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The social networking site MySpace.com has joined forces with online guidebook Citysearch.com to launch what’s called MySpace Local. This will be an online directory that allows users to rate, review and share information on small businesses in local areas.

The site, which recently launched for select MySpace users, includes content from CitySearch’s database of stores, restaurants, bars and area hotspots. The site enables users to search for information on a specific business or browse by category and neighborhood. This is huge for people with mobile capabilities, Blackberry’s etc.

Here’s How it Works…

Businesses each have profile pages that include basic information such as the business address, map, hours, products / specials offered, menus, etc as well as user ratings and reviews. MySpace/Citysearch plan to eventually allow businesses to add personalized videos to their profile pages as well.

Visitors to the site will also be able to view and share the ratings and reviews of others. Profile pages will let users keep track of their own activity on the site, while an activity feed will display the newest reviews, ratings or picks from either their friends or the MySpace community at large.

“MySpace is about the discovery of content and culture through the lens of your friends,” says MySpace chief executive Chris DeWolfe, in a statement. The new site, he said, is in line with the company’s larger content strategy with bigger and better things on the horizon.

The site allows small businesses to advertise in the networking site’s MyAds platform. It allows advertisers to allocate how much to spend, from $25 to $10k, on advertising targeted by geography, demographics, and interests.

The alliance comes amid a growing effort by small businesses to jump on the social networking bandwagon. Nearly one-third of companies plan to increase their social media marketing budgets this year, according to a March report by the Aberdeen Group, and eMarketer estimates socal networking advertising will increase 17 percent in 2009, to $2.4 BILLION dollars.

- Thx to CoverMag for this article outline

Wow, time flies. It doesn’t seem that long but it’s been about a month already since I last posted here. Seems like it was only a few weeks ago.

Hope your Michigan small business is going well, if not online, then offline. If it isn’t, this post will shed some insight as to how to increase your website traffic.

I am going to talk about how to generate more traffic to your website using articles.

The internet is a fantastic source of information. It is a given that people log on to the net primarily because they are looking for something they want to know more about, read more about, or research
more about.

Given this fact, it becomes very important that your Mid-Michigan small business website is filled with useful content for people to read.

It doesn’t matter if you are keeping an information type of a website or an ecommerce site - you need content. You need articles. Keep in mind that these are the very things that could drive traffic to your site.

So how will your articles deliver a steady flow of visitors to your website? There are a couple of ways.

If you write about something that is related to your site and you sprinkle in keywords related to your business, the search engines will give your site a higher level of relevance for your keyword search terms and consequently spider it more frequently.

Once you have your articles all written and ready, just upload them to your website. Then wait, sit back, and relax while the search engine robots crawl through them after a few days.

The robots will then add those keywords to the algorithm and the search engine they belong to will use them to compute the popularity of certain keywords on your site.

Sounds complex, doesn’t it? It is.

If your site proves to be the one that contains the most relevant information about the keyword term searched by the user, then your site will appear on the search engine results pages. That’s where you want your Eaton Rapids small business website to be.

And of course, the higher your position in the search engine is, the better the chances that your targeted visitors will click on your website to see what you have to offer, or information you have to provide.

The idea is simple - the more information rich content you have on your site, and the more keywords you sprinkle in them, the higher the chances your site gets noticed by people.

Read that bold sentence above again.

If your Charlotte small business website, or your company blog gives people the things they want, then they will come back to your site regularly to see if there is any new information they are seeking. This is called repeat visitors and they play a huge role in the success of your site.

The more they visit your site, the more loyal they become and the higher the chance they will purchase what you offer because you have gained their trust.

An alternative, and very effective, method of using articles to generate traffic to your site is through the use of article directories.

Article directories are websites whose primary purpose is to compile information rich articles submitted by their members. These websites will publish your articles in their network which then allow them to be available to all other internet users.

I have a list of a hundred or more article directories on the Internet.

The chances of your articles being read are much higher if you submit them to article directories. This is because popular article directories enjoy high page ranking and therefore the get many thousands of visitors per day.

Listing your articles in these directories, provided you have chosen the right keywords, will definitely help in getting your site listed on top of the search engine pages.

In essence, using articles as fresh content for your site or listing them in article directories is a great way to help gain additional visitors from the search engines and it is definitely something you
should be doing as part of your overall marketing campaign.

Thanks in part to John Spangler for the basis of this article post.

The headline news is almost getting repetitive on a daily basis these days. I’m not talking about the Gov’t bailouts either.

I’m talking about newspapers shutting their doors, going out of business, closing shop, stopping their presses for good.

Some of these are American institutions that have been around for 150 years or more!

Sure the economy has something to do with it.

Advertising revenue is meager, readership has been going south for several years now.

But in the overall big picture, do you really know why newspapers are folding up, newspaper companies that have been around for eons?

I can sum it up in 3 words: World Wide Web.

Better yet, I can top those 3 words and answer it in one word: Internet

More and more people are now getting all their news and information online. They’re no longer reading the newspapers. It’s old news by the time they get their daily paper.

The Internet is immediate. People have become accustomed to wanting results now and the Internet provides that.

Have you noticed how small our local weekly Eaton Rapids Community News paper has become now? It’s maybe 5 pages of nothing but old news, whereas, it used to be 15-20 pages every week.

And that’s happening to local and national newspapers all over the country. Just today the Chicago Tribune filed for bankruptcy.

What does this mean to you if you own a local business establishment? It means you’re going to have to get creative if you want to keep your business name in front of your potential customers.

As I’ve mentioned previously in this blog as far back as last year, you are throwing away your money if you’re advertising your business in print, namely newspapers.

The numbers don’t lie! The proof is in the pudding.

The majority of your customers and potential prospects aren’t reading the papers anymore.

They’re online, and that’s where you need to be to keep your Eaton County small business name in front of the eyeballs.

Consistent Internet marketing with your company or small business is the solution, no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it!

Do you have an idea where to market your Eaton County Small Business online at all? Or how?

There is an effective strategy, or formula if you will, that can bring you constant business, keep your phone ringing, build your customer list, at a fraction of the cost of what you spent on a weekly or monthly basis advertising your business offline.

I know how to make that happen and I do it on a daily basis.

I currently have a client that I’m bringing him an average of 150-200 new leads every week, anywhere from 10-30 phone calls a day enquiring about his product. And he’s in one of the worst economic professions there is right now in the State of Michigan, if not the entire country.

I can help your small business do the same thing (depending on your market) and if you’re interested, contact me and I’ll be happy to discuss with you what your options are.

As a Michigan small business owner, you have to market if you intend on staying in business. There’s no two-ways about it.

The question is…are you going to continue doing what you’re doing now and throwing your money in the wind hoping for a stampede through your front doors, or are you going to wise up and face reality that newspapers are a waste of money anymore?

The Internet is the solution to marketing your business effectively and affordably in the 21st century, and I can help you make that happen.

Greetings!

I’m going to share 3 key elements of the online marketing process that are absolutely essential if you have any hope of getting customers online.

If you’re missing just one of these elements, then the chances of you getting any customers online drops like a stone.

If you’re missing more than one, then your entire online marketing process completely falls apart.

Without further ado, here are the 3 pieces to your online jigsaw puzzle that will determine whether you succeed online, or you don’t:

1. Market

To be able to market effectively, you need a crystal clear definition of your target market.

And no, “everyone” isn’t an option.

It’s impossible to market to everyone and if you try to do that, you end up marketing to no-one.

I recommend choosing a very narrow and specific target market so that you can better use your limited resources of time, money and energy.

It can be hard deciding on your target market but once you do this important step, the rest of the marketing process falls into place.

You then need the next step…

2. Message

Once you have defined your target market, you then need to develop your marketing message.

This is what you say to customers to get them interested in buying your products and services.

So things like what you say if you meet them face-to-face or speak with them over the phone.

It also includes what you say in written form on your website, e-mails, brochures, etc.

The more your message matches what your target market wants the better.

In fact:

Higher market-message match = more clients.

It’s one thing to have a narrowly defined market and a great message that they want to hear, but you need the next step…

3. Methods

You need to identify the most effective marketing methods to use to get your marketing message in front your customers.

Here’s a short-cut for doing that…

Take a look at the methods other companies are currently using to reach your target market.

This includes competitors and those offering complimentary products and services to the same prospects you want to reach.

They’ve already done the hard work of finding out what works - and what doesn’t work - so you don’t have to.

You see, success leaves clues.

There’s no need to go re-inventing the wheel or going down unnecessary blind alleys that could have been avoided with a bit of research.

Also note that the more marketing methods you can use to reach your target market, the more stable your business will be long-term.

Why?

Because you’ll never be reliant on just one source of getting new customers.

That said, I recommend that you focus on just a small number of marketing methods in the beginning and then expand later.

You don’t want to be spinning too many unfamiliar plates too soon.

That’s it for this time around. If I can be of any assistance please don’t hesitate to inquire

We’re only 12 days away from spring officially being here…at least on the calendar. But at least the light is at the end of the tunnel. It’s been a long, cold, drawn out winter and we’re all ready for sunshine and warmer weather.

Today I’m going to pass on to you some online resources that will help you with the online marketing if you’re a Mid-Michigan small business owner, provided you actually use them. They’re good to know and have access to so hopefully you’ll see some value in them.

To find out if your business website has been indexed by Google, do the following: Go to Google and enter in the serach box the following: site:http://www.your website address.com.

TemplateMonster.com - a site full of web page templates
Guru.com - a site that has very affordable sales copy
Pingomatic.com - a site you want to use when you do any updates to your website/blog
SoundDogs.com - a site that offers free background music
Website.grader.com - this site will evaluate the effectiveness of your website’s marketing
SocialPoster.com - a great site that allows you the chance to submit your website URL to over 160 social and bookmarking sites to send loads of traffic your way.
Kijiji.com - a very good free classified ad site, owned by eBay. There are tons more but I won’t get into listing those here on this post.
DocStoc.com - invoices and free documents
PRWeb.com - online press release website

and last but not least today, here is a link that is a fantastic automatic screencleaner for the inside of your computer to make it run much more efficiently… http://tinyurl.com/2pzegg

That’s it for now. Hopefully a few of these resources will be beneficial to you and your mid-Michigan online business marketing.

Sorry I haven’t been able to keep up with my blahhg like I had intended this month. I’ve been crazy busy the past several weeks with a real estate client and just haven’t had a chance to pay a visit here, until now.

February just seemed to cruise by and here we are at the end of the month already.

Today what I’d like to write about is how to optimize your website pages with long tail keywords so you show up in the search engines for those targeted keywords. And the best part is I’ll tell you how to do this for free, other than your time.

This is what I do all the time so it’s almost second nature to me. If it’s something that stumps you or you just don’t have the time to mess with it, give me a call and we’ll go from there.

For EACH page on your website you work on you need to do this (or something along these lines):

# 1: Choose one long tail keyword phrase that potential customers will be searching for. Use the Google Adwords tool to find these phrases if you can’t think of any…

# 2: On the html of the page (view source) the most important thing to change or put in is the long tail keyword phrase you’ve chosen within the Title tag.

It will look like this
You put your long tail keyword phrase and nothing else inside those tags so it looks like this:

# 3: Still on the html of your page add in a description of your page (a couple of lines you’d like to see in the search engine results.)

This is called the Meta Description.

In the Google listings they will only include around 152 characters so you want a description that will compel searchers online to come to your web page that’s less than 152 characters long.

Here’s the tag to look for for your meta description…

You add your meta description in the first set of quotes, for example:

# 4: The content on your page…text, images etc should be about the long tail keyword phrase you use for that page. For example, your site is about gardening, you have a page with a long-tail keyword such as “gardening tips for tomatoes”. Make sure in the content on that page has that entire keyword phrase “gardening tips for tomatoes” spread out 2-3 times throughout that page.

You can get away with as little as 100 words related of specific content related to the keyword phrase (even less) but it’s good to aim for 250-350 words or more.

# 5: If the name of the images and other files on the page is closely related to the long tail keyword phrase that will help too.

Eg. if you have an image on the page that is related to the keyword phrase call it longtailkeywordphrase.jpg or something similar.

Also use the alt tag for images.

Look in the html where your image is located for alt=”"

Put something similar (but not always exactly the same) inside the quotes.

alt=”long tail keyword phrase image”

Those are the basic steps to creating a page that should indexed high in google once you get some good backlinks.

There are other things you can do but this will get you started on your way.

If you embed a YouTube video on your page…preferably one you’ve created yourself that matches the keyword phrase your targeting…then your page should be indexed on Google within 12-48 hours.

And if you’ve uploaded that video yourself and put the url of your page in the first line of the description then that will be a nice backlink to the page.

And the YouTube video is also likely to get listed AS WELL as your page.

There are services available where you can submit your video to multiple sites video sites at once all pointing back at your page that will be even more powerful and make your website pages rank high in the search engines for your particular keyword phrase.

Now just rinse and repeat with another long-tail keyword phrase for another of your web pages.

Hope this helps…good luck!

If I can be of any help, please don’t hesitate to contact me by phone or email. I help small businesses in mid-Michigan develop a web presence with their online marketing and I can help you too!

I’ve been doing some Internet marketing using online classifed ads with a couple of local businesses.

I spend some time on a daily basis writing these ads on several online classified ad websites as they pertain to these particular businesses.

The first goal is to get the reader to click on the ad in the first place using a compelling headline.
In the ad I also have a link to the business website and the business phone number. I want the reader to either go to the website by clicking on the link, or to pick up the phone and call that particular business.

I’m not selling anything, that’s the business owners job. My mission is to generate the leads with the classified ads to get a prospect to click on the link and to the website, or phone. I bring them the leads and their job is to close them.

One of my clients is a very active and successful real estate investor who now has me do all of his online marketing for his various real estate ventures. Here’s an excerpt I received from him late last week in an email. …”You deserve every bit of what you’ve earned here Glenn and i thank you for your hard work. if you knew how many things i am juggling right now, and most of it is related to your [marketing efforts]. in fact i am meeting with an investor tomorrow who’s looking at 4 properties. i don’t know where this will go, but this is meeting two with him. and that’s just the tip of the ice berg…. i don’t know how you are marketing but i will say that whatever you are doing with that is working great. keep up the good work”

I appreciate those kinds of emails. It tells me what I’m doing is working and it shows my client appreciates my efforts and is getting results. I’m paid to produce results and when I’m able to make that happen it’s a win-win for both of us. And the bigger win for me is he’ll tell his friends about my services and it could very well result in more business for me.

Marketing on the Internet through classified ads sites does work, but marketing on one site is like throwing just one fishing line in the water. If you want lots of fish to bite, you need more lines in the water. Which is why I market on numerous classified ad sites and not just one.

And the best thing is it’s free to advertise on Internet classified ad sites. Try that with your local newspaper once. That same newspaper that’s losing readers by the boatload on a weekly basis because more and more readers are getting online and finding what they’re looking for instead of paying for a paper.

Internet classified advertising is just one more tool you can use in your small business marketing tool belt, if it’s done effectively it can and will get you the results you’re looking for. And it doesn’t cost you anything to put some lines in the water.

You’re not going to catch any fish if you don’t have any lines in the water.

Good luck and happy fishing!

We all know it’s the 21st Century now but there are still alot of small business owners in Michigan who are stuck in the past and don’t grasp the importance of having a website for their business.

I ran across these 8 reasons why a Michigan small business owner still doesn’t have a website and found them spot on true. Some of these, if not all of them, might apply to you if you’re still on the fence about having a website for your business.

1) You have more business than you know what to do with.
2) You enjoy wasting your time answering the same questions over and over.
3) You’d rather work harder than smarter.
4) You do not want to dominate your local market.
5) You don’t want anyone to find you.
6) You are going out of business.
7) You have plenty of money to spend on untargeted advertising.
Your customers already know everything about your products and services.

A little tongue-in-cheek maybe? Nah

I’m sure there is plenty more than the 8 reasons I happened to find.

How are you marketing your mid Michigan small business if you don’t have a website? A working, functional website is the BEST tool you can have in your business right now to market yourself and build your customer list. Hands down.

Marketing your business in the newspaper anymore is a dwindling, untargeted method of marketing. It’s hopeful at best and you’re pretty much throwing money in the wind.

If you’re still making excuses as to why your small business in Michigan still doesn’t have a website, the time is overdue that you step into the 21st Century and see the big picture.

The Internet is getting bigger and it isn’t going away, but alot of newspapers sure are.

As a small business Internet consultant, I’m dedicated to helping small business owners tackle the overwhelming confusion of how to best market their business on the Internet.

There are sooo many options and directions on how to do this or that with the marketing of your business on the web. And off the web for that matter.

Not to mention the time involved, and the learning curve it takes to figure it all out. It can be a brain drain if your not quite sure what to do next, no question about it.

A small business owner is constantly juggling a dozen different duties at once. Most think running an ad in the local newspaper is sufficient marketing to get the register to ring. It once was but not anymore. Those days are looooong gone.

Does your mid-Michigan, or Eaton Rapids, business currently have a website? How’s that working for you? Are you including your website address in all your marketing? If not, you definately should be.

I can take a look at your website and explain to you what you can do to improve your traffic and conversions, making more sales or building your customer list. Your under no obligation.

I can increase the website traffic to your website. If you don’t have a website, I can build you one that won’t set you back thousands of dollars and monetize it for SEO. And I can get your business positioned on the first page of Google for the keywords that describe your business and what people actually type into their computer when looking for your business.

I enjoy helping mid-Michigan small business owners succeed with their online endeavors so they can concentrate on other areas of their business to make it as successful as it can be. Your success is my success.

If you’re a small business owner in Eaton Rapids, Charlotte and the surrounding area and looking to increase your business visibility on the Internet where over 70% of residents now are looking and reading, call me at 517.930.1919 and let’s talk.

I’ll explain to you why advertising everywhere BUT the Internet is costing you and your business lots of money and how to turn that around so you’re putting money back into your pocket by marketing your business online. The numbers don’t lie.

Call me today at 517.930.1919 and I’ll be happy to offer you some suggestions to improve your current marketing results.

Google is the largest and most dominate search engine on the Internet.

Just what does Google look for when indexing and sending traffic to your website?

Understanding Google is important if you want your website to generate traffic.

Google is concerned with giving it’s visitors the absolute best search engine results possible. This ensures people keep using Google and keep making Google wealthier.

Just how does Google determine which websites have quality information and which sites don’t?

Google has a very complex algorithm system they use that assures nobody ever has all the pieces to the search engine puzzle. It is constantly being refined but there are a few things that stay pretty consistent.

Google is able to track almost every visitor’s behavior on the Internet thanks to Google Analytics, Google Toolbar and Google Adsense.

- They’re able to track how long a duration a visitor stays on any given website. The longer a visitor stays the better the content is the rule of thumb.
- They can track how many website pages a visitor visits before leaving the site. The more pages the better unless the visitor went to a slew of pages in a short amount of time which would indicate the visitor couldn’t find what they were looking for and the content didn’t capture the visitors interest.
- Google also tracks where a visitor leaves a site after visiting only one page. This is called a “bounce”. To many bounces is harmful to a website’s ranking in Google and would indicate that there isn’t anything really worthwhile on the site to keep a visitors interest.
- Google also keeps tabs on return visits to a website. They’re able to track and record your IP address when you visit a site and can determine when you make a return visit. Return visits are very important to Google because they are a major indicator that the site has useful and relevant content that is most likely updated often. Some sites with huge amounts of return visitors are news related websites and social networking sites.

Google likes sites that have information added to them often, like blogs, and why your reading one right now :-).

People have known this for some time now and some of the more unscrupulous websites would keep their sites updated regularly by copying content from other sites.

So Google developed a duplicate content filter which determines if content was original or copied from another site. If content has been copied from several sites, Google can determine which site first posted the content and will frequently ignore and label the sites that copied the content.

In a Nutshell…

If you want to rank high in the Google search engine and generate traffic, then make a site that has useful information and isn’t copied from somewhere else. Give people a reason to stay at your site and hang around by having good content that is frequently updated.

If your a Mid-Michigan small business owner and reading this, it’s important you apply these principles to your website strategy if you want to rank high in Google with your keywords. Your don’t want to get black -listed by Google by trying to out-smart them. That won’t happen so you might as well play by their rules and make your website a quality content site that is frequently updated.

In short, provide your visitors with something of value. The more value you provide the higher you’ll rank in the most dominate search engine on the Internet, Google.