most sales online.

Website conversion has become a necessity in today online marketing, making it an important step when companies are looking to create a website that will overcome their competition.  Those who are experts at selling online marketing can expect for their sales to drastically increase in a short period of time since their clients will feel confident transferring their business to these corporations due to information on their website, guaranteeing returning business.  This makes it evident that proper website conversion can no longer be overlooked in today’s competitive market.

One of the most obvious tactics for becoming successful, but one that is very often overlooked by many website owners, is getting listed in Google Local, also called Google Maps. It should not escape any business owner that optimizing your site for becoming visible in Google Local listings is going to improve your bottom line due simply to increased visibility. Follow these suggestions.

Step 1: Search For Similar Businesses

You need to conduct as many searches as possible relating to your particular business in your geographic area. For example, if you are operating a skin clinic specializing in Botox treatments in Hermosa Beach, California you may wish to perform searches that include:

• Hermosa Beach Botox
• Hermosa Beach Botox treatment

The idea here is to conduct a search that brings back results that are geographically specific for the type of business that you operate. The more searches you conduct with a geographic specific keyword entered in the search, the better the number of results you will receive.

Step 2: Identify Several Businesses that Consistently Get Top Rankings

The next step is to identify possibly a few dozen different businesses that consistently get the top rankings. In order to compile your information properly you can create a spreadsheet while performing the tracking of these results that you can expand later on in this process.

Step 3: Profile Each Business

The next thing you need to do is to go to the local profile for each of these businesses that appear on your Google results. Click on any of the links that offer reviews. You should receive a page that contains the business information along with the reviews and other data that Google has discovered about them.

Step 4: Check Out Additional Information on Each Business

The next step is to click on the link that reads “More about this Place.” This section outlining the business listing will show a lot of individual brief pieces of information like titles and URLs that Google has found to be relevant when examining this business.

Step 5: List Your Business

You need to go to these listing sources websites where you can add or update the information on your own website. You want every listing to perfectly match each other. This means everything should match right down to the suffix used for the phone number and even the format of your address. For example, it could be listed as 1200 E. 10th Street or 1200 East 10th Street or 1220 E 10th Street Suite 100 pr 1200 East 10th St #200. If each one shows even the smallest difference, your search engine ranking will be in trouble. Pay attention and be certain that the listing at every source is exactly the same.

Step 6: Repeat Step 4 & 5 for the “Reviews” and “User Content” Sections

One thing to remember is that your determination and avid attention will have a lot to do with your local ranking. Those individuals that are determined to find extra sources, which will earn your business a higher local search rank, can find them by reviewing the listings of your toughest competitors. Both the “reviews” section and “user content” section, which can be found in the Google Maps/Local business listings page, can also offer additional spots.

Finally, if you have considered using an automated system to help you along with the process, don’t. That’s right, DON’T. These automated systems often put your information in spots that it doesn’t belong, or cut portions of it off altogether. This is why it’s important that you take the time to devote to placing your listings yourself. If you do invest the time to place your listings correctly, you will reap the benefits from Google; earning higher rankings and a much better quality of traffic.