You can do some great SEO work for your web site by creating PDF’s to add to your site.  You can add articles, add press releases, add a press or media kit, add your advertisements and promotions and more as PDF’s onto your site.  Simply link the keyword to the PDF and upload it onto your site.  This increases the size of your site and boosts your SEO.

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  She helps small businesses market themselves online by setting up social media and optimized blogs for small business owners and solopreneurs.  She then trains small business owners to use their blogs and social media to drive traffic and increase interest in their business. 

To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

Create a Promotional Coupon with TwtQpon

Small business ecommerce sites will find the Twitter coupon generator, TwtQpon, useful for promoting Web store deals on Twitter. You can also create special reward coupons for your own loyal Twitter followers.

When you visit the TwtQpon site, click on the “Create a Coupon” button and enter the following information in the Web form:

• Your Twitter account name
• The coupon title
• The coupon details (in 140 characters or less)
• Upload a 700 x 300 pixel image
• Specify a coupon code (if blank the coupon will show “no code required” on it)
• Add a redirect URL (your promotion landing page or ecommerce site URL)
• The expiration date of the coupon

This information is all you need to create your free Twitter coupon.  Your Twitter followers will see a Tweet, which is the text you enter in TwtQpon Web form. Customers who click the link are directed to the image-enabled version of the coupon page (on TwtQpon.com) and are then redirected to the URL you specified when they click to redeem.  What we like about this Twitter tool is that you can create and publish your Twitter coupon in seconds.

You do have an upgrade option to add personal branding, which is shown on the image-enabled version hosted at TwtQpon.com.  The website doesn’t specify a fixed price for the upgrade but suggests you enter a price at check-out based on what you think the upgrade is worth.  On its website TwtQpon says that the branding service is a way of supporting hosting and development costs.

Schedule Tweets with FutureTweets

FutureTweets by SolidFlux or Twaitter is another useful tool for busy small business ecommerce sites. If you often forget to update your Twitter status or you have difficulties working in regular tweet time this is a good tool to use.

The Web-based service lets you schedule a number of tweets and specify the time you want the tweets to be published on Twitter.  You could pick one or two days a week to add multiple tweets that you set to publish at different times.  The scheduling aspect will not be noticed by your followers and it will appear as if you Tweet on a more regular basis.

To use FutureTweets you need to give permission for the application to access your Twitter account. Once the connection between Twitter and FutureTweets has been made, you’ll find yourself looking at a very simple form on the FutureTweets website.  

All you need to do is type in your Twitter message and then select a publish date. You can enter the publish date manually in the form field (e.g. 2010-09-14 15:25) or you can choose the date on a calendar button and select the time by dragging the hands on the clock widget beside the message box on the form.

After scheduling your Tweets you’ll see a list of all scheduled tweets you have written with a star noting the ones that have been published. From this single Web page you can also edit or delete any Tweet you set using the tool.

What we liked best about FutureTweets is that it offers a simple interface with everything you need on one page so you can go in and schedule future tweets quickly. 

HootSuite Social Media Dashboard

HootSuite is a social application that you can use to manage a number of social media tasks in an efficient way from one Web-based interface.  The service supports a number of social platforms in addition to Twitter — like Facebook, WordPress and others.

HootSuite offers several tools that will help small business ecommerce site owners to better manage their Twitter and social media marketing tactics. Some of the tools let you schedule updates across one or more social media sites, and you can also collaborate and manage multiple social accounts that are spread amongst your marketing team.

Small business ecommerce site owners will also like two of the more business-focused tools in HootSuite. The first is the “Monitor Mentions” tool. This is used to track and gather mentions of your company or brand across multiple social sites.  Another business tool in HootSuite is used to review statistics and reports on individual status messages tweets you publish.

HootSuite is a more professional Twitter tool with a focus on the needs of a business user. We like that it offers multiple tools for multiple social media sites in a single Web-based interface.

HootSuite offers a free ad-supported version that lets you monitor and post to five social networks, use 2 RSS feeds, and caps your statistics history to the first 30-days of use.  The full unlimited version with all features and one team member for collaboration is $5.99 per month. Additional team members can be added for $10 per month per person.

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Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  She helps small businesses market themselves online by setting up social media and optimized blogs for small business owners and solopreneurs.  She then trains small business owners to use their blogs and social media to drive traffic and increase interest in their business. 

To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

With more and more businesses focusing on area specific customers and customers too relying more on local businesses, local SEO is gaining prominence. Equipped with geo-centric designs, content and domain name the websites can come up easily in local search listings.

Local search engine optimization or GEO targeting SEO is fast gaining popularity with more and more businesses targeting local customers as more customers are turning to local service providers for their needs. In this age of internet marketing the websites must be search engine optimized to draw in more traffic. But with the business websites growing in numbers along with the online users; to stay afloat in the competition, businesses are targeting region specific customers.

For increasing customer base and reaching out to a wider variety of consumers, local SEO is today a vital marketing strategy in the online business world. There are several businesses and service providers who find it more profitable to serve local clients and hence want to be found by local customers. For such businesses local search engine optimization is a must to make their websites get higher ranks in local searches. Especially for service providers like attorneys, physicians, or businesses like restaurants, movie halls, shopping centers, etc. the primary concern is to attract local customers and so they must focus on local search engine optimization for their websites. Some tips for geo-targeting SEO would be:

Geo-centric keyword research: Keyword research is a very important aspect of local search engine optimization. Consumers looking for local services or products conduct area or locality specific searches, for which they use geocentric keywords. So, for local SEO keyword research specific to the business’ area of operation should be conducted and the website’s content should target these geo-centric keywords.

Geo-targeting website content: The same search engine throws up different results in different countries. Whether you are using Google or Yahoo, if you search for ‘builders’ the search results in UK would be very different from those in US. To make your website come up in local listings its content should be of high quality and must be supported by geo-centric webpage links.

Geo-centric design: One of the basic requirements of local SEO is that the website must have a geo-centric design. Apart from the links included, the language used also matters a lot. The difference in spellings and use of language lends a local flavor to the website. That is why working closely with local designers of the region where you want your business to operate, can give your website a geo-centric design.

Geo-centric domain name: Multinational businesses targeting multiple regions usually have multiple versions of their website which have region specific domain names, contents in local languages as well as designs according to the style and trend prevalent in the local market. A very important aspect of local SEO, a geo-centric domain name helps the website show up easily in local searches.

Read Full Article Here

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  She helps small businesses market themselves online by setting up social media and optimized blogs for small business owners and solopreneurs.  She then trains small business owners to use their blogs and social media to drive traffic and increase interest in their business. 

To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

I read this recently and now I can’t find the source, but I love this part of the article and find it very true even to my business, when I was just getting started as an Internet Marketing Coach/Strategist.  So, I wanted to share it with you:

“If you have just started your online consulting business, I wouldn’t be surprised if you tell me that you are having difficulty getting people to sign up. You see, it’s not that buyers do not need your services but because the competition in this niche is stiffer than ever. Have you checked the number of people that you are going up against? But this does not mean that you should stop trying because there are actually effective ways to boost your consulting sales. Some of them are the following:

Start by building a website exclusively for your consulting services. As an information marketer, it is possible that you are also selling ebooks, audio products, DVDs, seminars, and coaching programs. But in order to boost your consulting sales, I recommend that you create a separate website for your consulting services so you can make your web content focused and targeted to your prospective buyers. Ensure that it’s professionally designed, appealing, and very informative. Remember, your visitors will gauge your expertise in your niche and will decide if they will do business with you in the future based on the appearance and content of your site. So, make sure that you leave a very strong impression.

Next step is to give your potential buyers valid reasons to trust you. Why would these people spend their money on your consulting services? Give them a reason to do business with you. Showcase your expertise in your niche and offer proofs that you have what it takes to improve their existing processes, to solve their pressing issues, and to provide the best answers to their burning questions. What I suggest is that you offer free consulting sessions, host your free teleseminars, and offer free but valuable information through article marketing, forum posting, blogging, and ezine publishing. It will also help if you strive to make all your customers happy. This is the first step to be known in the online arena as an ideal service provider. Buyers simply love doing business with marketers who have proven track records.

Make your marketing campaign more focused and more effective. Ensure that your marketing strategies are helping you reach out to those people who are most likely to do business with you. As much as possible, use all internet marketing tools to easily widen your reach. Personally, I would recommend article marketing and social media marketing as they’re very effective. You can also use blogging, PPC advertising, search engine marketing, email marketing, and ezine publishing. The more effort you put into your marketing campaign, the higher your chances of achieving your marketing goals.”

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and Internet Marketing Strategist.  She is  founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing and helps small businesses market themselves online by setting up social media and optimized blogs for small business owners and solopreneurs.  She then trains small business owners to use their blogs and social media to drive traffic and increase interest in their business. 

To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

Yelp is a great resource to read reviews, which means it is also a great resource to gain testimonials and chatter about your business online.  If you don’t Yelp, you should spend a little time on the site every once in a while, writing reviews of your favorite spots.

If you have a store front business, you should also set up a Yelp account so that people can rate your business and help direct more business to you.  This falls into the geo-target marketing that is so effective for businesses with a local clientele.  You can blow other small businesses away with this small business Internet marketing tip.

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  She helps small businesses market themselves online by setting up social media and optimized blogs for small business owners and solopreneurs.  She then trains small business owners to use their blogs and social media to drive traffic and increase interest in their business. 

To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.