Are you ready to get motivated and take some action to get more business from the Internet? Here are some tips that should keep you on the right track. I’m putting the information into two categories: Must-Do and Must-Consider. The Must-Do items are the ones I strongly recommend, because of their high ROI (return-on-investment) potential. They are the most important things to do to keep your business “in the game” of Internet marketing. I recommend using the Must-Do items as a checklist, but again, you must consider the ones that make the most sense for your type of business and prioritize for yourself. By all means, rearrange the list as you see fit. Omit items if you want to forgo those methods, or add others that aren’t mentioned in this book. I hope my list will be a good starting point for your own realistic game plan.

Must-Do

Make your website a top priority

For most businesses, the website is of key importance. It’s how you present yourself to the world. It is the “tip of the spear” for all of your Internet marketing efforts. Ultimately, you want all of your other channels (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) to bring traffic to your website. Your website should have information that is well presented and useful. It should make visitors feel comfortable. It should have a look and feel that says “this is a credible business, run by real people.”

Make sure your website has these qualities

Here are some important qualities of an effective website:

• Easy navigation
• A clear CTA (call-to-action)
• Appealing images, especially of human faces
• Consistent color and style elements
• Fast-loading pages
• Content that looks fresh and updated
• An effort to say “We want to serve your needs,” rather than “We want to tell you how wonderful we are.”

Make sure your website doesn’t suffer from these ailments

 Here are the things to avoid (some of which correlate with the previous list): 

• Overloaded web pages that look cluttered and unfocused
• Cold-looking pages, lacking a human touch
• Inconsistent color and style elements
• Confusing navigation
• A lack of fresh and current-looking content
• Having pages that load slowly
• Misspellings and bad grammar
• Making the site about you instead of about your customers

Do on-page SEO

On-page SEO refers to adding keywords to your web pages so that they will be indexed correctly by the search engines (SEO stands for “search engine optimization”). When search engine spiders crawl web pages, they look at different things to get an indication of the subject material. One of the key things they look at is the “title.” The title appears at the very top of the browser window or tab when a page is loaded. It is put in the “header” section of the html code, which holds information that is not part of the page content itself. Other important on-page SEO elements include meta-description tags, headings, text on your pages, and alt tags, which are words shown in place of images (for situations when the images don’t load in a browser).

Consider your most important keywords carefully

Keyword research should not be taken lightly or rushed. Honing in on the best keywords for your business is one of the most important aspects of Internet marketing. Remember, you will be in competition with other businesses that might be using the same keywords as you. Can you set yourself apart by adding a longer tail? Adding a longer tail means adding words to narrow down the meaning. Here is an example of how a longer tail can be added:

• roses
• red roses
• long-stemmed red roses
• long-stemmed red roses in bulk

Also, do some research on Google’s Keyword Planner tool. It will give you valuable information, such as ideas for keywords related to your business, as well as the number of times people have searched those keywords on Google in the previous year. (You must open an AdWords account to use this tool, but there will be no cost if you don’t run any AdWords campaigns.)

Have a blog

I was reluctant to put blogging in the Must-Do category because it takes an investment of time on a regular basis that many people will find difficult to manage. However, the benefits of a blog are numerous. If you are serious about increasing your visibility online, having a blog really is a must-do thing. It keeps your website fresh with new content, which helps keep visitors looking at your site longer. It helps with search-engine-optimization, which will give you more traffic. It gives you something to promote through social websites, such as on your Facebook page (whenever you make a new blog post, you can offer the link to your fans and followers). Having a blog is the basis of a good content-marketing strategy. Having good content leads to high visibility on the Internet.

Register your local business with Google

Google has a special system for listing local businesses. The first step for local business owners to take is to register their business. This involves filling out an online form, and then going through a verification process. (They want to verify the accuracy of the address entered, so they send a postcard with a code to that address.) If you are a local business, showing up in these listings can be extremely valuable—at no cost to you.

Build citations for your business

Citations are mentions of your business on the web. Any mention of your business (especially if it includes the name, address, and phone number) is considered a citation. Citations help create visibility for your business, bring traffic to your website, and lead to higher rankings in the local search results. You can easily build citations on directory sites like www.yellowbook.com. There are many directory sites that allow you to list your business without a cost.

Keep a consistent NAP with all online citations

Anytime your business is mentioned or advertised online, make sure you use the same NAP (name, address and phone number). The search engines have an algorithmic approach for the ranking order in which local businesses appear in search results. Having multiple citations with a consistent NAP can positively influence a business’ ranking. This gives the appearance of a more established and credible business. Any inconsistencies with the name, address, or phone number can cause your business to drop in ranking.

Create a Facebook business page

Facebook has about 2 billion users. Since so many people use Facebook, it is a mistake not to take advantage of this free page your business can have. People who visit your page and click the “like” button will then receive the posts from your business page in their news feeds. Your Facebook page can have a great deal of marketing value, without any cost to you. The important things to do are: create the page, add some images and information, and occasionally (at least) post new information related to your business. Also, be sure to interact with people who make comments on your posts.

Use YouTube

YouTube is a massively popular website that allows you to upload videos for free. The videos can bring visibility to your business, and traffic to your website. “How-to” videos are extremely popular. One advantage to YouTube is that it doesn’t demand the continuous engagement necessary for Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. With YouTube, you may simply create a video, upload it, tag it with keywords, and let it go to work for you. Your YouTube videos can show up whenever anyone searches YouTube or Google for the keywords used in your tags. Also, you could embed the videos in web pages on your site, or share the videos on Facebook, Google+ or other places.

Use email marketing

Email marketing is a must-do because it can be a fantastic marketing vehicle for very little time invested. The easiest way to approach it is to use an email marketing service. These services provide all you need to make your campaigns run smoothly. Giving away a free gift (such as a PDF file with information) can be a good incentive for people to submit their email address. Be aware that it’s not okay to send emails to people who have not voluntarily submitted their email addresses. Spamming is not effective, and can get you into legal trouble.

Use Google AdWords

I don’t know what type of business you’re in, but there is a great possibility that AdWords can help grow your business quickly. It is a very powerful and flexible platform that gives you a high degree of control over the visibility and costs of advertising. AdWords is a PPC (pay-per-click) platform. With PPC, you have two simultaneous goals: to be visible to likely prospects, and invisible to everyone else. There is a steep learning curve to AdWords, so I strongly advise that you either study intensely or get some help.

Use Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a service meant to inform you of things related to your website from the Google search engine perspective. It’s a free service, and it’s easy to use. If you care about how your website is seen by the Google search engine, you should take advantage of Google Search Console. It can give you such information as: errors that might have occurred when the Googlebot crawled your site; traffic data about how people arrived at your site; keyword data that tells what keywords are seen as most prominent; and search query data showing the actual queries made which resulted in an appearance of one of your pages in search results. It does not take much of your time. Just sign up for an account and add your website. Then look occasionally at the information it offers.

Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics is another service offered by Google to give insight on how your website is performing. Although there are some similarities to Google Webmaster Tools, the two services have different purposes. Google Webmaster Tools is meant to give you information related to how the Googlebot sees your site, and certain data points regarding your site’s appearances in the Google search results. Google Analytics is a much bigger and more robust platform for analyzing your web traffic from all sources, not just the Google search engine. Google Analytics is the best tool for gauging the success of marketing efforts to drive traffic to your website, and for learning visitor actions when they arrive. It will tell you how many visitors each page on your site receives, the average amount of time visitors spend on your pages, the type of device they are using, and much more. Google Analytics can be linked to a Google Webmaster Tools account, and also to a Google AdWords account. Using Google Analytics is a must-do if you are serious about Internet marketing. It’s free to use, easy to check, and offers valuable data to help guide your marketing efforts and investments.

Others must-do points from this book

Humanize. People like to do business with people, not computers. Adding images, stories, interactive features, humor, and other human touches can go a long way to make your Internet presence more appealing.

Make specific goals. Making your goals as specific as possible makes them easier to accomplish. Consider the goals you have at the moment and how you could make them as specific and concrete as possible.

Plan in detail. A former general spoke about the three most important parts of military planning: logistics, logistics, and logistics. It’s one thing to get heavy equipment into the right battle positions. It’s another thing to ensure that they always have enough fuel, ammunition, extra parts, etc. The more detailed you make your plans, the more you are able to foresee difficulties and prepare for them.

Be stern about time-management. Time-management is one of the biggest challenges in business. To manage your time in the best way, be sure to have clear priorities and be willing to eliminate distractions and goals of lesser importance. Also, be sure you are using the best tools for organization and communication.

Be optimistic. An optimistic attitude is a key ingredient for success. It’s what helps us keep going through the most difficult days, and makes us more effective on our better days.

Use social proof when you can. Social proof refers to the tendency of people to believe that others know more about a situation, and that we should follow their lead. Social proof influences our decisions at many points in our life. Ways to use this in your favor are to include testimonials on your website, show continuous interaction with people on your Facebook page, or highlighting statistics (like McDonalds: “billions and billions served”).

Discover your USP. A USP (unique selling proposition) sets you apart from your competition. It highlights some advantage your products or services has over ones from the competition. Simply put, it gives a reason why customers should do business with you.

Sell the benefits. Selling the benefits means explaining how your products or services will be helpful to prospective customers. Most businesses make the mistake of selling the features instead. For example, a feature of a vacuum cleaner might be: stronger suction. The benefit is that you can vacuum better and faster, saving time and creating a cleaner environment.

Use images. Images are perhaps your most effective tool in marketing. When you see television commercials or magazine ads, notice how powerful they are. They can communicate messages, convey emotions, or tell stories. They may also give a glimpse into how life could be better with your product of service. When it comes to the social web, images posts are looked at, commented on, and shared more than twice as much as text posts.

Tell stories. Facts tell, stories sell. People like stories. We are naturally curious about things that happen. By telling a story, you can hold a prospective customer’s attention longer. Also, stories are easier to remember than straight facts. Incorporate storytelling as much as you can on your website and in your marketing.

Must-Consider

Try to get backlinks

Links to your website from other websites are called “backlinks.” For many years, backlinks have been considered (by Google) to be a telling indicator of how valuable a web page is for content. If the Googlebot finds many links pointed to a certain page, an assumption is made that there must be good content on that page. This can cause a page to rank higher in the search results. The problem, however, is that a whole cottage industry has grown out of the demand for links in order to influence rankings. Google caught onto this, and has modified their algorithm as a result. Backlinks are still important for rankings, but only if they come from credible sites—especially ones that are about a similar topic. There are many ways to go about trying to get backlinks, including: writing guest posts on other people’s blogs, asking for links from people in other businesses, and submitting press releases. If you are serious about SEO, spend some time trying to get quality backlinks.

Use Twitter

Twitter is an immensely popular social web platform. Using it is very simple: open a free account, and start posting messages (of 140 characters or less). Who will receive those messages? Other Twitter users who decide to follow you. Succeeding on Twitter has to do with both quantity and quality of tweets. To truly leverage this platform, it is advisable to tweet every day, preferably several times. The quality is very important as well. If you tweet a message that is particularly informative, interesting or funny, your followers may decide to RT (re-tweet) it to their followers. Everyone who gets the tweet can then decide to RT, making Twitter an extremely viral platform. Sharing interesting images and links is an effective tactic. The most important thing to remember is that it’s a long-term, slow-building process. Make sure you are willing to keep the tweets flowing for a period of years.

Use LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the place where business owners, tradesmen, and professionals connect with one another. It is very popular, and can do wonders for a career or a business. Like other social web platforms, it requires continuous participation and engagement. It’s not a set-and-forget type of thing. Laying the foundation for a good LinkedIn presence starts with creating your profile. Your profile is like an online resume: it’s how other members will see you, and decide if they want to connect with you. A lot of business gets done through connections on LinkedIn. Features like recommendations and endorsements can help you build credibility. You can also create a company page, which other members can choose to follow. LinkedIn is free, but has a premium membership option that allows more features and freedoms.

Manage your online reviews

Reviews for businesses on websites like Yelp, Google and Yahoo are becoming more and more important to pay attention to. As the public usage of these services increases, businesses with high ratings and positive reviews are going to have a distinct advantage. The time is now to start paying attention to, and managing your reviews. Fortunately, there are some great tools available to help you monitor your reputation online. Some of which are also intended to help you cultivate good reviews from your happy customers.

Do podcasting

Podcasting means to record segments of audio and/or video, and make them available via RSS (Really Simple Syndication). It’s a bit like blogging: if people like the podcast, they can subscribe to it. Your podcasts can be listed in iTunes and on other podcast directories. Podcasting is a great way to share your knowledge, and establish yourself as an expert. It is also a great medium for interviews. Podcasting has been known to be a huge boon for some businesses. The demand by the public seems to be getting greater for podcast content, fueled by the growing usage of smartphones. There are several services available that make the process of podcasting smooth and easy.

Use Craigslist

Craigslist is one of the most popular websites in the world, receiving roughly fifty billion page views per month. Craigslist is mostly used for classified advertising in local markets. It allows you to post to one category, in one city, every 48 hours. For most types of ads (and in most locations), there is no charge for advertising on Craigslist. If your business provides a service, you may post an ad under the “services offered” category. Visitors to Craigslist are able to browse ads, or do keyword searches to find what they are seeking. Since Craigslist receives such a large amount of traffic, it’s worthwhile to experiment to see if Craigslist might be helpful to your business.

Have a mobile-friendly website

A mobile website is a version of your website that’s easier to read and use on a smartphone. This is an important thing to consider because people are using their smartphones more and more for web activity. Providing web pages that are mobile-friendly makes it easier for the people using those devices to find what they are looking for. Large, easy-to-press buttons can say “Call Now,” “Directions,” or other messages. Pressing a “Call Now” button can initiate a phone call. Since mobile-browsing has become a new norm, keep your website as mobile-friendly as possible.

Use a CMS, like WordPress

A CMS (content management system) allows you to have a well-structured and attractive website, without having to know programming code. Through a back-end interface, a CMS lets you create pages and posts. You can add text, photos, videos, links, menus and other items to your pages and posts. When new pages or posts are completed, you can publish them to be seen on the front-end. The most popular CMS is called WordPress. WordPress is widely recognized as the easiest to use among the most popular CMS platforms. It has a huge number of themes and plug-ins available, it’s free to use, and it provides great resources for learning.

Other must-consider points 

Use Evernote. Evernote is a software program for organizing your notes. Rather than have information spread out in different places, you may use Evernote as your personal database of information. It’s very easy to input new information, as well as to access it later. Also, your data gets synchronized to all of your devices. It is free to use, but also has a premium version. Organization is a key aspect of work efficiency and time management. I believe Evernote is the most useful tool for staying organized.

Use Gmail. Gmail is the email platform owned by Google. It is far more useful, though, than just an email platform. Its powerful search function makes it useful as a database system itself. It allows you to manage other email accounts from within, and filter messages to keep your mail sorted and organized automatically. For example, you can set emails from a certain source to be automatically deleted, automatically forwarded, or automatically labeled and archived.

Use Elance. Elance is a service that provides a connection to skilled professional freelancers around the world. When you need a graphic designer, email marketing specialist, or someone to design an iPhone app for your business, you can post the job on the Elance website and receive bids from around the world. Elance has a very easy and reliable interface. Finding freelancers through Elance can be an enormous time (and money) saver for your business. There is no cost for using the Elance service to post jobs. When a freelancer is hired, funds go into an escrow account. They are released to the freelancer when the job is completely satisfactorily.

Use Hootsuite. If you plan on using several social websites, I highly recommend using Hootsuite. It is a tool that allows you to manage several different social web accounts and pages from a single interface. It’s loaded with features that can make your social web efforts more effective and less time-consuming. It’s free to use, but has a premium version.

Always be testing. Testing should always be part of your process with Internet marketing. In fact, it’s one of the most significant things you can do to improve. When you test, you learn things that you would not be able to know or predict otherwise. Whenever you can, try to make A/B testing part of your process. For example, use AdWords to rotate and test two different promotions or discounts to see which gets a better response. If you do email marketing, try sending the same message to the whole list, but with a different subject-line to half of it. Then you can learn which has greater appeal.

Must-NOT-Do

• Underestimate the importance of having an effective website
• Underestimate the importance of having a blog
• Underestimate the time and discipline required to maintain a blog and a social web presence
• Ignore the power of mobile (people are using their smartphones more and more to access the web)
• Ignore the power and flexibility of AdWords
• Ignore the power of images to communicate messages and convey emotions
• Ignore the power of stories to grab people’s attention and create more memorable messages
• Ignore the importance of setting clear priorities and specific goals
• Ignore the power of social proof
• Forget to register your local business with the search engines
• Forget to build citations for your business on directory sites (especially if you have a local business)
• Forget to do basic on-page SEO for all web pages you would like to show in search results
• Forget the importance of reputation
• Forget to systematically ask for referrals
• Try to be something or someone you are not
• Try to do too much at once (be content with steady progress)
• Lack a human touch (use humor, stories, and images to warm up your pages and posts)
• Have an inconsistent NAP (name, address, phone number) for your business on the web
• Spend money on AdWords/PPC without knowing what you are doing, or without getting qualified help
• Confuse “search” PPC advertising with “display” PPC advertising (AdWords lets you do either or both)
• Rush the process of choosing your most important keywords (especially for SEO)
• Promote features instead of benefits
• Make your marketing all about you, instead of about your customer’s needs
• Assume you know what prospective customers care about (it’s better to listen to them first)
• Scatter your energy on too many things (as P.T. Barnum wrote, concentrate your energy “like a hammer on a nail.”)
• Procrastinate

Complete Web Exposure Package