Moe Tamani's Internet Marketing and SEO Blog, Articles and Search Engine Optimization Tips » Small Business

3 SEO Strategies to Put to Work

MoeTamani — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:00:12 +0000

3 SEO Strategies to Put to Work

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

SEO (search engine optimization) refers to all the tools and tricks that a business owner uses in order to drive traffic to his or her website. There are a lot of strategies out there, but SEO experts have long recognized that some are more effective than others. So if you’re serious about using SEO to get traffic to your site, consider these 3 strategies:

1. Linking. Search engines reward the highest ranks to websites that have inbound links from other websites that it considers relevant and authoritative in your market niche. In other words, if you can get a link from a website that is well-respected by members of your field, you will go a long way toward increasing your search engine ranking. A great way to do this is by exchanging links with others in your market. Think about some of the websites frequented by your target audience. Then get in touch with the owners of those websites and ask if they’d like to trade links with you. It’s important that you exchange links with businesses related to your product or service, but that aren’t necessarily your direct competitors. Another important thing to remember that linking as an SEO tool isn’t a one-time fix. If you want to continue driving traffic to your website, you need to continue building your links. There’s only so much traffic that single link can generate.

2. Article Marketing. Article marketing is a great SEO tool for driving traffic to your website for several reasons. The first is that each article directory allows you to list the link to your website in a resource box. This gives you a valuable inbound link. The second is that if you write relevant, quality articles for submission to article directories, your readers will perceive you as an expert or authority in your chosen field. They will be interested in hearing more from you, and they will click on the link to get to your website. Additionally, others in your field will see that what you have to say is valuable and will post your article their websites, thereby increasing your exposure to your target audience and driving traffic to your site.

There are a few things to keep in mind when submitting your articles to directories. The first is that each directory has its own submission guidelines, so be sure to familiarize yourself with them before submitting your article. The second is that your article should be information and educational, not a glaring advertisement for your product or service.

3. Forums. Forums are a great way to get traffic to your website. A forum is a public space in the internet for people interested in similar products, services, hobbies, vocations, etc. to meet. When you sign up for a forum, you have the opportunity to include a link to your website and a few sentences about yourself in your signature line. This means that every time you post to a forum, you are advertising yourself to people whom you already know to be interested in the things that you have to offer. The same caveat applies to forums as to articles. Your forum postings should always contribute something relevant and helpful to the discussion and should never be used to advertise your business or product. The idea of forums as an SEO tool is that you can build relationships with like-minded individuals in order to build trust. Once your target audience believes that you are trustworthy, they are more likely to find out what else you have to offer in the way of products and services. Be sure that you carefully read the rules of the forum before you post!

These are just three helpful SEO strategies to drive traffic to your site. If you’re looking for additional ideas, contact an SEO professional or internet marketing expert.

SEO and Small Business: 4 Keys to Success

MoeTamani — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:29:25 +0000

SEO and Small Business: 4 Keys to Success

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

If you’re an internet marketer then you already know the importance of SEO. But all of your SEO efforts are for naught if you haven’t taken the necessary steps to create a successful small business. The reality is that creating and sustaining a successful online business can be very difficult, but you can position yourself for success by following these 4 guidelines:

1.Sell the Right Stuff. This step assumes that you’ve already done ample research about what customers want and about what they’re willing to spend money on. The next step is to actually offer your target audience what they clearly want. One sure way to fail is to build your small business around what you think your audience wants rather than what they actually do want. So listen to your audience and give them what they want!

2.Get Help. If your SEO efforts have paid off and your search engine rankings are increasing, traffic is increasing, and an increasing number of people are interested in your product or service, then you’re on the right track! But one easy mistake to make is to try to do everything related to your business on your own. You have several gifts that make you a successful small business owner. Stick with those. Find other people with other gifts to take care of the other aspects of your business. Take some time to think about the things that you have to do yourself. Then figure out how to outsource everything else. It may be one of the most important things you have to do in the life of your small business. After all, you’re the one with the grand idea and you want to maintain some control over every aspect of your business. But you’ll find that your small business will get stronger and you let talented people help you with aspects of your business that don’t correlated with your talents

3.Manage Your Time Well. Some things that can suck us in and keep us from focusing on the bigger picture of business include email, media, and loose boundaries. Limit the amount of time you spend answering email each day. In fact, commit to only checking it once or twice per day, and only answers the emails that you have to answer. Every one else can get in touch with you by phone if they desperately need to speak to you. Turn of the television if you work at home. It’s too distracting. Finally, establish clear work hours. Honor them yourself, and expect others to honor them as well. This means letting friend and family know that you aren’t to be disturbed during work hours, and that when the workday is over, you close up shop and focus on the rest of your life.

4.Too Much Multi-tasking. If you have too many irons in the fire, or too many incomplete projects, your small business is losing money. Focus on starting and completing one project or one product. You’ll at least be making money on something! Keep an idea file for yourself to take the pressure off. Every time you have a great new idea, write it down and put it in the idea file. Then you when complete your next product, complete the necessary SEO, and get it on the market, you can allow yourself to start on the next product. Slowly but surely you’ll increase your sales, which isn’t going to happen if you never complete your first product because you have too much going on.

If you’re struggling in your small business, consult with an internet marketer, or even an SEO professional, for tips on how to get on the right track. These four keys should start you off on the right foot for a successful small business!
Cole

Small Business SEO: Can You Really Afford it?

MoeTamani — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:37:18 +0000

Small Business SEO: Can You Really Afford it?

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Let’s face it, when you look at it on paper, SEO is an expensive endeavor. Whether you do it yourself, use the services of a consultant, or hire someone else to do it for you, the cost can be overwhelming. In fact, some SEO experts charge as much as $500-$1000 per hour. It is such an involved process that the price tag is understandably pretty significant. As a small business owner, you have to decide whether search engine optimization is worth the expense. Can you afford to invest in SEO? Can you afford not to? The key to affordable SEO is an efficient balance of necessities, time, and budget. Here are three things to consider as you decide whether SEO is right for your small business.

1.Necessities of SEO.
Search engine optimization is a huge process, but not every component of SEO is necessary for every campaign. It’s no secret that the most fruitful campaigns utilize every type of marketing available, but doing everything doesn’t necessarily equal success. If you make sure that you’re doing the right things at the right time, then you can save time and effort while still creating a successful campaign.

2.Time to Invest in SEO.
Time is the single most important aspect of SEO. It’s simply a time-consuming process. If you’re not spending your own time doing it then you’re paying someone else for their time. Because time is your most valuable resource, one of the most important decisions you’ll have to make is which projects you’ll take on first. Prioritizing your tasks will help you make good use of your valuable time. Tackle your top-priority tasks first and save the less-important ones for later.

As you consider your use of time, also keep in mind that SEO is part waiting game. Anytime you think about Organic search engine optimization, you have to remember that SEO results take a significant amount of time to show up online. Make sure you understand just how long it might take and how it will affect your business. Depending on the industry and the competition, better rankings take 4-6 months

3.SEO Budget.
This is the primary factor in determining whether you’ll spend your own time doing SEO or hire someone else for the use of their time. But don’t let budget be your only consideration. Also keep in mind the value added when a professional takes care of your web optimization tasks. Determine the value added by an SEO professional by considering the quality of work and the potential of the search engine optimization work to get results for your business, however, more money doesn’t always guarantee a better product. On the other hand, remember that you often get what you pay for.

You can only determine the true cost of SEO by looking at your return on investment. Remember that the true value of search engine optimization is greater than the sum of its parts. Even a small increase in time, money, and energy invested can net huge results. By investing whatever you can, whenever you can, and wherever you can, you can potentially see a big difference in your business’s success. Reinvesting your returns can lead to even more success, and SEO suddenly doesn’t look so expensive anymore.

The Cost of Doing it Wrong:
And while it may be tempting to do SEO yourself, small business owners should especially consider hiring an internet marketing agency or search engine optimization expert. Small businesses are already at a disadvantage when it comes to SEO simply because of size and budget. Don’t risk putting yourself at an even greater disadvantage by doing it wrong or by inadvertently utilizing tactics that could harm your ranking or even get you banned by search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Even if you choose not to hire an SEO expert to take care of all of your optimization tasks, consider hiring a consultant to check the work you’ve done. This is a good way to keep careless mistakes from happening over and over again

5 Tips for Managing Your Online Reputation

MoeTamani — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:16:53 +0000

5 Tips for Managing Your Online Reputation

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

One of the most important things that social networking has allowed us to do is to find out what other people are saying about us. If the feedback we’re hearing is negative, we can do a lot of damage control. If it’s positive, we can find out what our customers think we’re doing right and build on those strengths. But one of the other important aspects of reputation management to remember is that we can use search engine optimization techniques to control what people see when they Google our business name or our own personal name.

For example, you may find that a search for your company name results in some disparaging feedback in the form of forum posts or blog comments. While there’s no way to wave a magic wand and make those go away, there are some ways to make sure that more positive information related to your and/or your business shows up in the search engine results in a higher place than the not-so-good stuff. Here are 5 tips to managing what people see when they search for us.

1. Blog. Use your blog frequently and refer to yourself in the third person. If you don’t already have an About Me page, create one. Also take the opportunity to write a few blog posts about yourself. Like always, you don’t want to make gratuitous references to yourself, but at least mention your name once or twice.

2. Name Your Domain. If you haven’t already done so, make your own name your domain name. While you may be tempted to simply point your domain name to your blog, also consider creating some content to put at yourname.com.

3. Profiles. You can make your blogger profiles work for you. If you need more information about how to create profiles that work to your advantage, consult an internet marketing expert or SEO professional.

4. Use Social Networking. Your profiles on MySpace and other sites can help you increase your search engine results that reflect positively on your and your business. These tools help you build a good reputation right off the bat.

5. Inbound Links. As always, the best way to increase the positive and decrease the negative is to increase your search engine ranking. And the best way to do that is to work, work, work on increasing your inbound links. Figure out which pages of your website you want to focus on most and set out to get quality inbound links to those pages.

If you follow these steps, you’ll notice in time that some of your social networking and blogging profiles will show up higher in the search engine rankings. If you’re putting the right kind of effort into creating and publishing new, quality blog posts, you’ll note that your blog is showing up in the results as well. You’ll also see yourname.com show up with an increased ranking in the search results if you’re creating good content and optimizing for a few keywords that you think are most important.

One of the most amazing aspects of creating an online business is that anyone, anywhere can find you, use your product or service, and provide feedback about you and your company. That’s also one of the most frightening aspects of creating an online business. The fact that anyone, anywhere can say anything they want, and that what they say can potentially make or break your business, is the chance you take when you put yourself out there on the internet. If you discover that unflattering information is showing up in the search results when you Google your name or the name of your business, your best bet is to consult an SEO expert or internet marketing professional that offers online reputation management. Those folks can help you determine how good SEO techniques can help win back your reputation, and bury that not-so-helpful feedback way back in the nether regions of the search engine results.

8 Ways to Cash in on Telephone Leads

MoeTamani — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:03:59 +0000

8 Ways to Cash in on Telephone Leads

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

If you’re a business owner who relies on telephone leads, here are 8 ways to get ahead of the competition. They aren’t really SEO techniques per se, but they are ways to optimize your site for such contacts.

1. Titles Tags: Have you tried putting your phone number at the very beginning of the title tag? Most business owners don’t even think of doing it, yet it can really pay off. Instead of just including the name of your business and a few keywords within the title tag, use the title you would normally use and just stick your phone number at the beginning. Even if your listing is not the first one on the search engine results page, a potential customer may call you anyway simply because your phone number is right there in front of them. They don’t have to click on a link, they don’t have to search for a phone number. They just need to pick up the phone and dial the number that’s right in front of them. Even if you don’t rank first in the search engine results, you’ve just gotten a lead.

2. Descriptions: After you’ve put your phone number in your title tag, put it in your description tag. Since the description tag often shows up right under the webpage title in the search engine results, your phone number will be listed twice before your potential customer ever clicks on a link. This might not result in as many leads as having your phone number in your title tag, but it sure won’t hurt.

3. Domain Name. Have you considered using your telephone number as your domain name? If you rely heavily on telephone leads, this may be the way to go to get great results.

4. Avatars: Sure, all the cool kids use logos or photos for their avatars at Facebook and Digg, but consider making your phone number your avatar.

5. User Names: This is just a variation on the avatar idea, but you might think about using your telephone number as your user name on social networking sites.

6. Placement. Most websites have a Contact Us page that lists their phone number. Others put the telephone number in the footer of each page. That’s great if you want your potential customer to dig around to find your phone number, and eventually give up because it’s taking to much time and effort. So place your phone number in a more prominent spot, like in a margin or near a content box. The phone number should be large, but not obnoxiously large, and possibly set off with an image like a telephone. If your website includes a slideshow or picture display, include your phone number as one of the images.

7. Custom Backgrounds. Some social media sites let you design your own custom backgrounds. How about using a background that displays your phone number?

8. Signatures. Assuming that you participate in forums, which is a good idea for any business owner, be sure to include your phone number with your signature.

If you need more ideas about how to optimize your site as a business owner who depends heavily on telephone leads, consider talking with an SEO expert or internet marketing professional. Given their vast exposure to all sorts of businesses and websites, they will be able to give you other ideas about how to get ahead of your competition using optimization techniques. They will also be able to help you determine how to make telephone optimization a part of your overall internet marketing strategy. Sure, you might be able to do it yourself, but chances are they have some wisdom that you need to tap in order to make the most of your business website.

6 Keys to Improving Productivity

Seomul Evans — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:43:49 +0000

6 Keys to Improving Productivity

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

If you own your own business, you know how difficult it can be to maintain an effective level of productivity. Interruptions are always part of your day, and there are any number of ways to distract yourself from the tasks at hand. Here are 6 keys to improving your productivity.

1. Make Appointments. One of the best ways to improve your productivity is to set specific times for meeting with employees, vendors, etc. Instead of letting people catch you when you “have a minute,” respectfully request that they make an appointment to meet with you. Admittedly, this does feel a little rigid and a little less relaxed than an open door policy, but it will guarantee fewer interruptions and the ability to get more done. One of the biggest benefits of this is that you can be prepared for a meeting in a way you can’t be prepared for an impromptu chat, and that means your meeting time will be more effective and run more smoothly. So pick a day of the week to have all of your meetings. Set them all up at your office and schedule them back-to-back so that you have to stay on schedule. You’ll find yourself more focused and more productive.

2. Take Your Phone Number Off of Your Website. Obviously this doesn’t work for everyone, but if you can do so without compromising your business, remove your phone number from your website. And when you do get phone calls, be intentional about screening them. Don’t answer unless you know who it is and you know that they need to speak to your urgently. For all other communication, put a web form on your website that allows visitors to contact you.

3. Hire Some Help. Volunteers, interns, and staff are all key to helping you improve your productivity. From the moment you start your business, you should be figuring out which work can be successfully handled by other people. Your job is to build the business. And remember that money is only one incentive. Be creative as you determine how you can compensate others.

4. Set Aside One Day for Administrative Tasks. Doing administration work as it arises is very tempting, especially because it’s quite rewarding to see menial administrative issues leave your desk. But avoid the temptation. Administrative work can be very distracting and can suck up valuable time. Instead, write down all of your administrative tasks and pick one day during the week to devote to them.

5. Set Aside the Morning. You’re freshest in the morning, so set aside several hours each morning to tackle one project that will make a difference in the success of your business. Make sure your staff knows not to bother you, and don’t take any phone calls or schedule any meetings. Once your project is complete, you’ll be refreshed and rejuvenated, and you can look forward to everything else your day has to offer. It’s tempting to pick up smaller tasks to work on each morning, but discipline yourself to take on one big project without even considering everything else that needs to be done. This is one of the best ways to keep your business moving forward all the time, and when you show respect for your own time, your employees will learn to do the same.

6. Limit Email. Avoid the temptation to treat email like an instant messenger. You don’t need to check it every five minutes and you certainly don’t need to respond immediately. If someone needs you urgently, they will call. Checking your email once a day will not cause you to lose business. In fact, it will increase your productivity. Pretty soon people will learn not to expect an immediate response from you and nothing will suffer.

Follow these 6 steps and watch your productivity increase by leaps and bounds!

4 Basic Business Lessons for entrepreneurs

MoeTamani — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 06:00:47 +0000

4 Basic Business Lessons for entrepreneurs

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Sometimes, as entrepreneurs, we need to get back to the basics. When we find ourselves swamped with more work that we feel we can ever handle, and when we sometimes forget just what made us passionate about our business in the first place, we need to be reminded of the basics that can help us regroup and get back on track. Here are 4 business basics to consider.

1. Ask for Help. No one ever said that you had to have all the answers to all the questions. Chances are that you haven’t even figured out what all the questions are yet. So don’t be ashamed for one second if you find that you need to turn to experts for advice. Find someone who’s been in business for years and learn from his mistakes. Let him help you climb the learning curve more quickly than you could on your own. You are going to run into problems and challenges that you never expected, much less know how to handle, so find someone who can help you. You might hire a consultant, an investor, or even an employee who has expertise in a field that you know nothing about. You can do yourself a big favor early on by being clear about your strengths and gifts. Find others to fill in the gaps for you.

2. Listen. Your business doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and while you sometimes might wish it did, you need to be constantly engaged with the people around you. Find out what your customers, investors, partners, and suppliers have to say. They will give you different, and valuable, perspectives on your business that you can’t find by yourself. While some of their feedback may be hard to swallow, digesting and letting it guide your future decisions will only make you, and your business, stronger. You can also get good ideas by going to trade shows and reading industry publications. Subscribe to GoogleNews feeds about your industry

3. Go With Your Gut. While it’s always a good idea to graciously accept feedback from the people around you, check your gut before making any drastic changes. Your instincts will guide you correctly almost all the time. This is also important to remember as you try to keep up with the business world around you. You’re never going to have all of the information you need to make bulletproof decisions, so sometimes you’re simply going to have to trust your gut. Sometimes you’ll even decide to take the path contraindicated by all of the research around you. Don’t be afraid to listen to your inner voice. It will lead you in the right direction.

4. Give Incentives. A great way to increase business is to offer incentives to customers and potential customers. Do a little bit of research to find out where else your customers are spending their money. What if you could partner will the other businesses that your customers patronize and work out a deal to offer together? Could you turn their referral fee into a client discount? The caveat here is to ensure that whatever you’re offering is perceived by your customers as having real value.

If you own your own business, take some time to reflect on these four business basics. They’re simple, and you’ve probably heard them all before, but they’re also keys to effectively running your company and thus deserve to be revisited regularly. Find the help you need, listen to the people around you who can give you a different perspective on your company, listen to your own inner voice, and give potential customers a reason to do business with you. When you abide by these keys, you’ll remember why you started your own business in the first place, and you’ll learn to enjoy it again.

3 Keys to Delegating at Work

admin — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:08:59 +0000

3 Keys to Delegating at Work

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

One of the most difficult aspects of small business ownership is delegating some of your responsibility to others. The difficulty lies in the fact that your business is successful because of your strong leadership and your ability to wear many hats at once. If that wasn’t the case, then your business would have failed long ago. So there’s a certain logic in your desire to do all of the work yourself; after all, if you want something done right, you should do it yourself. But doing all of the work and retaining all of the responsibility is the short road to burnout. Here are 3 keys to delegating that will save your business, and your sanity.

Don’t Be Such a Control Freak. Chances are that you’re most comfortable when all decisions come from you. But you can only run your company this way for so long before you become completely overwhelmed. Pick one or two of your key staff and let them make decisions on their own, without your input. That way, if you’re unavailable for a time, business can still continue. It’s certainly in your best interest to make sure they know exactly how you would make a decision if you were present, but chances are that your most competent employees already have a good idea of what you would do in many situations. Not only will you have fewer decisions to make, but you’ll be tacitly communicating to your employees that you trust them to do the right thing. That increases their job satisfaction and makes them more willing to take on increased responsibility in the future. It’s a win-win for everyone.
Give Your Employees an Incentive. Take those one or two people whom you now allow to make decisions on your behalf, and give them an incentive for their increased responsibility. Maybe you want them to have a profit share from the divisions for which they are responsible. Be sure to let them know how they are performing so they’ll know what to expect in the form of shared profits.
Increase Responsibility. If you use high school or college interns in your business, which is an extremely cost-effective way to increase your staffing, let one of your more seasoned employees be responsible for those interns. Let those employees train and manage the interns. This is a great way to give your employees added experience in human resources and management. Your employees will get increased experience and you will have fewer individuals to manage. You can probably think of other ways to increase the responsibilities of your current employees.

The importance of delegating responsibility cannot be stressed enough. As your business grows, you will find yourself becoming more and more busy, and less and less able to manage all of the tasks that need to be done. There is really no way to avoid delegation if you want to have a successful business, but the key is to delegate wisely. Groom one or two employees from the moment you hire them so that they will be ready to take on added responsibility when the time comes.

Let them shadow you, train them to do some of the tasks that you do, and keep them in the loop regarding major decisions. When they understand your thought processes and reasons for making the decisions you do, they’ll be more prepared to make those decisions in your stead. While the idea of delegation may be frightening at first, you’ll find yourself much more relaxed and able to concentrate on growing your business rather than on the menial tasks that need to be taken care of. So do yourself and your company a favor and learn to delegate. You’ll be on the fast track to success in no time.

5 Keys to Small Business Success

Seomul Evans — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:28:55 +0000

5 Keys to Small Business Success

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

You’ve been to business school and learned it all, right? Not so fast. Sometimes, the most important lessons come to us via mistakes we’ve made. Here are the top five keys to small business success that you never learned in school.

Don’t Be Such a Control Freak. One of the hardest things any small business owner has to do is learn when to delegate. Of course you want to do it all yourself because that’s the only way it’s going to be done right. But that only results in burnout and a bunch of employees who never learn anything. You’re only doing yourself and your business a favor when you learn to relinquish some control. The more hands you have helping you out, the more successful you will be.
Baby Steps. You might be of the mind that your business should be everything you’ve dreamed it would be right out of the gate. But consider the “baby steps” approach. Start out small. Spend as little as possible at the very beginning. Score some successes early on and then build on them. Get rid of the stuff that doesn’t work immediately. If you follow the “baby steps” approach, you have less to lose if you start off down the wrong path or have to scrap your whole plan and start over. Plus, it gives you a chance to research along the way by getting customer feedback as you go.
End Your Day Thinking About Your Business. Once you’ve left the office and finally spent some time with the family, your business is the last thing you want to think about. But spend just one more minute, right before you go to bed, thinking about one problem you’re facing in your business. The beauty of our brains is that our subconscious minds work while we sleep. If you spend a few minutes thinking about a problem right before you go to sleep, you’re essentially enlisting the aid of your subconscious to help you solve the problem. It’s the easiest work you’ll ever do.
Respect Your Computer Systems. Most small businesses take their computer systems for granted. They don’t back up their data, they don’t maintain their computers regularly, and they don’t enlist the aid of professionals to care for their computers. In fact, we don’t pay any attention to our computers until something goes wrong and we find ourselves in a crisis. If we treated our computer systems like factories treat their equipment, by regularly shutting down the whole works to perform routine maintenance, we’d get better performance and fewer problems from them.
Study the Numbers. It is a rare small business owner who actually likes to look at financial statements, at least when the business is just starting. Why? Because the numbers can be depressing. No one wants to look at the numbers when all they bring is bad news. But the truth is that you can’t improve those numbers until you have the courage to look at them and analyze them. Looking at bad numbers can bring about feelings of failure or despondence. So try this trick: Once every week, pretend you’re the accountant for your business. You have no emotional ties to the company. You’re only job is to crunch the numbers. When you separate yourself emotionally from the message that the numbers give you, you’re more likely to look at them objectively, without becoming despondent over or depressed about the news they bring. You’ll find that looking at the numbers is actually a very liberating experience. It can help you eliminate activities that don’t add value to your business and focus on the activities that help you profit.

Use these five keys to help you find success in your small business. You’ll be glad you did!

4 Reasons You Need Marketing Help

admin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:59:46 +0000

4 Reasons You Need Marketing Help

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

You are a small business owner with a vision and a passion. You are engaging and motivating to others and you know exactly how to use social networking sites to engage potential customers and increase the likelihood that you will make a sale. But admit it, you’re not the world’s greatest writer, and you’re not winning any awards for website design. And that’s where the trouble lies. Your website shows the world exactly what kind of professional you are. If it’s sloppy, poorly written, or disorganized, then potential customers will assume that you are sloppy and disorganized. Yes, doing your own internet marketing can feel like quite an accomplishment, but you haven’t accomplished much if visitors to your site leave as quickly as they came. Here are 4 reasons you need professional help.

Your Website. While websites are relatively easy to build, great websites are created by professional designers who have years of experience. And to build a great website you need great design, great copy, outstanding search engine optimization, and a stellar marketing professional. Once that’s in place, your website will do much of your work for you because it will be an aesthetically pleasing place to visit where potential customers can get relevant information and motivation to purchase your product or service.
Tests. The primary reason websites fail is because website owners don’t test the effectiveness of their online marketing strategies. You may think you know all there is to know about your audience and what they’re looking for in a product, but you simply can’t assume that your marketing efforts are all paying off without testing them. You need to test every marketing strategy you use, including how and where you attempt the sale, and whether your giveaways are making a difference.
Updating. When you test, of course, you have to make changes based on the outcomes of your tests. When you’ve figured out where a shortcoming lies, fix it and then test again. There’s no sense in testing if you’re not going to use the results to make improvements. You should have reports that tell you where your traffic comes from, where it goes, how and when you get unique visitors, and how long your visitors stay on your pages. If you need help figuring out how to interpret this pertinent data, get help from an internet marketing professional.
Get the Right People. Sure, you’ll probably eventually be able to figure out how to do your internet marketing yourself. But it will be a long process of trial and error, and even in the end you probably won’t be optimizing all the tools your have at your disposal. Wouldn’t you rather see results faster by utilizing professionals who have years of experience doing the same thing you’re trying to do by yourself? You have very specific gifts as on online business owner, but if your gifts don’t include optimizing internet marketing opportunities, then find the people who can do it on your behalf.

Maybe you’re looking for a sense of accomplishment that you feel will only come from having successfully completed every necessary small business task yourself, including internet marketing. But realize from the very beginning that there’s absolutely no shame in asking for help from professionals. In fact, since internet marketing means the difference between a successful online business and a failing online business, you owe it to yourself and your vision to get the help you need to make your business thrive. Do what you can do on your own, and then turn to the services of an internet marketing professional to help you realize your dream. You’ll be glad you did when you become the owner of a successful online business!