Preparing to market my small business online

Before launching your campaign, we take a few steps that will maximize its effectiveness:

1. Competitive analysis
   We start by analyzing a few of your top competitors. We find them by searching Google for the keywords you think you want to rank for, then observe what they’re doing to market themselves online. Are they running pay-per-click (PPC) ads? Is their website friendly and easy to navigate? How strong is their value proposition? Are they engaging with customers via social media? How long has their website been around, and how many backlinks does it have? If necessary, we’ll work with you to adjust your strategy to make sure you won’t be overlooked when you compete with these businesses head-to-head.
2. Keyword research
   When we did your competitive analysis we were searching for words we thought people were typing. But what are they really typing? You may think most people know you as a “personal injury attorney,” but in reality, the search data may show that most people are looking for something more specific like “dog bite lawyer.” There are many different tools that you can use to help you brainstorm synonyms, misspellings, or different angles to investigate. There are then many more tools that will help you gather search volumes (such as the Google keyword tool). One of our favorite approaches is to run an actual PPC campaign for a few weeks on a variety of different keywords and see which ads perform well in order to inform our keyword targeting recommendations. The goal of keyword research is to determine which keywords and phrases will be most profitable for you to rank for on search engines.
3. Conversion rate optimization
   The next step is to take a close look at the experience a visitor has when they get to your website. It does no good to bring in a potential customer only to have them scared off because they are confused or lost on your website. For conversion rate optimization, we perform a 25 point check on various aspects of your website like readability, how fast it loads, how easy it is to navigate, how well the content is written and so forth. Before driving any traffic to your site, it’s important to make sure that it will convert as much incoming traffic as possible into new customers.
4. Metrics
   How will you know if your marketing campaign is succeeding? Metrics are critical to the success of your campaign. We first help our customers define what “success” means for their website. Is success measured by the number of phone calls generated? Or the number of forms filled out? Or simply the number of visitors who see the site? Downloads of a whitepaper? Next, we help our customers set up Google Analytics to track traffic patterns and further inform our campaign. If appropriate, we’ll also set up call tracking to observe results that aren’t measurable by your website.
5. Baseline report
   You may have already have some traffic coming to your website before hiring us, so we run a baseline report to assess where your marketing campaign is at the onset so we can see how much we help you improve. A baseline report will include information like total number of visitors and conversions/leads, an assessment of your conversion rate, your current search engine rankings and other useful information which we can compare against in future reports.

How to market my small business online

Now that the initial preparation is done we’re ready to market. Depending on our findings during phase 1, we adjust our strategy to fit your industry & business. However, the resulting monthly package usually includes some combination of the following:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
  SEO is the process of helping Google and other search engines recognize that you are the “authority” or most relevant source of information for what their user is searching for. In order to determine this, Google crawls your website far in advance and uses over 100 factors of their algorithm to “rank” you against other sites. That way when a user searches for information, they just need to look you up in their database. Some of the key factors for SEO include what the title of your page is, how often you use the relevant words in your content and how many other sites link to you. During the SEO process, we’re making changes to content on your site and visiting other sites to encourage them to link to you so that the search engine “bots” will give you a higher score when they come to rank you.
• Local directory marketing
  Many visitors rely on sites like Google Maps, Merchant Circle or Yelp to find local vendors. For many businesses, it can be extremely worthwhile to make sure your business’ listing on these services is clear, concise and ranked highly. Many of the same techniques from SEO apply to local directory marketing. Many industries have industry-specific directories apart from the big name directories.
• Paid advertising
  One major downside of organic marketing is that it can take a long time (3 to 6 months or even longer in some industries). Paid advertising is nice because it’s instant (as soon as you pay, you’re up and driving traffic) and it’s scalable (you can generally do as much of it as you want). When doing paid advertising, you’re usually paying a site like Google or Facebook to run your ads, but Skyhook can manage your budget for you to ensure that you make the most of your budget.
• Relationship marketing
  Everybody knows that it’s far easier to keep a customer than to bring in a new one. With relationship marketing, we help you automate the process of following up with customers on regular intervals, thanking them for their business and reminding them of your other services. This is often through email, but can also be through social networks. Through relationship marketing, you can also gather feedback from unhappy customers that will help you improve your business.
• Social media marketing
  Social media is online word of mouth. We can help you give your happiest customers a megaphone so that they can spread the word to their friends. We can help you deal with the negative effects of an unhappy customer who leaves a bad review online. People are talking about your business online right now, so why not be a part of the conversation?

How Skyhook does business

Online marketing requires nearly constant attention and effort, but the payout can be huge if it’s done properly. At Skyhook, we’re so confident that you will see return on investment from hiring us that all of our contracts are month-to-month. We’re in constant communication with you, and we send a monthly report on the results of our efforts so you can see exactly what your dollars are buying you.

If you want your website to be an effective tool for generating revenue it needs to stand out! With millions of websites it is important to make sure that yours doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. Our #1 goal at Skyhook Internet Marketing is to help your company succeed. We believe that a quality website is more than a glorified business card; it is a source of revenue that will pay for itself a hundred times over.

Strategy Consultation:

When we begin a new project for a client we want to know exactly what their expectations are. We stress communication to make sure that all of the clients needs are met, and that they are completely satisfied! In order to make your site a success we’ll need to discuss several items with you, including:

• Brand development & design
• User experience design
• Market & keyword research
• Baseline reports
• Internet marketing principles

Getting Traffic to Your Site:

Simply building a website doesn’t mean that people will visit it. In business it is understood that marketing is an ongoing process. Here at Skyhook we are very dedicated to driving people to your website. We offer monthly marketing packages to fit the needs of your business.

Skyhook Internet Marketing has years of experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is key for driving traffic to your website and giving it online visibility. We work with you to optimize keyword search results and get your website the business your are looking for.

If you are interested in having a website built, or are curious about what Skyhook Internet Marketing can do for you, give us a call at (480) 331-8905

I can’t tell you how other website design firms do it, but let me tell you how we do it.

Collect information and provide a free, itemized estimate
Before we provide an estimate for your web project, we want to know all about your business. We believe that we will be much better marketers if we understand and believe in your product completely — that way we don’t have to pretend. We also want to make sure that you fully understand your problem. We have done this before, and we will ask difficult questions to make sure that the whole process is fully understood by both parties. In our experience we have come across dozens of products and solutions that will make building your website easier. There is no need to re-invent the wheel.

We will then take all of our recommendations and provide an itemized quote for you. The choice is yours which items you will do initially, which ones you will leave for later, and which ones you want to scratch all together. The final quote price will then be easily estimated.

Start with a template
The majority of our websites come from templates or pre-made designs. We find that it’s easier for most people to pick and choose what they want from a template site and then pay us only to customize it (even if it’s changed extensively) to create the kind of design they want. In cases where no customization is needed, you can save a bundle of money by using a pre-built solution by a professional graphic artist.

If you’ve already got a design in mind, we can work with that too. Our graphic artist can listen to your requests and provide mock-up designs based on what you want.

Add functionality
Once the design is solidified, the next step in website development is to add functionality. We will discuss the regions of your page that you would like to have special functionality — web forms, message boards, interaction, flash, etc. — and we will take care of the programming to make it happen.

Focus on internet marketing from the beginning
Internet marketing cannot be an afterthought. After all, your website is useless to you unless it makes you money. Before agreeing to an internet marketing job, we perform extensive keyword research to find out exactly what the competition is like. That way, we can sculpt your content in such a way to achieve maximum search engine rankings.

Final walkthrough
Your quote will also give you a timeframe for the project. You will receive periodic updates throughout the process (along with necessary communication), and will be given the opportunity to do a final walkthrough before your site goes live. All of our sites are built in a secret development area which you will have access to, and during the final walkthrough you will be able to inspect every facet of the project and insure that it is what you had in mind. Once the page is approved, we will help get the code transfered to your live server for all to see.

Continued relationship
We’ve been in business long enough to learn that even project based work doesn’t end when the project ends. We aim to develop an on-going relationship with our clients so that they can feel comfortable asking us questions and using our services in the future. If you stand still, your competition will pass you by and that’s why having a powerful internet marketing partner is so important.

If you’d like a free quote, give us a call or fill out our online contact form.

We look forward to working with you!

Dallin

These advancements, coupled with everything the internet has to offer on top of that, provide a powerful opportunity for business owners and individuals looking to get themselves or their product/service noticed by a massive and diverse audience. Internet marketing is the key to a successful business in our day. By overlooking the tremendous opportunity to market a business to millions of viewers everyday, one is basically saying to himself/herself that they are not concerned with establishing a successful business.

However, simply having a website is one thing. Having a GOOD website is a completely different story and can mean all the difference in the success of a business. As a search engine optimizer I often get asked a number of different questions from clients. Most of these questions revolve somewhere along the lines of, “How can I get my site to come up number one on Google?,” “What keywords should I use to optimize my website?,” or “How can I drive more traffic to my site?” All of these are good questions. However, I think sometimes business owners don’t understand that the answer to each of these questions is more simple than complex. We hear often about different strategies to “trick” google or yahoo into ranking our site higher or giving us a better score. There is a popular belief that google has some sort of underlying code that optimizers can crack and therefore automatically boost any website to the top of a the ranks for any keyword. This is simply not the case. Though there are a number of different techniques that can be utilized to help optimize a sight and make it more user friendly, relevant, and thus more “google” friendly, the ultimate deciding factor in how a website is ranked by google is relevancy. in other words, if you want google to think you have a good site, you have to HAVE a good site. No matter what you do for optimization, if it’s a bad site, chances are it will still be bad even after a heavy and steady dosage of SEO and SEM.

SEO and SEM stand for “Search Engine Optimization” and “Search Engine Marketing” not “Search Engine Overpowering” and “Search Engine Manipulation.” Basically what I’m saying is you’re probably tricking yourself if you think you can trick Google. The technology provided by this one company is revolutionizing the world as we speak. They are developing new and innovative internet tools faster than most can even keep up with. There’s just no sense in trying to find a loop hole. That said, given the length of this post already, I want to quickly list my top three pieces of advice for businesses thinking of building a new website or simply optimizing an existing website.

1. Content Content Content! Content is the Key! If you wish to rank high for “door bells,” there had better be information on your site about doors bells. If you want to see what you’re up against, type “door bells” in the google search bar and visit the top three or four sites and see how much information they provide about “door bells.” If you want to outrank them you’ll need to have more, and, if not more, better content than these top competitors.

2. Relevancy! This goes along the same lines as content but is a bit more in depth and technical. For example, if you’re trying to market “sunglasses,” your content should have words like, “sunny, summer, UV rays, sun protection, lenses, frames…etc. These words, “theme” words, should be interspersed throughout the entire site and especially on the homepage.

3. Blogging! Having a blog for you site is huge because search engines love to provide people with the latest breaking news in all topics. Search engines know that blogs provide the fastest means to market an idea or a story. Thus, when new content is posted on a blog the search engine detects new and exciting content and will quickly give the article a high ranking for keywords that show up often in that particular article. People want the latest news and this is what search engines are giving the people by giving fast high rankings to blog posts. Most blogs, especially wordpress based blogs, have built in pinging devices that notify top search engines and blog engines the moment an article is published which brings a web crawler from that search engine to the blog immediately to crawl if for content. The power of blogging is not limited to simply having your own blog, it is also helpful to actively participate on other blogs and forums that are relevent to your site. This can not only provide opportunities to create quality links to your site, but also gets you noticed by the members of those blogs and forums who then tell others they know about your services. AWeee the beauty of networking.

So there you have it. My top three SEO and SEM tips I utilize on a daily basis. While these are very important there are still a number of other techniques that are essential in optimizing a website and driving increased amounts of traffic to it. There will be more talk of these other techniques in later posts, but for now I hope this helps spark the attention of anyone thinking of optimizing an existing site or building a new website.

-Joe