Many businesses, large and small, are coming to a realization that Internet marketing is a necessary piece of their marketing puzzle. Offline channels like press releases, billboard advertising, radio spots and other techniques are still effective and important but the growth of the Internet is bringing a new aspect to traditional marketing. The following are some of the most common Internet marketing mistakes. As a newer field, most Internet marketing mistakes tend to be by omission. Businesses that take control of their online presence now will have a great advantage over those that don’t. Online advertising and purchasing continue to grow each year, avoid these mistakes and enjoy a positive online image and growing online sales.

• Lack of Interaction - The Internet is becoming an extremely social place where anyone and everyone have a voice. It is easier and easier for the average Joe to express his feelings on your product or service. Despite being a well-respected, customer oriented company, you may have a disgruntled customer now and then. Instead of blowing them off, respond to their concerns. There are many websites that have gone popular by discussing bad experiences with businesses. By reacting to even the individual complaints, you may save yourself hundreds of future customers.

Taking a proactive approach to online interaction is also becoming more common for all types of businesses. Many companies are instituting blogs on their websites to communicate with customers and announce news. Social media sites like Digg and talking with bloggers is a great way to manage your online reputation and build a following.

• Manage Dedication and Expectations - Online marketing is never a one-time event. In fact, it takes a lot of hard work on an on-going basis to maintain your online presence. Companies need to remain dedicated to their online efforts. One aspect of Internet marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), can take months to see results in some cases. You can’t give up after 2 months because you’re not on the top page for a tough keyword. And with PPC, you can’t just let your campaigns run on auto-pilot. Once you enter the arena of online marketing, you need to have dedicated resources (time or people) to administer online activities.

Too often, people have unreal expectations for the Internet marketing campaigns. it is possible to rank for competitive terms but it definitely takes time and lots of dedication. Instead of blaming Google and our competitors, you really need to ask yourself why your website should rank in the top 10 for a given keyword. Provide services or information that is worthy of being in the top 10.

• Worry About What You Can Control - You will never know the secret to dominating the Google search engine results. You can’t control how awesome your competition’s website is. You can learn as much as you can about website usability and design and make it a great place for visitors or customers. Many prolific bloggers have stated that search engines are not their main concern. They focus on great content and design with search engine optimization (SEO) rules in mind. If your site is truly popular among readers, chances are you will rank well for keyword pertaining to your subject. Create websites for your audience first, then search engines.

Leveraging the Internet for your business can be and has been one of the greatest enhancements for many companies. Internet business and marketing continues to grow each year. However, it is becoming more difficult to compete in this space. By getting ahead now and staying current with the latest Internet marketing trends, your business can continue to be successful online and off.

For more specific tips on Internet marketing and SEO, check out our SEO blog.

Tip #1 - Unique Content
It is extremely important to insure that the content on each of your websites is unique and not duplicated. This can be tricky when it comes to certain pages like “About Us” or a company history page. If you duplicate some of this content, having multiple sites can work against you more than actually help you.

Tip #2 - Target different audiences
To avoid having duplicate content issues, you can always use each site to target a different market. For example, if you were a Realtor with multiple sites, you could use each one to target a different city or county. This can be extremely useful since it may be easier to rank well for individual city real estate searches.

Tip #3 - Great Domain Names
You will always want to make sure you own your company’s name as your primary website. If you are going to buy multiple sites, your secondary sites can include keyword rich domains. Search engines give some weight to those sites who have keywords in their domain name.

Tip #4 - Lead Generators
Your primary site should obviously be your place of business where people can buy from your or learn more about your services. The great part about having an alternative site is you can have fun with it. Instead of focusing on bringing in customers, you can be creative and include linkbait type content that people will enjoy looking at. There can always be a little pitch about your business and a link to your main website to make the most of it.

Tip #5 - Enter the Blogosphere
More and more professionals are including blogs as part of their business. Many companies integrate this into their website but if you feel that a blog doesn’t fit your site or you don’t want to pay a web developer to add one, you can always use an additional domain to run your blog. Blogs have the potential to do very well in search engines because of their frequently changing content and you may find that a blog can be an incredible business generator.

For the average small business owner, dedicating the limited amount of time and resources you have into one good website is typically a better strategy than releasing multiple sites and sacrificing quality for quantity. However, if you already have multiple sites out there on the web, taking advantage of your small network of sites can push you to the top of the search engine results and knock your competitors down the list. Make the most of your websites and make sure that they are helping each other instead of hurting.

• Directories – Directories are one of the easiest places to get a quick link. Many web directories will let you submit your site for free. There are also some paid directory options which can be very beneficial. One directory you definitely should submit your website to is dmoz.org. This is a free directory and highly regarded by search engines. It may take up to a year to even have your submission reviewed so start early.

Pro’s: Usually Free, thousands of directory options, easy to submit to

Con’s: Links don’t carry as much weight since they are easily obtained, some require payment, picking the wrong directories can hurt you.

• Friends & Partners – Leveraging your business partnerships can be one of the easiest and most beneficial links you get. If you partner with someone in your field or a related field, ask them to link to your website. If you run a business that allows other websites to sell your products or have franchises, you can even require that they link back to your site.

Pro’s: High quality links from related sites, usually free links

Con’s: Can be time consuming to contact partners. May take these people awhile to update their sites.

• Buying Links – Purchasing links from link brokers or contacting site owners is another possible way to build links. There are many companies that offer this service. If you find a related website to your own, see if they have an advertise section.

Pro’s: Quick and easy way to pick up links, you can often pick the anchor text and the types of sites your link shows up.

Con’s: Definitely the most risky way to build links. Google and other search engines are cracking down websites that buy links. If you get involved in link buying, you need to make sure you know the best ways to do it.

There are some other common ways to build links. It is important to remember that the best way to build links is by having a popular site with lots of link-worthy content. If you have lots of good content that people naturally want to link to, you will often do very well in the search engine results. Start boosting your rankings with a strong link building campaign.

Adding a SEO Specialist to Your Team
Benefits: You have a dedicated specialist to focus on your business’ needs. They can take the time to learn the ins and outs of your business and work alongside your web development team. Ultimately, you have a little more control. Hiring a SEO specialist for the long term will help you stay on top of your industry for years to come.

When you need to hire a full-time SEO specialist: The decision mostly comes down to what your goals are and what type of business you are running. If you are running a business where your Internet sales bring in a good portion of your income, you may need a SEO specialist working for you full-time. It may be a little more expensive on a yearly basis but you need constant SEO being performed on your site to maintain your top positioning in the search engines.

Outsourcing SEO
Benefits: Outsourcing your SEO can save you a whole lot of time and money. Most business owners have their hands full. Hiring a SEO specialist and bringing them into your company can take a decent amount of time and money. When outsourcing your SEO work, you may be able to get a team of SEO experts instead of just a single full-time SEO specialist.

When you should outsource your SEO work: Many small businesses don’t even have a full-time web designer. If you only have the funds for a limited amount of employee’s, you should probably be outsourcing your SEO work to a SEO firm or independent SEO specialist. Some businesses may have the funds to support a web development and SEO team but if your site is mostly informational and you don’t run an e-commerce site, you will probably be better off outsourcing your SEO. Search engine optimization isn’t a one time deal but if your industry isn’t very competitive online, a strong campaign can be enough to maintain good search engine results for quite some time

Making this SEO decision can be crucial for your business. The key to making the most of your Internet marketing budget is efficiency. Make the choice that is going to be the most efficient for your type of business.

So how exactly do you afford it and how is it going to help you? SEO requires patience. Nobody can perform magic on your website and get you top rankings over night. If done right, SEO will pay for itself in the long run. If you spend hundreds on SEO but get thousands in return, SEO is definitely affordable. It may be hard cutting those checks to an SEO company or grinding it out on the Internet doing it yourself for the first few months but the ROI can make it worth your while. There are no guarantees in SEO but few companies fail to see some results after a good search engine optimization campaign.

Off-line Business & Branding - If someone had to guess the TLD of any website, they typically start with a .com. If you are a well-known business or are trying to make a brand name for yourself, your best option is to get yourcompanyname.com. This will make it much easier when customers are looking for you by name. Avoid using hyphens (your-company-name.com) if possible. Most people don’t expect hyphens when they are looking for a popular website. There are some SEO advantages to this as well. Websites with a .com TLD are a little more trusted by Google and other search engines. Next time you do a search, take notice of how many in the top 10 are .com. The biggest problem you may face is being able to get your desired .com. Internet real estate is going quickly and .com TLD’s can be hard to come by.

Internet Business - If you do most of your business online, chances are you aren’t quite a household name. While this may initially sound like a disadvantage, it opens up your domain name possibilities quite a bit. Instead of being tied down to a domain name like yourcompanyname.com where people expect to find your website, you can go after alternative domains that may be easier to find. Also, you can incorporate keywords into your domain which will help your SEO campaign in a few ways. First, if someone searches for Provo dentist and your domain name is provodentist.com, this is a good indication to the search engines as well as potential customers that your site is related to their search term. Secondly, if other people are linking to your website without anchor text, your domain name will provide keywords by default. You will still want to avoid hyphens in your domain name if possible but if you find a quality domain name, there are some cases where you might want to buy it with hyphens.

Top-level Domains (TLD) - Whether you are worried about branding or not, you always want to get the .com version of your domain name if possible. As I mentioned before, .com’s are more trusted by Google and Internet users recognize them as more important sites. If your desired .com is not available, .net is your next best option. Currently, most people should avoid .biz or .tv TLD’s. However, this may change as search engine’s evolve and domain names are harder to come by.

Summary
If you are a brand name or wish to create a brand, stick to yourcompanyname.com or yourcompanyname.net.
If your company name isn’t as important, try other approaches like keywordrichurl.com or keyword-rich-url.com.

If you are stuck between a few different domain names orTLD’s and aren’t sure which one will be the best for your business or website, contact us for recommendations at no charge. Good luck!

Get a business listing in the major search engine’s local areas. Google and Yahoo should be your first two targets. Once you have submitted information about your business, it can be found by someone looking for local businesses and services. Let’s start with Google. Visit the Google Local Business Center. If you don’t have a Google account, you’ll have to create one. Follow the steps to create an account and include as much information as possible. You can include your operating hours, forms of payment, company logo’s and pictures. As with many Google services, this one is a freebie. There is really no reason to not take advantage of this. It also will become more and more important as Google is changing its search engine results page to include maps at the very top. The links just to the right of the map are generated from the Google Local Business Center. If you don’t have a website, it will display your contact info. If you do have a website, it will display your contact info but also a link to your website.

You’ll also want your business to be included in Yahoo! Local. You can add your business by visiting their Local Merchant site. Yahoo! offers a free listing but also has paid options that include allowing you to add more information and photo’s as well as premium placement. Their search results look a little different but if you are serious about ranking well in Yahoo!, paid placement might get you straight to the top.

Even if you can’t afford the paid placement option in Yahoo!, you will find that including your business’s contact information in these two major search engine’s local section will help potential customers find your business.

Should you submit your site to directories? Generally, yes. There are some key directories you will want to be found in and some that you should probably stay away from.
How many directories should I submit to? Most directory links don’t carry a lot of weight. There isn’t a “good” or “bad” number of directories to submit to but if you submit your site to 1000 weaker directories, it may not equal the link weight of 1 good directory. The key is managing your time to make the most out of your directory submissions.
Which directories should I submit my website to? This is the important one. You can waste hours and hours submitting to the millions of web directories out there but you’ll be much better off by starting with some of the most popular directories that are actually respected by Google and other major search engines. Here are some of the directories you want to be in:

• DMOZ - Also known as the Open Directory Project (ODP), DMOZ is completely edited by volunteers and each submission is verified by human eyes before its allowed in. Because of the strict rules, search engines place a lot of trust in links from this directory. The best part: it’s free. The worst part: it can take months, possibly up to a year before your submission is viewed and allowed. Make sure you take the time to verify that all your information is correct before submitting, you don’t want your submission declined.
• Yahoo! Directory - Yahoo! was one of the first to introduce a large scale directory. Yahoo! is obviously a trusted source and human users actually reference this directory to find businesses and websites. The good news: submission show up much quicker. The bad news: this one isn’t free. If you have the budget to include this submission, it will be worth it.
• Business.com - If your site falls under the categories in Business.com, this would be another great place to list your website. This is another paid directory like Yahoo.
• JoeAnt.com - Another paid directory although much cheaper than Yahoo! or Business.com

Other than a few select directories, you probably should avoid any directories that require a payment to be listed. There are so many other options out there, your marketing budget could be better spent elsewhere. You may also notice many “services” offering to submit your website to thousands of search engines. Steer clear of these schemes. Typically, there is never a need to submit to search engines. After building a few links, Google and other search engines will find your site and you’ll be better off being found this way vs. submitting your site manually. After submitting your website to some of the directories listed above, try searching for niche directories that only list websites related to your own business, products, niche, etc. If your time is limited, the SEO benefit from submitting to thousands of sites is not worth it. Stick to the major directories and some smaller, niche directories and you will be one step closer to search engine success!

• Real Estate (Agents, Brokerages, Appraisers, Financial Services)
• Medical Professionals (Doctors, Dentists, Chiropractors)
• Retail (cars, computers, electronics)
• Travel-related (hotels, car rental, airfare, limousines)
• Other local services (dog boarding, kennels, photography, plumber

Having a strong online presence is similar to investing at an early age. The earlier you start, the more effective it will be in the long run. Not to mention that the local search industry is continuing to grow each year and the number of people searching for local businesses and services is only going to grow. Search engine optimization (SEO) is not a one-time process. It is an on-going effort but once your initial campaign is complete, it’s fairly low maintenance. Local businesses need to shed the idea that they don’t need a website if they aren’t selling products online. By participating in online marketing and SEO now, you are jumping in one of the the most effective advertising methods. Print ads, flyers and mailers continue to be less and less effective as people recognize them as junk mail.

One issue many small businesses face is incorporating a new marketing channel into their budget. SEO firms can be a little on the expensive side. There are some lower cost alternatives including some independent SEO consultants who can offer services for less or going the do-it-yourself route. Either way, the important part is to get started now and make your online presence known in your local market.

• Easy to make yours unique with free and paid themes
• Lots of online support if you run into problems
• Tons of plug-ins to customize and optimize your blog

There are literally thousands and thousands of plug-ins out there available to download but a few stand out as particularly useful when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO).Here are two essentials every WordPress blogger should have:

All in One SEO Pack - The name of this one pretty much sums it up. This plug-in takes some of the key SEO basics and makes them easy to edit within your WordPress dashboard. It allows you to pick the Title tag and keywords for each of your pages and posts. All in One SEO Pack allows you to select how many characters you’d like it to pull and it uses that for your meta description for your posts. On your pages, you have the option of typing in a custom meta description. There are some other great SEO benefits of this plug-in making it the most important SEO WordPress plug-in

Google Sitemap Generator - Webmaster Central from Google has a wonderful feature that lets you give Google an XML sitemap that helps their Googlebot find all of your websites. These XML sitemaps can be a little tricky to create on your own, especially with a large website or blog. The Google Sitemap Generator plug-in automatically creates your sitemap for you and then notifies Google that it has been updated.