Go Mobile. Be Found.

I really thought that 2010 would be the year of mobile. In fact my main business goal this year has been to push mobile. But small businesses, at least locally, have been slow to adopt this seventh mass media. Not because they don’t believe it can super charge their marketing, but because it is so new and yet another thing to add to their to-do list. That being said, I think next 2011 is going to be the year we see local businesses embrace mobile marketing.

A lot of people that I speak with aren’t even familiar with the term mobile marketing. They certainly are familiar with mobile devices like the ipod touch, the iPad and cell phones, but not with what they can do as small business owners to take mobile and use it to build their businesses.

So rather than me ramble on about exactly what you can do with mobile marketing I would like to invite you to come out to a mobile marketing event in an of itself, but mobile as in the moving kind – the Deluxe Small Business Heroes Tour. The tour has been traveling the country and this week (October 12 – 16) it comes to Charlotte. Deluxe is doing what I do everyday, but on a much larger scale – helping small businesses make their online business rock!

You can learn all about online marketing for your business from speakers every hour on the hour, covering different aspects of online marketing. There will also be giveaways, lots of them, so it’s going to be absolutely awesome.

Now, if you come on Friday to the Concord Mills event, I will be with the Deluxe tour speaking about mobile marketing. My keynotes are at 12 PM and 4 PM – so come join me and learn about mobile marketing!

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What Small Businesses Ought to Know About SEO

Every small business can gain easy recognition for their cause by eliciting the help of search engines – but search engines are strange entities of mystery so you have to know what they want and give it to them before they will show you their love. If you make your site more attractive to search engines you will be rewarded with higher rankings – so let’s cover some must-dos and get some attention!

To get more visitors to your website a small business must:

Match search terms with your content
This is the biggest downfall and faux pas of many a website: great text and graphics, a beautiful site, but no one is actually searching on the internet for anything in it! You can optimize your site till the cows come home but if no one is searching for your keywords then no one will come. There are lots of great free tools [Wordtracker, SEO Book, Google's Search Based Keyword Tool are a few] that you can put your keywords into and see if anyone searches for them, and if so how often. If a low or zero number per month searches for your keywords come up with some new ones – fast.

Write for humans
Although search bots can’t read they are pretty smart. If you stuff your text with keywords they know it. This used to work several years ago but now is definitely not looked kindly upon. Write your content in a way humans will enjoy but also leave some flags up for the search engines by strategically placing your keywords. Which leads on to…

Put keywords in the right places
The right places for your keywords are in your domain, the folders [categories if using Wordpress] and then in the title, or name, of the page. A good example of the use of keyword phrase ‘auto shop’ would be: http://charlotteautoshop.com/auto-repairs/auto-shop-FAQ.html

Laser focus your keywords
You will have great success if you concentrate on 5-20 or so keywords/phrases for your site. It’s better to have some content density around some keywords and rank better for fewer than rank low for many. Again, use the free keyword tools to find terms that have good search numbers and focus on them most.

Change it up
Each page on your website needs to have its own unique title that’s about 65 characters in length tops. Short and sweet titles are better, and longer ones are going to get cut off in your search engine listing anyway. Your keywords must be in the title and the closer to the beginning it best.

The same rules apply for your meta description [what is shown under the page title in the search engine listing,] except you should use no more than 160 characters, including spaces. Think of the description as a very short sales pitch for your web page. You have to ‘sell’ your page to make it stand out from all the other listings. Include a call to action like: Help the Charlotte Car Club – we need volunteers. If you love cars and can volunteer call 704.555.5555 today.

Get stylish
There are HTML tags you can use to make your headings stand out for your visitors and make the search engines pay extra notice. Bolding works but use the H1 and H2 tags at your disposal to add some oomph to your content and make sure your keywords are in your headings.

Now you know these six simple tips to get your small business found on the search engines, apply them, sit back and wait for some major attention from the search engines!

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Small Businesses – Come On, Get A Blog Already

Small businesses need to blog. It’s true. I tried to squeeze the reasons why into a neat sounding five or ten but I ended up with twelve. I’m sure there are even more reasons but let’s take a look at the twelve – why I think blogs are so important for small businesses to use:

1. Blogs are a break from the sales-speak that is the norm on a business website. They are a two way conversation, or at least can be, between a small business and its customers. This type of web format can help build relationships in a way that a regular website never can.

2. Blogs are the perfect platform for being less formal, more chatty, more approachable, and undoubtedly more ‘human’ in content. People like that, so people like blogs and like to follow them.

3. Not only are blogs a way for companies to reach out to their customers, they can be used to show different sides to a business, for example stories behind why a company has decided to support a certain charity. Blogs can be about anything so get creative! (more…)

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