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Increase Online Traffic To Your Small Business Website

Most small businesses now have websites. This is great, but what often happens is that a small business will hire a web developer to create an impressive website with no regard to search engine optimization or SEO strategies. There is no use developing an impressive website if no one can find it. This article will show you how to increase traffic to your small business website.

It is essential for a small business that your website is easily found. So how can a small business increase online traffic to their website? There are some essential ingredients that you can and should do even if you have a low budget online marketing plan.

1. Education

It is important for a small business owner to educate himself on what is search engine optimization (SEO). This means knowing how Google and the other search engines work so that you can play their game by their rules. There are tons of websites that will help you understand SEO and how to achieve it.

2. Start the campaign

Like a business plan, your small business needs an online marketing campaign plan. This establishes what you will use to increase traffic to your website. There is a lot available from keywords, Facebook optimization, online article writing, social bookmarking, videos for SEO and so on. The evolution of online marketing has come a long way since mailers and email newsletters. Make sure you have a clear plan about what online tools you are going to use and how you are going to use them.

3. Marketing on site

Once you know what SEO is and how it works, it’s time for your small business to do some on-site marketing online. This means tuning your website with profitable keywords that are in high demand and in low supply (just like real estate). You can use Google’s keyword tool for this or Wordtracker, which is a paid service.

Then you need to strategically place your keywords and know the difference between top keywords and long tail keywords. An often underrated but effective technique for on-site marketing is the use of images for SEO.

4. External marketing

This means getting online traffic to your website by using websites and tools outside of your website. It’s all about social media marketing for small businesses. Confused? Let me explain. Many small businesses now have a Facebook page for their businesses. There are a lot of Facebook marketing tips available, but this one and Twitter, which are the top two social media sites, are the places where you should be doing most of your external marketing so that people will be drawn to visit your website and see what it has to offer.

5. Trusted marketing

Do you use social media to whip your product or service? FAIL! This is a massive mistake many small businesses make and it really amounts to spam. As a small business, you must use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+ to build relationships through Trust Marketing.

6. Synergy

At the beginning I mentioned about having a good clear online marketing campaign plan. It is very important that your strategy is synergistic. Make sure your message is consistent across the different sites and tools you are using.

7. Measure

It is no good having a great small business website, an unreal Facebook home page, a regularly updated Twitter account, or a thousand articles online going to your website. You MUST also measure how each marketing channel is performing. Like asking a customer or customer who calls your company or enters “How did you find us?” Well, the great news about online marketing is that you don’t have to ask the customer that, you can find that information easily through various analytical internet marketing programs available. Facebook has “insights”, Google has Adwords, and there are plenty of companies that offer similar but more sophisticated measurements.

Measuring what your best keywords are, where your customers are from, what they click on, etc. will go a long way in tailoring your online marketing strategy to fine-tune it for massive results.

These are just some of the essential internet considerations that a small business should take into account in their online marketing. Of course, there are many others and these should not be ignored. Online marketing takes time, patience, and perseverance. It’s worth it?

Absolutely. Can you do it easily? If you can.

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