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Small Business Marketing Article Directory

Monday, the Federal Trade Commission issued an 81 page document entitled “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” requiring bloggers who write testimonials about products to disclose gifts or payments they receive. So if a company sends you a product, you will be scrutinized by the government, regardless whether you were asked to post a review or not. Whether it be free review copies of books, trips to resorts, payments, tshirts, doesn’t matter. Per the gov – you better disclose it or, as the Washington Post reports, you’ll be fined up to $11,000 per incident.

Seems pretty cut and dry, right?  No grey areas at all.  How about the blogger who has extoled the virtues of a certain graphics design application for quite some time.  Suddenly, said company sends him a free copy of their latest release and he writes a review of it. He didn’t ask for the copy, would have bought it anyway, and reviewed it.  Still need to be disclosed?  I have no idea to be honest.

There are also now liability guidelines with respect to bloggers making unsubstantiated claims about products that they are endorsing and the responsiblity of the product maker to “police” their bloggers.  The FTC said that they would consider “reasonable effort” on the part of the advertiser to keep the endorsers in line.  So, I guess if you have “endorsers” making wild claims there may be some cause for concern there.  I’d hope any prudent business person wouldn’t need the FTC to tell them to be concerned about that but really, if I want to run my business into the ground at lightning speed it should be my perogative.

I am stifling a “rant” as best I can here in an effort to be helpful to any small business owners who may be using blogs for their marketing efforts.  I really have to make one glaring, ridiculous, point on this whole matter though.  If you are a small business that is giving away products or services in return for endorsements, perhaps a shift to conventional media (newspapers, magazines) may be in order.  Here’s why:

The FTC holds no authority to regulate speech unless it is classified as “commercial speech”.  Therefore, in order to assert it’s jurisdiction over bloggers, it simply redefined their activities as “commercial speech”.   “Traditional Media”, ie- newspapers, magazines, etc., are not classified as such and, per the FTC “have a legacy of editorial independence.”  Per the FTC guidelines, in these cases, “knowing whether the media entity that published the review paid for the item in question would not affect the weight consumers give to the reviewer’s statements.”   Huh?

So, because the FTC thinks consumers trust newspapers and magazines, it’s not necessary for them to be transparent.  However, bloggers are iffy(I knew it!) and thus need to put themselves above suspicion. When criticized and pressed, an agency official told CNET, “As a practical matter, we don’t have the resources to look at 500,000 blogs.  Right now, we’re trying to focus on education.”

I for one am always comforted when a government agency grants itself new powers but promises to use them only sparingly and judiciously.  Last I checked this was still a free market society only now not only are consumers hurt — as product recommendations from other consumers are made scarcer, but free speech itself is chilled as individuals become less willing to put virtual pen to virtual paper out of fear that they may violate some obscure federal edict.

PS – I was recently given a used Dale Carnegie book that I am considering reading.  Should I actually read it and then decide to mention it, I’ll make sure to give credit. Or wait, do I credit Mr. Carnegie or the person that gave me the book?  Or what if the knowledge garnered from the book makes me some money? Um, nevermind. I’m not going to read it. It’s not worth it.

Fact is, over 75% of searches for information on local businesses & services occur online, over 85% of those searchers contact the business in some form and of those more and 60% purchase goods or services from that business. Now, big companies don’t care as much about this. Think about it. If I want to go to Walmart, I either know where it is already or I type in www.walmart.com in the url window and hit “enter”. But wouldn’t it be fantastic if when a potential customer is looking for your goods or services, YOU come up first in the search results?

This isn’t about paid advertising, ie- PPC or “Sponsored Results”. That’s a quick, yet costly, way to get exposure for your website. Have you heard of the “10 Box” or “10 Pack”? If yes, you’re way ahead of the game. If not, it’s Google’s Local Map Listing results (See Above Pic). These are keyword and geographically pulled listings that you can position your business to show up for. Note, however, that the “10 Box” is only triggered to show up for certain keywords in each category and those are the ones that you will want to optimize your site and your listing for.  Also note:  the searcher doesn’t necessarily even have to enter in a city, town or zip code with their search terms.  Google knows where they are based on their IP address (scary, I know) and is assuming that they are looking for a business or service close by.

Aside from massive amounts of exposure, there are many reasons why you want to give Local Search some serious attention:

User experience – For the most part, consumer’s fingers are no longer “doing the walking” through an actual Yellow Pages book. They are, however, furiously zipping across their keyboards searching, researching and critiquing businesses before ever picking up the phone to call or stepping outside to get in their car. They want to see you on the map, read a review, and maybe even see a photo of the business. Trust me, if they can’t find you to do this, they yell “Next” and move on. This is the experience of today’s user and you need to be a part of it whether you want to or not.

Reach – The reach you get from being listed online, and then in local directories as well, is enormous. Now the data collected and managed online goes even further. Not only is Mobile local search gathering momentum with the iphone and similar devices, but you can often find businesses with your GPS as well. Imagine your business showing up on people’s GPS when they enter in a request for, say a nearby restaurant or florist. How cool is that? The idea is to have your listing ready to pop up anywhere and everywhere that people may be looking for it.

Ranking – This is just the basics. The more places that you are listed online and the more references there are to your site and your business, the better for your search ranking and your bottom line. The more popular, or higher ranking, sites that link to yours, the better for your rankings as well. Listings with Local Search Directories count as having popular relevant links to your website so you are really getting a double benefit there.

Submitting to Local Search Engines & Directories
Submitting to local search engines and directories is very time consuming but it’s important to note that there is some work involved before jumping into the submission process. It is crucial to identify your keywords and create some good copy on your website that will capture your target audience once you get them to your site. You will want an analysis of which keywords will pull up Google’s 10-Box in local search and then a determination of which of those keywords you want to optimize for. It is recommended that you enlist the services of a professional to consult with you on this process.

There are now dozens of places online to find local businesses, so knowing the best local directories for local search and how to submit to and get listed with all of these local search engines and directories is extremely important to today’s local business.  Below is a pretty comprehensive, although not complete, of local search directories:

As you can see UBL, Universal Business Listings, actually covers a lot of these so if you decide to undertake this yourself, they are a recommended service.  For just $30, you can have your listing included in many free and several paid local search directories but, keep in mind, it is an annual fee.  It’s still worth it to have the peace of mind and uniformity across all of the directories.

Today well over 10 BILLION unique searches are done monthly online  – Just in the U.S.!  Both Google and Yahoo have made some dramatic shifts in the past year in how they return search results and trends are geared toward Local Searches.  Mobile search is just now taking off and that has a huge local component to it as well.  If you’re a small to medium-sized business looking to make your footprint online, there’s no better time than now to get started.  In fact, things are moving so fast, that if you wait too long you may very well get left behind.  Don’t let that happen.

Everyone knows what a banner ad is.  If not, spend a few minutes surfing around…AFTER you’ve read everything on my blog and my website.  Generally, the ads are constructed from images (JPEG, PNG, GIF), and employ animation and sometimes even sound (yuk) with the use of Javascript, Shockwave or Flash.  Banners are seen everywhere and are placed on websites per the permission of the site owner, who usually gets a small commission on sales generating from their clicks.  When a banner ad is displayed on a web page, it is called an “impression”.  When a viewer clicks on the banner and is transported to the advertiser’s website, that’s known as a “click-through”.  Click through rates (CTR) are calculated based on the clicks divided by the impressions.

Now that we have all of that out of the way, Click through rates (CTRs) on banner ads have fallen over time.  That’s a fact.  There are plenty of reasons why a banner ad may not be producing respectable CTRs, among them are:

It’s ugly, annoying, loud, too flashy, illegible, weak, boring, confusing, or has a link that goes to an error page.  Just to name a few.

But what about the notion that banner ads are passe’?  Old news?  Not necessarily!  A recent study from iProspect indicates that banner ads are actually generating traffic outside of just the CTRs.  When they surveyed internet users to determine what actions they took when viewing a display ad, nearly one third said they clicked on the ad.  BUT, 27% said they used a search engine to find the product, brand or company listed in the ad and another 21% said they typed the company web address into their browser and navigated to the site.  That’s not all.  Another 9% indicated that they investigated the product, brand or company through social media or message boards.  

The same study dug a little deeper and determined that, among those who saw the display ad and performed a related search at some point, 14% actually visited the site and purchased the product advertised.  Maybe not money in the pocket for the site owner sponsoring the banner ads but, as a business deciding where to place my advertising dollars, I don’t know that I’d write off banner ads just yet.

At some point, hopefully, you or your SEO consultant have done some good keyword research and you have a nice list of search terms that you are looking to target.  Pick one of those terms or phrases and use it as the basis to write an article.  Use the term or phrase in the article several times but don’t “keyword stuff”.  Make your article informative, clear and enticing in a way that leaves your readers wanting more.  In the final paragraph, often called the “resource box”, you will have an opportunity to leave a link to your website so that the reader can visit you for more information, or a free report, etc.

Once your masterpiece is ready to go, submit you article to “free content” submission sites.  There are hundreds of them and the submission process is fairly straighforward on most.  Once published on these sites, your article is not only available for readers to review and click through to your site but also to other webmasters who may wish to publish that article on their site.  The great thing about that is that your link will remain in the article regardless.

As the list of your published articles grow larger, and more and more of them are appearing on different websites, the total number of links to your site increases also. Major search engines are placing a lot of significance on incoming links to websites so they can determine the importance of a certain site.  The more incoming links the website has, the more importance search engines attaches to it. This will then increase your website’s placement in the search results.

Since many people are now taking their buying needs online, having your site on the search engines through your articles is one way of letting them know about you and your business.  There are also those who already have specific things they need on their mind but cannot decide yet between the many choices online. Chances are, they may stumble upon one of your articles, get interested in the content you wrote,  go to your site, and became enticed by your promotions.

Content is king.  That is why writing articles is one of the most utilized Internet marketing media today. Internet surfers just can’t get enough information on various topics. Providing information through these articles is a surefire way to drive hot traffic to your web site.

If you are presently marketing your business online and have not put a lot of consideration into the content on your site, you may be making an unbelievably pricey mistake. The content on your website is invaluable for a list of reasons. First of all it gives visitors to your website their first impression of your company and the products and services you provide. Additionally, well written content can be instrumental in selling your products and services to your prospective customers. Finally, the content on your website can influence the size of the target audience you are able to touch by helping to better your search engine rankings. With your content capable of doing so much, it is clear you should be engaging a professional content writer to assist you composing the copy for your website.

One of the most fundamental reasons why the quality of the content on your site is so important is because visitors to your site will likely build their first opinions of your site based on the content on your website. If the copy is poorly written, doesn’t hold the visitors attention and doesn’t promote your products and services well, visitors are likely to exit your site without making a purchase. Conversely, if the copy on your website is well written, engages the reader and promotes the products and services you offer the visitor is more likely to look into the website further to learn more about the products and services and might make a purchase.

Well written sales copy should accurately describe the products or services offered, accentuate the importance of these products and services and compel the visitor to make a purchase. All of this should be accomplished without appearing to be blatantly promoting the products and services. Composing this type of copy can be rather intricate and typically requires hiring a sales copywriter who is experienced and skilled at composing this type of informative and compelling content. Sales copy written by an nonprofessional or an unseasoned writer will not likely be as effective as copy written by a professional with a good deal of experience in online marketing.

Finally the content on your site is extremely important because it can greatly influence your search engine rankings. This is critical because high search engine rankings help your business to extend to a considerably broader audience. Internet users are typically looking for information quickly and require immediate results to their inquiries. Search engines understand this profile and write complex algorithms which help them to supply the most pertinent websites when a user searches for a particular word or phrase.

This is crucial to business owners because Internet users recognize the value of search engines and are apt to only visit sites which rate high in the search engines. This includes websites which rank on the first page or two of search results. Your business might sell football jerseys and you may have a well designed website, a quality inventory and outstanding prices but if your site doesn’t rank well in search engines you’re losing out on a great deal of free advertising. If your site lands on the third page or lower most visitors who search for relevant terms will not likely visit your website because they will have found what they were searching for on earlier pages.

Effective SEO copywriting focuses on many different factors such as the strong web content as well as keyword optimization.  Keyword optimization is making certain that your website has full use of a specific set of keywords so that when people search the Internet for these phrases, your website will be on the first page of results.  A good SEO copywriter should help you to acquire a high page rank within the different search engines as well as help build the sales through your site.