Most Effective Website Promotion Techniques

1)      Article marketing – Article marketing is a very popular and very effective way to promote your website.  There are numerous places where you can post articles online for other people to read.  You cannot expect everyone to find your website unless you spread the word about it.  Articles are a great way to accomplish this.  If you write well and are actually knowledgeable about your topic, then you will get people to follow the links in your resource box back to your website.  These are really good visitors too.  Chances are you are already part way there on gaining their trust.  Anyone who is in sales understands how important trust is for making a sale.

Another huge benefit to article marketing is the number of links that the search engines will see pointing back to your website.  If you are smart, you will use those articles to point links deep into your website.  This helps ensure that your website gets more thoroughly indexed by the search engines.  It also increases your link popularity which is a ranking factor for search engines like Google.

I advise you to find the best article directories for your industry and post your articles on them.  You will gain more by doing that than you will by submitting them to a bunch of directories that get almost no traffic.

2)      Link Exchanges – Reciprocal link exchanges are one of the more popular forms of link exchanges.  In my opinion, you are far better off engaging in a different type of link exchange though.  You are better off exchanging one way links.  The way that you do this is to have the other person link to you.  Then you go get them a link from somewhere else, like maybe another website or blog of yours.  This is the best way to promote each other.  Search engines prefer if you have one way links pointing to your pages instead of reciprocal ones.

You will find willing link partners for doing this if you ask enough.  In fact, if you are interested, ask me on my contact form.  I am more than willing to help spread the word about other people’s businesses if they are willing to spread the word about mine.  It makes sense.  It is a win/win scenario.

3)      Become a blogger – You have two options here.  You can either create a blog on your own website or host your blog somewhere else.  It usually doesn’t matter all that much.  If your website is only a few pages though, you might be better off keeping the blog on the same original website.

Being a blogger can benefit you in numerous ways.  For starters, it allows you to assert yourself as an industry expert.  You can share all of the knowledge that you have gained over the years with other people who are interested in it.  There are a lot of people out there who will use this information without ever even saying thank you.  But, there are also other people out there who will thank you by linking back to your website from their blog.  The more of this that happens, the better off you are.

By having all this extra information on your blog, your website is going to start ranking for terms that we in this business refer to as long tail keywords.  Basically it means that you will get more traffic to your website.  The more you write, the more traffic you will get.  If you write well, you will find that people will get to trust you and become more likely to buy from you.  Just make sure you write about topics related to your industry.

There is a lot more to blogging than this.  There are so many things that you can do with it.  I will write more extensively about this on another post.

4)      If your website represents a business, you should try to get listed in two of the most popular search engine approved website directories.  These two directories are the Yahoo Business Directory and the Open Source Directory Project (DMOZ.org).  Google’s own website directory is an exact replica of the DMOZ directory.   The DMOZ website used to be good at filtering out spam.  Some of it slips through though now because of corrupt editors.

Staff members at Google have stated that they do like to see websites listed in directories like Yahoo’s business directory.  Yahoo’s business directory is another human edited directory.  Therefore, it is harder for spam sites to slip into the website.  As a result, Google can place a higher level of trust on the websites that it finds listed on there.

If you belong to a chamber of commerce, you should definitely check to see if you can get a link form them to your website.  Chamber of Commerce websites carry lots of trust and authority which both help your website rank higher in the search engines.

You should also try to get links from any other organizations that you belong to.  Websites that end in .ORG tend to be more trustworthy than your typical .COM or .NET website.  If you belong to any organizations that have a website like this, you should certainly ask them for a link.

5)      Learn how to link properly from website to website for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes.  People who don’t know better assume that a link is a link.  This is not the case.  Little things can make a big difference.  If you want to get a page ranked high in the search engines for a certain phrase, then you should try to get people to link to you using that phrase as the keyword anchor in the link.  In other words, if you wanted your homepage to rank high for the phrase “bed and breakfast in Virginia” then you would want people to use that phrase to point a link at your homepage.  You don’t want them to just use the name of your business.  You should naturally rank high for the name of your business so long as nobody else has the same business name as you.

There are exceptions to this rule.  For example, suppose an article is published about the best bed and breakfasts in Virginia.  In that case you would want your link to use your business name or the name of your website.  You would not necessarily want the link anchor to use special keywords.  This is also true for pages that contain lists of similar businesses.  In those cases, using your business name or website name will be appropriate.

Sometimes people link just using the standard URL structure like http://their website.com.  This is also fine when the link is on a page whose topic is directly relevant to what your page is about.

In general you would want to use the words that are most likely to cause someone to click on the link.

6)      Pay Per Click Advertising – If you haven’t tried this yet then you should.  Pay per click advertising is an extremely effective way to get visitors to your website.  You are paying for them.  It is okay though if you are running a business website designed to make you money in some way shape or form.

You can set really low budgets for your ad campaigns.  You can set them so low that any business can afford them.  How does $20 per month sound?  I am telling you that this stuff works.  I use it on this website.

The most popular pay per click advertising companies are the three major search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.  All three of them offer their own form of this program.  Google’s service is called Adwords.  You bid against other businesses for ad position depending on which keywords you want to target with your ads.  These are very cost effective when combined with properly SEO’d pages.  The better optimized your page is for a keyword, the less you have to pay for your advertisement.

Wikipedia logo is from wikipedia.org

7)      Obtain links from high authority websites in your industry.  This may be a little unclear to you if you aren’t a geek like me.  Basically, it is better to get links from places that are well known in your industry.  The more well known it is, the more valuable a link from them becomes.  You can drive your website to the top of the search engines for a given phrase if you can obtain a link from the most authoritative website for your industry.

This kind of thing can be really challenging and frustrating for the typical business owner or webmaster.  I have a knack for this sort of thing which is why I am in this business.

8)      SEO (search engine optimization) – You will find that I talk about this topic an awful lot on this website.  I am sorry to be so repetitive, but it is that important.  One of the single most effective ways you can promote your site is to make sure it is well optimized for the search engines.  This will help you rank higher in the search engines for important and valuable search phrases.

Of course, you also have to understand how to tell which phrases are the most valuable ones.  That is a prerequisite to proper SEO.  Learning how to do this or hiring someone who knows how to do this is a worthwhile investment.  If you can properly execute this, you can stick your business right in front of people just as they are ready to make a buying decision.  As you can imagine, this translate into sales in a big way.  That is why so many companies are investing in it.

Summary:

As I said previously, this list was in no particular order.  This list is not comprehensive either.  There are many more ways to promote a website that actually work.  I save some of the best ones for paying customers.  Sorry about that, but I am in this to make a profit.  This list is genuine though.  These are many of the techniques that I recommend to customers and use myself.

If I had to pick the best two methods I would say it would be SEO and authoritative links.  If you have a web page built around solid SEO principles and you also have properly anchored highly authoritative links pointing back at that page, your competitors will have a hard time outranking you.  Getting your website to rank high in the search engines for the right keyword phrases is the most profitable and most effective website promotion technique that you can probably engage in.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Most business owners have their hands full enough with all of the traditional forms of marketing, advertising and promoting their businesses.  You have already learned from experience the ins and outs of direct mail, telephone book advertising, newspapers and signage.  Heck, you might even understand radio and television to some extent.  This internet marketing thing is new though.  The younger generation is good at it because they grew up with it.  For people like you, unless you were trained in it, you are probably still wondering what the best ways of doing it are.

It seems like every year you hear about something new that is happening that every business is supposed to be doing.  You hear about terms that you know nothing about like social media, My Space, Facebook and Twitter.  How the heck are you supposed to stay on top of it all, right?  I can help bring some clarity into this internet world for you.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is also often referred to as search engine optimization (SEO).  They are similar but not exactly the same thing. 

The Yahoo logo is a registered trademark of Yahoo.com

SEM encompasses all forms of marketing your website online for the search engines.  It would include methods of generating natural (organic) search engine traffic (SEO) as well as forms of paid advertising from Pay-Per-Click programs like Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search or Microsoft adCenter.   Sometimes when people talk about SEM they are only referring to the paid pay per click programs.  In my opinion, SEO is a subset of SEM.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more specifically about determining what phrases your potential customers are typing into the search engines and then enacting measures that help your website pages to show up higher and more often when people are conducting those searches.  You want to get your website to rank high on the search engine results pages every time someone types in one of those relevant phrases.  This is a really effective form of marketing.  It is extremely cost effective. 

Promoting your website this way is very similar to word of mouth advertising.  In this case though, people are asking Google for its opinion about whom to do business with.  By the way, Google is by far the most important of the search engines.  In 2009, Google accounted for 68% of all searches in the United States.  Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com all had much lower percentages of the total domestic search market.

The Bing logo is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation

People are using the internet to research purchases all the time now.  I can help you determine what people are searching for.  Then I help you get your web pages to rank high in the search results for those phrases.  I can also assist you in getting advertising through Pay per Click programs like Google Adwords.  These are the core part of the services I provide for my customers.  We can do one or both.  First we do the keyword research to determine how people are looking for a business like yours.  Then together we can decide on an effective strategy for promoting your business.  Before you know it, you’ll be starting to see the results you were hoping for.  Over a period of time we can build your website and your business to a position of leadership in your industry.

My SEM work is ideally suited for businesses that want one on one service from someone who knows what they are doing.  You do have the option of hiring a really expensive high end marketing firm that is going to charge you thousands of dollars for doing the same basic kind of work.  You also have the option of outsourcing a lot of this kind of work to Singapore or some other foreign company that will promise you the world but deliver lackluster results.

If you’re like me though, you would rather just work with someone you can talk to that actually listens and cares about what you are trying to accomplish.  You want someone who is intelligent enough to make the right decisions on your behalf.  You want a marketer that will act like an experienced salesman who understands what motivates people and causes them to make buying decisions.  That’s me.

You get an honest hard working American guy who is going to do whatever he can to benefit your company.  I would appreciate it if you would give me a shot at earning your business.   My website is full of details that talk more specifically about what I do.  Look around to learn more.  I can help all kinds of businesses whether you have a small local store, a service business, a restaurant, an online based business or even if you manufacture products that are sold worldwide.  Follow the blue links on the right side of the page to learn about my website promotion service or my prices or to read frequently asked questions.

Back in the days when Yahoo was king of the search engines, webmasters were going nuts by stuffing all kinds of keyword phrases onto various web pages.  Back then it was easier to manipulate the rankings.  You could get ranked for a million different keyword phrases just by including a whole bunch of related or unrelated phrases on any given page. 

The porn sites used this to their advantage.  They would launch a bunch of pages with pornographic photos on them and then include phrases on the page that were unrelated.  The pages would get ranked for these unrelated high traffic phrases.  People would visit them only to find out that they were porn pages and not what they had expected.

These unscrupulous webmasters would stuff keywords in the Meta tags like crazy.  They would also use color schemes to hide words that they buried on the page.  They had gotten really creative in the ways that they could hide these obvious ranking manipulation techniques.

Search engines eventually smartened up though.  They learned to filter out those types of pages because the vast majority of them provided low value content.  Now it appears that all of the major search engines have various filters in place to stop people from trying to keyword stuff their pages.  They have analyzed various quality pages to see what kind of keyword density a good page should have.  Heck, even EzineArticles.com checks to make sure your keyword density is not too high.  If it is over 2.5% they will not allow you to submit the article for publication.

A New Keyword Stuffing Technique Is Born

The newest form of keyword stuffing is being brought on by Google.  Google has created a database index of synonyms.  They have learned that certain words are related to certain other words and phrases.  For instance, they know that Daytona 500 and Nascar both refer to the same type of thing; auto-racing.  They know that the word driver can be used to describe a golf club depending on the other words around it.  They know that Ping can be both a computer term as well as a brand of golf sporting goods.

As a result, they reward pages that have a number of different related keywords and synonyms on a page instead of pages that have the same keyword over and over again.  If you doubt me, take a look for yourself.  You will start noticing it.

In fact, the keyword synonym database is so important that you will see sites ranking for other words based on their content of synonyms as well as incoming links that use synonyms as anchors.  The next time you are doing link analysis on your competition, pay attention to synonyms.  It could be that one particular incoming link is way more valuable than you thought it was.

It makes perfect sense that they do this.  Chances are if a page has a wider variety of related keywords it is much more likely to be honest high value content instead of content that was written specifically to manipulate search engine rankings.  Yahoo, Google and Bing are getting smarter all the time.  You had better start using this new method of keyword stuffing if you want to boost your on-page SEO scores.

The single most important on-page factor is the page’s title.  Obviously, the page’s title should pretty well describe the topic of the page.  Don’t screw that up.  You can get a huge boost in ranking for a term just by having the keyword phrase in your title.  It also helps if you have that keyword phrase near the beginning of the title.

Another important factor in on-page SEO is having the keywords in the URL.  You could argue that this isn’t really on-page SEO, but I put it there.  If at all possible, you want to have the keyword in the URL somewhere.  If it is a keyword phrase, then make sure you have it in the right word order.  If you have the words out of order, you can confuse the search engines as to the intended topic of the page.

Take time to write a well thought out Meta description for the page.  Make sure the primary keywords are there as well.  A good Meta description will increase click through rate on the search engine results pages.  Users will read at least part of the description.  As far as the Meta tag for Keywords goes, just put a few of the most appropriate keywords in there.  Google ignores this tag completely.  Other search engines still use it, but to a much lesser degree than years ago.  Do not stuff a million keywords in there.

Make sure you use the keywords in the H tags on the page.  H tags are used to designate headers.  The headers should follow a hierarchy.  H1 is the main heading.  H2 is a subheading of H1 and so on.  Do not keyword stuff the headings.  Instead uses synonyms and other choices of wording to make it flow better and not look like you just stuffed the phrase in there.

Have your main keyword appear in at least two different sized fonts.   If you have the keyword in a normal text font as well as a larger heading font then you already have this covered.    Other ways that you could alter how a keyword appears is by making it bold, using italics, using capitals or making it a hyperlink.  Google’s index counts the number of times a word appears and the number of times it appears in different sizes.  It equates larger size with more importance.  This is why it is so important to put it into H1 tags.  Usually the H1 tag will have the largest font and therefore be considered most important.

Do not keyword stuff your content.  If you want to add more keywords onto the page then use synonyms.  In fact, you should be using synonyms and industry related terminology all over the place.  It gives you more credibility.  Use alternative words and jargon that is related in any way shape or form to what you do.  Use brand names of things that would be mentioned on other websites about the same topic.  Perform some keyword research to see what phrase variations are common with your primary keywords.  Try to include some of those different variations on the page.  Make the wording flow and easy to read.

Try to include other forms of content on your page other than just text.  Pages are generally better if they include a combination of text, images and video.  Google loves video.  So do visitors.  Over time Google will get pickier about making you include new forms of media.  It is best if you incorporate them as much as possible now.

If you are trying to get an article or blog post to rank for a specific phrase, then you should always try to use the primary keyword phrase in the first paragraph and the last paragraph on the page.  Write a little introduction paragraph that uses it.  Then write a little conclusion paragraph that also uses it.  This helps to keep your article on topic and makes it easier for both the readers and search engines to understand it.

First you need to understand what factors Google uses to determine which page should rank there. Plus you have to understand the reason behind why the page that is there right now is ranking that high. So it really boils down to understanding Google and understanding your competition.

Understanding Google Rankings

 
I am not going to claim that I know every last detail about Google’s ranking algorithm. I certainly do not. Neither does anyone else who doesn’t work very high in the Google algorithm engineering team. They are the only ones who know every factor. Besides that, the ranking factors change over time anyway. The methods that work today might not work as well tomorrow. You probably have already learned that the hard way.

What I can tell you is that I do understand the most important factors for getting a page to rank high right now. There are a handful of critical factors and then there are many other less critical ones. I will share a few of the more critical factors. I learned these factors after studying the academic papers published by the top people at Google and through years of trial, error and experience.

First and foremost, you need to understand that there is an outright war between spammers and the search engines. The search engines don’t want legitimate websites to get caught in the middle. The way that you avoid getting caught in the middle is by not doing what the spammers do. You don’t want to be seen as one or even associate with spam websites.

For instance, if your website links out to other websites that are considered to be in bad neighborhoods such as spam sites or porn sites or gambling sites, then your website is never going to achieve top rankings for any valuable keywords. You will be found guilty by association. You must be careful who you link out to. If you link to known bad sites, Google will automatically lose its trust in your site.

Assuming you aren’t using your website to help the spammers of the world rank better then you are probably on a level playing field with the rest of the legitimate websites with pages competing for top rankings. Then there are two other major factors to consider.

1) How good are the links that point back to your page?

2) How good and relevant is your on-page content?

That is pretty much it. Those are the two major things that influence your ranking.

If you want to outrank the webpage above you, then you need to either get better links pointing to the page or get better content on that page.   Which one you need more depends on which one you are lacking in.  Links tend to carry more weight than the content does assuming your content is average or better. Even if your content is good, you might just need more of it. Sometimes the only reason a business can’t outrank its competition is because they have less than 100 words on a page about a product. Google needs to see a reasonable amount of readable content on a page for it to consider your page high enough quality.

Google’s algorithm is not perfect. In fact, they will admit that it is far from perfect. They are always trying to tweak their methods so that higher quality, more relevant and more important pages show up at the top of the results. Focus on that if you want to rank way up there. Build your web pages with very tight narrow focus topics. Then find ways of getting other websites to point links at your pages using the best possible words to describe them and the words that you want the page to rank for.

Understanding Why Your Competition Is Ranked High

 
The other thing that you are going to have to learn how to do in order to achieve a number one ranking is learn how to analyze your competition. If some other page is outranking you, it will be easier to outrank them if you understand why they are ranking as high as they are.

It is pretty easy to look at their page and get a quick sense of how relevant the content is and how good the information is. If their information is presented in a better way than yours, then maybe you should consider redesigning yours. If their page has more text on it, then maybe you should put more text on yours that more thoroughly describes the material. You could add additional photos or other forms of media like video and audio. What would your site visitor want to see? Put yourself in their shoes. Make it desirable to visitors and chances are it will also be desirable to the search engines. Do not overuse flash on a website though. The search engines aren’t very good with flash. Even though the site may look great, the pages are probably not search engine friendly.

Look at the links that point back to your competitor’s web page. Where do these links come from? Are they from other industry related websites? What words are used in the anchor text? What is the single best link they have pointing to the page? Is there anywhere that you can get an even better one than that?

These are the types of things you need to figure out, if you really want to know how to outrank them. If you are just slightly better than the guy on top, your page will soon move up there. Remember, you don’t need to have the best page on the internet. You only need to have a page that is better than your competition. Look at it this way.  Imagine you and another guy are in the African Safari running from a lion that wants to eat you.  You don’t need to outrun the lion. You just need to outrun the guy next to you.

Figure out how to be one step better than your competition and you will have figured out how to get your web page ranked number one in Google.

—The Google symbol is a registered trademark of Google Inc.

You used to be able to rank well by just stuffing a bunch of keywords onto a page.  Then you stuffed your whole website full of these keyword stuffed pages.  Now things are different.  You have to provide highly relevant content for the phrase you want to rank for.  Then you also need to go about acquiring the right kinds of links that point back to your pages so that Google will push your page higher in the results.

Ever since Google has been around, backlinks have been important.  The founders discovered that the more important a document was, the more likely it was to have links pointing to it from other documents on the internet.  Therefore, they reasoned that you could return much better search results by counting the number of backlinks a document had pointing to it.

As a result, they created the term Page Rank.  Google Page Rank is a way of mathematically expressing how likely it would be for a random surfer to land on any given page based on how all of the documents in a hypertext linked index were linked to one another.  The more likely it was to come across a certain document, the higher would be its PageRank.  By having more links to your pages or links from pages that had lots of links themselves, you are more likely to have your pages visited.  Therefore you would have higher Page Rank.

Google used Page Rank along with a documents’ word structure to determine which page would be the most relevant one for any given search phrase or search keyword.  This is the very basis for how Google works at its core.  Of course, things have evolved way beyond that by now.

Now, Google looks at a large number of factors to assign authority to certain types of links based on many factors.  They look at things like how many other links are on a page, how much Page Rank that page has, what words are used to link out to the other page, where the link is located within the content of the page as well as a number of other factors.  If it weren’t for all of these other factors, you would not need an expert to promote your site.  You could just publish articles like crazy and get good ranking.

Things are different now though.  You can’t just publish articles.  You have got to understand how Google determines a link’s value.  Then go after the really good links.  You may not be able to get the absolute best ones.  Google knows this.  This is why they assign the most value to the ones that are really hard to get.  That helps to assure that the links aren’t manipulated as much.

Business owners who don’t know better think that a link is a link.  I can tell you it most certainly is not.  There are good links and there are worthless links.  If you are getting a bunch of links from spam sites, you could be shooting yourself in the foot.  Be careful when hiring SEO firms and web promotion companies.  You want to make sure you get clean links and higher value links.  You also want the links to appear gradually over a period of time.  If they come all at once, the search engines will realize that you are trying to game the system.

Google and the other search engines have gotten really good at filtering spam.  They have devalued the links from spam sites an awful lot.  Now, if the spammers aren’t careful, they end up hurting a page’s ranking rather than helping it.

Links are vitally important for ranking.  This trend is unlikely to stop anytime soon.  If you don’t understand how to judge the quality of a link, then you might want to consider outsourcing some of your website promotional work.  Learning where and how to get valuable links takes quite a while and some determined effort.  It is not something you are bound to be very good at otherwise.

The internet has changed the way we do business.  People use the internet every day to help them make decisions about which companies to buy from.  They use the internet for looking up the telephone numbers of their favorite pizzeria.  They use the internet to find a plumber in their area.  They use the internet to find the cheapest place to buy a new book they heard about.  They use the internet to research a company that they are thinking about doing business with.  They look up things for their boss online.

If your company doesn’t have excellent exposure online then you are probably missing out on a lot of additional revenue.  It is that simple.  Of course you probably already know this and maybe that is why you are reading this in the first place.

So, let me help you get your business name in front of new customers.  Put your business in front of them before one of your competitors does.  Remember, people don’t always make the best choice when making a purchase.  They make the best choice between options that they know about.  If they don’t know about you or haven’t heard anything good about you, then they are far less likely to buy from you.

I can work with you to devise a strategy for making your business stand out.  We can grab the attention of some of those people who aren’t sure who they should do business with.  I get them to come to you.  Then you take over from there.  You work on impressing them and convincing them that they made the right choice.

How much is it worth to you to have a salesman out there promoting your business 24/7 – 365?  That is what clients get when they work with me.  Through consistent effort made over a period of time you will certainly see positive results.

Start working now to see your business grow six months or a year from now.  Don’t let a slow economy keep you from engaging in the most cost effective form of business advertising you could possibly get.  The sooner you get started, the sooner you can take market share from the other guys.  Don’t wait any longer.  Start promoting your business today.

Other business owners are starting to catch on to this.  They are starting to realize how much opportunity there really is to generate business online.  You are going to see it written into textbooks and taught at all of the major business schools in the United States.  Using the internet to generate customers and to build your brand is simply the most cost effective way of doing so.  Give me a shot at showing you how much bang you can get for such little buck.

Google revolutionized search engines.  They revolutionized them by creating a product that returned vastly superior search results for the types of things people were actually looking for online.  How did they do it?  They did it by creating a new algorithm that changed the way websites were analyzed.  Instead of relying on just what the original content of a webpage said about it, they began looking at the links that point back at the webpage.

They realized that you could adjust the rankings according to link popularity.  Basically, that meant the more links you had pointing to your page the better.  Then they took that idea a step farther and started breaking down different types of links and adjusting how much voting power each one had.

How does all of this apply to business?

Because of their superior methods of returning relevant results as well as some crafty common sense marketing, the company was able to soak up more than 70% of the market share for total searches performed on the internet.  That means that roughly 7 out of 10 people are using Google to look things up as opposed to one of the other search engines.

Therefore, if your business website cannot be found in Google, you are missing out on 7 out of 10 potential new customers that you otherwise could gain some exposure to.  That could make a huge difference in the number of new customers contacting you about buying your product or service.  Is it starting to make sense?

There are literally millions of searches conducted every single day on Google.  Of course only a very small percentage of those are related to your business in some way shape or form.  Nonetheless, that is a very large pie.  If you even get a small sliver of that business it could be worth a small fortune to you.  The size of that pie gets bigger and bigger every single day as the internet savvy generations replace the generation born before computers were around.

The best part about this Google thing is that businesses are very slow to catch on to this sort of thing.  That means you have an opportunity to get a jump on at least some of your competition.  An awful lot of business owners are still in the dark when it comes to this form of marketing.  Think about some of your colleagues.  I bet you know some people who are clueless when it comes to the internet and its potential.

An even better fact of the matter is that it if you are running a local business that caters to just one city or smaller geographical area, then there is a really good chance that it is going to cost very little to get your website exposed to a whole bunch of new customers.  You have to do a little bit of work to get your site to be in a good position.  Once you get it there though, it is easier to maintain that position.

Don’t pass up the perfect opportunity to get your business in front of all those new potential customers.  For what it costs, it just doesn’t make sense to skip this very important method of advertising yourself.

These people need to wake up.  Everyone under age forty is online.  In fact, most people over age 40 are online to some extent as well.  The vast majority of these people would prefer to look something up online rather than try to find someone to do business with in a phone book.

Think about it.  If you don’t know who to call to fix a broken appliance, what do you do?  You go to Google and type in “Maytag washing machine repair” or something similar.  Very few people are still using the old fashioned thick yellow page books.  Don’t believe me?  Look at how much thinner that local yellow page book has gotten over the last few years.  Look at the stock price of the companies that produce those telephone yellow pages.  People use the internet now.  They look for businesses on Google, Yahoo and Bing. 

It is insane for a business to not have some kind of decent web presence these days.  Those who do not spend enough time and resources on building that image on the internet are leaving a ton of money on the table that could have been in their cash registers.

Some small businesses just don’t get it.  Meanwhile, their competition is cleaning up.

I had a conversation with a business owner recently who had already hired someone to promote his website.  He owns a family operated manufacturing company that manufactures furniture.  This company does several million dollars a year in sales.  He told me that 2009 was a record year for his business even though the economy had plummeted.  The best part was that he attributed this massive increase in business to the extra investment they had made in their website.  They lost a bunch of business from their regular customers because of the economy.  However, they more than made up for it because of the increase in business they generated from new customers through their website.  If their competitors knew about this, I can assure you that they would be making the same investments instead of laying off more people. 

It costs a lot less than you think.

Another thing that amazes me is the value that a small business can generate from very little investment in their website.  If a business has a web designer who understands (SEO) search engine optimization, then it is very likely that their website is very profitable.  If not, then they should look for someone who does understand it and make the investment in them. 

It is important to have a website that projects the image that you want to leave with new potential customers.  It is also important to have a website that ranks well when people are looking for that kind of business.  People in Chicago who want to hire a wedding photographer are going to go to Google and type in things like “wedding photographers in Chicago” or “Chicago wedding photographers” or “best wedding photographer in Chicago” or something else like that.

You want your website to rank as high as possible for those terms. If you can get to number one on the list in Google, you will really clean up.  Here is the breakdown on how many visitors typically click on a link depending on where it falls on the page in a search engine.

Position on the page / percentage of clicks it gets

That means that roughly 90% of all Google searchers click on a result on the first page in Google.  If your website isn’t on page 1 you are already being missed by 90% of potential new customers.

Can you imagine how much more exposure you are going to get if you can get your website to move from page 2 or page 3 all the way up to page one?

People just don’t realize how cost effective it is to spend a few dollars to get to page 1 in the search results.   First you need to identify as many phrases as possible that people will use to find a business that does what you do.  Then try to get your website to rank high for those terms.  I can assure you that for the vast majority of businesses it is well worth the investment.  It probably costs way less than you think.

SEO comes in two different forms.  There is on-page SEO and off-page SEO.  On page SEO has to do with the general website structure when your website was first created.  There are certain rules that the webmaster should have followed to make your website as search engine friendly as possible.  If they followed these rules, you are already half way to getting excellent results with your website.

Off page SEO is even more important than on-page SEO in some cases.   Off page SEO means links.  You have probably noticed that many of the steps involved in promoting your website have something to do with getting links pointing back to your website.  See, search engines analyze the links on the internet that point to your website.  The better your links are and the more of them you have pointing back to your site the better.  This is very important.  Search engines like Google put an awful lot of weight behind certain links.  These links can mean the difference between a website ranking number one for their industry or ranking number 100 for it.  They are that important.

Not all links are created equal.  Some are completely worthless.  Some are extremely valuable.  You have to be knowledgeable in this field to understand the difference.  The basic rule of thumb is that you want links to your website coming from other authority websites within your industry.  You also need them to use certain words when they link to you.  There are really a ton of variables to consider here.

The real value in my services comes from knowing how and where to get these valuable links.  I analyze your competition and other websites in your industry to determine what kinds of links they have.  Then I go about acquiring these kinds of links for your website.  As time passes, the major search engines like Google will begin rewarding your website for having these links.  Slowly but surely, the pages of your website begin ranking higher and higher.

The vast majority of these links are one way links.  That means that the links point back to your site without you having to link to them.  These are the kinds of links that search engines want to see.  Any business owner who is serious about generating customers and money from their website should be investing regularly in this kind of service.  If you are considering hiring somebody to perform this kind of service for you, I would appreciate a shot at earning your business.

I can put together a plan that if applied methodically over a period of time, will make the pages of your website rise higher and higher in the search results for the words we target.  We will target the words and phrases that your potential customers would likely use to find a business like yours.  This way, your site is far more likely to be seen and visited by people who are searching for a company, product or service like yours.  This stuff really works.  It is one of the most cost effective ways of advertising your business that you will ever find.

If you’re interested, please read more about the types of website promotion services I can provide for you.