How small businesses can utilize online marketing, specifically search engine marketing and search engine optimization to promote their products and services.

1. Online Marketing
Strategies for Small
Businesses
Moderated by Presented by
John Meyer Bob Baer
The Company Corporation The Company Corporation

2. About Bob Baer
• Online Marketing Manager for
The Company Corporation
• Manages web analytics and online
marketing activities
• Prior to joining The Company Corporation,
managed Paid Search and Affiliate
Marketing Strategy for the Card Services
division of JPMorgan Chase
– Managed a team of business analysts and programmers that
created some of the company’s top revenue-generating
campaigns
• Bachelor of Science and MBA degrees from the
University of Delaware

3. What is Online Marketing?
• Online vs. Offline Marketing
• How they can work together

4. Small Business Online
• Who needs an online website?
• Does every business need a site?
• Types of websites a small business can have.
– Corporate Site
– Sales – Shopping Cart
– Direct Sales – One item
– Lead Generation
– Information / Solution Based Site
– Service Based Site

5. 10 Steps to Online Riches
1. Ask the right questions up front
2. Buy a domain name
3. Decide the purpose of the site
4. Set up a basic website – design
5. Develop unique content (Top 10 Lists)
6. Create a process for lead capture (Free Offer)
7. Sign-up for Google Adwords account
8. Create ads, pick keywords & determine a budget
9. Promote your site everywhere you can
10. Measure your results – key metrics

6. What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?
• SEM is the process by which search engines
are leveraged to sell products and services.
• SEM has 2
components:
– Paid Search aka
Pay Per Click (PPC)
– Organic Search aka
Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)

7. Paid Search
• Also known as “pay per click” (PPC),
“sponsored ads”, “paid inclusion” and “paid
placement”
• Google is the predominant search engine with
67% share of the market
– Yahoo! and MSNSearch have a 28% market share,
which gives the top 3 engines a 95% share
• ROI is easily tracked because most of the
activity occurs on the web

8. How does Paid Search work?
• Auction based advertising system.
– Advertisers bid against one another for ad placement
on a particular keyword.
– Bids are placed at the keyword level and are set at
the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay
for a click from the search engine results page to
their site.
• Advertisers are only charged when an ad is clicked.
• Bid amounts should be set based on conversion rates
and profitability

9. Selecting Keywords
• Select keywords that are relevant to your site
• Use Keyword tools to expand the list
www.KeywordDiscoveryTool.com
• There are 4 Keyword matching options
– Broad – Matches any instance of a keyword in a search
query.
– Phrase – Will match only when an exact phrase is found.
– Exact – Ads display when the query contains only the
exact keyword.
– Negative match allows advertisers to prevent ads from
displaying when certain irrelevant terms are included in
the search query along with the keyword. (i.e. Microsoft
Corporation)

10. Creating Compelling Ads in 95
Characters or Less
Ad #1 Ad #2
Google Online Advertising
Online advertising. Improve your website ROI. Sign up
Google's online advertising program. for AdWords. Show ads today.
adwords.google.com adwords.google.com
• Keep the message short and simple.
– Good headlines stand out and relate to the keyword being searched.
– Use the description line to explain why someone should click or not
click
– The call to action should be simple yet compelling.
– Weed out unwanted clicks. Remember, you pay for the click and you
get ROI when the click turns into a conversion. If you only serve US
clients, then say that to avoid international clicks.
• In the example above, assume the search query was
“online advertising”
– Ad #1 wastes 95 characters – No keyword in the headline, the word
Google is repeated 3x, and its missing the call to action.
– Ad #2 is much better – Search Query is repeated in headline, explains
why, and has a strong call to action (sign up, start today).

11. Measuring Performance
• Track everything
– Use Web Analytics tools such as Google Analytics
– Track performance at the keyword, match type and
ad version level
• Test and Learn
– Experiment with different bid levels
– Test alternative landing pages
– Run several versions of ad copy simultaneously

12. Search Engine Optimization
• What is it?
• Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of
improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site
from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or
"algorithmic") search results.
• Why is it important?
• Typically, the higher a site's "page rank" (i.e, the earlier
it comes in the search results list), the more visitors it
will receive from the search engine. SEO can also target
different kinds of search, including image search, local
search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

13. SEO Ranking Explained
• So how does a web site get “ranked”?
– Google, Yahoo, and Bing (fka MSNSearch /Live.com)
use crawlers or “search bots” to find pages for their
index.
– Ranking is based on several factors:
• Score is given to the site based on the content found
on each site / page.
• Inbound links from other sites.
• SEO friendly site architecture.

14. Optimize your Web Site in 5 easy steps
1. Select the right keywords. Your entire SEO
strategy depends heavily on selecting the right
keywords.
– Use www.KeywordDiscoveryTool.com to uncover
the highest searched terms.
– Start with generic (i.e. one word terms) and let the
tool help you build out the list.
– Find the most relevant keywords for each page.

15. Optimize your Web Site in 5 easy steps
2. Content, content, content
– Build or modify your content around those keywords
– Make sure its still user friendly and readable.
– Start by writing good copy and then assess how key
terms were used. Adjust where necessary without
sacrificing content.
– Proper headings throughout the page makes your
content better organized for users and search
engines.
– Save media files and images with relevant
keywords in the filename.

16. Optimize your Web Site in 5 easy steps
3. Use Title and Meta Tags on every page.
– The title tag is visible to search bots and users and
search engines only display the first 66 characters.
Use keywords sensibly in the title to create a
compelling call to action.
– The description meta tag is what gets displayed in
the search results below your title which makes it
almost as important as the title. Again, make sure
the copy is relevant to the content on the page and
has a strong call to action.
– Although most SEO professionals agree that search
engines give less weight to the keyword meta tag,
using it is still a worthwhile exercise.

17. Optimize your Web Site in 5 easy steps
4. Sitemaps and Robots.txt
– Create a sitemap for your website and add a link to it
from each page on your site. (Many sites place it in the
footer.) Users and search engines will use it to quickly
find information on your site.
– Create an XML sitemap and upload it to Google
Webmaster Tools. Google has provided a useful tool for
creating XML sitemaps.
http://code.google.com/p/googlesitemapgenerator/
– Use a robots.txt file to invite the search engine to crawl
your site, but also to prevent certain pages from being
indexed. You only want the search engine to crawl
pages that have relevant content so you can use the
robots.txt file to remove things like CSS or JavaScript.

18. Optimize your Web Site in 5 easy steps
5. Sign up for a Google Webmaster Tools
account
– It’s free – www.google.com/webmasters/tools
– Follow instructions to verify your site
– Upload XML sitemap and provide robots.txt URL

19. Good Resources for Search Engine
Marketing Information
• Paid Search
– www.searchengineguide.com
– www.sempo.org
– www.searchenginewatch.com
• SEO
– www.seomoz.org
– www.seobook.com
– www.seochat.com

20. About The Company Corporation
• The Company Corporation has been a provider of online
incorporation services for over 15 years.
• Our organization has helped over a half million
business owners get started and offers services
nationwide.
• Parent company (Corporation Service Company) has
been in business for 110 years.
Call today!
1-888-340-7239
www.incorporate.com