If you have a local business, it is well within reach to improve your visibility through website strategies that when combined, create better results than a web strategy that implements only one or the other at the same time. In both web strategies, the common ingredient is keyword research.  The more indepth it is, the better priorities can be set to efficiently work at building content through media such as blogs.  Customized business blogs have the keyword research built into the navigation, meta tags.  The blog posts use the keyword phrases focused on and link back to a relevant page on the main business website it supports.  This organic building of useful and optimized content helps push up rankings, and over time, can build up an authoritative website search engines highly value. 

At the same time, with a modest pay-per-click budget, the web strategy turns to paid search advertising.  It is critically important to refrain from using massive keyword phrases on a small budget because the quality score of the ads will tend to trend downword.  When this happens, you can end up paying more for clicks than another ad, and have a lesser rank position as well.  The web strategy to apply, is to narrow the keyword phrases down and focus on getting a click through rate that is higher than average (3% is considered well above average).

What we are doing now, is using a 'branding kit' that spreads the business owner's theme across Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.  We build a couple of business fanpages that help generate leads and interest.  Integrating these three major social networks with a customized business blog creates a powerful web strategy.  The organic search and pay-per-click search advertising produce stronger gains when a business network of websites have been implemented into the overall web strategy.

If you are setting out the goal of using a business blog to support your main website, your web strategy must include the elements of keyword research to discover key phrases that hold true desire to reach your site because you have just what the searcher wants.  The more narrow the search, usually the better qualified traffic.  Highly interested people are not going to bounce off your site if you deliver a quick and decisive impression that your site has the right 'stuff'.  The business blog is a major marketing tool in the sense that you can deliver a great amount of content that is designed to satisfy readers while passing on link juice through keyword phrases linked back to your main site.  In other words, build a high authority blog for your business site that eventually garners attention, and point your keyword phrase to your main site where transactions take place.  The web strategy that makes this work is anchored with the keyword research and a solid foundation of on-page optimization on the webpages the links are pointing to.  Meta descriptions and title tags between the business blog and the main transaction site should have high relevancy to the keyword phrases on both sites.  Strike the right balance and a key phrase that has thousands of searches a month can be within your grasp (make the first page of Google). 

 

When I think of old school marketing, I think of the thank you cards you would mail out to show appreciation and hopefully get recommended for the work you performed for them.  There's a web 2.0 marketing strategy now that is greatly improving the delivery of appreciation marketing and one company that has really put it together.  You can now design a custom greeting or thank you card for any purpose online.  One card for one occasion or one card can be mailed to many.  It's an amazing system that makes standing in the drug store card aisle and looking in vain for the perfect card, and then stamping and mailing.  Now, you can make the perfect card with graphics and text, even with the new QR codes for smart phones.  That means you can send a beautiful card and link the card to a video on the internet to wow the recipient.  The company is Send Out Cards.  I jumped on the opportunity to send cards wholesale that are stamped and posted for me.  Better quality and lower prices, and the convenience means those important thank yous and special occasions are no longer a hassle to keep up with, and missed opportunities are no longer missed.  The system is amazing, even gifts can be sent along with the card.  Nothing is easier or makes the personal impression a physical card does in hand.  There is a whole business side to this if you get in on the wholesale level.  I just love having the service for my own business and personal needs.  The other unique new school marketing is tied to video delivery in all its forms.  Getting very popular are video postcards sent by email, where there's a design that fits the theme surrounding the video that's included.  The way it's done that does not cause email problems is only a graphic with a link is emailed and when the recipient clicks the link/pic, a new window opens up with the video message.  So the vast memory necessary is not a factor because the video is sitting on a server that is designed for it.  Contact me and I'd be happy to send a video email for you to see for yourself and mail you a custom card I've done.  And, try the Send Out Cards software yourself and send a card for free for taking a look at my site: https://www.sendoutcards.com/netmorenow/ 

As critical as marketing web strategies are in bringing together various web properties and integrating a cohesive strategy, it's not quite as important as your 'big idea'.  Whether your idea has a unique selling proposition to stand out of the crowd, or that the idea will become very successful.  I can say for myself, over the last year alone, my business idea has gone through several refinements that benefit current clients and future clients.  I have been successful in building up a level of continual marketing activites that drive results and have that 'stickiness' of being a keeper, something a business client wants continued.  The method of idea refinement can simply be put as first build often, measure often and constantly learn.  I came across a series of videos that lay out the concepts in detail and I highly recommend anyone in the first couple of years of their business development to watch the videos.  When you are an entreprenuer, often the big idea is the only thing and the refinements that could turn a future disappointment into wild success are completely overlooked because of the singleminded purpose of the big idea is the perfect product/service.  If you want to shorten the time it takes to create winners out of your big ideas, watch the series and take a new look at your overall business concept. The videos are hosted at appsumo where you can find deals on apps and training.  Take a few notes and bookmark the page in case you need to break down the time watching a series of videos. It is called The Lean Startup 

• “Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster”

• “Offers new ways to cut work time and investment”

• “Many CEOs have fully embraced and continue to internalize the lean startup principles”

• “Concepts apply both to designing products and to developing a market”

Between my all inclusive marketing strategies offered through NetMoreNow and the flow of Fanpage development, we stay pretty busy.  The new FanPageWorks was launched to handle single to multiple websites built to fit on Facebook. Two new client projects completed in the last couple days, please visit Mio Cosmetics, this makeup and cosmetics firm really is building momentum with near ten thousand fans.  We also included a fun Media One three minute video that showcases about forty great pictures found in the Facebook albums.  We're happy to already see a bump up in new fans since launching the new welcome page.

Another Facebook fanpage was really mixing fun with some hard work for a UK band that focuses on entertainment, functions and weddings.  They are really good, check out the video and the audio page.  This was a fanpage that really is a website with a couple of pages.  For a little UK band entertainment, check out Hip Operation (as in the music is Hip!).

The reach Facebook has, with it's accompanying demographics applied to advertising may not displace search engines, but it goes one better in creating segmented marketing so you reach people who have an expressed interest in what you have to offer.  With the search engine Bing as Facebook's built in search engine, returning results when Facebook doesn't really adds a whole dimension.  Now, with the segmentation of communication tools, Facebook has found a way to tie it all together.  I have two fanpages, one, http://www.fb.com/netmorenow that deals with an all inclusive approach to marketing a business, and http://fb.com/FanPageWorks, which is just what it is!  Come by, write a little comment or two, and give a like...or two!

How I've found effective ways to help small businesses with the marketing strategies has been through building optimized business blogs designed to help a business owner become an authority in their niche.  The way that happens is through sharing important insights that help people get the most from your product or service.  This is done through blogging on the relevant topics.  The blog posts also have anchor links back to the main site the blog supports.  The links are the most important keyword phrases that the business desires to be found under by search engines.  When the content is indexed, the inbound links that the business has control over, helps score for better listing positions on the keyword phrases used.

Blogging is only one part, having it show up on the business fanpage wall is part of the social and search integration that needs to take place.  It really takes a well chosen set of web properties that are developed around the main business site to give it the exposure necessary to reach your audience, and grow that audience.

All told, I'm over a hundred Facebook fanpages for clients now.  Facebook is one of the web properties absolutely necessary to have a presence on.  Why?  Social buzz is being measured and is used in determining the importance of your business website more than meta tags and on page optimization.  Those are very important, but with high social buzz, showing up in Facebook conversations, Twitter posts and other social networks all add up to your presence on the internet.  And that is figuring in heavily to how well your business is positioned for now and on into the future.

For more in-depth search and social media discussion, click here on website strategies.  There's lots there, you can link to my NetMoreNow blog from there for even more social and search articles. 

What I will cover here are a half dozen Facebook platforms I use and what are the benefits to each for marketing purposes.  And, a lot of tools I use on my client's behalf.