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suggest the importance of local businesses investing in a web

presence...

> Google and Yahoo are developing local search engines. In the

future, no matter where you are in the world, all you'll have to

do is enter your address and a business type and Google or Yahoo

will return a list of businesses closest to you.

> Some of

your potential customers will already be using the search

engines to find your local business. For example, if you are a

real estate agent in Perth, Australia, some of your potential

customers will be using Google to find "real estate agent in

Perth Australia".

> The number of users with Internet

access is increasing rapidly. Young people in particular will

almost certainly use the web rather than page through a yellow

pages directory.

> Very few local businesses have websites

that are listed in the search engines. Competition is weak but

in the future local businesses will compete aggressively for top

positions in the search engines.

> A website is by far the

most effective and inexpensive way to manage a growing customer

database. Web forms make it easy to capture client's data and

e-mail management systems make it easy to send personalized

e-mail.

> A website can save a lot of time and money by

including frequently asked questions and giving the customer the

ability to pay via credit card, thus reducing the manpower

needed to service your clients.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/6-reasons-why-future-small-business-success-may-be-dependant-on-a-website-297.html

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The process starts with you researching under exploited niche markets. Research keywords associated with your niche. Select the keywords that have high results to search ratios. Write articles based on those keywords and then distribute them to the top article directories.

It’s a pretty simple process – well tried and tested – and it works.

If you run a web site that is intended to promote an established off-line business you have to change your approach slightly. You don’t have the luxury of exploiting an under-developed niche. Any promotion you do has to relate to your off-line business.

The good news is that you can still use article marketing to provide a stellar boost to your web traffic.

My own business only provides services to local companies. However, I still need to compete with all the other web sites out there, wherever they are located around the World, to get a good search engine position. So, while I only have 2 or 3 local competitors I need to compete with several hundred thousand web sites to ensure that my business is found by my local prospects.

Article writing and distribution is still a fantastic way of improving just about any sites search position. It’s just the way in which you undertake your subject matter research that changes.

Any article I write has to relate to the theme of my business. So instead of searching out niches I use the products and services of my business as the starting point for my key word research.

It’s very important to get the central themes of your business fixed in your mind. Once you get stuck into keyword research it is all too easy to get side tracked into exciting possibilities that are at best peripheral to your business. So spend a few minutes and write down the core concepts for you business.

Now you need to use those themes as the seeds for your keyword research. There are hundreds of ways for you to undertake the basic keyword research. But that is not what this article is about. If you need a place to start you could take a look at nichebot.com or search for keyword elite.

One advantage you have as an existing web site manager is that you can use your web logs as a source of keyword information. Most web statistics packages will show you the keywords that users have used to find your site. It can be a bit of an eye opener just what terms people have used to reach your site.

Another good source of keywords is your customers and staff. Ask them to list the words or phrases they would use to search for your company or, better yet, the products and services that you sell. Again you are likely to get some phrases that you simply would not think of alone.

At the end of this exercise you will have a list of keywords and phrases that prospects are likely to use to try to find your business. Your job now is to sort out the gems - keywords that have high search values and relatively low competition – from the rest. It’s these gems you are going to use as the basis of your articles.

That’s it, job done. Writing the articles should be pretty easy – take your main keyword phrase and construct a strong, eye catching title. Make sure you use that same phrase in the first sentence of your article. Sprinkle in a useful measure of the secondary keywords form above and the article will pretty much write itself.

All that remains is to distribute the article to the top article directories and move on to the next.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/how-to-use-article-marketing-to-generate-traffic-to-your-small-business-web-site-220552.html

About the Author:

Keoni Leni is the developer of Article Writing and Marketing , Based on his own experience on generating web traffic to a number of small business sites, http://www.articlewriting.jkl.co.uk/ contains all the information you need to pur your web traffic into orbit.

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First and foremost, you should have a web site to promote your business. It doesn't have to be anything fancy; it could even be a one-page site that describes your product offerings. The important thing is to have a site that lets potential customers know what you can do for them, and more importantly, where they can find you. When you build your site, make sure to list your address, phone number and email address.

If you're not ready to pay for full-blown web hosting and hire a designer to create your site for you, there are other options at your disposal. Many portals are now offering free or low-cost site hosting and blogs. For as little as $10 a month, you can have a site with your own domain name (i.e. YourCompany.com). This is an easy and inexpensive way to dip your toe into online marketing.

The next thing you should do is make sure your company is listed in the major online yellow page business directories. Most of these directories provide a mechanism for submitting your business for free. The information here will be very similar to what you'd put on your own site.

Just like their offline counterparts, the online yellow pages offer many upgrades to improve the visibility of your company and drive more business to you. These upgrades range from enhanced listings and a more prominent display to full-blown search marketing program designed to help you grow your business.

The important thing to remember is if you're not listed in the directories or visible online, your customers won't be able to find you and will end up going to your competition.

For more information on online yellow page listings, visit www.local.com.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/building-an-online-presence-for-your-small-business-101428.html

About the Author:

Zane Rathwick is Director of Search for Local.com, a leading internet yellow page business directory listings site.

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Google is like a person who is fed by quality, content. If it knows you are providing quality, relevant content for you visitors, it visits more often and rewards you for your efforts by bringing you qualified traffic.

2. Quantity of Quality Content

Writing articles is also an easy way to increase the quantity of the content on your web site. Short articles on subjects your visitors want to know about provides value to the visitor, which is valuable to the search engines. The more you have, the more you are rewarded with visitors.

3. Low Cost Production

A targeted article is only limited to the amount of time you have to write. can easily produce one or two articles a day in a couple of hours if you simply write in a conversational tone.

For those who hate to write, you can hire someone to do it for you whether it is a college student or someone from a freelance web site. Some places will write articles for as little as $20 per article. Freelancers may be willing to do it for even less.

4. Instant Exposure

Once you have created some quality articles, you can submit them to article sites or use a submission service for instant exposure. You can literally start to receive targeted visitors as soon as the article is posted.

5. A Little Article Goes a Long Way

Articles can literally stay around forever. As long as the web sites you submitted your article to are up, your articles will be there as well. This means a lifetime of targeted traffic as a result of anyone who reads your article, sees your signature file and visits your web site.

6. Builds Your Credibility as an Expert in a Field

Articles are a powerful tool for branding yourself as an expert by demonstrating your knowledge on certain subjects. It also gives you the opportunity to provide useful information for potential prospects and customers

7. Presells Your Customers

Quality web site content in the form of articles is another way to help presell your customers or generate leads for your business. A good article will wet the customers whistle and leave them wanting more and asking more questions.

When they have questions, they will often turn you, the expert. You can then turn these curious prospects into clients and customers.

These are just three of the seven main reasons to put articles on your existing web site or to create new web sites with articles. In comparison to most types of Internet Advertising, it is probably the most cost effective and the best investment of both time and money.

Articles, press releases and other types of content are all becoming a vital part in bringing Internet Marketers and businesses closer to web surfers by forcing us to produce higher quality content.

Those who facilitate this process are the ones who will be rewarded the most.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/affiliate-programs-articles/seven-reasons-you-should-promote-your-web-sites-or-small-business-with-articles-53207.html

About the Author:

Rod Davis is an online marketing specialist who writes weekly articles his newsletter at

Microbusiness Media . You can find more great articles on articlemarketing and PR by

visiting http://www.MicrobusinessMedia.com

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Many advertisers have experienced lack luster results in their attempts to utilize search engine marketing because they failed to understand the complexity of running a successful search engine marketing campaign.

Moving forward under the guidelines of pick a keyword and watch the traffic roll in, has doomed many would-be search engine marketers. They choose their keyword list, place an ad on the keywords, and wait for the sells that never happen.

Thats the way it works right? Wrong! That would work well 10 years ago. But now, marketers must contend with a much more savvy customer that can use a search engine like an extension of their own bodies. If they arent satisfied with what they find in their initial search, they can quickly come up with a new search that can potentially put them on the trail of what they seek. This means that ads that appear on the side of the page are less likely to be read , as the user determines from the first couple of listings that there may be a better keyword to try. If they search the keywords correctly, the top five listings should be all they need. Ads on the side of the page, 5 pages deep in the rankings are, for lack of better terms, useless. Ads that are in the top of the advertising categories are usually too expensive to make a profit for smaller organizations, so they arent really an option. Add to this that most search engine marketing campaigns are approached with the wrong strategy for making the web surfer interested in their product offer and you have a perfect storm for search engine marketing ad inadequacy.

Todays search engine marketing campaigns, like many other marketing techniques, are usually deployed with the same tunnel vision game plan that proved limitedly valuable for smaller businesses a decade ago. Now, those antiquated strategies are showing their age. The old train of thought envisioned a strategy to catch the users attention when he or she is looking for a different product all together, then sell him or her your products. This thought process eventually gave birth to the pop up, slide in, pop over, the text ad, and many many more angles to implement the plan of interruption marketing. At the surface, this marketing technique seems flawless but as the lame ROI figures would indicate, one must come to grips with a sobering conclusion. Interruption advertising is not as effective as it once was.

The internet and the internet surfer has matured. Web surfers have somewhere they are trying to get to online. If you dont have the exact solution, they are very good and telling you to get out of the way by skimming over your website and clicking off of it. Search engine marketing campaigns are increasingly being thwarted by the fact that much of the advertising budget goes to paying the cost for website skimmers. Skimmers are those individuals that have a very short attention span when it comes to internet surfing. They click on an ad, and are successfully directed to the website being advertised, but only stay for a few seconds or less. That, my friend, is a skimmer. Unfortunately, the marketer still pays the fee for the click through but gets none of the benefit of having a potential customer read why the advertised product is so wonderful. That is an ROI buster.

The shear number of skimmers online today has grown and flashy website designs do not slow them down like they used to. Been there. Seen that. Search Engine Marketing now has to adapt to the changing marketing climate. The focus can no longer be all about getting the readers attention, it must instead focus on getting and keeping the web surfers attention.

An exciting advancement in search engine marketing is the introduction of error marketing through TypoBounty dot com. Through Error Marketing advertisers seek to better their sells pitch by eliminating any problems and errors that exist on their web properties. They offer a bounty or cash reward to anyone that can find a specified type of error on their web property. This draws massive amounts of traffic from potential customers that are seeking to earn money for finding errors. In the mean time, they read the entire website, giving the advertiser a greater opportunity to tell why their product should be purchased. Since it costs less than 10 dollars per month to advertise this way, and the advertiser can pick and choose the types and number of errors they will pay for per month, and the amount they will pay, and visitors read the entire sells pitch, powerful advertising campaigns can be embarked on for less than 20 dollars per month. Compare this to the 300 to 15,000 dollars per month advertising campaigns and other techniques that cost more and deliver much less and the benefit is clear.

The art is keep their attention and have the hang on your every word.literally.

Since searchers dig to the deepest depths of the TypoBounty dot com website looking for a chance to earn, ads are not overly affected by bid wars from larger more financially equipped marketers.

Get their attention. Keep their attention until every point about the product as been digested and stored in memory. That is how you get a customer to buy.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/making-search-engine-marketing-work-small-business-190052.html

About the Author:

The author, John Reed, has 15 years business marketing experience and has had the opportunity to use and review multiple marketing strategies and techniques. You can read more about avoiding the money traps of marketing online at www.typobounty.com

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Driving Qualified Prospects To Your Site Without A High Page Rank Or A Large Marketing Budget!

FINDING YOUR TARGET MARKET ONLINE

Whatever your product is, there are ezines, newsletters and article sites devoted to its subject area. If you sell bikes there are probably hundreds if not thousands of online publications and sites focussed on the subject of cycling. All you have to do to put yourself in front of your target market is to submit articles to these sites. Sites are constantly in need of fresh content relevant to their subject area so it is fairly easy to get published.

LET YOUR TARGET MARKET QUALIFY THEMSELVES

With every article you publish include a free offer for more information, a sizeable discount on your product or a free consultation. To take advantage of your offer all a reader has to do is to click on the link you include with your free offer. The offer can be embedded within your article or included with your signature.

PICK AND CHOOSE WHICH SITES TO PUBLISH IN

Don’t try to submit articles to every ezines, newsletter and article site that caters to your subject. First of all it would take weeks to submit to all of them and a lot of them don’t have enough readers to make it worth your while. You need to know the number of subscribers a newsletter has and the number of visitors and/or page rank of ezines and article sites. The larger the number of readers the greater the amount of traffic you will get from them.

Newsletters should willingly supply information on the number of subscribers they have. As for ezines and article sites the easiest way to find out their page rank is to download a free tool from Google. This bar is placed at the top of the page. When you place your cursor over the central area (usually a grey colour) it will give you the sites page rank. Google rates are 0-10, 7 or 8 is an outstanding rating given that even some of the other search engines are only rated at 9.

Check out any reviews or comments about the site that you can find? If you have any challenges finding information hire a student and pay them to do the research. In the eyes of the readers the quality of the publications and sites your articles appear in will reflect on your expertise.

ARTICLE CONTENT

The goal of your articles should be to provide useful information, not to sell. Remember people don’t read ezines and newsletters to find something to buy. In the case of cyclists they want information on the latest trends, reviews of popular products, event calendars and suggestions for training and bicycle repair.

Before anyone is ready to buy anything from you they have to be convinced of your expertise. This is especially true for the higher priced products. Publishing articles let you demonstrate your expertise and offer more information with free reports or your site content, both of which they can access with the convenient link embedded in your article or with your signature.

FRINGE BENEFITS OF ARTICLE WRITING

Publishing articles not only drives traffic to your site it also improves your standing in the eyes of the search engines. When search engine crawlers visit a site they follow the links within the site. Article sites and ezines have an easier time earning a higher page ranking because one important criterion for search engine ranking is the amount of relevant content. By relevant content I mean content that is about the key words or phrases sites have used in their page title and other tags. If your link is one of the links a high page ranking article site has and your site has lots of relevant content it can boost your ranking substantially.

FOCUS ON YOUR TARGET MARKETS PROBLEMS

Whenever I offer article writing as a marketing and promotion solution I hear groans. For some reason few people like to write. Fortunately, articles are really just short letters. Start by listing the problems your target market has in relation to your product area. Choose one you have a solution for and write out the solution in point form. Then just fill in the details.

Ask a friend or family member or friend to proof it for you. It is harder to catch the mistakes in something you’ve written then it is in something totally new to you. If there is no one around to proof read for you take a break or turn your attention to something else for awhile so your article feels fresher to you and you’ll be more likely to catch mistakes.

If you freeze when faced with a blank screen then hire an English student to write the article for you. You still have to come up with the problem and solution but all you have to do is to tell the student what they are and let them take it from there.

MULTIPLY YOUR ARTICLES REACH

At the end of every article is an “about the author”/ signature block. By adding an extra sentence offering the right to reprint your article you can extend your reach exponentially. Just be sure to that you require anyone wishing to reprint your article to do so in it’s entirety including your signature block and any embedded links.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/internet-marketing-strategies-for-small-business-421464.html

About the Author:

Gilda Stein is a Senior Consultant with Concepts Consulting – Simplifying success with easy to implement small business solutions and Internet marketing strategies tailored specifically to small business.

This article is free to republish with the signature block

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