Most of the local business owners, who I know, still don’t have a web presence -for a combination of reasons. Many business owners are from my age group and don’t feel comfortable setting up a website. So, they pay somebody else to do it or it never gets done. There are a multitude of reasons to avoid launching your business on the web, and all of them are “lame excuses.”

As I travel around town, I get to hear all the excuses. “I’m too old,” “Our business isn’t the Internet type,” and “I don’t know HTML.” You can tell everybody else those excuses, but do you want to grow your business or not? The vast majority of small businesses fail, and the Internet is the cheapest form of advertising available.

If haven’t launched a website or Blog, you are delaying business marketing progress for nothing. Take a computer class, learn from your kids, or learn from your grandchildren, but start as soon as possible. Perhaps, your grandchild can earn some money teaching you how to make even more money.

Blogs are easy to start with, since you don’t need to have any HTML knowledge. You can also go to Blogger, and get a free Blog. It might take you 10 to 15 minutes to set up and start posting information right away.

Some website hosts work like that too, but let’s assume you have a site of some kind. Did you know your website host might have a Blog feature built in, at no extra charge? If you have this feature, you can easily build a commercial Blog.

For a small business, with a website and commercial Blog, you should be able to establish your natural search engine rankings. Sometimes, these are called “organic rankings” and you don’t have to pay a penny for them. It may take a few months or more to establish yourself, and you should make regular posts.

For optimum results, your regular posts can be daily, a few times per week, or once a week. More postings are much better and will have significant impact on your rankings. Search engines love frequent posts, such as those found in Blogs.

Instead of worrying about Google algorithms, and SEO(search engine optimization) theories, go back to the basics and boost your rankings with content. Most of us have heard, “Content is King,” and it is totally true.

So what do you say about your business? Tell your established customers and prospects about your service and products. Explain what your unique selling proposition (USP) is. This is what makes you different from similar businesses in your town.

When you have new products, or are looking for feedback about new product development, a Blog is extremely useful. Your customers and prospects can leave you feedback, so marketing research is very easy.

Lastly, don’t shy away from a “gold mine.” Free advertising is too valuable to ignore. Blogs are the advertising bargain of the decade and possibly, of the 21st century.

Copyright 2005 - Paul Jerard / Aura Publications

About the author:

Paul Jerard is the director of Yoga teacher training at Aura in RI. He’s a master instructor of martial arts and Yoga. He teaches Yoga, martial arts, and fitness. He wrote: Is Running a Yoga Business Right for You? For Yoga students wanting to be a Yoga teacher. http://www.yoga-teacher-training.org

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Notice: This article above was written by a 3rd party author and included here “as is” for informational purposes only. The authors of this site make no claims and take no responsibility for the accuracy, use or misuse of the content of this article. If you like the article, please visit the authors site for more information.

When an online marketer is designing and setting up web pages they may use a Meta information to allow search engines to gain an understanding of what their website or web page is designed to do for visitors.

Once upon a time in the land of Cyber it was believed that a Meta Tag could be the silver bullet that allowed you to gain high rankings in search engines. The fairy tale has gone away, but the Meta Tag Fable remains.

What is a Meta Tag?

A Meta Tag is invisible to your visitors, but along with other Meta information may be useful to search engines to derive a brief description of your website. This information is what you will find if you do a search of your own website through a popular search engine. The Meta tag is added through the use of html language.

In a time not so far removed a Meta Tag was often loaded with keywords or phrases associated with your website. These jam-packed Meta Tags would allow for a meteoric rise in the search engines, however the mechanism for ranking search engines began to alter when search engines discovered that the Meta Tag didn t provide the most pristine picture of the sites they were ranking.

The companies operating search engines saw that the Meta Tag was being abused so they began to develop sophisticated new ways to rank websites that did not rely on Meta Tags.

It is possible that you could find marketing data that indicates an approach that includes keyword stuffing on Meta Tags, please understand this is either based on outdated information or the person writing the article hasn t really researched their subject very well. The last search engine to use Meta Tags was Alta Vista and they ceased using this ranking method in 2002.

Search engines do use Meta Title information, but do not use Meta Tags for search engine rankings. Goggle has never used Meta Tags.

Meta information can still be useful for your website, but using Meta Tags is now something that is ignored and vilified in less than polite company.

The growth of Search Engine Optimized (SEO) articles is a healthy direction because is helps provide legitimacy to your website and it also provides a positive reputation online. This reputation is now a part of many search engine rankings.

A reputable online marketing consultant can provide content rich ideas that will enhance the long-term performance of your website.

About the Author :

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with http://HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com

Article Source: www.iSnare.com

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Notice: This article above was written by a 3rd party author and included here “as is” for informational purposes only. The authors of this site make no claims and take no responsibility for the accuracy, use or misuse of the content of this article. If you like the article, please visit the authors site for more information.

You probably do this already - complete regular searches in Google for your key phrases and see how high you rank. It’s well known that the first three results are far and away the sites that get the most clicks. If you can get one of the top three results in your key terms then you will have more targeted visitors coming to your site. If you can get the first result, well that is even better. Of course all your competitors want to do the same.

One of the great things about Google is that is updates quite frequently. That little GoogleBot is busy 24/7 indexing the web to make sure everyone gets the best answers to their search questions. I’ve recently been playing with a technique that I thought might be worth testing and because Google has updated so quickly I’ve been able to get a result within a few weeks, and I got the perfect result - a number one ranking for one of the key phrases I was after. In fact this technique worked so well that I got the number one result for a related search phrase too!

A Quick and Easy Google SEO Trick

The technique I used was to place an ad in a particularly highly ranked classified site. In this case it was the famous site Craigslist.org for London (http://london.craigslist.org/). This site is the original free classifieds trading community that has become a world wide phenomenon driven by word of mouth. But that’s not important. What is important is that Craigslist is very popular and has a high PageRank, and most importantly you can place a free ad on the site anytime you want to. There are restrictions and limitations but it is easy to do, there is no reason you shouldn’t make an ad or two. It’s free promotion for your business that may happen to also help with your placement in Google SERPs.

Key Term : SERP - Short for S earch E ngine R esults P age, the Web page that a search engine returns with the results of its search. The major search engines typically display three kinds of listings on their SERPs. Listings that have been indexed by the search engine’s spider, listings that have been indexed into the search engine’s directory by a human, and listings that are paid to be listed by the search engine.

A Practical Test

For testing I was after the search phrase “Thesis Proofreader” for my business site’s thesis proofreading service. I entered the term into Google and noticed that a Craigslist entry was receiving a high result, but the subject and keywords were not highly targeted. However they were good enough to get a third page result in Google for that term. I went in and created a very simple ad in Craigslist that directly targeted my keywords and a week or two later I had the number one result for that term in the Google global SERP. Also because I had used the term “Essay” in the subject of the ad I managed to secure the first page result for “Essay Proofreader” as well. Not bad :).

A Bit Hit and Miss

I was surprised that it worked as well as it did but I know better than to expect that good a result every time. One important consideration in my test is that there just isn’t much competition for my search phrase; hence it was easy to get the top result. If your market is more competitive your result likely won’t be as good. Craigslist deletes ads in 45 days so it’s not a permanent result either, you will need to keep going back to recreate your ad if you want to keep the result.

You should be sure to check the current results in Google to see if any free listing sites like Craigslist are pulling up high results for your terms. If you have some advertising cash to spend, see if any pay-for-entry directories or classifieds are pulling high results too. If there are then there is a good chance that if you create a well targeted ad you will have positive results.

It’s important to do search research first so you know which city listings in Craigslist are pulling the high results. Ideally for an online business that can service the world you would have a Craigslist listing for every city, but that just may not be feasible and may break the Craigslist rules anyway. With search research you determine which city is pulling the best results for your terms, which could be caused by a whole number of reasons - backlinks to that particular Craigslist city, key terms - the amount of variables to consider are beyond human comprehension, let Google handle that and just take the results on face value.

Take the time to locate the best city based on current search results and place your entry in that city at the very least. If your business is specifically targeted at a geographical area then it is a good idea to do a comprehensive ad in your Craigslist city (if available) as well, it certainly won’t hurt.

It’s also important to note that there is nothing stopping competitors doing the same thing as you. The SEO war may spread into Craigslist and muddy the site, which would no doubt prompt a clampdown on commercial listings in Craigslist. Perhaps this technique is best for those operating in small or unique industries since it is unlikely that competitive action will ruin it for everyone.

Also note that Google itself is a completely uncontrollable variable in this equation. Google may decide that it will no longer count Craigslist entries. Maybe it will decide to only index for certain terms. Just accept that you can’t control what Google decides to do, but you can test to see what results you can get. Not trying guarantees no results.

It’s Too Easy Not to Test

There is no good reason not to use this technique. Classified sites want listings, it’s what they do. You may or may not achieve better search engine results but at the least there is a chance that a browser may stumble across your ad and come shopping at your business. It takes very little time and usually is free so get out there and start creating those free ads. Just remember to use the right keywords and don’t go overboard, you don’t want all your incoming links to come from free directories because in the long run Google may penalise your results.

About the Author
By Yaro Starak

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

Do you want to profit from your own successful home based Internet business?

Learn from Yaro Starak, a young entrepreneur from Australia. Get your free articles and audio now - visit his Internet Business Blog.

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Notice: This article above was written by a 3rd party author and included here “as is” for informational purposes only. The authors of this site make no claims and take no responsibility for the accuracy, use or misuse of the content of this article. If you like the article, please visit the authors site for more information.