5 Best Local Business Marketing Strategies

As a local business you have to learn how to use the internet to your advantage. If you aren't using the internet to bring in more customers you are missing out big time. These days people pull out their mobile device when it comes to finding a local business in their area that has what they are looking for. 

The days of using the Yellow Pages are quickly dwindling, 54% of people use the Internet over the phone book to search for a local plumber, florist, restaurant, mechanic, etc., sometimes just to get a phone number and other times to do research on the required services offered in their area. 

According to SMDigital Partners: 

• 74% of all web users perform local searches
• 100 + million people use Google Maps from mobile phones to find local business every month
• 66% of people use online local search.
• 61% of all local searches result in purchases
• 82% of local searches result in offline actions, including, an in-store visit, phone call or purchase

A recent study from comScore revealed that 78% of local mobile searches resulted in offline purchases. If you aren't popping up in local search they will head over to your competition, this is guaranteed. 

Here are 5 simple things you can incorporate in your local business marketing strategy to help get more people in the door. 

1.  Create A Local Business Profile In The Top Three Search Engines

This is by far one of the easiest things you can do as far as local search marketing goes. All three top search engines, Bing, Google & Yahoo, allow businesses to create a local search business profile. This is absolutely free and it will take you all of 10 minutes. Make sure to include a phone number so that it can show up in search results under your business name. Go do it now!

2.  Get Mobile

These days everyone has a mobile phone. They use it to do all of their searching and other online activities. If your business can't handle mobile users you are in a world of trouble. Your business has to be able to come up in mobile search. Otherwise you will miss out on a ton of potential new customers. 

3.  Optimize Your Website Using Key Local Terms

When the search engines crawl your site they are looking for keywords that help them better understand what your website is all about. Always use the location of your business in the title tags. Include the full address include city and state. 

4.  Get Involved With Social Media Marketing

Well over a billion people are using Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter at any given moment. Think some of your customers are hanging out on these sites? You better believe they are. And as a small business you need to have a strong presence on both of these sites. When it comes to local marketing this is one of the best ways to do it. Build up your following and you will always have customers coming through your doors.  Monitor your reputation on Yelp, the leading consumer review site where thousands of people review various businesses. 

5.  Use Paid Local Search

Paid local search allows you to only receive visitors that are in your region. You can actually tell the search engines the area you want to receive visitors from. This gives you complete control over where your visitors come from. So instead of paying to have visitors come to your site who are less likely to purchase from you, you can only get visitors who are in your local area and are looking for what you have to offer.   Using paid local search will save you a great deal of money. It will also help you increase your conversions as you are only presenting your offers to those who you know are most likely interested. 

And there you have it, 5 of the best local business marketing strategies for small businesses. Use all of them and watch your rankings and profits start to soar.

What Is Pay Per Click Marketing And Its Benefits

Whether you are new to online marketing, or an online entrepreneur who wants to learn more about PPC, then you are in for a treat.  In this online guide, you will get a plethora of information about PPC campaigns and how they work. Moreover, you get to learn how this Internet marketing medium can be very beneficial for your business. 

What Is PPC? 

Par Per Click, or also referred as PPC and Search Engine Marketing, is a form of online marketing that has been used by a great number of online entrepreneurs and marketers from all over the world. 

Pay Per Click allows you to gain search engine traffic that can boost the conversion rates of your calls to action and increase sales. All paid search ads appear before organic listings on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Pay Per Click is basically a sponsored Internet advertising scheme in which you (as an advertiser or marketer) have to pay a fee every time an internet user clicks one of your ads. 

Generally, it is a technique of buying visits or leads to your website. As its name suggests, you do not have to pay for anything with PPC, unless a web searcher clicks your ad that is displayed in the search engine results for the keywords you are bidding on. 

How Does It Work?

Basically PPC works like this, ads are created within the admin area of the network, for example, in Google Adwords. 

Those ads then appear in search engine results based on a keyword bidding system that is in place in Adwords, each time a user clicks on an add, the advertiser is charged a certain fee by Adwords. The fees depend on the value of the keywords being bid on, the more competitive terms cost a lot more than those that are not.

There Are 3 Entities Involved In PPC:

1. Searcher Engine Users – They are the people who use search engines to look for information. They are the ones that these ads are targeting based on specific keyword searches. 
   
   
2. Search Engines – Search Engines like Yahoo and Google have to cater to both advertisers and searchers simultaneously. With the help of search engines, searchers get to find solutions to their problems and queries, while advertisers are able to promote their products or services. In other words, they provide relevant and helpful result pages to the users, while driving highly targeted traffic to advertisers. 
   
   
3. Advertisers – Advertisers who use PPC get to set up their accounts with the particular keywords they want to target for their campaigns and bid limits of what they will pay each time their ad is clicked in the SERPS (search engine page results). Each ad is designed to target relevant keyword searches and to show up when people are searching for them.

Pay Per Click advertising mainly revolves around using the right keywords. To be successful in your PPC campaign, you need to put extra emphasis in keyword organization, grouping and research. 

It is also of utmost importance to understand how the system works since paying per click can get very expensive, very fast. 

Constant monitoring, measuring and testing is necessary to retain a positive ROI (return on investment).

The Best PPC Services

There are a lot companies that offer Pay Per Click management services, but, only these two can be considered the best:

• Google Adwords
  
  
• Bing Ads

The Benefits of PPC marketing

As a website owner or advertiser, you get to enjoy these perks:

• Greater Reach - With PPC marketing, you get an additional source of traffic to your website, which can enhance your online presence as well as help you establish your business as one of the leaders in your niche or industry. 
  
  
• Increases In Revenue - For high converting sales pages and websites, PPC can yield a positive ROI, and instant sales, as opposed, to other methods, such as, SEO or social media marketing that takes time and a lot of effort.
  
  
• Quick Results - Unlike your traditional organic online marketing techniques, PPC advertising can be easily and quickly launched. This, in turn, will bring qualified leads and targeted traffic to your site in a very fast and efficient fashion. 
  
  
• Quality Traffic - With PPC campaigns, you get to assign an array of ads for particular demographics and keywords. As a result, the quality of traffic coming to your website can be significant. 
  
  
• Testing And Measuring Benefits - Your PPC campaign can be used to test the effectiveness of your Internet marketing in a lot of different ways. For instance, you can use it to perform an A/B test on your promo ads, banners and landing pages. Additionally, you may use these campaigns to test for the right keywords and key phrases to use in your campaigns with other marketing methods. 

What Content Ranks Best In Today's Fussy Google SERPS

 I am often amazed when people ask what type of content ranks best in today's search engine. The answer is and will always be the same, Google wants one thing and that is quality content. Google strives to provide its users with the best possible results.

There are several reasons why some sites rank at the top and others rank at the very bottom. 

Two of the main reasons why websites rank high in Google are:

1. Delivering high quality original content that is both legitimate and credible.
2. Updating the site with fresh content on a regular basis. 

So my first piece of advice is to stop trying to game the search engines with black hat techniques. Yes they may work for a short while, but eventually the search engines will catch up and put your site in the sandbox.

Once in the sandbox Google won't send you anymore traffic. Instead of spending hours trying to find a way to trick the search engines why not spend an hour or two writing a valuable piece of content the search engines will love? 

There are two main things Google looks at to determine if content is of good quality. 

1. Engaging Users

The first one is engagement. How engaging is your content? Are people actually reading the entire article or are they hitting the back button as soon as they see it? This is how Google measures engagement. They want to know how long people are sticking around to read your content. If they stick around for several minutes they know you are providing value. This metric is measured by what is called Bounce Rate, and lower bounce rates can help rankings.

If users typically click back, and your site has consistently high bounce rates, this can affect rankings in Google. 

2. Backlinks

The second thing they look at is linking patterns. Google and other search engines learned very early on that people link to content they consider valuable. Content that is considered useful almost always gets shared by users. Content that is considered useless doesn't. 

And while linking algorithms have advanced quite a bit over the last several years, the basic principles of this concept still hold true. So if you want your content to rank make sure its valuable. Make sure it helps the end user. That's the key to getting your content ranked. There are no magic methods or solutions.

Make Content For Users Not Search Engines

I am sure you have heard this said before and it’s true.  When one creates a web page for search engines their focus is keywords, making sure the Google bot understands what keywords the page should rank for, and overstuffing the content with such to the point that it may become unreadable to the human eye. 

But, these types of black hat tactics rarely work, and if they do, it’s only for a short while and then the site gets hit with a big fat penalty and ends up in the black hole of SERPS.

Make every effort to provide useful content. It’s sort of a merry go around:

Useful content leads to happy users and a low bounce rate, happy users link back and/or spread the word about the content through social media which leads to more traffic which leads to better rankings in Google.

So, it’s all about useful content. That's what Google wants and that's what your potential customers want. 

Anytime someone uses Google to make a search they have an intent. They either want to find out about something, learn about something, solve a problem, buy something or treat something. 

Google is going to provide users with information that fulfils that intent.

So do your research and find out what type of content your target audience is searching for. 

Make it a point to craft your content around their wants and needs. This will not only increase your rankings, but, it will also increase your conversions and sales. 

The one thing to keep in mind is people read content, not the search engines. Do away with the keyword stuffing and anything else that is designed to manipulate the search engines. Write good content that people will love to read and I your content will get ranked.

6 Blog Design Tips To Please Visitors And Lower Bounce Rates

Creating an effective and well converting blog design can be a challenging task, whether you do it yourself or outsource it. In reality, there is no one better qualified to determine what you want to achieve on your site than you, and so it is important to brainstorm, and test to come up with the proper design solutions that will increase conversion rates on your blog.

It is a fact that in 2022 the main ingredient in the online success recipe is originality, and this also applies to blog design and layout. 

But, no matter your approach, there are several elements to be aware of when designing your site that are universal must haves, read on to learn more about the most important elements to consider in blog design. 

Elements to Consider When Designing Your Blog

1. Pleasing Colours - The very first impression that a visitor has of your blog is visual, and a dynamic presence online should start with a nice, comforting blend of colours. You should maintain a balance, so do not go for the extremes, too light or too dark. Select a colour palette that well represents your niche. 

If you are using a banner image for your header, then use complimentary colours for the rest of the site. When used properly the right colour combinations can really bring your blog to life. 

One of the worst colour ideas is to use black background with white or yellow font. While this may be ideal for a gaming site, it is very hard to read. It's usually best to make text background white or a light colour, and use dark font colours, like black or very dark blue.

2.  Simple Site Navigation - Web visitors do not like to, nor will they stick around long to search too long for what they are looking for on your site. Navigation should be simple and easy to find, this includes the use of sidebar menus and top navigation menus. Simple to use site category widgets are always a good idea. 

Also, besides listing a Recent Posts widget on your blog, consider adding an archives or visitor sitemap page, such as that provided by the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugin. This will allow visitors to reach all the pages of your site and if they are intrigued keep them on your site longer, consequently, reducing bounce rates.

Another thing to keep in mind is your calls to action and exactly what you want your visitors to do on your site, those calls to action should be easily accessible from all angles of the site.

3. Provide Related Posts After Content - Make sure to provide related posts within each piece of content on the blog, this keeps visitors around longer and lowers bounce rates. 

4. Threaded Comments - When comments are threaded and each comment has a separate reply button, visitors are often more inclined to join the discussions or share a viewpoint than when they have to browse comments and provide names in their replies to provide their viewpoints. 

5. Mobile Ready - Less and less individuals surf the web with their computers and even notebooks. Many think it is much easier to access the internet from their smartphones or tablet computers. When your blog loads fast and it’s optimized for mobile, visitors will find it easy to browse, read and comment and they will definitely return. 

6. Make Links Look Like Links - This is really important because if you want visitors to click on your links, for example, affiliate links, then they should stand out within the text font colour.

You should be flexible and open to innovation, to handle a broader array of internet users and to design your blog to be user friendly, welcoming and accessible by all types of computing devices. 

When your site visitors like what they see and the content they read they will undoubtedly return and tell their friends. Don't be afraid to experiment and test to find what makes your blog pages convert the best.

As previously mentioned, it’s important to various elements to see how users react and how they affect conversions on your calls to action, it is only by collecting and analysing data can you really zero in on problems and create fixes.

How To Lower Website Bounce Rate

You have built a great site, added stellar content, performed the requisite on site and off site SEO and now you are getting organic search traffic coming at a steady pace.

You can now sit back and toast your efforts because you’re work is done right? 

Wrong! 

There is still much more work to be done, and one of the most important jobs is to analyse site’s traffic behaviour and bounce rate.

What is Bounce Rate?

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Bounce rate is a metric that is used to gage how long visitors stay on your site once they land there.

This metric can tell you a lot about what is wrong and right with the site. Also, it is a fact that Google uses bounce rate as a ranking signal in their algorithm.

Usually if visitors leave the site soon after they arrive it is a sign that something is wrong with the site, or they are not getting their needs met. This is how Google sees it. 

Exceptions To This Rule

Consider this for a moment:

If a user that comes to a website finds exactly what they were searching for, why should they stay even a second longer, or browse the site further?

If the landing page has some type of exit link that takes them away from the site quickly, such as, as an email marketing opt in, or affiliate links that are converting in optimal numbers, or their question was answered quickly and accurately, then likely that site’s goals are being reached. Though, the search engines, such as, Google, won’t see this as a good thing, the site owner won’t care much.

But, if that is not the case, and you expect visitors to stick around, or offers are not converting then you will need to find out what is wrong with those landing pages that have such low bounce rates.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer regarding what is an acceptable standard of bounce rate. It is important to consider the intent of the site to determine what % is acceptable.

Tips To Improve Bounce Rates

Content Quality Versus Quantity

While some site owners focus on having a lot of site pages and constantly updating, they fail in providing high quality content. This can result in a high bounce rate, especially when the site is focused on informational content that web traffic is not responding well to.

This does not mean that you should post once every three weeks, this means that there should be regularly scheduled content added, but, such that is high in quality and will engage visitors to maintain a low bounce rate. If you can’t swing the balance of quality and quantity you can always outsource.

Also, it’s important that the content be properly formatted for the web. What works best is short paragraphs, bullets, appropriate paragraph headers and an overall easy to read layout, as opposed to, long blocks or text and long paragraphs. 

Of course, content that is interesting, and portrays the personal voice of the writer who presents it, is usually more engaging than some generic write up that is dull and has no personality.

Site Design

The theme used on blogs and sites can also lower bounce rate. If the colors are not pleasing and easy to look at, people will leave.

Clean themes are usually best, they are classy and look good, and they allow you to show off your most important content, without it being drowned out by a loud design.

Here Are Some Considerations

• Is it easy to find pages on your site?
  
  
• Is the content buried and hard to locate?
  
  
• Is it clear where users should click?
  
  
• Will a quick scan of the page show users a clear picture of what they can expect to find?

Navigation

Navigation is another element of utmost importance in determining bounce rate. If, for example, the person that landed on a page likes what they read and wants to browse your site more, there needs to be easily accessible navigation of the entire site. 

Top menu bars and sidebar menus are ideal to display your most important pages to web traffic.

Placing related content after a piece of content will entice users to stay on and read more.

Too Many Ads

Are there ads, like Google Adsense, in between every 3 lines of your site’s content pages? This is annoying and can be a major culprit in high bounce rates. 

Ads should complement the content, not be an eye sore that annoys and distracts from what the visitor came to see. 

Pop ups can be especially annoying, particularly those that keep popping up continuously as someone is trying to focus on reading, watching a video or navigating through a site.

Users cannot be expected to navigate through a sea of ads to zero in on the content they were promised when they came to the page.

Sidebar

There is a thin line between an over populated and an under used sidebar. A sidebar has numerous possibilities, and when used correctly it can have major benefits for keeping visitors on the site and also for displaying your most important calls to action. 

Just as with the main content section of the site, too many ads in the sidebar is not always effective. Consider displaying your most popular content, such as, that that has the most comments. 

An email marketing opt-in can have a great home at the sidebar, and your social media follow links as well. 

Internal Links

If you have a reasonable quantity of content on the site then interlinking with relevant relevant keyword terms can also lower bounce rate.

Each page on your site should have at least one or two links to another page with a relevant relevant keyword anchor. 

This will engage readers to browse other pages on your site, and can help to lower the bounce rate. Coincidentally, interlinking also helps with on-site SEO as well.

Final Thoughts

Typically, a lower bounce rate shows that you are doing something right. But, unless your site is making good money or visitors are performing the requisite calls to actions on a regular basis, a bounce rate that is higher than 60% means that there are issues on the site that need to be addressed.

How To Optimize Landing Pages For Better Conversions

As an Internet marketer, having loads of website traffic is not enough to make your online business a successful and profitable one. The truth is, generating massive website traffic is just the first step of the whole conversion or selling process. 

In Internet marketing, the amount of traffic your site gets won’t be as vital as the amount of consumers who are taking action on your landing page, whether it is by enrolling to your newsletter subscriptions or buying a product.  Keep in mind that in internet marketing, conversion is everything. Hence, to be successful in internet marketing, you need to spend more time in landing page optimization. 

Landing page optimization plays a crucial role in determining whether your online business will fail or succeed. By optimizing your landing page, you get to increase your conversion rates, attain more qualified leads, promote multiple products, receive more backlinks and increase the effectiveness of your online ads.

On top of that, landing page optimization will help you identify which layouts, keywords, colour schemes and other aspects of your page have the best conversion rates. 

If you want to know how to optimize your landing page effectively, check out these tips and pointers: 

Analyse The Data

One of the most crucial aspects of landing page optimization is data analysis. As the name implies, data analysis is a process that allows you to analyse all the data on your site and landing page. 

There are a lot of ways to analyse the data on your landing page. 

In this case, you can use split testing (A/B Testing), traffic analysis, and data metric tools, like Optimizely, Conversion Voodoo, Concept Feedback, Google Analytics, Visual Website Optimizer and many more. 

Evaluate The Problem And Apply Appropriate Fixes

With the data you have gathered about your landing page, you will be able to determine what aspects on your page are working and which are not. In addition, the data accumulated will help you know what elements on your landing page and site are in dire need of upgrades and improvements. 

After evaluating the gathered data, you have to find the right solutions to the problem, and implement them as soon as possible. 

Changes in your landing page do not have to be drastic or monumental. In fact, a few changes in the words used in your call to action may have a massive positive impact to your site’s conversions. 

Keep Tweaking

Keep repeating the whole process for as long your online business exists. The key to having a successful online business is to adapt to changes in trends and behavioural patterns of the consumers. 

Additional Tips For Landing Page Optimization 

One of the most common mistakes that internet marketers would make is having a multitude of CTAs (call to actions) on a single landing page. If you ask a visitor to choose between 50 CTAs, chances are he or she will bounce instantly. But if you opt to focus on less of them, you will most likely get the visitor to take the action you want. 

Make your landing page look more credible by adding trust signs like guarantees, trust budges and testimonials. In this case, only use them when they are relevant to your service and offer. For instance, if you are accepting payments through PayPal, try to include a PayPal logo or a PayPal Verified seal on your site or landing page.  

Make sure to increase the speed on your landing page. Internet traffic loses interest quickly when they land on slow loading websites. 

Give your visitor a good reason to buy your product or sign up to your newsletters. You can lure your visitors into subscribing by giving away free eBooks or discount coupons. 

How to Optimize Websites For Mobile And Two Validation Tools

Smartphone usage is increasing at a rapid pace. Millions of people worldwide own a smartphone and with larger screen sizes, better resolution and faster data streaming, users are more inclined to using tablets and smartphone devices for Internet access. 

Industry experts predict that 2/3 of online shoppers are using mobile devices to access the Internet and the number of users will soon exceed desktop and laptop users. 

Therefore, webmasters simply cannot ignore the huge number of mobile users, as they are viable potential customers and prospects in online business. This mobile trend makes it necessary to optimize websites for mobile to ensure proper viewing compatibility no matter the size of the screen the visitor might be using.

3 Options for Mobile Ready Websites

There are three main ways to make sure your site is compatible with the smaller screen sizes seen in tablets and smartphones.

• First, there is the option to use a mobile ready theme that will render correctly in any size screen. 
  
  
• Two, is the option to use responsive themes that adjust for each user’s device. 
  
  
• Third, there is the option to offer two versions of the site, one mobile and one non mobile. Sophisticated technology assess the user’s device and then serves the appropriate version of the site for that user.

Developing a different website for mobile users is the most suitable alternative that is becoming more popular today. 

But don't despair.  It is VERY EASY to optimize your website for mobile, smartphones other androids, tablets or iPhone as well as laptop sizes - IF you have the right software.

There are 3 types of mobile devices that can be used to access the web: 

• Smartphones: Smartphones can be used to access the web in the same way as any other computer device. These Android and iOS enhanced handsets can use HTML5 and have browsers where people go to the websites just as they would on any computer. The issue is that screen sizes are much smaller than on desktops and tablets, an issues that needs to considered in serving a suitable design that will render correctly and allow for proper viewing.
  
  
• Tablets: Tablets are smaller versions of laptops, and some of them also have very small screens where websites may not render properly without help.  
  
  
• Feature Phones: The browsers (WML, cHTML, WAP etc.) in these handsets are not compatible for viewing desktop optimized webpages. 

Recommendations from Google

1. Responsive Website Design: Google is one of the most eminent search engines used by billions of users worldwide. Google recommends configuration that uses single HTML for an URL website which is implemented in the responsive website design technology. Responsive designing facilitates site owners to apply CSS media queries to respond to the clients’ way of access. This allows sufficient flexibility to web page layouts to adjust the widths and height of the site according to the device used to view the site. 
   
   
2. Dynamic Serving: The other configuration supported by Google is Dynamic Serving.  Dynamic Serving allows website owners to use different HTML for one URL. To ensure proper identification, different HTTP headers are used. 
   
   
3. There is also a third configuration option recommended by Google. In this case websites with two different destinations for different types of devices are used. When users enter the search through a mobile device they are redirected to a different destination URL through a bidirectional link. This sort of link annotation allows the search engines to recognize the connection between the two URLS. 

Webmasters can choose any of the three configurations recommended by Google. However, in any case, essential and appropriate resources like CSS and Javascript has to be implemented for proper search engine indexing. 

Testing Tools to View a Website on Different Screen Sizes 

• Quirk Tool: Quirk tool allows users to view how their site looks on various screen sizes. It also permits webmasters to perform a number of actions. The screen fly feature not only allows users to view screen size on PCs and mobiles, but, also on television screens. Using the Smap feature designers can build the client’s site map on the browser. This tool can also be used to build wireframes. 
  
  
• Responsinator: Checks how websites render in many different devices, including popular brands of smartphones, and tablets. These include, iPhones, iPads, various Android phones and tablets. 

A proper testing period and multiple trials are important before making the site live, not only to ensure a positive user experience, but, to make sure that you don’t lose out on a big chunk of traffic and potential customers.