First, we need to understand the basics of the daily deal.  The concept makes sense on the surface – drive a ton of traffic to your business with deep discounts via a mass localized email.  You’ll breakeven (or perhaps lose a modest amount of money) on the deal, but the customers will return to buy again at full price.  You’ve increased your customer base and your profits in the long term.

Sounds logical, right?

Well, here is a summary of some of the experiences Third Marble customers have had with the Groupon and Living Social daily deal coupons:

1. Coupon clippers only buy when there’s a discount.  What we’re hearing is that very few of these ‘cheapskates’ actually have any loyalty to a company that offers a 50% off or better deal, then wants them to pay full-price on their next visit.  Shocker.  As a seasoned direct marketer, I used to measure and study the effect of the “life time value” of someone whose first purchase was at a discount vs. full price.  Guess what?  The full price shopper is almost always more loyal – they find value in your company – not your coupons.
2. You may bite off more than you can chew.  Yes, you will get an increase in your business – perhaps more than you can handle.  If you don’t make any money on the coupon transactions, you better make sure you don’t have to hire additional staff or resources to handle the increased volume.  That adds to your costs, which decrease your profits.
3. Are you ready to re-connect? Make sure you have the processes in place to re-connect with your Groupon / Living Social buyers.  In other words, if your profits from this deal are going to come from future purchases, make sure you have a method or process in place to communicate with them in the future – like getting their email address, mailing address, phone number and / or Facebook like.  If you can afford it, you may want to send coupons to these buyers that don’t repeat purchase in X number of weeks to encourage them to return.
4. Do Not Alienate Your Existing Customers!  This is the hidden cost that most do not think about.  If you get so busy taking care of your Groupon / Living Social buyers that you don’t make time for your long time, profitable customers, you may LOSE BUSINESS!  Example: Let’s say you take appointments (like a barber shop or optometrist) and you can handle 100 appointments per week.  If you sell 200 coupons, you may fill your appointment book for the next month or so.  What happens when your most profitable customers call to book an appointment and can’t get one for a month?  They’ll probably Google your competitors and take their business elsewhere.  Make sure you reserve time and resources for your existing, full-price paying, profitable customers.  No business can afford to lose their best customers.

I’m not trying to talk you out of trying Groupon or Living Social.  I’m simply trying to prepare you.  Really think through the process you’re going to need when the coupons start to hit.  Will you need additional phone support?  Additional staff?  Extra business cards, brochures, supplies, products?  Is your website ready?  How will you get them to buy from you again?

We’ve heard everything from horror stories to success stories with the daily deals.  In general, those that were prepared found success.  Those that were not did not.

We hope this helps!

Here are the basic variables:

1. Someone sees your listing on Google (like a Google Ad, a Google Places listing or a natural listing on Google).  Let’s call the Number of times your ad is visible each month “N” – ie. the number of impressions your listings get on Google each month.
2. The Click Thru Rate (“CTR%”) is the percentage of times your listing is clicked for every time it is displayed.  So if your CTR% is 5%, then you get 5 visitors to your website for every 100 times your listing is visible.
3. The next step in the equation is the Conversion Rate (“Conv%”)  – The percentage of people that contact you once they’ve seen your website.
4. Then there is your Closing Rate (“Close%”) – the percentage of time you close business with the people that call you.
5. And lastly, we’ll need the average revenue you get from each customer (“$”).

So here’s the final equation:

Monthly Revenue from Google    =   

N   x   CTR%   x   Conv%   x   Close%   x   $

Here’s an example:  Let’s assume your listings display 10,000 each month on Google (N = 10,000).  You have a 2% Click Thru Rate on your ads (CTR% = 2%).  1 out of every 20 visitors to your website call you (Conv% = 5%).  2 out of every 5 people that call you become a customer (Close% = 40%). The average amount a customer spends with you is $1000 ($ = $1000).  Your Revenue from Google should be about $4000 per month. (10,000  x  .02  x  .05  x  .40  x  $1000  =   $4000)

So how do you make more money on Google?

Increase N – Get more impressions by increasing your visibility on Google.

Increase CTR% – Make sure your keywords are relevant and your listings are compelling.

Increase Conv% – Make sure your website gives a visitor a good reason to call you.

Increase Close% – Do you have a consistent closing process once someone calls you?

Increase $ – Do have strategies to increase your average revenue per customer?

OK – the math lesson is over, put your algebra book away and start thinking about this.  The easiest thing to do first is work on the variable that is the weakest, or has the most potential for improvement.  Here are some suggestions for finding the weakest variable:

If you aren’t getting many visitors to your website, there are two main things to look at:

Are you visible on Page One of Google?  If you don’t know, request a Free Google Visibility Analysis and find out.  If you need more visibility (ie. need to increase “N”), then try Pay per Click (PPC) with our One Month Trial, get on (or optimize) your Google Places account and do more SEO.  Low visibility = low website visitors.

If you are getting lots of impressions (ie. your “N” is good), then your CTR% is too low.  This is usually from either poorly written ads, or more commonly, your keywords aren’t very relevant to your business.  The keywords may be too broad, or too narrow in focus.  Re-evaluate your targeted keywords.  Off-target keywords = low CTR%.

If you are getting lots of visitors to your website (ie. “ N   x   CTR% “ is good), but the phone never seems to ring, then look at:

Your website – does it give the visitor a compelling reason to call you? Is there a clear call-to-action like “call us for a free estimate”?  Is your phone number clear and bold at the top of every page?  Is your address at the top of every page (very important for local companies)?  Does the look of your website match the qualities of your company?  (In other words, if you are the low-cost leader, does it look inexpensive?  If you are the high quality company, does you website look like a high quality site?)  Bad website = low Conv%.

Your Keywords - Are they correctly targeted?  Are they locally targeted?  Are they targeted to the right geography?  Are they exactly what someone would search for if they wanted exactly what you sell (ie. are they relevant)?  Off-target keywords = off-target visitors = low Conv%.

If you are getting lots of phone calls, but never seem to close the calls, or if your average revenue from a customer is low, then take a good look at your closing process.  Do you have a well-optimized closing process?  Is it consistent and repeatable?  Have you experimented with your closing process?  Poor closing process = fewer customers and lower average revenue per customer.

Once you identify the weakest area, fix it.  In the example above, the conversion rate (Conv%) was only 5%.  If you fixed it and increased it to 10%, your revenue would jump to $8000 per month.

Continuing the process, if you then increased your monthly impressions from 10,000 to 20,000, your monthly revenue would climb to $16,000.  If you were able to improve your Close Rate (Close%) from 40% to 60%, then your monthly revenue jumps to $24,000.  Let’s say you then increased your average revenue from each customer ($) from $1000 to $1200.  Now your monthly revenue is $28,800.  Finally, if your Click Thru Rate were to increase from 2% to 2.5%, your monthly revenue would become $36,000.

Please remember, this is an academic exercise, and no one can guarantee such results.  But you get the idea.

I hope this helps – if it does, please leave a reply, or click the “Like” button below.

Chris

More “Traffic” to your website will not always bring you more business.  More “Relevant Traffic” will bring you more business.  As an example, if I were to drive 10,000 people to your website interested in winning $1000, you would get 10,000 visitors looking for free money.  I doubt many of them would be interested in anything else on your website.  However, if I were to drive 100 visitors to a website for a store in Anytown, VA that sold American flags, and all 100 of them lived within 10 miles of the store and they just searched Google for the phrase “American flag store in Anytown, VA”, you might expect to get a few phone calls.

To further illustrate the idea and importance of “Relevant Traffic”, I like to use the pyramid model:

The Google Advertising Pyramid

At the top of the pyramid, the search phrases are very targeted to a business.   Using my typical pizza restaurant example, the search terms at the top of the pyramid might be something like “Italian Restaurant Pizza Delivery Coupons in Anytown, VA”.  This term is very specific and there aren’t very many websites that would want to be found for that phrase.  The person that enters this phrase is looking for something very specific.  If you owned an Italian restaurant in Anytown that delivered pizza and you had delivery coupons on your website, then this search phrase would be highly likely to get you a phone call.  In other words, that visitor would be very “Relevant” to your business.  On the other hand, this phrase isn’t searched for very frequently, probably only once or twice a month.

At the bottom of the pyramid, there are the phrases that are very broad in nature.  As an example, the search phrase “restaurant” would be near the bottom of the pyramid.  The person that enters “restaurant” as a search term could be looking for a job in a restaurant, a sub shop, hamburgers, breakfast, Chinese food, a restaurant that takes reservations for a client dinner, McDonalds, or even for a restaurant that’s for sale – in any city in the country also.  So for the pizza restaurant mentioned previously, most of the people searching for “restaurant” would probably be “Irrelevant” and unlikely to convert to a customer.

Unfortunately, the easiest way to get a lot of traffic to a website is to target a few very broad terms – ie. target the irrelevant traffic at the bottom of the pyramid.  This is how some other Pay per Click companies operate, so you need to be a little careful when selecting a Pay per Click company.  Some of them tend to charge more since they will get you a ton of “traffic” to your website, but you may not get too many phone calls.

At Third Marble Marketing, we strive to make sure the traffic from our Local Google Advertising is Relevant Traffic from the top of the pyramid.  Yes, we have to spend more time setting up hundreds of phrases from the top of the pyramid, instead of just three or four from the bottom.  But whether you are spending $100 per month, or $1000 per month with Third Marble Marketing, we make sure you are getting the most relevant visitors for your money (so you can get the most customers for your money).

I hope this helps – if it does, please leave a reply, or click the “Like” button below.

Continuing our discussion, this month, I want to describe the next few places to put your keywords to help improve your rankings in the search engines like Google.  Last month we talked about the Title Tags, the Meta Description and the URL.  While those are the three most important places to put your keywords, this month, we will discuss the next most important places that will get you just a little higher in the rankings – Header Tags, Alt Tags and Copy.

Header Tags

Once you have selected your ideal keyword phrase for a page on your website, you should incorporate as many of those keywords into the “Headline” of that page.  In the image below, the phrase “Where to Put KeyWords to be on Page One of Google (Part 1)” is considered the Headline for the web page:

In the HTML for this web page, the Header Tags (sometimes called “H” Tags) define the Headline for a web page.  It simply looks like this in the code:

<h1>Where to Put KeyWords to be on Page One of Google (Part 1)</h1>

(Hint: If you want to see the HTML for your web page, right click in any blank area of your web page and select “View Source” or “View Page Source”.)

The Header Tags on a web page are a lot like the headlines for newspaper articles – they tell the reader what the articles (or in this case the web page) are about.  Google and the other search engines factor this thinking into their indexing algorithms, so it is important that your Header Tags (Headlines) contain keywords that people would search for to find your web site.

A great example of a bad headline is “Welcome to our Web Site”.  That could be anyone’s website.  For our pizza restaurant example, a better headline would be “ABC Pizza – A Pizza Restaurant in Anytown, VA”.

Alt Tags

Google and other search engines can’t understand images, so website images have “Alt Tags”.  These tags are designed to be description of the image.  Since “an image is worth a thousand words”, search engines often use the words in the Alt Tags in their search algorithms.  Make sure your images all have meaningful Alt Tags that contain your ideal keywords.  You can see the Alt Tag for an image by simply hovering your cursor over the image, like this:

An Example of how to see an Alt Tag.

Your Website Copy

Writing your website copy is always a challenge.  Not only do you have to sell your customers on your product or service, you also have to make the copy search engine friendly.  There are a few things that you should try to do with your website copy, but not at the expense of losing a potential phone call or customer.  If you can, try to incorporate a few of these strategies in your copy writing:

• Make your ideal keywords bold whenever possible, without looking ridiculous.
• Do not repeat the same phrase over and over and over and over and over again.  The search engine will think you are spamming.  Make sure the copy reads like it is “normal” English and that it makes sense to the reader.
• Try to make your hyper-links meaningful.  Instead of “Click Here“, use a hyper-link like “Learn more about Local Google Advertising“.  The words in the link make a small difference.
• The words at the beginning of your web page carry more weight, so make sure your ideal keyword phrase is in the first sentence.

If you don’t know how to make any of these changes yourself, your web person should be able to do it.  These are easy changes to make, so don’t let your web person charge you too much either.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact us.  In the meantime, if you think you need help with selecting your ideal keyword phrase, check out our $900 Google Trial with a Free SEO Suggestion Report.

I hope this helps – if it does, please leave a reply below, or click the “Like” button below.

• Words in the URL (ie. www.keywords.com/key-words/)
• Title Tags
• Meta Description
• Header Tags
• Alt Tags
• Links
• Copy (including bold font words)

Search Engine Optimization of URLs

Let’s say your “ideal keyword phrase” is “pizza restaurant Anytown VA”.  If your URL is “www.mom-and-pop-italian.com”, this isn’t going to help much.  If you have extra money to spend, consider buying the URL “www.pizza-restaurant-anytown-va.com” and having someone create a second website for you.  If that’s not practical, then you may want to ask your web person to change the URL for your home page to “www.mom-and-pop-italian.com/pizza-restaurant-anytown-va”.

If the URLs on some of your pages look like “www.mom-and-pop-italian.com/page=123″, then change the “/page=123″ to “/pizza-restaurant”.  If these options aren’t appealing, don’t worry, we have a few more tricks.

A little about Google

Before we get into Title Tags, I’d like to talk a little about Google.  Google’s mission is to provide their searchers with the most relevant search results possible.  So when someone enters keywords into Google, what Google displays on their Search Results Page better have those keywords, otherwise Google will look foolish.  Makes sense, right?  So if we understand what shows up on their search results, we’ll know where to put our keywords.  Below is a screen shot of a search result…

Three pieces of a Google Search Result and where they come from.

A = Title Tag, B = Meta Description, C = URL

So if the Title Tag, the Meta Description and the URL are what Google is showing you in their search engine results, then it stands to reason that they would be the most important words on a website for search engine optimization.  If these three elements contain your ideal keyword phrase, then you’ve greatly increased your chances of being on Page One.

Search Engine Optimization of Title Tags

If you want to know what your current Title Tag is on your website’s home page is, simply go to your website and look in the far upper right of browser window, or, if you have browser tabs, you can find it there.  Here is an example of where to look:

This shows the location of the Title Tag and the URL.

Once you know your “ideal keyword phrase”, change your Title Tag so it matches your ideal keyword phrase.  Your Title Tag should be less than 60 characters, including spaces.  You should also avoid short words like “in”, “at”, “the”, etc.  Try not to repeat any one word more than once or Google will think you are spamming your Title Tag.  In the pizza example, a good Title Tag might be “Pizza Restaurant Anytown VA | Italian Restaurant | Delivery” (59 characters).

Search Engine Optimization of Meta Descriptions

The Meta Description cannot be seen on your website or in your browser window.  It’s part of your website code that your web person added.  Here’s what one looks like:

<meta name=”description” content=”Local Google Advertising. Easy, Effective, Affordable. Local Pay per Click (PPC) for local businesses. Google AdWords service at affordable prices.” />

To see your Meta Description, right click in an open area of your website’s home page, then click on “View Source” to see the html code for your home page.  If you don’t see a line in the code that starts with “<meta name=”description” content=”, then you may not have a meta description on your home page.

To optimize your Meta Description, simply make the first few words the same as your Title Tag.  Meta Descriptions should be less than 150 characters, but they can be a little longer.  Do not repeat words too many times, or again, Google will think you are spamming.  Remember this is the copy that a potential customer will read on Google’s search results page.  Make sure it is written in complete sentences and is free of misspellings.  Not only do you want people to see your search result, but you also want them to click on it.  This is somewhat of an art form. You need to create compelling copy that sells to help drive more traffic to your website, but also maximize the keyword usage.  For the pizza restaurant  example, a Meta Description would be something like:

Pizza restaurant in Anytown, VA. Enjoy our Italian restaurant favorites like pizza, spaghetti, lasagna and more. Pizza delivery and carry out available. (152 characters).

Next time, I’ll talk about more about Header Tags, Alt Tags, images, copy and other ways to optimize your own website for the search engines.  In the meantime, if you think you need help with selecting your ideal keyword phrase, check out our $900 Google Trial with a Free SEO Suggestion Report.

I hope this helps – if it does, please leave a reply below, or click the “Like” button below.

For small, local businesses that want to be listed on Page One of Google, the “key to keywords” is selecting a good phrase that best describes your business AND your location.  Once you determine a good phrase for your business, you can start adding that phrase strategically throughout your website and other places on the internet.  This should dramatically increase your chances of being on Page One of Google when someone enters that phrase.

The ideal phrase for most local businesses should be a combination of two basic phrases – the “WHAT” phrase and the “WHERE” phrase.

• The “WHAT” phrase is a keyword or phrase that accurately describes your best product or service.  By ‘best’, I mean your most profitable, most asked for, best selling or your customer’s favorite product or service.
• The “WHERE” phrase is simply the city and state from the physical address of your store or office location.

First, let’s talk about the “WHERE” phrase.  Small businesses often find it difficult to compete with national companies or franchises.  These large companies often have large budgets, can afford the very best SEO guys and can dominate keywords on a national level.  For a small business with small budgets, the idea is to dominate the local level since most of your customers probably come from within 10 or 20 miles of your location.  By adding your business’s city and state to your “ideal keyword phrase”, your website can appear above the national companies on Page One of Google.  It is important to select your business’s location and make sure it’s the exact city in your physical location’s address.  In other words, if you are located in a suburb of a major city, don’t try to use the name of the major city.  I’ll discuss the reasons why this is important when I talk about how to optimize your Google Places page.

Now, let’s look at how to find good keywords for the “WHAT” phrase.  If you want to spend the money, most decent SEO companies can generate a list of keywords for you.  If you don’t want to spend the money, you can do it yourself.  Here’s how:

• Make a list of 10 or so phrases that you think someone might enter into Google to find your products or service, other than your business name.
• Circle the phrases that describe products and services that generate the most profit for you.
• Circle the phrase or two that most prospect customers call about.
• Circle the phrase or phrases that you would have been listed under in the Yellow Pages.
• Ask several friends what they would enter into Google if they wanted to find a business like yours.  Circle or add any of their responses.

You should have a list of a few circled phrases.  If one or two stand out as clear winners, that’s your phrase.

If you want a more scientific way to determine your best WHAT phrase, ask us about Third Marble Marketing’s SEO Suggestion Report.

To finish, simply add the “WHAT” phrase to the “WHERE” phrase.  For example, if you own a pizza shop in Anytown, VA, your keyword phrase might be “pizza restaurant Anytown VA”.  If your pizza restaurant has a very profitable pizza delivery service, then your keyword phrase might be “pizza delivery Anytown, VA”.

In my next article, I’ll discuss what you should do with this keyword phrase to get your business exposure on Page One of Google.

I hope this helps – if it does, please leave a reply below, or click the “Like” button below.

If you already have a Google Places Account, to get the most out of it, you need to optimize it. Optimizing means to “teach” Google to display your listing when someone enters your search phrase. For more on how to pick your search phrase, see my article on “The “Key” to SEO – Selecting the right Keywords”.

The purpose of today’s article is to give you a few tips to help your Google Places Account get listed on Page One of Google’s search results.

Google Places Optimization Tip #1:

The first trick is to find the right keyword phrase for your local business. For more on how to do this, see my article titled “The Key to SEO – Selecting the Right Keywords”.
As an example for this article, if you own a pizza restaurant in Anytown, VA, then your keyword phrase should probably be “pizza restaurant Anytown, VA”. The first half of the phrase describes WHAT your business is and would be something that a person would enter into a search engine (ie. “pizza restaurant”). The second half is WHERE you are located (ie. “Anytown, VA”).

Google Place Optimization Tip #2:

Once you have the right keyword phrase, change your Google Places description so that it includes that exact phrase as the first few words, like this:

“Pizza Restaurant in Any Town, VA. Our pizza restaurant sells pizza, subs, gyros and Italian dishes. Pizza delivery and carry-out available. Serving Any Town, Major City and Tiny Suburb, VA.”

Google Places Optimization Tip #3:

Next, make sure your Google Places Categories are all optimized. You get five categories to choose from. The first one has to be from Google’s pre-determined categories. In our example, we would select “Pizza Restaurant”. The next four categories can be any phrase you want. You may want to try different variations of phrases that some would enter into a search engine to find what you sell, like: “pizza delivery”, “pizza coupons”, “Italian food” and “Italian restaurant”.

In Google Places, this is where you set-up your Company Description and Categories.

Google Places Optimization Tip #4:

There is a section at the end of the Google Places set-up screen called “Additional Details”. This is a section that allows you to add any additional details about your company. This is a good place to reinforce your keywords again. Remember, most people when looking for a business like yours will enter keywords that describe what they need. Google uses the example “Parking available : Yes”. “Parking” is probably not something I would search for if I was looking for pizza. However, I might search Google for “Pizza delivery”, so “Pizza Delivery : Yes” would be a good option. You might also consider phrases like “Restaurant type : Italian”, “Carry-out : yes”, “Pizza coupons : Available on Website”, etc… If you need ideas for keywords, your Pay-per-Click data is an excellent source. If you don’t have any Pay-per-Click data, check out our $900 Google Trial.

This is the "Additional Details" section in the Google Places Account set up.

Google Places Optimization Tip #5:

Add a link to your Google Places pages to your website. Once your Google Places page is up, in the upper right corner, there is a link called “Link”. If you click that link, it will give you the URL for your Google Places Page.

Google Places Optimization Tip #6:

Get your customers to add reviews to your Google Places page. The easiest way to do this is to ask your best customers to go to your website, click the link you made in Tip #5, and add a review. These reviews make your page stand out and people tend to trust someone with 10 reviews and a 4.8 star rating. Never add any reviews yourself!

Google Places Optimization Tip #7:

Add several images to your Google Places Account. I like to rename the images to they match the company’s keyword phrase. In other words, if the image you are about to add is “IMG1023.jpg”, then rename it something like “pizza-restaurant-anytown-va-1.jpg” before adding it to your Google Places Account.

Google Places Optimization Tip #8:

Add a YouTube video. Google owns YouTube, so if you have a video on YouTube, add it. If you can, make the name of the video your keyword phrase – ie. “Pizza Restaurant Anytown, VA”.

Google Places Optimization Tip #9:

Make sure your Google Places Account is complete. Fill out all the fields you can, including the “Hours of operation” and “Payment options”.

If your listing doesn’t show up in a month or two for your keyword phrase, then try a new keyword phrase and re-optimize your Places Account. If you want to get even more from your Google Places Account, call us to find out how we can use Google Pay-per-Click to increase the traffic to your Google Places Account.

I hope this helps – if it does, please leave a reply below, or click the “Like” button below.

Chris Fawcett, president of Third Marble Marketing, said, “We feel that this deal will help small businesses in our area grow.  Third Marble (Marketing) was founded to help small businesses grow and compete online to help the economy grow.  I don’t think people realize that most new jobs in this country are created by small businesses – not Wall Street.  For this economy to get better, small businesses need to prosper.  We figure if Third Marble Marketing can help small businesses grow, then we’re helping to fix the economy.  We feel that Shop Chesterfield First shares these same values and concerns for the local economy.”

Shop Chesterfield First is a Chesterfield, VA website with a mission to maintain Chesterfield County’s economic vitality by educating the residents of Chesterfield County, VA about the importance of supporting their local business establishments. They understand that the local businesses are the backbone of their community and the sales tax revenues from purchases in the county help to fund schools, police, fire and emergency medical services, and more.

Third Marble Marketing is an internet marketing company located in Chesterfield County, VA that specializes in advertising small and local businesses on Google.

For more information about Shop Chesterfield First, visit their website – www.ShopChesterfieldFirst.com.

For more information about Third Marble Marketing, or their new offer for Shop Chesterfield First businesses, call 804-839-4821, or visit www.ThirdMarbleMarketing.com.

Why do small business owners let other online advertising agencies get away with the “Website Traffic Scam”?

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Then you may be a victim also. Let me explain.

In simple terms, you can classify website traffic two ways – visitors that want to do business with you and visitors that won’t. If someone is searching for what you sell and they live near your location, then they’ll probably buy from you. If they don’t live near your small business or they aren’t searching for what you sell, they probably won’t.

You see, I can drive 10,000 visitors to anyone’s website. But, I guarantee they will NEVER buy from you. All I have to do is build a bunch of links to you website that say “Free Money”. Do you think anyone that clicked on that link will buy your product or service? No. But I drove “traffic”, right? But how much would you pay a company to drive 10,000 visitors to your website? $1000? What a deal! That’s only 10 cents per visitor!

What if I could drive 50 visitors to your website for $100? That sounds like a bad deal right? That’s $2.00 per visitor – 20 times the cost as the deal above.

Let’s say you own a small Maid Service in Anytown, USA. What if those visitors to your website just entered the search term “Maid Service in Anytown, USA” into Google and they live with in 10 miles of your location? How many of those visitors to your website would pick-up the phone and call you about your service? 1 in 10? 1 in 20? Each phone call would cost you around $20-$40 dollars. If the profit from your average customer is $200, then you would make money (about $160-$180 per customer).

By contrast, if you spend $1000 on worthless traffic to get zero phone calls from 10,000 visitors that don’t live near you that were looking for Free Money, you just lost $1000.

I’m exaggerating to make a point – not all traffic is created equal – and not all traffic will drive new customers. Be careful when you hire an advertising agency that promises traffic, not customers. Don’t fall victim to the “Website Traffic Scam”.

I hope this helps.

1. SEO – Appearing in the “Natural” Results Section

The first strategy is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.  This is the art / science of convincing Google that your website is the most relevant website for a particular set of search terms.  With a good SEO strategy, your business can be in the “Organic” or “Natural” results section of Google’s Search Results Page.  For a local business, the first step is to know what to optimize for.  In most cases, it would be the combination of the phrase that best describes your product or service and the city and state your are located.  Keep an eye out for my next post on how to identify good phrases for your business.  After identifying the right keywords to optimize for, the next step is to change your title tags, meta descriptions, headlines, copy and perhaps your URL’s to contain those keywords you are trying to optimize for.  There are numerous other methods for climbing the page ranks, so we always recommend hiring an experienced SEO expert to this for you.

2 – Google Places – Appearing in the Map Section

If you enter a locally oriented phrase into Google’s Search Engine, Google will typically display a map of that local area with “pins” that show the location of the business you are searching for.  These “pins” are typically linked to a Google Places Page.  If you don’t have a Google Places Page set-up for your company, then just do it.  Here’s a guide to Google Places.  The trick to being on Page One of Google is to set-up one of your Categories as a pre-defined Google Category, then set the other four available Categories to match your targeted keywords on your website.  (Again, keep an eye out for my next post on how to find your ideal Keywords.)  You should also make sure your company’s description has your target keywords as well.

3 – Google Pay-Per-Click – Appering in the “Sponsored Links” or “Ads” Section

This is the fastest and most reliable way to be on Page One of Google.  However, it’s also the most expensive.  Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is exactly what it says – you pay every time someone clicks on your ad.  It is also the most effective.  Why?  Because SEO and Google Places can only be optimized for a handful of keyword phrases.  If you offer many different services, it’s nearly impossible to be on Page One of Google for them all.  PPC is the best way to make sure someone looking for any of your services finds you.  The other reason it is the most effective is you can also go very broad with your keyword phrases.  It’s fairly easy to optimize a website or a Google Places Page for a term like “pizza delivery Anytown, VA”, but not so easy for a local company to get the phrase “pizza delivery”.  With PPC, you can bid on the term “pizza delivery” and be on Page One.

If you have an online marketing consultant tell you one of these methods is better than the other – run.  If someone enters a search term related to your business into Google, wouldn’t you want to be on Page One as many times as possible?  For the right keyword phrases, I always recommend trying to be on Page One of Google as many times as you possibly can.

I hope this helps – if it does, please leave a reply below, or click the “Like” button below.