Local Internet Marketing a Must

A common misconception among businesses that cater to a local consumer base is that there is no reason to market on the Internet or to have any kind of website at all. “Internet users buy on eBay and Amazon.com. Nobody uses the internet looking for local services,” they might think.

Let’s bust that myth right now. The truth of the matter is that millions of people search for local services every day! They use it to find the nearest restaurant, find recommendations for a local dentist, check the local computer store’s inventory and pricing, find the number for the town’s local plumber, find someone to take pictures of their kids, and pretty much anything else you can imagine.

The good news is that because there are so many people searching for local businesses on the Internet, local Internet marketing can be very effective. The bad news is that if you’re not taking advantage of it, your competition could be getting the business of all the local internet users that should be yours!

If there is a product or service that somebody offers, then there’s a good chance there is somebody searching the Internet for a local business to provide that product or service. For the ever increasing number of people who have grown up with the World Wide Web as an integral part of their lives, using the phone book to find information on local businesses is tantamount to communicating through snail mail instead of email, text messaging, or instant messenger.

But why would somebody search for a local computer store when they could just go to Dell.com?

Sometimes people want to be able to look at, play with, and see the actual product in person before forking over their hard-earned money for it. Sometimes it’s about immediate satisfaction. Consumers are an impatient crowd. When they want something, they don’t want it shipped 2nd day air, they want it right now! Maybe it’s a trust issue. There are still a percentage of people who don’t trust the internet to keep their credit card information safe.

Another reason is that you can’t try on clothing or shoes over the Internet. You can’t get your picture taken, try on makeup, or listen to the booming sound of the latest high-tech speaker system over the Internet.

And these days, local Internet marketing is a breeze! Services such as those provided by local Internet marketing experts like OrangeSoda have the technology and expertise needed to regionally target your Internet advertising so that only local internet searchers will see your ads. This not only prevents someone in another country from viewing your ad, wasting advertising dollars that you can’t get back, but it also means that you can target your ads to searchers in a particular state, county, or even a single city.

If you’re a local business targeting an exclusively local market, now is the time to get your name into cyberspace. Incredible opportunities are being missed by local marketers who are ignoring the vast power of local internet marketing. People in your town are searching right now for your services. Make sure you’re not missing out on the potential to get their business.

A good place to start is with a local business profile through OnlineInLocal.

Time to Prepare for the Q4 Holiday Rush

The Q4 holiday rush may seem like a ways off from here, but for savvy website owners, now is the time to start preparing for it. A lot of work goes into preparing for the last quarter push in sales, and with good reason. Consumers get in a mindset of spending money, and those who are prepared reap the highest benefits.

Q4 has a slew of holidays that gradually build up to “the big one”. While most Internet businesses tend to focus most of their resources on the last week of December, forgetting the other holidays can be a big mistake. Getting your site prepared for each holiday keeps people coming back for more ensuring that your last week of December is as big as it can possibly be.

The “HOT” Holidays

Fourth quarter holidays that should not be ignored include:

Other lesser known Q4 holidays (likely to only be observed by Google, who updates their homepage to reflect virtually every holiday, and very few others) include:

Also included are National Disability Employment Awareness Month (October) and National Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15 to Oct. 15).

Taking Advantage of Every Holiday

The fact that Google updates their homepage with a new theme to reflect virtually every holiday has created a lot of talk within the Internet community. Creating and updating your website with holiday themes can help create some chatter for your site as well.

Develop some thematic graphics that appear on your home page and throughout your site for each holiday, and run specials for these holidays to help drive sales. Here are a few ideas for specials you can run through each holiday:

For most folks, holidays are a way to remind them of something important. But for those of us in business, it’s an excuse to run a promotion that will boost our sales! Since consumers gravitate to promotions like bees to honey, you should never dismiss any chance to celebrate a holiday on your website.

Quick and Clean SEO - Part 2

In Part I of this article series, we discussed the SEO advantages of using keywords in your headlines. It’s one of the easiest and quickest methods to land a few extra points with the search engines. In Part II, we’ll reveal a couple more quick and easy methods of getting friendly with the search engines.

Bold or Italicize Keywords Throughout a Page

Bolding or italicizing keywords throughout a webpage will increase the relevance a search engine gives those specific keywords. The preferred method of bolding keywords is with STRONG tags, while italicizing should be done with EM (which is short for “emphasis”) tags:

Optimize for Less Popular Keywords and Phrases

Getting top ranking for the key phrase “hiking boots” can be tough because it’s a very popular term with a lot of competition. It can be done, but would require a lot of time and effort. And since this article is about speed and simplicity, we won’t discuss what would go into a campaign to get ranked for such a popular term.

For quicker and easier ranking, go after more specific, less competitive key phrases. For example, instead of “hiking boots” try combining the term with brand names, designs, material used, manufacturing process, and so forth:

You get the idea. While you won’t get as much traffic as a similar rank for a more popular phrase, you will get ranked much easier and faster. The traffic you get will also be more highly targeted and more likely to convert into a sale.

Keep the Code Clean

Search engines are interested in useful content on your webpages, not your sweet JavaScript or CSS skills. You can clean things up a bit by linking to script and CSS files from a separate location rather than including it in the same file as the rest of the webpage.

Clean code also makes it much easier for the search engines to scan your page and figure out what it’s all about.

The tactics that we’ve discussed in these articles can be very easily and quickly implemented into just about any website. Keep in mind, however, that you don’t want to get carried away by cramming a page full of keyword-stuffed headlines, bolding and italicizing half your page, or overusing a particular key phrase so much that nothing on your webpage makes sense.

Search engines are savvy enough to spot such meager attempts to get ranked, and most will penalize you for doing so. Also, don’t forget who you’re target market is… people. Stuffing a webpage full of keywords might help you get ranked higher (at least temporarily), but if a visitor can’t make sense of it, they’ll just leave your website anyway and your efforts will have been wasted.

So remember to keep it clean, keep it simple, and you’ll be happy with the results.