What is a backlink and why should I care?

Building back-links to your website is one of the most important steps you can take to make your website visible to the search engines.  However, when I speak with clientelle and I talk about building back-links, the most common response is a blank stare!

So what exactly is a back-link and why is it important?

A back-link is one website linking to another.  That's it.  Pretty simple!

Why is this important?

This is one of the MOST important steps to your website building endeavors because the search engines count how many other people are linking to your site.  The search engines are very sophisticated, however they are still not as sophisticated as human beings.  The search engines consider a back-link to be a recommendation for the content on a page and the philosophy of the search engines is that what other people say about a website is more trustworthy then what is placed on the site itself.

How do I build backlinks?

As with just about everything in SEO, it all begins with keywords.  The first thing you need to do is spend some time to research the keyword that you want to your site to show up with.  Then, you want to use that keyword as the "Anchor Text" for your link.

Here is an example:

Beaverton Carpet Cleaning

This is one of my current clients.  The anchor text in this ad is the actual keyword we are targeting for.  We are targeting for Carpet cleaning in beaverton oregon.

The search engines now look at these backlinks as really relevent.  many people make the mistake of using the words CLICK HERE as the actual anchor text, but the search engines consider the actual keyword like Beaverton Carpet Cleaners as much more relevant.

So how do I get backlinks like this?

There are several strategies that you can implement to put this strategy to work for you.  One thing you can do is start a business blog.  When you start a business blog you can write about your industry.  In this example, our client is going to start a blog about cleaning carpets, and Beaverton Carpet Cleaning is going to be used thoughout the articles.

Another strategy is to use article directories.  You can write business articles about your industry and you can place your back-links within the content of your articles.  Once again, you could teach how to get stains out and write Beaverton Carpet Cleaners in the article.

Do this consistently over a period of months and as the search engines find your links, they are going to give more and more credit to your primary page.Tweet

What a razor blade can teach you about marketing your business

I found an ad that I think is SPECTACULAR and is something that I think teaches a lot about how to effectively market a small business' products/services.

Here is part of the ad I found.



This is an ad that was run by Proctor and Gamble to sell razor blades and other shaving accessories.

The obvious thing to do for most small business owners would be to present the "Features" of your product:

• Our razor has 5 blades instead of 3
• Our razor has a silver handle
• Our razor has a silver stand

These are the Features of a product.  Features are BORING!  When Proctor and Gamble decided to write this ad, they instead decided to focus their marketing efforts on the BENEFIT of using their products in a very clever way!

The headline they chose was this:

I will teach those less smooth then myself the path to smoothness

They are focusing on the end result.  Smoothness. That's what razors do.  Make your face smooth.  However, there is also an hidden message there...communicated as a double entendre.

The word Smoothness has several meanings in this context:

1. A person could have a smooth face from the result of a good shave
2. A man can be smooth in his interactions with women

Ultimately, one of the core desires of a man who wants a good shave is the opportunity to impress the ladies and have opportunities for sex & romance.

Your product or service doesn't necessarily have to appeal to the sex drive of your customers, but there are two lessons to be learned here that will help you to be more successful in your marketing efforts:

1. Focus on the BENEFITS your product or service offer and you'll make more sales
2. Your Benefit can be more then just the obvious...by changing your message in subtle ways, you can make your message much more important to your customers!

I hope you learned a lot and I would love for you to share other interesting examples in the comments section of this blog!

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The Four Pillars Of Small Business Marketing Success!

Greeting Small Business Owner! In today's blog, I wanted to talk about the four pillars of marketing success for your small business.

Speaking to you as a small business marketing consultant, I speak with a lot of small business owners about what makes a successful marketing campaign. In my experience, it seems that very few business owners have a complete understanding of everything that's involved in getting more customers (especially online).

In order to generate more customers for your small business on the internet, you have to take some time to evaluate what I like to call The Four Pillars of Marketing Success. Here they are for your education and enlightenment:

1. Market

Your market is a HUGE part of your overall marketing success. You need to know who your customers are (and what they want), who you competition is (and how you stack up), what the average prices are in the marketplace for your product or service and what keywords your customers are searching on the internet to find your business.

2. Creating a compelling marketing message

Once you know about your customers, competition, pricing and keywords the next step is to create a compelling marketing message. A compelling marketing message is a message that get's the attention of your customer and leads them to take a specific action. There are a few pieces to the overall marketing message that should be there to make it most effective.

First, to get the most customers, you should include an overt benefit. This is what your product or service does for your customer. The benefit should be stated in a direct and obvious manner. You should not be subtle about what your product or service does for your customer because they will not take the time to figure this out.

Second, you want to include forms of proof. Forms of proof could be case studies, before and after photos, testimonials, third party endorsements etc. Something that PROVES that your claims are true.

Third, your offering should have a dramatic difference. In essense, you should share something about your product that makes it truly unique and better then the competition.

Fourth, a call to action. Once you have utilized the other elements above to create a powerful marketing message, you have to leverage that information into a specific call to action like filling out a form or contacting you. Offering an incentive to take this specific action now is even better.

3. Getting your message seen by your customers

This is another important step. You can have the most amazing marketing letter in the world, but if your customers don't know that you exist, it doesn't matter. Getting your message to the masses is very important. There are several options for doing this. You can use search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), affiliate marketing networks, banner advertising, social media marketing, classified postings, social bookmarking or contextual advertising. The best campaigns use a combination of these tools in order to get a lot of traffic and relevent traffic to your site.

4. Tracking your results

The last step is one that most people simply don't consider. This step is highly important because your marketing efforts rarely work as you plan them the first time out. IN order to know what's working and what's not, you need to take the time to track your results. The best way I have found to track one's results is to incorporate a tracking software into your site itself. You can use something as simple as google Analytics.

This type of software will tell you how many visitors you are getting, where they are coming from and you can actually use this software to follow your visitors around your site and see what pages they are looking at.

Capturing & analyzing this data can give you tremendous insights into the effectiveness of your marketing campaign and you can utilize this information to make adjustments to your marketing in order to maximize your results and get the most customers possible.

We call this process the four pillars of marketing because like a table has four legs, your marketing needs all of these elements in order to truly be successful. If you are not incorporating every element mentioned above, you are going to miss out on opportunities to make your marketing efforts as successful as possible and get as many customers as possible.



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SEO for small businesses - 3 easy steps to optimize your site

Search engine optimization is really important to the success or failure of your small business marketing campaigns. In order to see the most profit from your online marketing, your site has to be visited by your target audience. The more, the better. That's where SEO (search engine optimization) comes into play.

So what is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the process of making your website as visible as possible so that your target customers can find your business. More visitors means more leads. More leads means more customers. More customers means more money. Simple math!

The fact is, SEO is a fairly complicated topic. Here are a few simple steps that you can incorporate into your website so that you can get as many visitors as possible.

1. Research:

The first step to any SEO campaign is to do effective keyword research. This can be effectively accomplished by going to google's keyword tool. You can type in generic keywords around your business to find out what people are searching. This will help you to make sure you are competing for keywords that people are actually searching. It's great to be on page 1 of google, but if you're on the first page for a term that nobody searches, it's pointless.

Look for long tail keywords (keywords that use several words) and chances are the local keywords are going to be your best bet. For example, if you own a floor cleaning business in the phoenix arizona area...you would want to start with the obvious:

You can see from the keyword tool that carpet cleaning phoenix is the obvious keyword phrase (long tail) to compete for because it gets roughly 6,600 searches per month.

2. Utilize: (meta tags)

Once you've identified a keyword that you want to compete for, you want to optimize your page for that word.  Most search engines don't place as much weight on meta-tags as they used to, but if you do them the right way it can make a big different.

You'll want to choose a few keywords (4-6) per page and place those in your meta tags.  The meta-tags go into the heading of your XHTML code.  When done correctly it should look like this:

<title>Professional Accounting Solutions</title>
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Accounting, Accounting Solutions, Accounting System, Accounts Receivable" />
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="If you need a complete accounting system for your business, we have several options for you" />
<META NAME="geo.placename" CONTENT="Phoenix, AZ" />

These meta-tags tell the search engines that your site should come up if someone types in:

• Accounting
• Accounting Solutions
• Account System
• Accounts Receivable

Now, this is just part 1. Part two is that you have to use those keywords in your content.  In your words, you should include these words...specifically you should use the keywords in header (<h1>Accounting</h1>) tags, you can bold your keywords, underline your keywords and highlight them in your text in some way.  The final step is to run your page through a keyword checker.  Ideally, you want your keywords to be at a density of 2-5%.  A great tool that I use to find this out is at http://www.submitexpress.com/.  Use their meta-tag analyzer and it will tell you what the density is of your keywords and it will tell you if your meta-tags are relevant to your page.  This is a great tool for beginners.

3. Backlinks:

Once your page is optimized for the target keywords that you're trying to get ranked on, the next step is to build back-links to your page.  There are several strategies that will allow you to build backlinks quickly.  First, you should build social media pages for your site.  Facebook, myspace, twitter, Youtube.  These are all great options where you can share your page, build backlinks and get free traffic. Another great way to get backlinks is to blog/write articles.  You can create your own blog about your industry, write about your oppinions and input links back to your website.  If you use your keywords as the anchor text of the backlinks that makes the backlinks more relevent.  Another great option is to use social bookmarking.  This is easily accomplished by using sites like mixx, digg, stumbleupon etc.  This is a quick way to build back links and get more visitors to your site.

Ultimately, these strategies take work, but if you consistently do a little bit every day, over time it will make a big difference in your marketing efforts.

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How to generate sales leads with your small business website

In this article I'd like to discuss the right way and the wrong way to generate sales leads on your website.  For most of the small businesses I work with, the ability to generate sales leads with their website is really the ultimate goal of their page.  If you can consistently use your website to generate sales leads for your small business it will allow you to consistently speak with people about your product or services and all you to consistently generate revenue!

Whenever we build a page for our client's with the intention to help them generate sales leads for their small business, there is a specific process we go through:

1. Research
2. Grabber
3. Trust
4. Call to action

These are all the specific elements that are required to generate sales leads from your page and I'll share with you each step.

Research:  The first step in building a page that is important is to do a little research to see what keywords people are searching for.  I do this for two reasons:

1. If you know what keywords people are searching, you can use those keywords in your marketing so that people feel more comfortable with your ad.
2. If you know what keywords people are searching, then you can optimize your site for those keywords.

One of the easiest ways to do research is to go to google's keyword tool (it's free) and you can simply type in keywords that are relevant to your business and you can find out what phrases people are searching in the search engines to find your company.  The keyword tool will show you what keywords are popular, how many people are searching for those keyword phrases and whether or not those keywords are highly competitive or not.  If you want to generate sales leads from your website, this information is crucial.

Grabber:

The next step is to create a grabber for your site.  A grabber is something that is designed to grab someone's attention and get them to stay on your site.  A grabber can be anything from an interesting picture, a solid headline, a video...really a good grabber just needs to capture the reader's attention and keep them on the page.  Studies have shown that you have 7-10 seconds to grab a reader before they leave you page and go somewhere else.  A good way to come up with solid headlines is to look at magazine covers.  You can go to http://www.magazine.com/ and you can look at hundreds of old magazines and you can find different headlines to model your headline off of.

Trust:

Another consideration you need to make it that you have to build trust with your prospect before they will take action on your page.  There are a few good ways to build trust in order to generate leads.  First, your page should look quite professional.  Having a well organized page with professional graphics and a professional logo will go a long way to earning the trust with your readers.  Another great way to earn trust is to add testimonials from your client's!  Testimonials help to show you're a real business and actually do good work.  Additionally, you can earn trust by adding logos of trusted third party organizations like the better business bureau, trade associations etc.  If people find your site through an article you've written that demonstrated expertise in, this can also help you to generate sales leads for your business.

Call To Action:

That last thing that your page needs to have if you want to effectively generate sales leads is to have a call to action.  A call to action is a specific step that you want your customers to take.  This is usually filling out a form, but it could be anything you want them to do.  In order to generate sales leads most effectively, it is best to offer an incentive to create a sense of urgency so that your prospect will take action now.  Your call to action needs to be clear, compelling and should have a deadline to generate sales leads most effectively.

These are the 4 elements that should be in every lead generate campaign and if you make sure to include all of these elements into your website, you should be able to generate sales leads with ease as long as you get sufficient traffic to your website.

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The importance of adding proof to your marketing

One of the single most important aspects to building a marketing piece that sells is adding proof that your product or services work.  This is something that many small businesses forget to do and is something that is incredibly important.I always tell my clients that the more bold your claims are, the more powerful your proof needs to be. 

So what is a form of proof?  What are some examples?
There are actually many different forms of "Proof" and as a small business owner, you should think about the kind of "proof" that might be most effective with your customers. 

Here are a few examples.  If you're a contractor, before and after photos might be your best choice for proving that you're a good contractor.  If you're a massage therapist or a hypnotherapist, testimonials are going to be your best bet.  In fact, the video above is an example of a short testimonial video we shot for a recent acupuncture client of ours.   In any type of small business, you should incorporate logos of associations you belong to or other endorsements by third parties.

Another great way to get proof about your business is to create a fan page on sites like facebook or twitter.  The more people you have following you there, the better off your page will be.


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Social Media Marketing

When it comes to small business marketing an inexpensive and effective idea that cannot be passed up is social media marketing. People want to do business with other people, and by getting your business out there in the world of social media marketing you will be doing yourself a huge favor. Here is a link to a list of social media sites.




Here are some ideas to keep in mind when setting up your social media marketing page

Write about your personal experience. Potential customers want to feel as though they know you, and by writing about your experience and your company they feel like they know you better. Also, spice it up with some photos related to your business.

Add your social media information to your business cards. You may have noticed recently the words Facebook and Myspace popping up more frequently on business fliers. More and more people are joining these social networking sites of all age ranges.

Use the status updates so people know your business is active and booming. People feel like they are peeking into a small window of your life and business through the status updates.

Use videos on your social media marketing sites. Everyone loves watching videos!

Get your business out there in the heavily populated world of social media marketing sites, and watch your business grow!

Small Business Marketing Plan

When you're creating a small business marketing plan there are several important aspects to consider because small business marketing is much different from marketing a large business for one main reason, you probably don't have as many resources as a large business.

The first consideration to make when you're developing your small business marketing plan is your market. Is there a genuine need in the market for your service or product? If there is not, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. As a marketing guru once said, the ideal situation is to find a market that is starving for something and then give them what they are starving for. Unfortunately, most small businesses make the common mistake of just trying to guess what people want, but when you're formulating a small business marketing plan, it is best to do a little research and find out if people want what you are offering.

A few simple ways to research are to use google's keyword tool and find out how many people are actually searching for your product online. You can also search resources like Yahoo Answers and see if people are looking for the solution you offer. Another good way to check is to see if there are competitors in the market. If there are, chances are good that people want your product or service.

Another consideration to make when you are developing a small business marketing plan is your USP (unique selling proposition). A unique selling proposition is a single sentence that sums up what makes your product or service the obvious choice. Why would people choose you over your competition. While price can be an important consideration to make while developing your small business marketing plan, it should not be your USP because making price the differentiator will only cause you to be a commodity. Your USP might have to do with your experience, your processes, the quality of your materials or something else, but you should have a clearly defined difference that makes you obvious choice.

In addition to the above, I would also state that you should consider a call to action for your small business marketing plan. Your call to action is incredibly important. It should be specific, easy to do and you have to provide a good reason to your audience as to why they should partake in your call to action.

4 things you must include in your small business marketing letter

When it comes to creating a solid marketing message, very few people know what they are doing.  Most small business owners make the mistake of focusing on price point.  Price is a consideration of course, but there are many other factors that come into play as well. 

Here are a few ideas that you should incorporate into your marketing messages or website to make sure your message is on target.

1. USP: This acronym stands for Unique Selling Proposition.  A unique selling proposition is what differentiates you from everyone else in your marketplace.  What makes you different should be a genuine difference, not just something meaningless.
2. Grabber: You only have 8-10 seconds to grab a reader before they leave your page, so you have to present something to your readers to get them interested in sticking around on your page.  This could be a compelling video, an attention grabbing headline, a shocking before and after photo or a combination of these elements.  Incorporating a strong grabber is going to be a key element in your marketing message.
3. Proof:  When people find your business, you need to do something to establish credibility because they don't know who you are or what kind of work you do.  The bolder your claims, the more compelling you need to be with your proof.  Good forms of proof on a local business website are before and after photos, recognize-able logos of third parties endorsing your organization, before and after videos and testimonials.  The more believable your claims are, the more likely your visitors will take action.
4. Call to action:  One of the most important aspects to your marketing message is to have a clear & simple call to action.  The action should be specific, easy to do and it's best if you can offer an incentive for doing it now in order to create a sense of urgency.  Examples of this would be: Give us your email address and we'll give you our free report; 7 shocking facts about home security.

A solid marketing message will apply all of these elements into a message that is so easy to read that a fourth grader could read it.  Incorporate all of these marketing elements into you website and or marketing letters and you're sure to get a solid result.

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7 steps to more website traffic for your small business

When I speak with small business owners about how to get more out of their website, the problem always lies in one of two areas:

1. The website's marketing message is weak
2. The site isn't generating enough visitors

In this posting, it is my intention to discuss getting more website traffic because most small business owners that I speak with have no idea how to get visitors to your page.  I remember the first time I built a website for a small business.  I made the website and just expected a swarm of visitors to magically find my website.  When they didn't, I was very disappointed.

If you're feeling the same way, you'll want to read every word of this article because I'm about to share with you 7 tricks to get more traffic to your website.

1. Research: The first step you should do is take some time and do a little research.  Search engines are going to be your biggest asset when it comes to visitors.  Take time to learn what keywords people are searching for your marketplace.  In other words, learn what people type into a search engine when they are looking for your business.  You can easily do this by going to Google's free keyword tool to find out what people are typing in when they want to find your business.
2. Optimize your page: The next step is to actually USE THE KEYWORDS you found in the content of your website.  You should place those keywords in your headings, in your links, as the image tags for your pictures and you should use them several times in your articles.
3. Submit Your Site: If the search engines don't know your site exists, they won't send any visitors to your website.  In order to get found you need to submit your site to the search engines query of site's to be indexed so that they will know you exist.
4. Get back-links: Back-links are king.  Find website directories where you can post your website for free.  These links will help people find you and demonstrate to the search engines that your site is more credible.
5. Ping Your Site: You can find free website's on the web that will ping your site.  A ping is a way of announcing to the internet that there is new content and it's like sending up a signal flair to the search engines to come and look at your site.
6. Write Articles:  If you take some time and write quality articles about your industry, people can find those.  If you link those articles to your page, people can find your page and hopefully become your customers.
7. Have patience:  The steps described here are part of a process called SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  This is the process for helping the search engines find your site and present it to others. This process can take time, but it will be well worth it if you do your research correctly in the beginning.

If you have any further questions about this process, there are a ton of great articles on the web that can help you.  Additionally, Anderson Marketing Solutions provides services where we can do this process for you.  If you have any questions feel free to contact our offices directly.

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Is a website with a pretty design enough?

After helping so many small business owners harness the internet to earn more money from the web I hear a lot of common things. The most common thing that people tell me is, "I already have a website". Whenever I get that response, I always ask the same question..."Are you getting business from your site?" The answer to this question is almost always a resounding, "NO" or "Not as much as I'd like".

Most designers are only concerned with creating a website that has nice graphics, a good layout and something to make the website cool. Here is the problem; you can have the prettiest, best laid out, coolest website in the world, but if you don't get visitors your website is not going to be profitable for you.

Search Engine Optimization, the great equalizer!

The internet is the ultimate way to level the playing field for all companies. With the internet, it is now possible to reach thousands of potential customers without a multimillion dollar advertising budget. Instead, all you need is to know exactly what you're doing.

The problem is that most small business owners don't have the time or the know-how to handle everything necessary to generate enough business online. Most people still have this belief that they can simply create a website and people are going to magically find your website and buy your products/services. The reality is that in order to get visitors to your page you can either buy traffic (expensive P.P.C., Content Marketing, Banner Ad Marketing, etc.) or you can develop organic traffic.

Organic traffic through search engines has changed the world. It has never been easier for people to find EXACTLY what they want within seconds. If you have a product or a service that people want, you can leverage those tools to get all the customers you can handle. In order to do that, you have to manage 3 things:

1. On-page optimization: This means identifying keywords that people use when they are ready to buy your product, encoding all of your pages so that the search engines know what keywords you are searching for and finally you have to ensure that your website is relevant for the keywords that are applicable you are optimizing for.
2. Off-page optimization: The second step to leverage search engines is to obtain importance. Every search engine has their own algorithm that they use to figure out which website is the most relevant to the keyword that you put into the search. The search engines send their robot "Spiders" to crawl your website. The search engines look for two things, your on-page optimization and how many other sites recommend your site. The way that other sites recommend you is by linking to you. The more links you have, and the higher the search engine ranks those links, the more important/relevant the search engine thinks your site is...so you get a higher ranking.
3. The last step to getting customers online is to capture your visitor's information and give them a reason to keep coming back. The majority of your visitors are going to look at your website the first time and leave. An average website will make most of it's sales between the 2nd and 8th visit to their website. In order to keep your visitors returning to your page, you have to give them a reason to give you their information so that you can keep in touch with them and then you have to keep giving them reasons to come back.

All of these steps may seem like a lot of work. That's because they are. However, it's business. If you do all of these steps the right way, you can easily transform your website from no results/not the results you want, into your primary revenue channel. To learn more about how Planet Whiz can help you with this process, get a FREE WEBSITE EVALUATION and learn how your site stacks up!

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