I have demonstrated in previous articles how with proper keyword research and SEO (search engine optimization) a business website can be built to dominate local search for practically any niche. In this article we are going to add a little twist to the process and show you why your business should be advertising in a local online business directory.

In today’s experiment I’m going to use an Animal Hospital in Lynchburg Va. Addison Animal Hospital in Lynchburg has a free listing with LynchburgRegister.com, a local Lynchburg Virginia business directory. We are going to try to boost this directory listing in the Google search rankings.

Let me begin by telling you that according to Google people are searching for Lynchburg Animal Hospitals over 565 times each month using about 6 different keyword search phrases. That’s a lot of searches and a lot of potential customers that could be exposed to your business. Just converting 1% of these would mean over 5 new customers a month and the chances are you’d do much better than that on page 1 of Google!

You see this is the great benefit of Internet Marketing. Everything can be measured. It differs from traditional advertising like newspaper, yellow pages etc. where results can’t be quantified. With a website you know exactly how effective your efforts are. This is why it makes sense to set up your company website correctly with the help of someone who takes the time to understand your business and stays on top of things to be sure your business goals are being achieved.

OK, we’ve identified our goal. We will boost a business directory page to the 1st page of Google. That page could be used in a number of ways which I’ll discuss in a future article.

- Len

PS- At the time of writing this, the directory page we are promoting has not even been indexed by Google. This means that if you typed in the URL of the site directly in the Google search box, zero results would be found. In other words, the page doesn’t even exist to Google yet.
Update: 7/23/08

The page we are attempting to promote still hasn’t been indexed by Google. This isn’t good since we are going to have a hard time getting it to the first page without it being indexed (impossible). We are going to try a few new things to see if we can’t speed things up a little.

There are those who may have said about our first case study done on antiques that it was a small niche and those results couldn’t be duplicated in a larger market.

Well lets up the Ante. Google says that the term “free pet Lynchburg Va” is searched for 52 times a day! That is 364 searches each week, over 1,400 searches each month! Over 17,000 potential new customers a year! At the time of this post there were only 5 phrases in Google that were more searched for than the phrase “free pet Lynchburg Va” containing the word “Lynchburg”. There are 504,000 pages competing for the top spot!

Now this is what’s unbelieveable, the first Lynchburg business to have a listing for this search term is on page 3 of Google and it’s a pet boarding business. I couldn’t find a local pet store website on the first 10 pages of Google for the search term “free pet Lynchburg Va“. Wow!

I feel it’s safe to say that a person searching for “free pet Lynchburg Va” is in the market for a free pet. They are actively looking for a free pet. Maybe there looking for a mouse to feed the snake or a goldfish for a child, who knows, but these people are potential Lynchburg pet store customers and nobody is actively doing anything to claim them as their own!

So lets say you are a pet store owner and have managed to get your site on page 1 of Google, what could you do with that to grow your business?

• You could have them provide their contact information for a coupon for a free pet (goldfish or something).
• You could create a buzz by running a contest to give away a more expensive pet like a dog or cat.
• Perhaps the giveaway is conditioned upon the purchase of an item (aquarium, goldfish bowl).

There are so many ways that you could use your site to drive new customers into your business. Are you ready to make this work for your company?

If a Lynchburg Web Design business can rank to the term”free pet Lynchburg Va” with a simple little article your business could be dominating your niche as well. Give me a call, I’m ready to go to work. I think you can see that Ask First Marketing is about way more that just “building websites”.

Click Here To See How This Article Ranks In Google

Len

Would you like to see the importance of a blog/website and some decent SEO and how it can benefit your business? (See The Results Here) According to Google there are an average of 210 searches per MONTH conducted for the phrase “Lynchburg Antiques“.

Now, aside from the Google Map that shows up at the top of the page, there is not one single Lynchburg antiques store or Lynchburg antiques dealer on page one of Google! (or page two!!) and with Google maps, only 2 out of the 10 even have a website! Of course there are the generic yellow page type of sites on page one, but not a SINGLE Lynchburg antiques store!

Google also shows there are 160,000 competing pages all fighting for page one. So if I were an Antique Store owner or Dealer, I would have put up a site with something to sell on it yesterday!!!

Back to my opening statement. My searches were done before writing this post. So hopefully by the time you read this and look for yourself, THIS post will actually be on page one. With over 2,500 people a year searching for “Lynchburg Antiques” and MY little post here on a web design site showing up on page one, what’s stopping you!?? Click Here To See Where This Post Is Ranking In Google

I could have picked any business and done this. Makes you think huh?

Len

As you know from a previous post, marketing in Lynchburg or on the internet in general can be a challenge. As a small business owner you have enough things to keep you busy aside from learning the ins-and-outs of marketing your business online.

The main reason most owners even have a website is for marketing purposes, or so they think. The problem is that no one knows you exist, at least online. You use your site to market yourself, but you must actually market your site, kind of a catch-22 huh?

Believe it or not, this is not as hard as you may think, but you still do have to get visitors to your site. Right now you may have your website on your business cards, invoices, vehicles and signage, but what about search results? Now SEO (search engine optimization) doesn’t have to be some great mystery. It is really not that difficult to target people looking for you or your products & services.

Most of us here in Central Virginia, or just in Lynchburg, rely on local traffic for our business. So if you are a plumber for example, using the keyword “plumbing” is totally useless. It’s a great word, but you won’t get squat for traffic because your site will be muddled in with the million other pages. Now “Lynchburg plumber”, or “central Virginia plumber” is a more TARGETED keyword phrase. Granted, the number of searches for these exact terms will be considerably less, but these are your customers, not some guy in Salinas California!

For me, the first step to online marketing is developing your site knowing that it will be working as just another marketing tool in your arsenal. Build a marketing plan around your site, and now you are in business.

So correct keywords, and a marketing plan on how to use your site is crucial. Let’s say you have a site up now. I will send you a million visitors all from your local area. Now what? What does your site do? Does it sell the visitor or is it just a placeholder or an over-sized digital business card? Does your site have the ability to convert these visitors into customers? Do you have a way to communicate with these visitors?

These are just questions of course, but they are important ones. Your online marketing strategy needs to account for this. Converting visitors into customers is essential. Communicating with these visitors is also important, and your site should be set up to do so!

Lynchburg for example is not that big of a city, at least as far as the internet goes. Getting on page one of Google for terms that people are actually typing in to find you is actually fairly easy, with the right plan of attack. Yes, you could advertise in local papers, fliers, brochures, classifieds, etc, but again, if people come to your site, what does your site do to “sell” them on your business?

Just food for thought.

Len

If you have a small business and would like to know more about growing your business, increasing your customer base, and getting more sales using the internet then you have come to the right place. I am going to demonstrate for you right here, what a little know-how can do for your small business. I am going to use Lynchburg in this demonstration because I live and work here, and I also know the business environment here but these techniques will work in any town in America.

So what is Internet Marketing? And how does it affect you and your business?

Internet Marketing is really just the use of the internet to promote yourself or your business. Nationally companies are shifting their advertising dollars to online venues, and cutting back on the traditional forms, such as print and TV ads. Why? Because everyone is online! People have a shorter attention span than just 10 years ago, and everyone has become so used to being bombarded by traditional advertising, it has become ineffective.

“But I am just a small Lynchburg shop”, you say. “How can I use the internet to market my company“, you ask. You must understand that the internet is the same for everyone. Small companies have the advantage here, because it levels the playing field, cost wise. You can do the same thing the big companies do and the cost is so minimal that you would actually be surprised. You don’t need million dollar websites either, so in scale, it will cost you much less to do the same thing.

You can offer online specials, set up polls and reward people for filling them out, you can have a giveaway, you can do anything you want, you are only limited by your imagination.

THAT is marketing online. The goal is to SELL. Sell your products, your service … just SELL. The goal behind the marketing is to have an end result in mind, then work backwards on achieving it and during this process, actually use the web as part of the process!

You’re a dog groomer in Lynchburg, for example. You want to have more steady business, attract new customers and maybe bring back some ones you haven’t seen in a while. It’s time to market. You have a goal, and it’s a pretty common one to most businesses.

How can you use the internet to help with this? Well you can’t groom a dog on the internet (not yet anyway), but you can certainly let people know about your business. Step one is TRAFFIC. Your business may have some, but does your site? Do you know how many people visit your site? Where is your business in Google? Do you know what your keywords are, or if you even have any?

Without traffic you have no business. You need visitors. The more, the better. Now there might not be a million people looking for dog grooming in Lynchburg, but you certainly want to capture the ones that are looking. Then you want to capture the ones looking for maybe pet related items (ie: toys, food, collars, clothes, etc)

Let’s get back to marketing. Traffic generation is for another time. Let’s assume you get some traffic to your site, and you obviously have foot traffic in your business. Now it’s time to start passing along your message. Maybe part of your new marketing strategy is a promotion. Maybe a $xx coupon to a pet supply store with every grooming. Maybe it’s a discount on a dog day care facility. You get the idea.

Now you have to get that message across, and do it cheaply of course! Make up some fliers to hand out at your location to all of your foot traffic. Nothing fancy, but maybe on some bright colored paper. Announce your new special, and give one to everyone! Offer up a free “something” to your current customers for anybody they refer to you and brings their dog in for grooming.

Announce the same thing on your website, but here you have the flexibility to go into more details than you can on a single page flier. By now you should have an email form on the site to capture emails so at the same time you can gather some email addresses.

Now, you have a flier you hand out in-store. MAKE sure to put your web address on it, letting people know to go online and read more about your special. At the same time, you can get the people to sign up for your email list by offering a giveaway.

I know it may sound a bit confusing, but it really isn’t. You need more business. The only way you can get that is to advertise. Instead of spending outrageous amounts of money on newspaper ads, all we are doing here is using a mix of in-store and internet marketing to make a buzz. If your offer is GREAT, people WILL talk!!! We all know that good word of mouth is a small businesses best friend! In order to attract more customers you have to be different.

If you continue to do the same thing you WILL get the same results! I will go into further ways to market your business online in another post.

Len