In the marketing toolbox for local businesses, there are several options to help promote a local business using the Internet. We all know that social media is taking business by storm and search engines drive more traffic to a website than all other mediums combined.
The following strategy takes the top two online methods to drive traffic, social media and search engines, and combines them to leverage the power of the Internet for small business. Using a popular Web 2.0 site, Squidoo, I cover some basic tips when creating a Squidoo lens to drive traffic and help your search engine rankings.
1. You want to write on a topic that has a keyword that is related somewhat to your company. This is useful both from an SEO perspective, and will help to get your site to rank higher in the search engines, and will also help people to identify your site with your Squidoo lens.
2. Make more than one Lens. Unless you have a site which only sells one product to a very specific type of person, it is probably safe to say that you could write about many topics that could be related to your site in some way. Use those topics to help you create multiple Squidoo lenses.
3. Make sure that you keep updating your lens regularly. This will bring back older readers to your lens again and again. Also, don’t forget that the search engines are much fonder of sites which are updated regularly than those that have stagnant content.
4. Make sure your topic titles have your keywords in it. Titles and headlines are always given more weight in the search engines than keywords that are going to be in the middle of your content.
5. When selecting the URL for your lens, make sure that it has a valuable keyword for you included in it. This will help your SEO. It will also make your Lens URL easier for visitors to remember. This is an important strategy of marketing regardless of the type of website.
6. Don’t try and direct sell a product through a Squidoo Lens. Also, do not try to overly stuff a page with your keywords. Just use them here and there where it seems appropriate and the benefits will actually be greater in the long term.
7. Get other links to point to your Squidoo Lens. You can promote your Lens the same way that you would promote any other site. Bookmark content on social bookmarking sites, submit articles to directories, and comment in forums and blogs with your lens as your signature.
8. Use other modules with your Lens. If you like blogging, the Google Blog module is going to be one of your best choices for added modules.
9. Use Web 2.0 to your advantage. That means tweeting about your lens or linking to it occasionally from your Facebook status.
10. Make sure that your content actually answers a relevant question for the reader. This will build faith in your company, bring return traffic, and spread good word of mouth about your company.
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Squidoo also likes involvement in their community and rewards people who comment and rate other Squidoo lens. This needs to be done ethically and not as a “you rate my lens a 5 and I’ll rate yours a 5. But it is a community and spending some time each week in Squidoo on other lenses builds links from other lenses to yours and helps improve your overall Squidoo rankings. Just remember to choose lens that are on topic with your lens and whose visitors would benefit from your lens information.
Cliff