scottklenn: Is Your Business Connected? | Black Ink Virtual Assistance

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Is Your Business Connected? | Black Ink Virtual Assistance

Welcome to Guest Post Thursday! We are fortunate to have excellent guest posters who know their biz to share information and resources with us.

This week, Chris Sheehy from Sidewalk Branding Company explains next steps after your beautiful website is up and running!

Guest Post

By Chris Sheehy | Sidewalk Branding Company

Black Ink has designed a great website for you. Great! So, how will it be discovered?

Businesses wanting greater discovery online by people searching for what they sell ? need to look no further than having greater visibility on search engines ? where the searchers are. Moreover, connecting the digital assets of your business (i.e. website, social media, online listings, backlinks, images?) could expand your visibility in multiples.

That?s right ? a business can show up more than once in the ten-result listings for a search query. And do it by choice, not chance. Imagine your business showing two listings when someone searches for a keyword you are targeting ? that would be a 20% market share on the page.

Three listings ? 30% ? that?s near domination over your competition!

FROM A CONSUMER PERSPECTIVE (THINK FOR A MOMENT HOW YOU SEARCH),

A BUSINESS WITH MULTIPLE LISTINGS FOR A SINGLE SEARCH TERM IS EASILY IDENTIFIED AS THE POPULAR LEADING EXPERT.

There are many things you can choose to optimize for increasing the visibility of your business on search, but from a search engine marketing (SEM) strategy standpoint, I typically suggest focusing on the following elements:

Website (Text, Title, & Description)
Backlink Sources
Blogs
Business Listings & Profiles
Images ? Video ? Audio
NAP ? Name, Address, Phone
Social Media Profiles
Hash tag Usage (#)

The foundation of all internet marketing activity and one of the most misunderstood elements in online marketing is keyword research. Since text is the ONLY thing search engines see ? the focus on words instead of graphics is a must from a marketing perspective.

The object is to target-market the words best suited to attract the right buying traffic to your website. Not just traffic ? buying traffic.

In other words, (no pun intended) ? when writing any online content, make sure you are writing with the intent to promote a specific word or closely related group of words. For your website, this means targeting a word(s) for the contextual focus of each website page. If done correctly, each page of your website will be discovered and indexed by search engines as opposed to just your first page. It?s trickier than it sounds. As a reference, I usually spend more than 10-hours honing keywords for new clients ? this is something I do all the time ? so if it takes you any less, you might want to consider outsourcing this.

Ultimately, the keyword list you end up with will be the nucleus for optimizing each of these elements (listed above). Being consistent with using this optimized phraseology will help in building consistency across your multiple marketing channels.

Whatever you do concerning internet marketing ? be it website pages, directory listings, or social media posts ? ask yourself if your actions are directly or indirectly (vertical market or horizontal market) concentric to your primary keyword list and related to your core values & core business offerings. If you have to think hard about it ? pass. A lack of relevance or drift in strategy in your internet marketing actions could ultimately hurt your search engine marketing efforts and online business rankings.

Using a consistent keyword optimization methodology coupled with having a super-snappy search engine marketing strategy could certainly make your business show up in multiples in the search list of ten. It is a strategy that takes time to build and one which requires the utmost of consistency. But in the end ? owing more than 10% share on search is worth it.

Want to learn more? Register for the free seminar presented by the Rhode Island Small Business Recovery Program, August 29 in Warwick RI. Click HERE for complete info and registration.