President Obama has declared June 16-22 as “Small Business Week” in America. It’s a way to recognize the small businesses that drive the American economy. This isn’t the first Small Business Week – it goes back to 1963 – but this one is particularly important because of the impact the recent economic downturn has had on small businesses. In the current economy, small businesses need to use every tool necessary to stay ahead of larger competitors.

If you are a small business owner, one of the ways you can do this is to leverage the Internet. Small business Internet marketing can help your small business reach customers throughout the world. However, if you are in a competitive market, you’ll need help to make sure that people can find your website. eVisible specializes in helping small businesses gain visibility online by using a variety of proven of tactics including:

SEO: Getting your website to rank highly for specific keywords is about more than just luck. You need to research which keywords will be the most effective to target and have a dedicated game plan for how to increase your page rankings. By doing search engine optimization correctly, your site can rank higher than larger competitors and get more clicks from curious customers.

Social Media: Establishing a strong social media presence is a highly effective online marketing tool for small businesses. By leveraging outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, you can make a personal connection with potential customers that makes you stand out from larger competitors. A strong social media campaign lets happy customers spread the word about your company to their friends, one of the most powerful forms of marketing.

Directory Submissions: Local directory submissions help to ensure that potential customers have all the information they need to choose your business for their needs. Customers want to know as much as they can about any small business, including positive reviews, pictures and contact information.

eVisible wants to help take your small business to the next level. Find out more about our small business services <https://www.evisible.co/small-business-solutions/> and contact us today for a free consultation.

Any social media marketing company will tell you that content is king when it comes to a successful SEO and Social Media campaign. But not all content is created equal. How you structure your blog posts, social media updates and other content and what you say in it will play a huge factor in attraction attention to your campaign. Here are five types of online content that are proven to boost your SEO campaign.

The Mission Statement

One of the most important factors in making your social media marketing campaign connect with its intended audience is to establish its identity. You can easily accomplish this with a blog post or other type of content that spells out your mission statement. Think of it as your manifesto for the campaign and the reason why you are doing it.

Example: Three Reasons Why Solar Power is Important for Our Future lets readers who are interested in solar power know that this blog will speak their language.

The Pot-Stirring Post

Controversy generates conversations and if done the right way, taking a stand on a controversial subject will get people commenting on your campaign and following what you are going to say next. Be careful with this type of post – going too far can get you in trouble.

Example: Warren Buffet’s recent op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy took the stance that the richest Americans took the stance that the wealthiest Americans should be required to pay some income taxes regardless of loopholes. It was quickly shared and debated by people on both sides of the issue.

Timelines

People always love quick fixes and seeing fast results. Give this to them with posts that promise results in a set period of time if they follow your steps. This is a close cousin of the “Best Of…” list posts that we’ll get to shortly.

Example: 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger gives people one action to try each day to improve their writing and publicity skills.

ASAP Posts

These posts feature a headline that grabs your attention and frequently will spur you to urgent action. If nothing else, you’ll be compelled to read the article to see what is so important that it can’t wait.

Example: Top Ten Reviews’ 10 Things You Can Do Now To Protect Your Identity addresses a serious subject and makes it clear that it contains actionable steps that can help a person become a victim of identity theft.

List Posts

People love lists and rankings and blog posts that do this attract attention and comments as readers debate the validity of your list and come up with lists of their own.

Example: This Bleacher Report ranking of the Biggest One-Hit Wonders in sports brought interest from fans of all sports.

Need more help guiding your SEO campaign? Along with content creation, eVisible has many social media services available to help brand managers, bloggers and other people boost their visibility and track their success. Make sure you check out our new Social Involvement tool at https://www.evisible.co/tools/social-involvement/, which tracks the interest the social world has in your web pages.

When it comes to SEO campaigns, using the right keywords is critical to success. You can corner the market on keywords that are related to your industry, but if these keywords don’t correlate to clients and customers, what good does this do? Keywords serve as invitations for customers to check out your site. When someone does a search on a keyword or phrase and your site ranks highly in the results, you’ve effectively brought them to the front door of your virtual business. A smart keyword strategy not only gets customers to your virtual store but makes sure they are looking to spend money and not just there to window shop.

Knowing your market and your place within the market is critical to researching your keywords. Less competitive keywords and phrases might generate less traffic but there’s also a greater chance that you’ll rank highly for them if you target them with an SEO campaign. If you are in a niche market, you can find keywords that will specifically target people looking for exactly what you’re providing. This can get your ideal customer to your website quickly while providing immediate returns on your SEO campaign. If you are an established company looking at long-term gains, you might want to focus on a few keywords that are more competitive. You’ll know your market and your position better than anyone else and will want to adjust your SEO campaign accordingly.

Before starting any keyword search, there are a few things that you’ll want to consider:

• If you are using Google AdWords Keywords Suggestion Tool, make sure you are doing an Exact Search instead of a Broad Search. This is something that you can toggle between by clicking a button before you perform a search. A Broad Search will include phrases that include your keywords in any order or even parts of your keyword phrase. It also includes plural or singular forms, stemmed forms and synonyms. An exact search only returns the phrase exactly as you entered it. You can search for both if you want to expand your search but this can create confusion in your research.
• Think about all of the different ways that people might search for your products. Instead of just focusing on your category of business, do searches for specific product models or sub-categories of services you provide. Search for variations with part numbers or popular abbreviations of products.
• More than anything else, ask yourself what customers are searching for and build your keyword list accordingly.

Before you start doing your research on your keywords, it’s important to have a game plan in place. Instead of just grouping words together that “seem” the same, group them into categories. If you sell golf clubs, one category could be for name brands of golf clubs. Another could be for types of clubs (such as drivers, irons, wedges or putters). Other categories could describe what people are searching for with new versus used equipment. This lets you select keywords that target the right audience and potential reach as many different customers as possible.

Ultimately, you want to get the highest Return on Investment for your SEO campaign. eVisible understand this, which is why we’ve created a powerful Keyword Research and Suggestion tool and made it available for free on our website. All you need to do is enter in a keyword, phrase or a bit of marketing copy and it instantly gives you a list of related keywords. It’s a great way to start your keyword research and narrow down (or expand) your choices. You might want to focus on areas of your business that are currently underperforming by targeting related keywords. Or you might notice keywords and phrases with a limited amount of competition that you can rank highly for more quickly. Having a smart game plan and doing the research the right way will set you on the path to smart and focused keyword-based SEO campaign.