As you can see, nearly 90% of initial clicks happen on the first page. For local businesses nearly 70% of local searches take place online and nearly 40% take place from a mobile type device. This number is expected to increase to nearly 60% within the near future.

A form of internet marketing that helps in the promotion of websites by making their visibility high in the result pages of search engines is called search engine marketing.  Search engine marketing is done by using paid placements, search engine optimization and by contextual advertising.

 There are many ways in which you can improve your search engine marketing strategy.

Some of the ways are as follows:

 1. Adding fresh content: It is very essential to keep the content fresh by updating regularly. If you consider carefully the sites that show on the first page, then you will realize that the best ones are the ones that update their content regularly. Thus, you should try and write your own articles and upload them along with graphics or with some photos. However, if you can not do that, then you can take help from freelancers by outsourcing the job. You can improve the ranking of your website by appointing a team of writers or by appointing a particular writer. You can get freelancers for reasonable rates. Another thing that is important and must be kept in mind before you appoint a writer is that the writer must understand the concepts of SEO.

 2. Using keywords carefully: The keywords and the phrases that you use are not to be less than 3 to 5 % of the total text on the page. This is done so that the keywords are not too much and not too less. It is essential to provide keywords on every page as every page needs keywords to create themes for search engines. The density of keywords that is recommended is about 2 to 3 % of the text that is on your page. The usage of keywords must be done very carefully as the excessive use of keywords will be recognized by search engines as stuffing. Another problem that may be caused by excessive usage of keywords is that the quality of writing may be affected.

 3. Linking relevant sites to your page: You will have better rankings if you are successful in linking relevant sites to your page. This means that the links that are on your page must be connected to the matter on your page even if it is indirectly so.

 These are a few ways in which you can improve your search engine marketing strategies. You must follow them and see the results.

Article is a guest post contributed by Ryan Jones.

One of the hardest aspects of having a small business is the range of customers you will have. With a small business, you may not be able to grab everyone’s attention in your community. You put up business signs, put up a small billboard, send out flyers, hand out business cards, and maybe even have a Facebook group created with people in your community, asking them to invite friends, yet there is still many people who haven’t heard about you living within one block radius, let alone all the other people living within miles of your business. Using Twitter and geo targeting users is a great way to get people from around your area to know about you.

Everything and everyone has been turning to Twitter, including University professors to announce assignments or class updates and television shows to shout out recent news. With a constant growth in Twitter subscribers daily, it is becoming one of the best places to market to any product, business, organization, and group. No matter what size of company you have, it is easy to target people based on location on Twitter with geo targeting.

With the benefit of being able use Twitter for promoting a small business, the business owners are able to post up spur of the moment sales notices like, “From 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm today only, discounts on “XXX”, which is a good way to catch the attention of customers if sales are slow. It is also a good way to have count downs to dates of sponsored events relating to the business or promotional events happening in the future.

Geo targeting Twitter users for a small business is a great way to gain customers around your area that haven’t heard of you otherwise. It is also a great way to promote spur of the moment “business booster” sale periods every now and then. Not only are you able to gain a larger customer audience, but you are able to appeal to spur of the moment business daily, if needed, through quickly letting customers know you are having a small sale or event in your store.

Click Here to find out more about Twit Sniper

I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to Google to search for a restaurant, service, or other type of business to find more information only to come up with a big nada. My first thought at this point is that this business doesn’t want me to find them. I don’t care if you have a yellow pages entry or not, most of the time I’m not going to read it.

If you don’t have a website, you are missing out on a massive amount of revenue. You are not only leaving money at the table, but you are potentially closing your doors to new clients/buyers/customers.

Like most people, I am extremely pressed for time and I don’t really feel like calling you if I don’t have to. I want to be able to order online, email you with questions, or submit a service request without having the hassle of talking to someone on the phone.

I know, I know…you might be thinking that most of your customers don’t use the internet anyway or that your type of business isn’t one that needs an online presence. Well, my first response is that your customers don’t use the internet because you haven’t catered to the ones that do! I guarantee you that if you start building a hub online, that you will find a new breed of customer entering your door.

Even if you’ve got all the customers you can handle, think of what you can do with an online presence:

1. Collect customer email addresses to advertise promotions or special offers.
2. Create an online service desk to make handling customer issues a “hands off” experience.
3. Brand your business to build its reputation.
4. Get noticed by trade publications or other media outlets.

The list goes on and on…

So, now comes the fun part, the action plan. I’m going to lay it out for you nice and simple:

1. Build a website with a landing page that details what you do, what you have to offer, and why people should buy from you. This page should have your brand logo or image as well as an email form to capture customer information. Make sure to include a phone number and email address.
2. Create a blog as an addition to your website. Your blog will not only help you collect more online real estate, but blogs are great Google food. You will have a much easier time getting noticed if you own keywords in your niche or location. You don’t have to blog every day, or every week for that matter, but you do need to post on a regular interval so that people know your blog/website isn’t dead.
3. Offer special links to promotions or discounts and update them regularly. There is nothing worse than clicking on a link to see someone’s promotions only to find that they are months old or inactive. No dead links or old content…period!

Your blog is the hub for your business and is an excellent way to actively attract attention and stay hip at the same time. Your website will allow your customers to find you online and research without wasting your time or their time on the phone. Just make sure to monitor your email account so that you can provide service from all fronts. You will be amazed by the time you can save and the new business that you attract.

This article reprinted with the permission of Nathan Hangen, Social Media. Nathan is a professional blogger as well as social media expert and the author of “Twitter Rockstar“.

At first, you’ll probably think you should just invite family and friends, but that is probably not the best strategy. Although friends and family will help, you shouldn’t focus on them for branding efforts.

Instead, you need to find your future customers and put yourself in front of them. This includes using Twitter search, sites like Twitter Grader, and Twitter Counter to find other like minded individuals. Use these power users to build a basic following and then work to provide solid content via video and blogging so that you have something to share.

A pitch is not something that most people want to talk about, so spend more time talking about your niche and yourself than your pitch. Let people get to know you and don’t be afraid to get slightly personal. Give away content and information to establish yourself as an authority, which in turn will help you get coverage via RT’s (ReTweets) and @’s (replies). It only takes a base of 500-2000 people before your efforts will start to multiply on their own.

Another place you’ll need to do some work is your profile. Many people look past the important steps of setting up a power user’s profile, but if you really want to gain traction in your niche you’ll need to set up your account first. Here’s what you need to do:

1.Go to http://freetwitterdesigner.com and set up a background image for your profile. Make sure to include any relevant information about yourself that you can and also any profile or blog links that will fit. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to include a phone number, tag line, or address to give yourself some credibility. Depending on yor niche, you might want to include some product images as well.

2.Replace the default image with a good and professional picture of yourself. It doesn’t have to be formal, but it should represent you and your brand. People with default profile images are generally ignored, and that is certainly not the way you want to be treated. This is absoutely a must.

3.Create a well thought out bio and include as much about yourself as possible. Make it compelling, original, and catchy. Don’t lie or hype yourself up…just be real. This is where a lot of people go wrong. Also, don’t sound like a commercial, talk about what makes you different, don’t focus on the product.

Once you’ve got your profile set up, you can then move on to using the right methodology and techniques to find people in your niche to follow and then build a list from there. There are several ways to do this, but I prefer the bot-free method, which I talk about in my Twitter course called Twitter Rockstar.

Check out http://Twitip.com as well to stay up to date on Twitter trends and techniques.

There are a lot of people that use Twitter wrong right off the bat, but if you follow these 3 steps first you’ll be in better shape than most.

Nathan Hangen has generously allowed me to post this from his Social Media blog. Nathan is the author of “Twitter Rockstar“, a must read if you’re serious about developing your twitter persona and learning the correct way to use twitter.

Though some traffic generation strategies cost real money to launch, there are a lot of highly powerful methods that will not cost you a single cent. Indeed, there are free internet marketing tactics that will promise thousands upon thousands of visitors on a regular basis – if they are executed properly.

Here are 5 powerful, and free, ways to promote your online business:

1. Article marketing. Article marketing is, without a doubt, the most effective way to generate traffic for any website. Article marketing involves the writing of 250 to 750 word articles relevant to the subject of your website and populated by a healthy amount of specific keywords being targeted for that particular piece. Each article should be accompanied by an attention-grabbing title and a resource box that contains a clear call to action which will be leading readers to the author’s website. Such an article will be submitted to any, or all, of the many article directories on the web today. Article marketing is a great way to build your brand, to build your name as an expert in the industry, and to build back links that will greatly improve your website’s position in search engine results.

2. Viral marketing. Viral marketing is the online equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising. Basically, it’s about releasing something really cool for free and relying on the people who will get to experience it to share the same with the people they know. Of course, the viral seed should carry your business message – specifically, a link to your website – for this strategy to work. Delivering the viral seed to 5 people can immediately spread your link to 25 people, and to 625 people, and to thousands more after that. The number of people who will get to experience the viral seed will exponentially grow, a testament to the sheer marketing power of viral marketing. Examples of a viral seed are a free eBook, a free software program, a free discount coupon, and the likes.

3. Press release marketing. Offline and online publications are always on the lookout for newsworthy items that they can use. By submitting a press release about your website to any or all of the press release wires on the web, and with the press release containing your website’s URL, you can potentially have your link published to thousands upon thousands of offline and online publications very, very easily.

4. Video marketing. Video is hot these days. Websites like YouTube are among the most popular online destinations these days. You can capitalize on the general public’s fascination with videos by creating a video that is relevant to the subject of your website and embedding a watermark on the same which will contain your website’s URL. Uploading such a video in YouTube alone can guarantee thousands of new visitors overnight.

5. Web 2.0 marketing. Social networking (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) social bookmarking (StumpleUpon, among others) and social news indexing (Digg, Reddit and the likes) are just some of the new media that you can exploit for free to expose your URL to more people and to generate direct traffic to your web pages.

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Debra Freligh is a well-known Marketing expert and the owner of DMF Media:

You will have to learn how to market your website effectively to drive traffic to your website. The smartest thing to do would be to attract visitors who are looking to buy the product you are selling.

Bringing in massive amounts of laser targeted traffic is the key to running a successful internet business. If you do not learn how to promote your online business, you will not have a business in the near future. There are many different ways to do this that cost little or no money.

Some people believe that marketing online is fairly simple, and it is for the most part. What I suggest is to find one method of marketing that you are very good at and to use that method over and over again. You can always learn how to promote your online business other ways some other time. But if what you are doing is working, stick with it!

Article marketing may be the very best way to market your online business. There are many article directories online that you can submit your articles to for free. You will be able to live a link back to your website in the authors resource box. Your website will move up in rankings in the search engines as you pick up more and more back links.

With article marketing you will get traffic two fold, through the articles themselves and through the search engines. The key to making your article marketing campaign work is consistency. Don’t over do it and don’t under do it. Some people submit 2 articles a week and some submit up to a handful or more per day. It really all depends on how competitive your niche is.

Instead of submitting one article to every article directory, submit a unique article to each. Submit the bulk of your articles to the top directories and submit to them often.

Using an article distribution service may be a good idea too. These services usually require a monthly fee but is well worth the cost if you can afford it. I personally use an article distribution service and I submit articles manually. I find that a comprehensive approach to distributing the articles works best.

After a few months of writing and submitting articles you will then see the targeted traffic begin to show. Keep it up and you will soon see that traffic begin to buy from you as well.

Matt Helphrey uses the internet to Make Money From Home and you can too! Find out what you need to do to start your own online business at www.livelifetothefullest.biz

Article Source: http://www.thecontentcorner.com

It always helps to define terms up front (and clearly), so let’s get a few terms clarified so you can proceed to the fun part. (If you don’t think inventing a domain name is fun, you need to lighten up and enjoy the process!)

Navigating the virtual world

Do you know how a domain name works? You may see “Food.com,” and start salivating before you even get there, but computers and networks don’t use names for addresses, they use numbers. A domain name, then, is converted by the Internets’ Domain Name Servers (DNS) into a number than represents a particular computer on the Internet. And, yes, some computers can have more than one domain name. At any rate, the number that the DNS produces for each computer is called an IP (Internet Protocol) address.

The IP addresses administered by the DNS allows computer users to find their way around the Internet by looking for these IP addresses, just like a delivery van will look for your home address to bring the packages to your door. The Internet brings “packets” (of data) to your virtual door in a similar manner, and the DNS makes it easier by using a familiar set of letters (a “domain name”) instead of the hard-to-memorize IP addresses. This lets you type www.yourcompany.com instead of 64.68.51.255 or some other number.

Good domain names

Do not choose a name that has nothing to do with your company or your website. Just because Amazon.com got away with it doesn’t mean you can. For one thing, company’s that came early to the Internet party had time to educate people as to names and everything else. The Internet is now moving much too quickly to afford you much time to explain what your domain name means. Better examples than Amazon would be eBay and PayPal, names that describe in short order what the websites are up to. In other words, if you are selling flowers don’t name your site Apples.com. And picking some kind of cute or oddball name makes no sense anymore, and might just confuse your audience.

Good domain names are neither too long nor too involved. The longer the name, the harder it is to remember. Would you be more likely to remember SaveYourData.com or RecoverDataFromYourCrashedHardDrive.com? This is not to say that short names are the way to go, however. You want a domain name that contains a few keywords that relate to the website and/or company focus, if possible.

Keywords and core ideas

To help your site earn higher placements and rankings with the major search engines, try to integrate a keyword or core idea into the domain name. Having a name like JaysAutoRepairs.com will do much better with search engines than JaysRepairs.com. With the first domain name you know the website fixes autos, whereas the second name doesn’t tell you what kind of repairs Jay does. This is not very conducive to helping steer the right people to your business.

You may find that some names or combinations of words that are already in use can be modified with the use of a hyphen or two. This is a much overlooked way to get a domain name that otherwise may not be available without the hyphens. If the domain name you want is NorthsideHaulers.com, and it is taken, you can consider using Northside-Haulers.com instead.

What about the actual domain type?

Much advice about naming domains tells you to try getting a .com name before settling for an alternative, such as .org or .net. This gets harder and harder to do as more and more names are being registered. Thinking about the domain angle is changing, and it probably better to rate your domain name on the part that comes before the “dot,” not the part after. A good, keyword-rich domain name will be of more value than a lesser word or phrase with a “.com” at the end.

You should also save as much money as possible on the domain names. You can get a domain name for less than $10 from several places, then transfer it for free to some other “parking spot.” This saves up to $20 on buying the name from a hosting company itself. A domain name is a domain name, and you should always save a little money whenever and wherever possible.

Self-defense, domain style

Protect your new name by registering multiple extensions (.net, .org, .biz, etc.) as this will deter others from copying it. If you own JustVWParts.com you can also register any other popular extensions that are available. You can have the secondary domains forward visitors to the main site. One more thing: If you have a name that is often misspelled, you might consider registering a domain in the misspelled version and redirecting that traffic, too. There is a thriving business in registering misspelled celebrity and company names – say, MercedezBenz.com – to take advantage of people’s bad spelling and typographical errors. For fun, take a look at what someone did to make a sales site out of “ebya.com,” a common misspelling of “eBay.”

It is very important to spend a bit of time thinking and playing with words and word pieces when trying to come up with the best domain name for your business. Try to work some keywords and/or core ideas into the domain name. Cover yourself with other low-cost domain extensions, and never stop thinking about what other clever, memorable names might work for you. You can direct any new domains to the same old site, so you don’t incur anything more than a very slight cost if you give your customers a number of different ways to find you.

Amy Armitage is the head of Business Development for Lunarpages. Lunarpages provides quality web hosting from their US-based hosting facility. They offer a wide-range of services from dedicated servers and managed solutions to shared and reseller hosting plans. Visit us online for more information.

Many search engine optimization agencies have come up with proven processes that are flexible and tailored to fit the needs of their clients’ websites. An SEO agency typically offers SEO services that are adaptable and able to address the business objectives of their clients, as well as the distinctive opportunities and challenges that different websites present.

Normally, an SEO agency starts to take on a consulting project through conducting an exploratory research. This enables them to better understand their clients’ target markets. This also allows an SEO agency to become familiar with the different goals and overall strategy that a certain business has.

Some of the services that an SEO agency can offer include basic to advanced SEO consultation, website audit consultation, website redesign, SEO consulting workshops, web analytics, pay-per-click campaign management, SEO copyediting and copywriting, and search engine marketing products. Businesses can expect SEO agencies to give quick responses to search engine marketing questions, timely execution of SEO deliverables, and customized SEO consultations that fit specific needs. Most, if not all, SEO agencies also try to keep open and honest lines of communication, as well as critiques, with their clients regarding the marketability of their websites.

Over the years, businesses find SEO agencies to be empowering as they share knowledge and tools that their clients need to boost the value and profitability of their online business. This is quite true as SEO agencies tend to be highly collaborative and they try to provide a unique learning environment in every step of the way. As they find their way through a search engine marketing project, they give effort to encouraging their clients to be more involved, ask questions, and give suggestions.

SEO agencies believe that good SEO work only gets better and better as time passes by. When ranking algorithms change, they try to find new search engine techniques because they know that they also need to keep up with the changing search engine marketing demands. To help their clients better understand this outlook, they educate them about SEO best practices and arm them with a roadmap for success. This enables their clients to keep their websites optimized even long after SEO agencies are done with their jobs. Simply put, an SEO agency ultimately helps its client save money.

Search engine marketing can indeed be tricky but with the help of an SEO agency, search engine marketing success can only be a few steps away.

Thomas is an author and SEO expert. He teaches effective article marketing strategies with unique content articles. Take a look at his blog for new online SEO and web hosting related articles.