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DuctTapeMarketing.com
April 13, 2004
In this issue:
Featured Resource - Newsletters I
Read - by John Jantsch
Featured Tip - Is Your Website Ready For
Local Search Engine Traffic? -
John Jantsch
Featured Book - The 80/20 Principle - Richard Koch
Featured Listening - I Can't Be New -
Susan Werner
Websites are an awesome tool for small business owners even if they are
only trying to attract business from around the corner or in the next
town.
I launched another website last week to help describe my one-on-one
small service business marketing consulting, writing, and workshops. You
may in fact even find it mildly interesting. It is located at
JohnJantsch.com
Don't
forget to visit the
Duct Tape Weblog.
You can view content not available in this newsletter and even share your
own thoughts for others to view.
Thanks
for subscribing - John
Featured Resource - Newsletters I Read
Since you subscribe to this marketing
newsletter I assumed you might be interested in some of the newsletters
I read as well. Here are some that would highly recommend you subscribe
to.
Bold Insights from Bold Approach
- Monthly marketing advice that gives you very good detailed strategies
and tactics.
More
Clients - This one is weekly and comes from Robert Middleton an
expert in marketing for small service businesses.
MarketingProfs
-Huge collection of marketing information and reports
Featured Tip
Is Your Website Ready For Local
Search Engine Traffic?
By John Jantsch
I suppose the real reason for most local
small businesses to have a website at all is to provide information for
the local market, generate leads from local shoppers. But too
many small businesses have created websites more like monuments to their
company name. If someone knew the name of the company, they could
probably find the website. That was good to a point but what about those
people who just know they need what you sell but they don't know anybody
who sells it?
What if, instead, local businesses began
to think about their websites more like a listing in a phone directory.
What if they began to build and optimize their websites with the primary
intent of being found in their hometown as the leader in a category.
Someone looking for "Farm Fresh Tuna in Upper Cutbank, Montana" is going
to enter just such a search, right?
Google and Yahoo both announced this month
their model for tapping into the local search traffic. In other words
they are now going to make it easier for web surfers that want to find
an accountant in their home town to do so.
Everyone knew they would eventually get around to this very lucrative
market so now more than ever you need to prepare your website to be
found in your town.
More about local search at these sites.
http://www.google.com/lochp - Beta site
http://www.google.com/help/faq_local.html#what FAQ
http://local.yahoo.com/u_s__states - yahoo local
What I'm talking about today is "local" search engine optimization.
In one sense the principles are the same as everyday regular search
engine optimization but the way of thinking about them is a bit
different.
~~~~~~
gEEk Term definition: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the
science of making sure web pages are "designed" in such a way that
search engines can find, index, and rank them according to the value of
their content. For those of you who don't know, there is an entire
industry built around this science.
~~~~~~
In the old day the mindset was to create a website and optimize it for
anyone looking for a certain topic.
Local SEO focuses first on being found in your town....for a certain
topic. Geo targeting is the key. When someone is looking for a
veterinarian, they don't search locally (at the moment) for the name of
your firm. Think in terms of a Yellow Pages directory. They go to city
they are looking for and then the category and then the name of the firm
to call.
Local search is structured much the same. People who are looking for an
auto mechanic online will search "Kansas City Auto mechanic" In order to
win the local search game you must be able to win that type of search.
There are no hard and fast rules and even if there were they would
change but here are some things you need to begin to think about to bury
your competition in the local search game.
Title tags - Probably one of the most important info on your page
anyway so make sure your title reads something like "YOURFIRMNAME" Kansas
City's oldest bakery
H1 tags - Make sure that your keywords for your site and your
geography have H1 tags - The Best Baked Brioche in Peoria, Il
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Thinking this sounds great but not sure how you can get it done?
Let me give your website a fr~ee review and I'll show you just how to
get your site found locally. Don't get left behind as your competition
uses this powerful tool.
Send an email to
John@DuctTapeMarketing with "Review my site" in the subject and a
link to the site you would like me to review. I will get back to you
with suggestions that will help you get much more from your website.
Don't have a website?...well, I can help with that one too, just send an
email with "HELP" in the subject
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Content - Add your address and phone number early and prominently
(not a bad thing for every page really)
Meta tags - Opinions vary on the usefulness of these but there
are some tags that may gain usefulness depending on how the search
engines refine their methods.
meta name="zipcode"
content="64105,64113,64112,64110,64106,66207,66208,66210
meta name="city" content="Kansas City"
meta name="state" content="Missouri, Kansas"
meta name="ICBM" content="39.10246, -94.59009
City, State, and Zip code tags are pretty self explanatory but the ICBM
one is a bit out there but kind of cool too.
If you go to the GEOUrl Address Server
you can locate the exact latitude and longitude of your business. That's
what those two numbers after the ICBM tag are. (Of course I think that
is the same system they use to target bombs.)
Linking - Make your internal links local friendly - Instead of
"Remodeling Projects" use "Omaha Kitchen Projects"
DMOZ - The Open Directory Project is a directory of sites that
are listed by human volunteers. It seems that getting listed here gives
you high marks with search engines so you need to do it but make sure
that you go for the Regional listings all the way down to your town. It
is unlikely (and not very useful) that you will get listed for a broad
category, particularly if you don't provide world-wide service. Go for
the poodle clipping section of your town and you will have better luck.
Other Directories - Another good reason to get listed in DMOZ for
your town is that other local directories like Verizon's Smart Pages and
SBC's Yellow Pages rely on these listing as well. By the way, get listed
in as many of these phone book type of directories like Smart Pages as
you can. Some are free and there is speculation that initially the big
search engines will rely on these already built local directories.
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John Jantsch is a marketing consultant based in Kansas City, Mo. He
writes frequently on real world small business marketing tactics and is
the creator of “Duct Tape Marketing” a turn-key small business marketing
system. Check out his blog at
http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com/weblog.php
Featured Book
•
The 80/20 Principle - Richard Koch
Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto is famous for communicating
what has become known as the 80/20 principle - that 80% of the wealth
lay with 20% of the population. In this book the author shows you how
this principle applies to sales, marketing and profits. Find the 80%
that is wasted and you can do much more with much less.
Featured Listening and Such
I Can't Be New - Susan Werner - A wonderful collection of
American Songbook classics played on the piano and sung by a talent that
brings new life to Porter, Gershwin, et al. This is the perfect album to
put on a night in the middle of a spring rain storm.
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