Local businesses by and large have not done much with Internet marketing, and what they have done has generally been ineffective.

That is a two-edged sword, because on the one hand, there is a lot of work that can be done to help local businesses. On the other hand, many early adopters have been burned badly either by inept SEO work or by SEO ripoff artists.

And yet it can be extremely profitable for small, brick-and-mortar  businesses to do search engine optimization on a small scale. That has been proven time and again—but you have to know how.

Part of the problem is that small business owners seldom understand what promotion on the Internet can do for them, much less how it should be done correctly. They do not know what the services should cost or how to pick a knowledgeable consultant. They are generally either ripe for the picking or total skeptics.

One of the biggest problems I have seen is the general perception that “a website is a website,” and you either have one or don’t, that an SEO analyst just waves a magical wand and turns your sow’s ear of a website into a silk purse overnight. That is just wrong.

The truth is that the best SEO money you can spend is on creating an on-page-optimized website with quality content, well organized from the point of view of site visitors, attractively (and logically) designed, and with all the hidden on-page SEO taken care of as well.

Once you do all that, the site may get ranked quickly by Google without a lot of off-page SEO. But without proper site organization, design, and on-page optimization, doing much off-page SEO in that case is largely a waste of time.

Why On-Page SEO Is the Most Effective SEO

Here’s why on-page SEO is paramount:

1. Google and other search engines will not rank your site well in search results if the text is too sparse, too off topic, or too poorly written, if your site appears to be badly organized, or if the bounce rates (how quickly visitors arriving at your site leave it again) are too high. In other words, Google knows poor on-page SEO even if you do not.

2. If potential customers/clients cannot find what they want on your site, can’t easily read your site, or find it unpleasant or confusing,  they leave. Oh, sure, tastes vary, and if you could afford to drive 500 visitors to your site for every customer who actually buys, you might do all right.

But that kind of waste of traffic is much too expensive to sustain.  That means even if you substitute ads for natural search results, (a) the ads will be hideously expensive and (2) site visitors will leave immediately. Why waste money?

If, on the other hand, the site has good on-page SEO, a mobile version that automatically displays to smart phones, good content and good navigation (from the users’ point of view), that site can make a lot of profit for a local business.

How to Promote a Local Business Effectively with Good SEO

Here are some ways to use a web site to promote a local business effectively:

1. Prominently display the information customers look for first: hours, location, map, exactly what kinds of goods and service are offered.

2. Make sure the info on the site is organized intuitively from a potential customer’s point of view—not from the business owners point of view, which can be quite different.

3. Make sure the site is as easy as possible to read. Do not use trendy, kewl web design. Use black text on a white background. Use standard, professional type design and formatting.

4. Use relevant photos of actual products or services, and provide captions and alt text for them so Google knows that they are there and what they show (because Google bots cannot actually see pictures as we do).

5. Make sure the layout is clear, standard, and easy to scan at a glance.

6. Use page titles that clearly and uniquely identify each page of the site and tie it to the site as a whole.

7. Have a good domain name. If the business has an existing site with a poor domain name. buy a good name or two and point them to the site.

8. Have content that answers customer and potential customer questions. Make it easy to find, easy to read, well organized, and pleasant.

9. Get a professional to do (at least) the less visible on-page SEO, because that is the hardest for business owners to figure out, even if they have an in-house techie to implement it.

10. Repeat after me: Web designers are almost never trained in SEO, and most do not even bother with it. They may not even know enough about SEO/SEM to realize that they do not know how to do it.

Potential Uses of SEO Combined with Traditional Marketing

Here are some potential uses of SEO in combination with traditional marketing:

• Make sure customers can find you.
• Answer questions and make sure they know you have what they want.
• Provide coupons and other incentives to get them into the building—just like print ads.
• Provide incentives and make it easy for them to refer others to your business—even better than print ads.
• For restaurants, post menus and other information that tantalizes potential customers.
• For professional services, post credentials, background information, reviews, and testimonials that do a great selling job before the customer comes to the physical store or office—-and that get them to either make an appointment or just drop by, as appropriate.
• Convince and make it easy for potential and existing customers to join a mailing list, Like a facebook page, and Follow a Twitter account that can draw them into (or back into) the store sooner and more often by making it cheap and easy to notify them of sales and special events. QR codes on web pages can even get customers to provide their cell phone numbers and agree to receive text messages from the business, a practice that has proven immensely profitable in recent years.

It is too bad that small business owners do not yet appreciate the resources available to them. It is downright shameful that so many small business owners have been burned by bad SEO. But with good communication, the potential both for them and for SEO consultants is huge.

Internet marketers have only really began to grasp this year the fact that worldwide most Internet users are not sitting at computers. Three-fourths of Internet users in some countries do not use computers; they use their mobile phones to access the Internet.

Even in the United States, the home of the Internet and many major computer-makers, one-fourth of Internet users are on their mobile phones. That is big news.

The revolution in Internet usage—both the expansion and the changing means of access—were dramatized by the essential role of social media and mobile phones in the Middle Eastern and North African revolutions that characterized the Arab Spring.

Marketers, especially Internet marketers, can either seize the grand new opportunities offered by new consumers and new markets or lose out on this fascinating new trend. Like the out-of-touch dictatorships toppled in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, marketers who do not adapt to changing circumstances will find themselves left behind in the dust.

Already bold local agencies in the ME-NA region are offering smart new programs that capitalize on emerging markets. They know the people, they understand the trends, and they share the energy and momentum that have drawn the world’s admiration during the long, amazing year of 2011.

For a dramatic visual on internet marketing in the Middle East, see this Middle East Marketing Infographic.

For more information on the marketing opportunities offered current technological and social changes and by paid search in the Middle East, contact Levant Digital. 

I’ve written before about how self-running videos are counter productive if the site visitor is at work or staying up late at home. How likely do you think the prospect is to buy from you if your self-running video blares out and gets her in trouble at work, rouses a disapproving spouse, or wakes a cranky baby? Not at all!

Lots of us multitask. That should not be news to anyone. So if I’m already listening to audio or video, do you think I want to have two voices yammering at once? Not even!

Also, if I open your email and click a link to see what you’re offering, and there’s a video, I may leave the tab open but go on with my phone conversation or whatever, planning to go back later.

When the page first opens, I turn off the video. Later, though, with a bunch of tabs and windows open, if I have to restart the browser for any reason, I have to go through all those tabs to find your stupid video and turn it off again. If that happens, unless the video is a training module that I’ve paid to see, I close it and never go back.

Try to think like a potential customer. Our worlds do not revolve around you! Do not try to impose on our time, or you will not get another chance.

I’ve started unsubscribing from the lists of marketers that use self-running videos. And I am not alone.

Now do you understand?

Courses encourage marketers to just get on line and blather—and record the webinar blather to sell as a product. It just is not that simple.

Some people should not do webinars. They just are not good at them and never will be. You have to be a reasonably good speaker with a decent voice and presentation to make webinars work for you.

Remember, so-called free webinars are not totally free. They still cost attendees time, and time is money. Respect your listeners by being prepared.

If done wrong, webinars can really tick off customers. I experienced one today that was classically bad.

To save you from annoying your customers, here are some pitfalls and guidelines:

1. Be prepared. I just attended the worst webinar ever—for a product I’ve already bought. The presenter did not really know how to use the product!

2. Organize your presentation. Plan your presentation carefully and present it in the order in which a new user would need to learn. Do not just jump around as thoughts occur to you. Extemporizing is not good in a webinar.

3. Rehearse your presentation beforehand. Do not just wing it. Even if you made an outline and organized your material, you still need to practice before an audience unless you are a master at webinars…and maybe even then.

4. Use good equipment, and test it in advance. I am sick of webinars with horrible sound. Cheap headphones, cell phones, noisy environments, bad VOIP all can be a problem—and adding two or more together compounds the problem.

5. Make sure you have a decent voice for audio. Today’s webinar presenter droned on in a monotone voice that sounded computer generated. It was *awful*! Believe it or not, a really bad voice and presentation makes it hard to focus enough to even understand the words.

6. Strong accents combined with poor sound can be deadly. The odd pronunciations of the (apparently) Eastern European software developer today were not cute. Combined with poor sound, they made him impossible to understand.

He just should not do webinars for an American audience—even to answer questions. What’s the point if you can’t understand what he’s saying.

Note: I have studied five languages, love listening to foreign accents, and over the years have enjoyed worked with people from over 20 nations on five continents.

7. Don’t let your ego run away with you. You are not a rock star. Your jokes are not that funny, and we do not care about your personal life. Stick to the topic!

8. Have a specific subject, and stick to it. You offered a topic. That is what people signed up for. Do not impose on their time and attention by talking about other things—whether sports, celebrities, or other products you have to sell.

9. Start on time. Just because you and your buddies are present and blathering to each other, that does not mean the webinar has started.

10. Give good value for the time expended. Do not waste attendees’ time and patience. Deliver on what you promised in the webinar invitation.

If you are selling a product, wait till near the end, and do not overhype it. Tell the truth. It pays off in the long run.

You are in business for the long haul aren’t you? If so. do good webinars that make attendees want to hear more from you. Bad webinars create bad feelings.

So there!

Generally you get what you pay for—if you can figure out what you need. But price does not always guarantee the best quality. You need to know what to look for.

I have looked at quite a few shopping carts for clients. They generally fall into two groups: free or cheap but very limited, or very, very expensive.

Most do not seem to have considered SEO. They may generate pages that the search engines (and customers) will ignore. But this one is different.

SEO Shopping Cart looks like a good shopping cart solution that almost any business can afford. Prices are $35, $125 or $250 a month, depending on your business needs. All three levels offer these Shopping Cart Features:

Custom keyword-rich URLs (not those junky-looking gibberish strings some shopping carts create)
Custom image ALT attributes (great for SEO)
Custom Page Titles (very important for customers to bookmark potential purchases while shopping)
Custom Anchor Text
Breadcrumbs (for customer convenience)
Custom Header H1 Tags
Configurable META Keywords
Configurable MEATA Descriptions
No Duplicate Content (because this system prevents it!)
301 Redirection
XML Sitemaps generated automatically every night

The two higher levels also feature dedicated product review pages with Add to Cart buttons.

Interested?

Ascender Cart is so confident that their SEO Shopping Cart is the MUST HAVE shopping card that they will give you a FREE SEO training manual.

This looks like a deal to me. What do you think?

Right now the fad for giving away things to get new email list subscribers has morphed into emailing your Internet Marketing list, claiming to offer something free when really you are trying to get your subscribers to go sign up for someone else’s list in order to get something free.

I don’t need anything free, but I must admit that I tend to stay on lists where the list owner now and then gives actual, useful free info or software. As Robert Plank says, the information itself ought to be enough of a gift, and I agree.

Meanwhile I unsubscribe from every single bozo who claims to be giving me something “free” but sends me to someone else’s website to sign up for it.

So there!

Not to sound too snarky (as if!) but there are people out there claiming to be experts who have no clue. Most of them are not even local to 99 percent of areas they want to do “local marketing” for.

I can tell you from a recent business stint of a few weeks in a city 200 miles from home that localities do differ a great deal in their attitudes, motivations, and communication styles.

So in case anyone was thinking of letting Aunt Susie’s neighbor’s son Jeffie do their local internet marketing, don’t. (Yes, you! I know you thought about it.)

Local marketing takes actual expertise. Really. Small business or large, if you do not have experience in local Internet marketing, you’ll save time, money and heartburn in the long run by hiring a pro like Web Fresh Leads.

So don’t say I never told you anything positive.

And now back to our regularly scheduled snarks.

If you have to enter your name and email address, click the Submit button, check email, open a message, and click a link, then go to a site and download a file, it is not instant.

Yeah, yeah, “everybody knows” the offers are not *literally* free or instant, and that’s the problem. If that is the way you communicate as a marketer, why should buyers believe *anything* you say?

Now there is a new one: “support”. This week I “instantly” downloaded some “free” software. A prominent icon on the download page indicated that it would run in Mac OS X, but it does not.

It should, since it is written to run in Adobe Air, a cross-platform, ah, platform software. But no.

So I put in a support ticket. On the Help page (which did not mention my problem) was a prominent phone number. “Call us for quick help.” So I called.

The person who answered the phone knew nothing, wanted to know nothing, and could not seem to figure out why I bothered her. “You can look at the Help page.”

“I did. It did not help. It said to call this number.”

“On the Help page, you can put in a ticket.”

“I did,” I said. “The page said for faster help to call this number.” Irony was lost on her.

“Well, I’m not tech support. I’m sure they will respond soon.”

They did respond soon. (I’m pretty sure it was the same person, Victoria.) The message was, “If you need help, please go to our Help page.” (The one where I started.) “If you do not see your problem answered there, you can put in a Help ticket. “

It was clear that the person who answered the Help ticket had not actually read the Help ticket. So I replied, pointing that out.

Same person answered, “I am not a technical support specialist, but you can go to our Help page. If you do not see your question answered there, you can put in a Help ticket.”

Honestly I am not making any of this up—-or exaggerating even a tiny bit.

I have been a customer of this yoyo company. Do you think I will ever buy anything from them again? Noooooooo!

Meanwhile I got half a dozen email messages from that company the same day, offering to sell me things. (Talk about irony impaired!)

I don’t think so!

The objection to automatically played sound or video is not just personal. It’s practical, too. (But many of us also consider it to be rude.)

Like many Internet users, I’m a multitasker. So when I hit your site, I may be already listening to an instructional MP3 or video, not to mention music I like, or a business telephone conversation.

Your message overrides whatever it is that I’m choosing to hear. That it is extremely annoying.  If I want to hear your message, I will turn it on.

Sometimes it takes me awhile to find the Off button. If it takes more than a couple of seconds, I close the window and usually don’t go back.

Bear in mind that some of us are searching for information from a client’s office. Or we may be at work at a regular job. Even if we are searching for a product like yours for our client and employer, the autoplay sales pitch sounds like we are goofing off, just surfing the web.

Even if we are on a break or lunch, your blaring ad—especially with loud music—can make us look bad. We hate that!

Not to mention that the sound may disturb our cubicle neighbors who are trying to do work that requires serious concentration. Some of them may complain. Others may be encouraged to make noise that later makes it hard for us to concentrate. Autoplay sound is unprofessional.

So if you competitor does not blare at us, and your competitor has a comparable product, guess who gets our business? That’s right: not you!

So think about that instead of how cool you think you sound...if your goal is to make sales.

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• Disable AutoPlay Through The Registry (lockergnome.com)

Heed their feedback. It’s a warning.

Customers who complain are doing you a big favor. Instead of telling you that there is a problem, they could just go away mad—and tell all their friends.

Just because you have not encountered the problem yourself, that does not mean it is not real. It means that your interface, documentation, web design, or *something* is at fault, and you need to fix it.

And just because no one has complained before, that does not mean there has not been a problem all along.

Quit assuming that the customer is always wrong / stupid / lazy / dishonest. And even if you think that, do not let it show.

And the customer who is trying out a free service or product today (and complaining when it does not work as advertised) is not being “ungrateful.” Grow up! You’re in business.

That complaining, grouchy customer gave you a chance. They could have become your biggest fan. But you failed them.

Good marketers rise to the challenge, accept complaints as feedback, and make sure the customer is happy. That is how you keep customers and get new ones by referral. Sarcasm is not.

Sure, a grouchy customer could be just a mean person. Or they could be just having a bad day. And your product and/or inadequate service and support could just be the cause of that bad day.

So be nice. And pay attention. You could learn a lot.

Customers who speak up are valuable. And they are the tip of the problem iceberg. For every one who speaks up, there are lots more who simply leave in disgust—and tell their friends.

Think about it.