Small Business Development Blog

Visual On Page SEO Examples

Visual examples of On Page SEO terms:

Note:  See how this page is clearly targeting the keyword phrase "Small Business Consulting Services", and that the;

1. Page Title,
2. URL Address, and
3. H1 Heading

... are all inline with each other not at odds with each other.

 

How to use SEO to Market your Small Business on the Internet

If you're reading this article you'll likely be looking at how to use SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in marketing your small business. It doesn't have to be a mystery, it's not rocket science. Yes, like all things there are different levels and depths of knowledge but if you're a small business owner and you want to use SEO for marketing purposes... you really just need three things;

1. An SEO Process, (a simple and concise step by step process that can be followed and implemented, designed with small businesses in mind).
2. A website with a CMS that anyone can edit the SEO factors for each individual page, (CMS stands for content management system, it is the access you have the back end of your website to make changes).
3. Someone to actually do it, (in theory anyone can do it, the question comes down to; Is it better to implement yourself or have a professional do it to save you time and hassle and keep you focused on your main business activities?).

SEO is about one very simple idea.... Helping those looking online (searching) for your product, services, solutions, profession, and general information about your industry... helping them to find your company! GIVE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT! The more people that you help to find you and your company online the more quality visitors you will receive to your website, which in turn should turn into leads and enquiries and sales. Which the whole point, right?!

SEO Process for Small Businesses

The SEO Process has 4 parts;

1) Keyword Selection
2) On Page SEO
3) Off Page SEO
4) Recording & Reporting

1 Keyword Selection

This is covered in the article how to research and select keywords

2 On Page SEO

2.1 Learn - Build Knowledge & Understanding

Each page in your website needs to be setup in an optimal way that assists search engines (google) to understand what is on that page. Why is this important? Google is the gate way. When people search for information they use google, so it is google who people trust to ‘understand' all the web pages online. HELP GOOGLE understand what is on your page by following a few simple rules. It is important to note (as we discussed in how to research and select keywords) that each individual page on your website should target a different exact keyword phrase... e.g. the Home page might be targeting "Photographer London", where as the main Services page might target "Photography Services", etc.

2.2 Create - Visible On Page SEO

On each page repeat the same specific / targeted keywords for the following...

• Page Title (see very top left of screen... e.g. "Small Business Consulting Services - Window Internet Explorer")
• Clean URLs (e.g. "http://mimosaplanet.com/small-business-consulting-service" ) 
• H1,H2,H3 tags (Heading Text e.g. "Small Business Consulting Services")
• Page Text
  • Bold (e.g. "mimosaPLANET are a Small Business Consulting Services firm that ...")
  • First or Second Sentence (i.e. use the keyword phrase in either the first or second sentence of copy if possible. Note; do not ‘stuff' the keyword phrase in to the copy so that it sounds wrong, or over ‘stuff' the keyword phrase throughout the copy, you will be penalised, just write normally)

For visual examples of On Page SEO

2.3 Create - Invisible ON Page SEO

On each page repeat the same specific / targeted keywords for the following...

• Description (Won't help with Ranking but will help with CTR (click through rate))
• Meta Keywords: no more than 5-7 keyword phrase words (again unlikely to help with google very much but may still help with other search engines, so no real harm done including it)
• Image File Name (seems to improve google image search results)
• H1, H2, H3, H4 heading text directly above an Image (seems to improve google image search results)
• Alt text on images

Now, to do these On Page SEO steps requires a CMS (Content Management System) that allows you to change each of the points we listed above. There are many different CMS in use today. If your website was setup a while ago it is possible that you will not be able to change all these factors for each individual page. If that is true, I would recommend getting a new website setup that has the ability in the CMS (the back end of your website) to edit all these factors. Without this ability (that is, the ability of you or member of staff or an outside professional to adjust and edit your website in terms of on-page SEO best practice), you'll never achieve massive success in SEO.

3 Off Page SEO

3.1 Learn - Build Knowledge & Understanding

• Page Rank
  • Your Website's Importance in the the eyes of Google
  • Represented by a 0-10 Scale (Note: if you are ranked 4 out of 10 it might be 3 times as hard to go to a 5 out of 10, but to go to a 6 out of 10 it could be another 10 times as hard again.) The higher the better.
• Links
  • Web pages that link to you
  • Generally speaking the more links the better
  • Links are probably 75% of the total importance to your over all Page Rank and individual keyword phrase Search Rankings
• Link Anchor Text
  • The text that is in the link to you
  • Use keywords in that text
• Link Quality or Weight
  • Not all links are equal in value to you
  • Links with Anchor text are more valuable and useful that those without
  • Links from websites with higher Page Rank are more valuable (so much so that 1 link from a website with a very high Page Rank of 9, could be worth 1000 different links from website with a Page Rank of 1)

3.2 Create - Link Building:

• Directories (use directories that have high traffic and are quality only)
  • Worldwide Directories (Yahoo.com, Business.com, etc)
  • Local Directories (local.google.com, local yellow pages equivalent, etc)
  • Industry Specific Directories 
  • Blog Directories (for blogs)
• Content Publishing (people link to great content)
  • Blog (have a blog on your website and publish regular articles)
  • Create a tool (People will link to a useful / interesting Tool, i.e. Mortgage Calculator)
  • Viral videos, photos (again people also like and there for link to cool stuff)
• Press Releases
  • Have a link back to your site using Anchor text
• Social Media
  • LinkedIn 
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • FourSquare
    
    At the very least you should setup profiles for each of the above social media sites, even if you don't have the time or resources yet to actively enage in each community fully.
    
    
• Forums & Wikis
  • Wikipedia
  • Yahoo Answers
  • Industry Specific Forums
• Partners
  • Strategic Partners
  • Referral Partners
  • Event Sponsors

We actually have a more extensive process our consultants use to implement Off-Page SEO with clients, far too long to place on a blog article. But this gives a good overview of the basics.

4 Recording and Reporting

This will be covered in another article. Recording and Reporting for SEO.

* A special thanks to HubSpot and Marketing Experiments for providing many of the ideas and methodology behind this overall process.

Action Points

SEO implementation does not have to be hard. The main point; SETUP your website to HELP GOOGLE find and understand you. This will mean google can help people that are looking for what you have find you. Determine;

1. does my website have a CMS that allows full editing by anyone of the factors listed above regarding SEO best practice? (not sure on the answer, get a consultant to check, or ask your website provider)
2. who is going to implement these changes (you, a member of staff, a consultant)?
3. set a time schedule to start implementation and allocate time each week to this implementation.

Go for it!

How to Research and Select Keywords for Marketing your Small Business on the Internet

One element of successful inbound internet marketing strategy is to research and select the right keywords or keyword phrases. The obvious question that comes up from many in small businesses is how do we do this quickly and effectively. Well... you need a keyword selection process.

Why a Keyword Selection Process?

This is important because; in old world marketing speak, it's really just about 'profiling & selecting the right target market'.

The keyword selection process is actually part 1 of our full SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Process. The mimosaPLANET 6 Element Growth Cycle methodology states that; in an ideal world it would be best if you can invest some time to do a quick "Plan" (or Action Plan) before you try to "Create" & "Implement" the necessary pieces of a strategy or tactic. Furthermore, to build an effective "Plan" it would be best to do some "Discovery" (or Analysis) before you "Plan".

Well, if our overall strategy is to generate more leads and enquiries by executing an inbound internet marketing strategy and thus rank highly in Search results (getting found online by those actually looking for our products/services/expertise), then one of our key tactics is to use SEO. And to do SEO effectively we really need to do some research (Discovery & Analysis) of which keywords / keyword phrases people are searching for online, and then select (Plan) which keywords and keyword phrases we will target, i.e. what search terms we are aiming to rank highly in.

Keyword Selection Process

Keyword Selection is part one of four, in the mimosaPLANET SEO process (we've researched ideas and concepts from plenty of really smart people and companies, and we're always looking for improvements. However in small business one of the keys to success is getting results fast, to ensure this happens we try to keep our processes simple. Whether it is the business owner, a team member or one of our consultants implementing and executing the process, in small & medium businesses the idea of investing 200 hours on just keyword research only is unthinkable. Get the info, get it implemented, get results = have money to invest further to become better at strategy/tactic)!

SEO Process (part 1 of 4)

1 Keyword Selection

1.1 Discover (Do some Research & Analysis)

Keyword Google Information:
1.1.1 Google Keyword Tool Search: [Profession] (e.g. "Commercial Photographer" or "Photographer" or "Business Photographer" or "Product Photographer" or "Business Profile Photographer" or "Business Portrait Photographer")
1.1.2 Google Keyword Tool Search: [Service/Product] (e.g. "Commercial Photography" or "Product Photography", etc)
1.1.3 Google Keyword Tool Search: [Profession + City/Area] (e.g. "Commercial Photographer UK" or "Business Photographer London UK" or "Product Photographer London" or "Photographer London")
1.1.4 Google Keyword Tool Search: [Service/Product + City/Area] (e.g. "Commercial Photography LA" or "Business Profile Photography Los Angeles")
1.1.5 Google Keyword Tool Search: mywebsite.com

Keyword Google Ranking Results:
1.1.6 Google Search Results: My Company Name (web results)
1.1.7 Google Search Results: My Company Name (local only results)
1.1.8 Google Search Results: [Profession/Service/Product] (web)
1.1.9 Google Search Results: [Profession/Service/Product] (local)
1.1.10 Google Search Results: [Profession/Service/Product + City/Area] (web)
1.1.11 Google Search Results: [Profession/Service/Product + City/Area] (local)

Keyword Google Information:
1.1.12 Google Keyword Tool Search: mycompetitor.com for those Ranked on 1st page of Google Search - [Profession/Service/Product]
1.1.13 Google Keyword Tool Search: mycompetitor.com for those Ranked on 1st page of Google Search - [Profession/Service/Product + City/Area]
1.1.14 Google Keyword Tool Search: Top 5-10 [Products/Services/Solutions/Enquiries/Markets]

'How To' Note: What to you do with all these individual results? I recommend exporting each of the Google Keyword Tool Search results to excel. Also perhaps, 'print screen' the normal google search results and paste into a word document and save for future reference.

1.2 Plan (Choose which words and phrases to optimize for)

1.2.1 Selection Criteria 1: Search Volume (target = high)

• Goal - Find words that have a high monthly search volume.
• Need to know - Number of people searching each term per month.
• How to find out - Google Adwords Tool or SEO Book Tool or HubSpot or similar Tool

1.2.2 Selection Criteria 2: Relevance (target = high)

• Goal - Find how many people who search a term, are likely to buy from you.
• How - Make Estimates, Track Results, Compare to PPC Ads Conv. Then Rate each keyword phrase, i.e. (1-5) or (1-10) or (1-100).

1.2.3 Selection Criteria 3: Difficulty or Competition (target = low)

• Goal - Find out the probability of getting on the first page of Google.
• How - Understand the SEO strength of existing top 10 websites. Look at google Adwords PPC competition information (the higher the price paid for clicks, the more likely your competition will be high, and thus harder to rank highly for)
• By - Page Rank of each site, Cost of Adwords for this term.

'How To' Note: With your keyword search results exported to excel, you can now; sort columns and highlight rows as you see fit. This is based on all that the information yo have now gathered and with the above selection criteria in mind. You should then select 5-20 top keywords to target, place them in a table, set the starting point.

Target Keyword Table

Use a table to record your top 5 - 20 selections.

Keyword Phrase	SC1: Monthly Search Volume	SC2: Relevance	SC3: Difficulty	Current Google Search Rank	Current Actual Monthly Visits	Target Website Page
Commercial Photographer						Home
Commercial Photography Services						Services
Product Photography						Services/ product- photography
Commercial Photography Resources						Resources
Commercial Photography Company						Company or About Us

 

Important Note:

Selecting the right keywords or keyword phrases is not limited to 1 or 2 words. Indeed, at mimosaPLANET we monitor over 1500 different keyword phrases. We use specialist internet marketing software to make this process a heap easier, the selection criteria & table above are taken from HubSpot methodology. The important point is... SEO best practice will have each individual page targeting a different keyword phrase. See how the home page target keyword in the example above is ‘Commercial Photographer' vs the services page which is ‘Commercial Photography Services', etc.

Action Points

The biggest challenge to execute any marketing tactic in a small business is the actual DOING of what is required. Following this above process (‘the actual required DOING') will give you vital information to ensure your marketing efforts get the return they should. Set aside the time for you to do it in your diary now or delegate to a member of your team now or engage a professional to do inbound internet marketing for you. Without setting a deadline for completion, it'll just become another task on the long ‘to do list' that never gets done. Run through the research process, then start by selecting the top 5 - 20 keyword phrases. Next, you'll then focus on optimising (On-Page SEO & Off-Page SEO) your current website, but that is another article. Get to it!

 

 

9 Steps to Twitter Success – Simple Twitter Process for Small Business

Wouldn't it be easier to cut the clutter and follow a simple process designed for small and medium businesses to get twitter success? For small business owners and managing directors of SMEs, Twitter and the world of social media can seem like a foreign language. I've been monitoring this area for some time however, I only recently started to actively pursue a Twitter Strategy, the main excuse I was hanging on to ... "I don't want to invest the time until I can be sure I can invest the time consistently for a sustained period".

I got over that one, and so can you. Like many things in business, you need to ask questions on ROI. If a project or strategy in your business passes the ROI test, then off you go. Twitter has now passed my own ROI test, if it passes yours, go for it.

So, I've now started and I thought I'd share my simple Twitter Process, specifically designed for small and medium businesses to get the outcome they want.

Twitter Process

1. SETUP TWITTER:
   Setup twitter account. http://twitter.com
   
   
2. ENHANCE TWITTER PROFILE:
   Complete and enhance your Twitter Profile, with this question in mind... What are my ultimate online business goals? e.g. 1) increase visitors to xyz website landing page, 2) increase landing conversion rate to generate leads. example @jamesMcooper (this is me, follow me, shameless plug!)
   
   
3. MANAGE TWITTER:
   Setup TweetDeck App - http://www.tweetdeck.com . Add multiple twitter accounts (business + personal), linkedin profile, facebook account, facebook business account, etc. The more you use twitter the greater the value and understanding of what the different columns in tweetdeck can provide you. In short, it should help you manage your online marketing systems in relation to social media accounts.
   
   
4. TIME FOR TWITTER:
   Set aside a daily Time period or block for twitter and/or social media development. i.e 20mins a day at 5:40pm. Whatever works for you. Some might be doing it all day, others are busy with customers doing whatever it is you and your business does. Remember to receive an output you must invest an input. If you can't or don't want to invest the time, outsource your internet marketing strategy .
   
   
5. TWITTER GOAL 1 - QUANTITY:
   Start following relevant industry influencers - find in http://wefollow.com and http://search.twitter.com and http://twitter.grader.com/search . Search under tags or terms that are relevant to you and your business, then start following the influencers. What about the followers of the influencers? What about who the influencers are following? You get the idea. You'll find people will soon start following you. It's basically, 'You follow me, I'll follow you' ... but keep it relevant. Follow the twitter/entrepreneur/blogger/social media experts too, you'll learn faster this way. e.g. @chrisbrogan , @GuyWawasaki etc. (PS this is an ongoing step).
   
   
6. TWITTER GOAL 2 - QUALITY:
   With some quantity achieved then use http://friendorfollow.com to unfollow those that don't follow you and have no relevance to you, or in general clean your list from spammers. Quality and relevance is important! (ps this is an ongoing step).
   
   
7. TWITTER GOAL 3 - ENGAGEMENT:
   Then, there is no point being connected to people unless you communicate and have a relationship with them. Give love/value to receive love/value. Start with RTs of valuable content, and @ messages, replies to DMs, search and interact with those that mention you, etc. If you don't know what these terms are just yet, you'll get the idea once you reach this stage.
   
   
8. TWITTER GOAL 4 - INFLUENCE:
   And ultimately, if you're a good citizen and have played nice it's likely you'll develop a level of influence with your followers, and this is how you can ultimately get value from twitter... by others having trust and interest in you, what you say and your recommendations.
   
   
9. INCREASE TWITTER ROI:
   Getting higher ROI and ROE - Test and try the tools/apps at http://oneforty.com to improve your return on investment and return on effort... make life easier for yourself by systematising. Use tools to improve management and get more valuable information by reviewing analytics. Although, be mindful you don't remove the human element that gets you meaningful engagement, as meaningful engagement directly relates to your level of influence. Through out this 9 step process I have assumed you'll already have good analytics (website stats) systems for your website / blog / conversion pages. If you don't, setup google analytics for free or invest in internet marketing software like hubspot. This way you can see the ROI directly related to visitors from each source (in this case we are interested in twitter), and the number of leads from twitter, and ultimately the number and value of clients/sales.

Action Points

At the very least protect your business name / Trade Marks and person name (if possible) by setting up a business twitter account and personal twitter account. Then if you decide you can commit to ‘TIME FOR TWITTER' then follow the process, and let me know how you go! If this all just seems too hard, then you can always get some to "do it for me".

 

List of Free Business Directories

For SEO purposes it is highly desirable to have many links to your website, and getting listed on free and paid business directories is often a good place to start Link Building. The following list is a reference resource and not a comprehensive perfect list, you should make your own judgements on the quality and suitability of each directory for your individual purposes. We'll continually add to and refine this list over time. Please feel free to contribute to the list too.

Free UK Business Directories

http://www.freeindex.co.uk
http://www.business-directory-uk.co.uk
http://www.businessgalore.co.uk
http://www.uksmallbusinessdirectory.co.uk
http://www.wwwi.co.uk
http://kyotee.co.uk
http://www.searchme4.co.uk
http://www.scoot.co.uk
http://www.mysheriff.co.uk
http://www.businesslist.co.uk  

 

Free US Business Directories

http://www.dmoz.org
www.freeindex.com
www.bizhwy.com
www.nitpickit.com
www.volta.net
www.killerstartups.com
www.hotfrog.com
www.mylocalservices.us
www.listings.local.yahoo.com
http://local.google.com

 

Free NZ Business Directories

http://www.finda.co.nz

 

Blog Directories

GetBlogs Blog Directory

Top Blog Directories listed by PageRank...

More Blog Directories listed here...

 

 

Internet Marketing Strategy - An Overview for Small Businesses

It is vital that all small businesses have an effective Internet Marketing Strategy. This article provides a clear overview designed specifically with small businesses and small business owners in mind.

Internet Marketing Strategy Overview

1. Purpose: The purpose of your Internet Marketing Strategy is simple;
   
   i) increase visitors to your website,
   ii) increase conversion rate of visitors to leads or enquiries (for e-Commerce websites; increase conversion to sale).
   
   Every individual internet marketing technique should have its root purpose to assist with one of these two points.

2. Leverage: Recognise your website and the internet represents massive leverage. To make the most of them both, and any internet marketing you do, you must understand more about how they both work. This means learning, which means becoming at first conscious of your incompetence. We are all unconsciously incompetent at a whole heap of things, but have you ever noticed that by learning a little more about a topic you'll suddenly discover that there is all this other information that you don't know about. If you learn just a little in this area you'll be ahead of 95% of the pack!

3. Positioning: You should position you and your company in the minds of your target market as experts. Become the expert in your industry. The best way for small businesses to both increase website visitors and increase conversions to leads and enquiries is by positioning yourself as thought leaders - as experts - in your field.

4. Content Creation: To achieve expert positioning you must produce better content and provide a good amount of it free. Provide massive value free! Why? Well, everyone expects it, so if you don't some else will and I'll vote with my mouse immediately and leave your website. Even more likely is the fact I'll never find you in the first place. There are two main types of content creation. One for each of our core purposes;

   1. General website pages & blog articles - to Increase Visits.

   2. No Risk High Value Offers - to Increase Conversion. The idea here is to have an offer that is so powerful that the visitor would be crazy not to take it up.

5. Permission Marketing: To get the offer (an offer can be an eBook, Seminar ticket, or How To Guide or Video, etc), they must provide there contact details. You now have permission to communicate with them about your company, your products, your services. Some will be ready to buy immediately, some could take months of communication.

There are 3 main methods we find work well for small businesses. For more detailed techniques see the below links (over the coming weeks we will publish articles on the following topics and update this page to include the links as soon as each article is publshed). You can bookmark this page and use as a resource for Internet Marketing Strategy & Tactics.

Method 1 - Search

Links:

• How to use Search to Market your Small Business on the Internet

  
  How to Research and Select Keywords for Marketing your Small Business on the Internet

  How to use SEO to Market your Small Business on the Internet

  How to use SEM to Market your Small Business on the Internet 

Method 2 - Blogging

Links:

• How to use Blogging to Market your Small Business on the Internet 

Method 3 - Social Media

Links:

• How to use Social Media to Market your Small Business on the Internet

  
  How to use LinkedIn to Market your Small Business on the Internet

  How to use Twitter to Market your Small Business on the Internet

  How to use Facebook to Market your Small Business on the Internet

  How to use YouTube to Market your Small Business on the Internet

Action Points

• Start learning more, that's the first place to start. Read more blog articles, watch some how to videos, etc. If you don't feel you have the time - simple, engage a professional - but unless you know a certain amount, how can you know the right questions to ask to determine if they are any good or not?

• Second, go beyond knowing the overview of an effective Internet Marketing Strategy and go beyond understanding how the 3 different methods of search, blogging and social media can help market your business. You now need a process to follow for Internet Marketing Success.

Go for it!

 

 

What is SEO & SEM? - I Bet You Could Get More From Your Website?

How To Get More Visitors To Your Website Through SEO & SEM...

Don't know what SEO and SEM are? Heck, neither did I a few years ago, but if you don't know about them now, chances are you are not maximising the return on an investment you have most likely already made. I'm talking about the investment of your website.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) are the marketing techniques used by a professional to get your website to rank higher in search engines like Google and Yahoo. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) relates to highly targeted ads that appear only to people that are actively looking (searching) for that particular product or service. They are the sponsored links at the top or on the right of Google's search results.

These two strategies are very powerful methods to get more visitors to your website...

I'm Not An Expert In This Field...

And that's the point, you're probably not either. In fact you may just be starting to learn about all this new online stuff and looking for more information and clarity to some of the jargon and terms. I'll give you a basic understanding, and then you can choose to progress as follows;

Step 1) DIY. Do some of quick improvements if you have a Content Management System (CMS) that you have access to on your website (that means the ability to login to your website and edit and add content to it).

Step 2) Get a professional specialist to work on it. This is the best method in the long run, because you and I will probably never learn enough to be as good as an expert in this field. But what is important is an understanding of the basics and what you are looking to achieve.

So, let's explain....

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

In terms of internet search marketing strategies, there are basically too method; Organic Search and Paid Search. Organic search is where your business pops up when someone types in a search word or phrase looking for your products, services or profession. The higher you are up on this list the greater the chance people will click through to your website. Obvious really, if you're listed on the first page awesome, on page 4 you're forgotten.

So this brings up the questions of;

• ‘Why are some websites listed above others?'
• ‘How does the search engine determine which site ranks first, second, third, etc?'
• ‘How do I get my website to the top?'

Here's the real issue... Nobody knows the 100% answer to these questions but the Search Engine companies themselves. It's a closely guarded secret. This is because ever since search engines have existed in the mid 1990s people have been trying to manipulate rankings on them through illegitimate ways. You see, search engines work on algorithms... basically complex mathematical equations to determine website rankings. These algorithms are now based on heaps of different criteria, they used to be simple, in fact Google states it now uses over 200 different ‘signals' to determine a web pages ranking. But if you had to boil it down to basics, I'd say there are two main points to work on to begin with to get a higher ranking for your website legitimately;

• Content: This is the actual words on a website. If you had a business that produced green beans and started putting the words ‘the best green beans in the world' all though a web pages content, then chances are that if someone searched for the phrase ‘the best green beans in the world' you would rank on the first page. The lesson here is the content on your website, and more specifically on individual pages that are promoting the products and services of your business, need to consider what words, questions or phrases people are typing in when searching.

Getting on the first page of a search for ‘the best green beans in the world' is pointless if 99.9% of your prospects used the search phrase ‘green beans provider'. Getting this right requires patience, wow I just struggled to even write that word (patience), but patience and persistence are required to test different words and phrases. This is where a SEO consultant is highly valuable.

• Links: Google's founders created PageRank. PageRank determines how many other sites link to a page. If a page has many links to it, especially from other sites that have high PageRanks themselves, then that page is given more relevance and subsequently ranks higher in organic search results than other pages related to the searched phrase.

So having your business listed (with links back your site), in large popular websites can build your sites ranking. Such sites include; directories, social networking sites, community forums, media sites.

A professional SEO consultant will know all the other methods to use and how to execute them to affect a better ranking result.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

This is a simple marketing concept and strategy really, it's a lot quicker and easier to pay for results in a search engine than work to get high organic search results... it's called paid search. Paid search is what has built the Google empire to make US$16.5Billion in Revenue in 2007. Google Adwords are the listings you see on the right of the page when you do a search.

The great thing for businesses is that unlike traditional fixed fee advertising, paid search has the following features;

• You are only charged for those people that actually click on your ad.
• Only people that type in keywords, terms or phrases that you choose to be listed with will see the ad, so you can target it to the correct audience. You can even limit the geographically area right down so that only people that are searching from a city or suburb see your ad.
• You can set a maximum monthly budget for your paid search campaign, so when that budget is reached, your ad is simply not displayed any more, preventing a unexpected large bill at the end of the month.
• The price you pay per click (or lead to your website in reality) is determined by you and the open market. If you are prepared to pay $5 per click for a keyword and everyone else is only prepared to pay $0.50 then you'll likely be at the top of the list until your monthly budget is hit.

Key's to making this paid search marketing strategy work are;

• Use the right key words. This could take some time and testing.
• Use Direct Response advertising principles and interruption marketing to get people to click on your advert not the other ads. As I've discussed before, offer something... a Free Brochure, or Free Guide/Report to help the decision making process of the prospect.
• Landing Pages. Paid search should not link through to the home page of your site. People normally search for a specific product or specific service; it's likely you have many products and services. You will be much more successful running multiple paid search campaigns for each individual service or key products... then have a ‘landing page' for each campaign. The sole purpose of the landing page is to capture the prospect details, give them something that is relevant, useful and valuable to them, in exchange for their details.

This week's Action Points...

These two strategies can fall in the too hard basket time after time; I know I'm guilty of not doing enough in these areas. You have the choice, ask yourself this question; "do many people that need my products and services use search engines to find a provider/supplier/retailer?"

If the answer is yes, make a start with the basics described above then get a pro involved, better yet if you have $500 - $1000 a month budget get a pro involved right away. You could start to either of these strategies for that budget using a professional consultant. I've got the details of a couple I believe can add value, if you're interested eMail me and I'll send through their details.