Looking to move your site up the search engine results pages for your Lansing-based company? Here is your complete guide.

Step 1: Keyword Research
The first thing you need to do is figure out what Lansingites are searching for when they are looking for the products or services that you offer. In SEO terms, the keywords “Lansing Marketing,” “Marketing in Lansing,” “Marketing Lansing MI,” and “Lansing based marketing” are all different keywords. Sure, you and I understand that they all roughly mean the same thing, but we are dealing with computers who are not quite as smart as people… yet. There are a ton of websites out there that explain keyword research so click here to Google it.

Step 2: Apply the Keyword Research
Okay, once you do the keyword research, you’re going to need to put your keywords in the title of your page, in the meta description, and probably at least once in the body of your post. The important thing here is to be “natural.” What’s natural to a computer you ask? Well, honestly, it keeps changing which is one of the reasons that I hate SEO. But, that’s neither here nor there. The best practice is to just include each keyword that you want to get ranked for once in each of the aforementioned places. If you don’t know how to do this, we’re more than happy to help you. Just shoot us an email.

Step 3: Link Building
So now that you’re website is optimized, you should see your rankings improve quite a bit! The next thing you’re going to want to do is to build links to your site. Here’s a punch list for you:

• Set up a Google Places Page for yourself
• Do the same thing on Bing
• Add your website to the Lansing Link Directory
• Add your website to every other small business directory you can find. Here is a good place to start looking: Local Link Directories
• Comment on local blogs that allow you to plug in your URL when you’re posting
• Write lots of articles/blog posts and post them on sites such as ezinearticles.com or goarticles.com.
• If you are interested in being published locally, please contact us about writing for our new website I Am Lansing which is a site that we are working on exclusively for the purpose of giving people just like you an opportunity for more exposure to people in Lansing.

Step 4: Watch your Rankings Rise
This has been a brief overview of how you can begin to increase your rankings in the search engines. As always, we are here to help you do just that. Contact us today to get started with your marketing or sign up for our newsletter.

Recently we got work with yet another couponer! Layne runs Coupons With Q, a blog about couponing and so much more. The perfect site for mom’s, Coupons With Q already as an Alexa ranking of under 300,000 which is pretty impressive for any blog. (Alexa is a site that ranks the top 30 million websites in the world by how much traffic they get. Facebook is 1, Google is 2, etc.).

We were pleased as punch when Layne contacted us to help her out with a few things on her WordPress website. While she had figured most things out in regards to her site, there were a few technical things she wanted help with. We helped add the same font used for headings of the sidebars to the main navigation, we helped expand the center section of the blog and spice it up a bit, and we helped get rid of some annoying borders that were built into the otherwise fairly nice theme. We’re pretty pleased with the results, and more importantly, Layne is too!

Work Done:

• Design Tweaks
• Installed some helpful plugins
• Fixed website when it broke after plugin updates which had caused unexpected changes

Browse the rest of our portfolio or contact us about helping you with your WordPress project today.

Here is another example of a WordPress website that we set up called AutoAuctionsInMichigan.Info. The theme is from WooThemes and has been modified to fit the needs of the informational auction website.  The theme is simple and clean and only required minor design tweaks for it to suit the auto auction industry.

The overall point of this website is simply to provide useful information to people, especially auto dealers, about the many different auto auctions that are taking place all around the state of Michigan. It also doubles as a marketing piece with ad space across the top and in the sidebar. Eventually, auctions will also be able to rent out the space across the top of the website where they can be “featured” front and center to people in Michigan. This site is currently on the third page of Google for its primary keyword and will likely move up as it provides more information about auctions and gets links from other websites.s

Work Done:

• Set up WordPress CMS
• Installed suitable plugins
• Minor design c
  hanges
• Synced blog with Google’s blog service
• Keyword research and application (part 1 of SEO)
• Link building (part 2 of SEO)

Browse the rest of our portfolio or contact us about helping you with your WordPress project today.

CouponRaeanne is quickly gaining popularity in the new “couponing” industry. Couponing, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is the art of saving money on groceries and other household items by using a combination of store coupons, manufacturers’ coupons, discounts, sales, and pricing cycles.

Raeanne, the author of coupon Raeanne, has taught classes on couponing and her website offers would-be-couponers an easy source for finding and capitalizing on some of the best deals in Lansing.

We have been privileged to work with Raeanne to help her here and there on her already excellent site.

Work done:

• Plugin Consulting
• Help with theme change
• Minor help with marketing
• Minor fixes

You can visit the site here: CouponRaeanne.com

Yes we’re serious. You can have a professional looking website for your business for under $500 and you can have it in less than 7 days! How are we able to do this? Well…

Cheap, Affordable Web Page Design

Yes you heard right! You can get a website for your business for as little as $399! How are we able to do this?

It’s quite simple really. We use WordPress to make your website. Using WordPress allows us to offer affordable websites because it enables us to piggy-back off the efforts of thousands of other developers and designers saving us on design and development costs. We then get to pass that savings on to you!

Here are just some of the features that come standard on our WordPress sites:

• Create as many pages as you want – You can easily and quickly create a Contact Us web page, an About Us web page, or any other type of web page you’d like.
• Blogging capabilities – Blogs are one of the best ways to keep your customers up to date with what’s new in your business! It even lets others post comments that you can allow or delete
• WYSIWYG Editor – WYSIWYG stands for “What you see is what you get.” WordPress websites give you the ability to add content to your website using an editor much like Microsoft Word. This makes it incredibly simple to update your blog or pages on your website.
• Privacy Settings – You can make your website public so that the search engines will add it to their database or you can make it private so only people who know your domain name can find it
• Add Media – You can imbed videos, images, and more into any page or blog post

Below you will find our pricing structures for setting up WP websites! We’re sure there is one that’s just right for you

Basic Site	Advanced Functionality
Installation and Set Up the Website	Installation and Set Up the Website
Monthly Database back ups	Monthly Database back ups
Monthly File back ups	Monthly File back ups
Select from 5 of our hand-picked templates or choose your own	We will find and configure a template to match your business model
Basic functionality which includes blog page, analytics, anti-spam, and contact form	Basic functionality which includes blog page, analytics, anti-spam, and contact form
X	Advanced Features for Businesses such as a Daily Deal, Ecommerce, Social Networking, etc.
X	Includes minor adjustments to your template
$399 + hosting	$699 + hosting

• Hosting with backups: $15/mo. – This essentially rents the computer in cyberspace that a site resides on. This includes monthly backups of the website and database.
• Hosting with support and updates: $35/mo. – This includes all of the above and also includes staying up to date with updates to your website on a monthly basis and up to 3 hours of adjustments to the site per month.

*Note: Changes to a website without the hosting support package will be billed at our normal hourly rate of $35/hr.

After almost a year, we have finally launched the beta version of our new Lansing based, business directory called Connect Orange! With nearly 2000 profiles for Lansing businesses, we are confident that Connect Orange will make a splash in the Lansing community.

Connect Orange offers consumers the ability to easily find local companies, rate and review them, add them if they do not yet have a listing, share them with their friends, and do all of this in style! It also allows users to submit coupons they have found to the site for the community to take advantage of. It is our hope that Connect Orange will become one of the top sites in Lansing for local deals.

Connect Orange was also designed with the local business owner in mind. Business owners or managers can create or claim their listing, submit deals to consumers, and even be contacted by consumers through the website. We also have a growing list of premium features that local business owners can take advantage of to increase their exposure and attract Lansing’s eye.

The site is now live at http://connectorange.com.

Advertisers are welcome and can connect with us here or through the Connect Orange website.

The new year is a great time to assess business strategies and to establish a sound plan for your business’s future. Here at Scepter Marketing, we are doing just that! We wanted to share with you what we are planning to do with our marketing so that you have a blueprint to copy. We always try to learn from the experts and have found one of the best ways to learn is simply to copy what they do. We have broken down our plan into two sections: principles that we are endeavoring to apply on a new level and practices that we will be, or will continue doing. So without further ado, here is our blueprint for 2012. Enjoy our cheat sheet

Principles:

Sticking to the Mission that You Love: In the ever growing, ever changing environment of the internet there is a plethora of services we could offer and a thousand things we could do. With so many opportunities in so many different arenas it has been easy to jump from one idea to another. We see our competition starting to offer a certain social media service or an interesting, new package for SEO services, and we want to dive in and do it too. If they can do it, we can do it too right? If our customers want it, we should give it to them right? Nope. This year we are really evaluating our strengths and weaknesses. What are we good at? What do we love doing? What is the mission that we are supposed to be accomplishing?

Every business must ultimately exist for a purpose other than the bottom line if it wants to become a great company. Products and services can come and go. Employees can come and go. A business can grow or downsize. In any case, it must remain true to its ultimate purpose if it is to out last the struggles that face every business. And the leaders of the business should love that mission. It should be their personal mission as well as the company mission. It is important to love the work that you do. There will always be unpleasant parts of any business. That’s not what we’re talking about when we talk about loving your work. We are talking about loving the mission of the business and loving the nature of the work itself.

Here at Scepter, there are some services that just aren’t “us.” They don’t fit our skill sets or they don’t fit our culture. We hate doing them. So we’re going to focus on promoting the services that we enjoy doing, the ones that are “us”, the ones that reflect us and our company. Of course, that means that we will have a smaller customer pool to pull from. It also means that we may turn away business that we could have obtained. But in the long run, this will be better for us and our customers. We will enjoy our work as we pursue the mission of our company, and our customers will enjoy higher quality of services because we are not spreading ourselves too thin or offering halfhearted service.

Bus People: A business is made up of people and ultimately relies on people to function. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins writes about the necessity of getting the right people on the bus and the right people off the bus. Collins study of great companies showed that one of the most fundamental principles of having a great company was to build a team that had the “right people on the bus” – that is, a solid team of people who work well together and maintain the company atmosphere. This means that new people may have to come on board, and others may need to be shifted to different positions that more closely match their talents. Some may even need to be released from the company to find another company where they might fit.

In previous years we have sometimes worked with people who did not fit with our mission or our goals. We had overlooked these facts because of the potential reward that we thought might be obtained. It didn’t work. Ever. Even if the reward is good in the short run, this type of behavior doesn’t last long term. A business simply cannot be built on unstable people or on unstable relationships. This year, we are taking extra precautions to make sure that we are working with the right people, not just on the right projects.

Practices:

Fix Your Website(s): Keeping with our theme of building a solid foundation, we are revamping some of our website properties. These days people equate the look of your website with whether or not your company is legitimate or not. This makes your website the most important part of your online presence. If you do nothing else this year, make sure your website looks fantastic. It is the first step any business should take.

We have been working diligently on a new web property for the local Lansing area called Connect Orange. While Connect Orange has been online for awhile, it was in desperate need of a facelift which should be complete by the end of the week. Over the next month, you will likely see the chances made to our website as well. We are changing our website in accordance with the first principle listed above – to focus on the mission that we love. We are streamlining our website so that we communicate exactly who we are and what we’re about right up front. If we offer what you’re looking for, our goal is to draw you in. If not, then at least we’d like you to enjoy your experience.

Your website should communicate the same things about your company.

Buy Local Real Estate: One of our primary techniques coming into this new year is to buy up domain names for locally based keywords that we want to target. It is often much, much easier to get a page ranked that has what is called, “an exact match domain.” For example, if you were trying to get your website ranked for Gyms in Lansing, it would be easier to get the domain name http://gymsinlansing.com ranked for that term than it would be to get a name like http://bstrongfitness.com. The great thing is that domain names are very affordable, so you can likely afford several.

A website should be created for each domain name and several blog posts should be written for each one with relevant, unique articles. Once this is done, the blog should be listed in several local or quality directories. This will provide a good base for the site and in some cases will land the new domain on the first page of the search results in Google and/or Bing. If that is not the case, following a fairly simple link building process should help significantly. (I would be remiss if I did not mention that we offer these services for our clients! If you need help, you can contact us about doing this for you here.)

Help Bring People Together: This last practice is a bit unusual but it is one of the biggest things we’re working on this year. The concept is a simple one to grasp and goes like this:

There is more information on the internet than is necessary or helpful. Because of this, one of the best ways to attract more visits and links (which are good for SEO) to your website is to set yourself or your company up as a mediator of information. There are many different ways to do this, and what you do depends on you, your skill sets, and your business. Here are some examples to think about:

• Take initiative to bring people in your industry together in an association. Creating an association conveniently helps showcase you or your company as an expert in your field while simultaneously helping to provide consumers with the information they need about your industry. It also has the side benefit of turning your competitors into allies. Instead of fighting all of them for the next customer, you can work together to create a network of trusted companies. There is always enough business to go around.
• Find local outlets where consumers are gathered to learn about the types of products or services you offer. Local colleges, associations, or community projects can be great places to showcase what your company does and help the community at the same time. Quite often, these organizations or event sponsors have their own websites and will gladly link to yours if you help them which will definitely help you get higher rankings.
• If you’re in business, it is likely that you have a lot of knowledge that you could share with consumers. While your company’s blog is a great place to do this, you can also consider guest writing for local blogs or news sites. Some local sites like IAmLansing.com allow anyone in the community to write an article and post it for the benefit of the community. The more local you can find, the better. While you will still get some link benefit from big article directories or question and answer sites, you will likely benefit more but staying on local sites.
• Lastly, if you have the cash or expertise, you can have websites created that function as a local hub for your industry. This is very similar to the first example of creating an association. For example, if you are a roofer, you could create a website for roofers in your local area to showcase their work, submit articles about how to pick a good roofer, or similar things. In doing this you profit in two ways. Firstly, you can use this hub to promote yourself or your company either by directly plugging your companies products or services or by simply linking from this valuable hub to your company website. Secondly, you get to steer the conversation about your industry in your area. While you must be careful to provide value those who come to your site, you can do so in a way that is also incredibly valuable for your company. Again, you are setting yourself or your company up as the experts in the area.

And there you have it. As you can see, we are going with a “less is more” approach this year. Less scattered, less crap, less stress, more focus, more fun. These are things that we are taking to heart this new year and we sincerely hope that you will take them to heart as well. As always, we are here to help you with your website and marketing needs. Just get a hold of us and let you know what you need. We’d be happy to help you start this year off on the right foot!

You’ve probably seen the commercials, but in case you weren’t paying attention you ought to know about Bing. Bing is a search engine designed by MicroSoft and is the biggest competitor to Google in terms of search. Bing actually merged with Yahoo’s search awhile back as well making Bing a major player in the search engine space. While they are still a distant second to Google, a recent interview with a Bing representative on SEOmoz unveils a whole lot of reasons why any business, including small businesses, should not only be aware of Bing, but should start to take advantage of it.

Here are a few VERY interesting stats given in the interview:

• Bing has 69 million searches that ONLY search on Bing, not Google!
• These users have  a 4% higher spend rate
• Bing’s searchers are 23% more likely to make an online purchase
• Overall, Bing has 30%+ Market share in search

And here are some of the things that got me excited about what Bing is doing in terms of tools and/or information available to website owners:

• You can actually talk to Duane Forrester (a Bing representative) who says that they 1) want our feedback and 2) actually take it into account in their tool creation (the link is to his twitter)
• They seem to have an honest interest in providing web masters with the data they need to find out how to help their rankings whereas Google is notorious for hiding this type of information
• Bing is going for “more relevance” in search but “less creepy” which I love, because Google is getting kinda creepy (and so is Facebook by the way)

So what does this mean for small businesses? It’s simple really, it means that if you are not paying attention to Bing, you could be missing out on over 30% of the potential business that clicks more and spends more than those in the 70% group! So what should you do about this?

1. Go to Bing Local and set up your business with a profile
2. Set up your website in Bing’s Webmaster Tools and add your site (don’t worry it’s easy)
3. Sit back and wait for the data to come in so you can evaluate how your site is doing!

For Immediate Release: 10-28-11

This coming November, Scepter will be launching a revamped version of their Lansing business directory. This directory will provide a great place for Lansing consumers to connect with small businesses and vice versa. The directory site is similar in concept to the Yellow Pages but exclusively for Lansing. This directory will provide businesses with the ability to either create or claim their business listing on the site. Consumers can then contact the business via the contact information on these profiles as well as add businesses of interest to their favorites.

Additional features include:

• Yipit Daily Deal Feed. This feature allows Lansing-ites to see deals from Groupon, Living Social, and other daily deal sites simply by coming to Connect Orange rather than having to sign up for several daily emails.
• Ratings and Reviews. Like any good business directory, ours will allow users to rate and review local businesses as well as add them to their favorites and share them on Social Media websites.
• Coupons from local businesses. We will push for businesses to give exclusive deals to our users that come only through Connect Orange.
• As the website develops, we hope to add even more features!

From the business’s perspective, owners/managers will be able to:

• Create or claim their own business profile fore free that has their phone number, email address, business address, and links to their facebook and/or twitter.
• A link to their website from their profile which ought to help with their SEO
• A medium of connecting exclusively with Lansing consumers
• The ability to get “Featured Listings” to get higher visibility to locals

We are pleased to be able to offer this site to the Greater Lansing Area and we think it will help to fill a need that is not currently being met well. Stay tuned for more information.

A link to their website from their profile which ought to help with their SEO

There are several amazing things brewing here at Scepter and we wanted to let you in on one of our latest projects. As is the case with most of our projects, we are extremely excited to be announcing this new project which, God willing, is one of many to come! So with that… Meet the Lansing Network

Being that Scepter Marketing is based in Lansing, MI, we want to do all we can to ensure that our city grows and prospers. Those who don’t live in the Capitol City, may not know that we’ve have had some relatively tough times over the last few years. Like much of Michigan, our economy has been greatly influenced by the car industry and has not fully recovered.

However, despite all of the hard times, it is our firm belief that Lansing can and will not only survive these turbulent times, but that we can come out of them prospering. This concept has come out of our belief and is the beginning of our attempts to see it come to fruition.

The Lansing Network is a network of Lansing-based websites that will provide a great deal of value to the Greater Lansing Area. From small businesses owners, to writers, to investors, to church goers, to everyone else – our network of websites will provide places for people to connect in new ways with people and organizations in this community.

Over the next few months, we will be releasing several websites in addition to those we are currently beta testing. The network will consist of a combination of several different types of websites. At the forefront will be a small business directory to help people in the city find the service providers that they need. From restaurants to contractors to doctors and more, consumers will finally have a good way to find and connect with local businesses. This site is tentatively set to launch in mid November.

Other sites in the network will include things such as classified ads, a blog/news site for Lansing writers, billboard-type sites for small businesses to advertise on and through, a site that works to organize churches and other organizations together to take care of the community, a site that makes it easy to find a job here, and more. We have already launched three sites which we are beta testing as a start to this Lansing Network: GymsInLansing.com, StorageInLansing.com, and CarsLansingMI.com – all of which are geared towards helping small businesses advertise by providing a means of getting them in front of consumers who are already looking for them.

The overall goal of this network is to help foster a sense of community here in Lansing while also working to connect people with other people and with organizations that will help improve their lives. With the help of God, we believe the 517 can be a great city and we are committed to help making it happen.