Search Engine Optimization

When it comes to marketing any business online people very rarely ever sit around and wait for things to just happen. If you are, it might be wise to start testing different efforts and approaches to get things moving a bit. Often times you really need to make some changes and perform tweaks to fully understand what is really working and what isn’t. This goes with every online marketing effort you could possibly think of to help start building your business.

Let’s take a look at some web marketing efforts you should always be testing:

1. Your Website: Your website is something you should be testing all the time. You are always going to get people that respond differently on your website depending on how you have things laid out. Very rarely is a website built and just left alone to function properly. You have to move things around and change things to see how different business can be overtime. You might find that having a lead sign up form on a different part of your page brings in more sign ups or a phone number in a different location all of a sudden gets the phone ringing even more. Things like lead forms being placed in different areas for a certain time period will reveal its complete effectiveness. You have to test different things on your website otherwise you could be missing out on great opportunities.

2. Email Newsletter: Your email newsletter is another great place to really test out a variety of efforts that could help you out in the long run. If you send out a regularly scheduled newsletter and you forget to test how do you know what is working well and what isn’t? Move things around and change the type of information you put into your email marketing in order to increase conversion rates and get your business growing. If you don’t change things around eventually your efforts will get a little stale for your recipients and you will reach a saturation point for your email recipients.

3. Social Media Marketing: Social media is a very big area to test things out. Try different approaches to see what it takes to get people to react back and respond to you. If you send out the same message over and over you will almost always get the same response back. Changes things up a bit.

Testing is a very important part of marketing and building a business online. Keep things moving around so you find exactly what works.

You own a business, you get up every morning with the realization that you have to do something with regards to marketing your business online, but you are just not sure where to start. Is this your current situation? Watching all your competitors roll past you online and you are still not sure what you should be doing? It can be difficult but here is an outline of what you should be thinking about on a monthly basis.

1. Links: Let’s assume for a minute that you have already optimized your entire website for search. Building links through a variety of sources is important to get your website moving. Things like profiles, articles and press releases are a great way to get started with link building. Let’s go ahead and break down those components below:

• PR- Write a press release and distribute it through a few good quality PR distribution sources. Services like PRWeb and PRLeap are great places to get started with your PR distribution.

• Articles: Position yourself as an expert and write articles that position you as an authority in your industry. Using websites like Hub Pages and Ezine you can submit your articles while leaving behind links embedded in either the body of the article or a special article section.

• Business Profiles: A business profile might not necessarily deliver the best amount of traffic but the link in the profile and the profile itself ranking in the search results for your name is an important effort. These profiles will appear in search results for branded searches which will help you strengthen your brand management.

2. Social Media: Social media has become a very important part of a business’s daily and monthly routine and should be utilized by all websites and business owners. Social media can often times really confuse people, so many ways to communicate which is the best approach?

• Blog Posts: If your business does not have a blog it should. Every business should have a blog that they write in on a weekly basis. Ideally writing everyday would be the best case scenario but with time constraints that can be difficult for some businesses to handle. 2-3 blog posts a week should be the goal for any blog owner. A blog post is an amazing way to really pull in great traffic when used properly.

• Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking might be a bit outdated in some ways and it is an effort that is simply not that “hot” anymore in the industry but it is still a great place to put your blog posts for others to be able to read. It does require patience and consistency to really develop stream of traffic.

• Twitter: Twitter is probably one of the most important areas to be visible in. Every time you log into you your Twitter account you should always make an effort to follow new people. I am not going to put a number value on how many you need to follow but somewhere in the ball park of 15-20 new people every time you log in will be a good start if you are just getting involved with Twitter. You will want to take your blog post and drop a link and the title right in your Twitter wall stream. Over time as your followers build the traffic will increase to your website.

• Google Buzz: Google Buzz is more recent social tool but quickly gaining steam in the industry. With the ability to follow other people Google Buzz is starting to really gain momentum as a new place to spread the word about a message, business or brand. Your blog posts should be tagged in Google Buzz right along with Twitter. You can even sync the two accounts together to streamline things.

• LinkedIn: If you are not a part of LinkedIn yet you should be. LinkedIn should be a part of your monthly social media marketing. Join some like minded groups and start posting your blog posts into the groups and see your visitor stream really pick up the pace.

• Facebook: Of course Facebook is important as well but Facebook fan pages have to be approached with a very tasteful mindset otherwise you could see your account disappear. Launch a page and start by posting your posts into your Facebook account.

It is important to put together a plan for every single month to market your business online the right way. Putting together a schedule will allow you to really stay on track with your branding efforts.

Spreading any message online right now takes times and patience but even more so it really takes dedication and firm grasp on how to pick the right channels online to market your business or yourself through. There are many things you can be doing online to build exposure and they should all be utilized in some way.

Here are some examples of how you can build awareness to your website.

Write Good Articles: I’m not talking about paying someone overseas to write 500 articles for you I mean sitting down in front of the computer and writing a nice industry specific topic positioning you as the expert in your field. Putting together a lengthy article citing sources, using images and really pouring your expertise and posting it in as many different strategic locations as possible will help you build nice one way links.

Start a Video Channel: If you are in an industry that can benefit from many “how to” videos than launching a YouTube channel and creating some useful videos the community can use to help them with their everyday life will allow your message and brand to spread at a much greater rate.

Contact Writers & Bloggers: Most online newspaper sources have ways that you can reach out to writers very easily. All you have to do is just dig around a little bit and you can find the contact info for a writer and a reporter with little effort. If they are in charge of an online column that fits your industry it doesn’t hurt to lob out an email to see if there could be a story write up on either you or your business.

Consistency: Be active online all the time. You don’t want to have little spikes of activity and then lay dormant for months on end. Be consistent in front of your audience so you can really build your brand online and burn the image of your brand into the minds of your audience.

Spreading your message online comes in many different shapes and sizes all it takes is sitting down and really thinking about a plan of attack. Don’t worry about executing it all in one month but rather space out your plan over 6-12 months.