You’ve heard the hype of what the internet has to offer your business and you wanted to get involved. So, you followed a simple plan:

• Built a website

• Installed Google Analytics

• Wrote content to match keywords

• Exchanged some links

• Waited for traffic and leads

You kept waiting…

There are over 300,000,000 websites online. To get your website onto the first page of Google is going to take some work.

Luckily, Local SEO is not as hard as it looks. You can laser target your keywords. Laser targeting your keywords means that:

• Ranking in SERPS is going to be easier

• Traffic will convert at a higher rate

• You will be creating a powerful marketing tool

The question is can you do this without external help? There are plenty of companies offering SEO outsourcing, allowing you to utilise the skills of their search engine optimisation specialists. The truth is, if you have some spare time, you can do some or all of the work yourself.

Understand what SEO for local business really is…

We will go with the assumption that you run a plumbing firm, operating in Birmingham, UK. As you built your site, you were probably thinking that words such as: plumber, cheap plumbers and 24hr plumbers are the right keywords to target, wrong!

Local SEO involves creating long-tail keywords that includes your geographical location.

Targeting the shorter keywords (e.g plumber) is going to be much more difficult. Bear in mind that many of the visitors (if you manage to rank), will not actually be local to your business, so conversions will be low.

Here is how you decide on keywords for your business…

Deciding on keywords

First of all, you can use the AdWords Tool to check that the keyword you are targeting is actually being searched by potential consumers.

1. When you log into the AdWords Keyword Tool, just above the “Search”, ensure that the search is set to “United Kingdom”.

2. To the left hand side, you will see boxes that you can check, or uncheck. Ensure that it is set to “Exact”. This then shows the amount of people that are searching for the exact phrase, not a variation of it. For “Plumber”, you can see the global reach is 60,500 and the “local” (UK) reach is 5,400. The “local” number is the one you need to focus on.

3. We want to be slightly more targeted. Most plumbers work within a 30-50 mile radius, unless they are tendering for large jobs. With that assumption you will want to target 3 types of locations:

• Solihull – A part of South Birmingham, so what could be considered to be a “sub-keyword”

• Birmingham – The “main” area you operate in and your keyword

• West Midlands – The “parent” area, which Birmingham area is located in

4. Laser target the search you’ll see that the numbers for “plumber Solihull”, “plumber Birmingham” and “plumber West Midlands” change to 73, 210 and 16 (as of 01/04/2013).

5. From those searches, you can see that the main two you should focus on are the “sub-keyword” and the “main” keyword. It would be pointless to focus on the “parent” (West Midlands) as there would be a lot more competition and the monthly searches are incredibly low.

6. Obviously you can use lots of variations for keywords. You could mix different areas (e.g. Lapworth, Harbourne and Northfield) and different plumbing keywords (e.g. plumbers, heating engineer and drain specialist) together to make new phrases.

Judging competition

You need to judge your competition to determine how well you will rank. There are 3 quick and easy searches that will give you an idea:

1. Input the domain into OSE. This will give you an overview of the website in terms of the SEO profile.

2. Do a visual check. Are the companies that are listed big and well known companies, possibly national? If so, it might be harder to rank!

3. Check for the amount of results that are listed in Google. An example as been provided below.

• Search “Plumber Birmingham” in quotes (this brings in results that contain that keyword).

• For “Plumber” 63,000,000 results are listed; a lot of competition!

• For “plumber Birmingham” the results drop to 11,200. Now you have a keyword that you can easily compete for page 1 rankings on Google!

Now you have a good range of keywords to start with!

Finding an honest, reliable and professional digital marketing agency is by no means an easy task. Some seem extremely cheap; too cheap. On the other hand, there are those that are just too expensive. Choosing a company that offers search engine optimisation packages is therefore, a bit of a minefield.

For businesses, it comes down to a case of being able to narrow down service providers. Price and guarantees are always going to help close a deal.

Any business owner that has been looking to outsource marketing has probably come across what some companies call “guaranteed search engine optimisation packages”; SEO with guaranteed results.

The fact is no such package really exists, and here is why.

First of all, what does exist…

Is SEO outsourcing companies that have professionals working on their team. They can offer a packaged service and can give indicators of results including time frames and positioning, based on their past performance; but no guarantees.

There are companies out there that do perform, produce results, work using white-hat/natural SEO techniques that are worth using; you just need to find them.

Consider reading out post on how to outsource.

The Cash-back Guarantee

There are some companies that will give a cash-back offer as part of their overall guarantee. Scrutinize this, as 9/10 times, you have no leg to stand on if the deal turns sour. What is worth pursuing is an Escrow/Authorize.net transaction. Under the rules of these transactions, under a dispute, neither does the seller get paid, nor do the buyers get a refund. Money is only released when there is a conclusion that seems fair. Of course, this still doesn’t guarantee that you will get any money back.

The takeaway is, if there is no Escrow or similar company to protect a transaction, the guarantee is worthless.

Competitor’s SEO Efforts

Next, is the question, what are your competitors doing? How can any firm offer guaranteed search engine optimisation packages, if they don’t know what your competitors are doing?

Here is a quick example. Let’s assume that you are in a niche where none of the top 10 results have improved their SEO rankings over the last 12 months and the competition for the keyword is fairly easy to rank for. Your SEO sees this. That is not to say that the day they start their optimisation, 10-20 firms suddenly see a breakthrough in the industry and start doing the same. Suddenly, the efforts of the marketing company, simply keep your results from dropping, due to the increased competition.

Most honest companies will give you guides. They “expect” to rank a website at a certain position, within a rough time frame. Although in most industries being vague is considered dishonest, in the world of site optimisation, this is actually a fairly honest answer.

Black-hat strategies

Next we come to black-hat strategies. Basically, anything that is considered to be dishonest, unethical or manipulating search results, is black-hat. You can see a more detailed description here.

Google sees this as you see your spam email; annoying and something that has no value. So, what do you think happens when they find out about it? They block it!

Your website might escape the eye of Google for a month, maybe even multiple months. During this time, the firm offering “guaranteed search engine optimisation packages” will collect their fee. After a few months, your results will not just drop, you’ll likely be blacklisted from Google and your site literally disappears. Any work prior to the SEO company, will also have been time wasted.

Don’t believe us? Google has been cracking down on this for a long time, originally with just larger blog networks and advertising ages, that were designed to manipulate search engine rankings.

Google Algorithms

Without understanding every single aspect of Google’s current and future algorithms, there is no way to determine exactly what is right and wrong. Here is the thing; most companies offering SEO with guaranteed results have never even worked at Google. Even if they have, they will not have created every aspect of every algorithm. To top it off, they certainly won’t know every aspect of the new ones that are about to be released. So, what is their guarantee really based upon?

Here is a list of historic updates that Google has released.

Conclusion

SERPs are not something that can be guaranteed. If you trust a service provider enough, then a cash-back guarantee may be worth something, but that still doesn’t guarantee your rankings!

 

From the outside looking in, freelancing and running your own business looks like the perfect career. You work when you want, how you want and for whom you want. We all know that the formula to success is not quite as cut and dried as this…

Whether you are a freelance blog writer, or even own a web design company, you’ll have to deal with distractions.

A distraction steals you time in two ways:

• You lose time, the time that you are doing whatever you have been distracted by.
• You lose even more time; it may take 20-30 minutes to really get back into the swing of things and refocus your thoughts.

For that reason, one simple distraction could lose you an hour or more every single day!

Understand what distracts you!

First of all, you need to figure out what the things are that are distracting you. The chances are that the distractions for a freelance blog writer, as extremely similar to those of a .NET developer, ecommerce store owners and even search engine optimisation specialists.

Here is a list that might help:

• Lack  of breaks
• Mobile phones
• Instant messaging systems
• Email
• Social networking sites
• Friends or family visiting/interrupting
• Not having a routine

The problem usually boils down to distractions; the next stage is to find a problem to the solution.

Breaks

Breaks are important. No matter how hard you want to work, your brain will slowly get lost in several trains of thought.

If you have regular breaks, then you’ll feel refreshed and be more productive as a result. As a rule of thumb, try and have 5 minutes for every hour of work and 45 minutes for lunch.

Mobile phones, instant messaging systems, email and social networking sites

This is pretty simple. Switch them off/log out until your lunch break, or after you have finished work. The only exception to the rule would be when one of the above helps with work. For instance, if you have clients that need a quick response via email, log on every hour rather than shutting the email off completely.

Friends or family visiting/interrupting

This is a difficult one, especially when your friends or family live with you. It is hard for a lot of people to see what you do as a real job. For that reason, they might arrange a trip or ask you to help them for an hour here and there.

Be stern, but polite; they need to understand that if you don’t work, you don’t get paid.

Think of it like this…

How would their boss feel if they went and walked their dog for an hour during working hours?

Explain that you need to keep focused, just like their boss wants them to stay focused when they are working.

IMPORTANT – Having a routine

By far the most important part of keeping motivated and focused is having a routine. If you have a plan, then you brain can absorb what you need to do. As you hit milestones, you will feel like you are progressing, which helps to keep motivation high.

1. Don’t assume that a plan has to be unrealistic or set in stone; it can be adapted. Work out what you can do within a proposed time frame and put that in an Excel style diary. The diary can consist of basic notes and no times, or it could be more detailed. As long as you understand your diary, that is all that matters.

2. Don’t be tempted to wake up late, simply because you can work later. Working too late is unhealthy. This also messes with your routine, it will make it hard for you to stay motivated, but make it easy for you to get distracted.

3. Don’t include things such as answering emails in your plan, if you do that every hour anyway.

4. Always take into account your regular good/bad days; don’t be unrealistic when you make a plan. Maybe Mondays are the days where you don’t actually get much work done? Maybe tend to have lots of emails to answer, clients asking for quotes and so on; admin type work? Adjust your diary to suit.

Your plan might look as simplistic as this:

Monday

Start: 9am

Finish: 4pm-5pm

Break: 5 minutes per hour worked

Lunch: 12.30pm-1.15pm

Jobs: Quote (client name), guest post (site name), weekly admin, 5 x 500 word blog posts (client name), 1 x post on “Name Of My Business Blog”

Within 10 seconds of scanning your daily diary, you’ll know what to do. When you get emails from clients, it makes scheduling incredibly simple. If you’re not a fan of complex diaries; this is a great way to organise, keep motivated and keep focused.

 

In short, developing a customer retention strategy is achievable, measurable and simple. You don’t even need to hire a digital agency to get started. Processes like email marketing campaigns are quick, easy and extremely cheap!

The importance of customer retention is overlooked by many. For many businesses, the focus is on acquiring and not retaining, regardless of their business idea.

Building relationships is the key to success, regardless of the niche that your business operates in.

Why does your business need a customer retention plan?

• Reduce overheads – less resources are needed to service a client due to their awareness of the sales process
• Build brand awareness – consistent sales means consistent exposure and therefore, increased brand awareness
• Receive referrals – customer loyalty brings customer referrals; free business leads
• Increase revenue – loyal customers produce a higher revenue than new customers
• Increase profit – an increase in revenue and a reduction in overheads, means an increase in profit
• Stabilised income – loyal customers can be monitored easily, making financial projections much more accurate
• Diversify marketing – you might think you have tried every marketing tactic possible. Well, here is something new to try!

The facts and the figures

“The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%” – Marketing Metrics

“It costs 6 – 7 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one” – Bain & Company

There are 100s of similar facts and figures showing that customer relationship marketing is something that produces an extremely high ROI. Obviously, the facts and figures vary depending on the industry, the size of a company and how well they execute their retention strategy. The facts have always been there, it is time to take advantage of them.

What you need to know

The simplest of actions make the biggest difference. Customer service, consistent contact, honesty and fulfilling expectations are some of the simplest things a business can do and they all work in unity to create your customer retention plan.

Techniques that work…

Email marketing

Every business should have an email marketing campaign. They are easy to manage using platforms such as MailChimp. Give consumers the chance to opt-out at the checkout when they purchase goods or services.

An email marketing campaign needs to be consistent; content writing tone and schedule. Some companies aim to produce one email per week, whereas others aim for one per month. This could be interesting industry news, links to a valuable blog post on your company blog, or special offers.

Order tracking alerts

Order tracking alerts might not seem important, but they are. Why? They combine consistent contact and customer service. If you can create an alert when goods are packed and shipped, then you have made contact with the customer, but offered them that little bit extra. It will also save your company time, as you won’t have to answer emails and telephone calls from customers asking where items are.

Regular discounts

Whether you are a retailer or service provider, offering discounts on goods or services that are valuable will help. Sure, it might seem odd to discount best sellers, but remember that customer retention is not costing you as much as customer acquisition.

Competitions

Competitions are a cheap way of getting 100s of customers interactively involved in your business. Do you run an extreme sports business? Post a competition for £500 of merchandise for the best photo. Not only will the majority of your customers enter, but it will get them thinking about your brand again. You’ll find that you get unexpected benefits too, such as back links which will help with your website SEO.

Rewarding complaints

The frustrating thing about losing customers is that most businesses don’t know why they lost them in the first place. Complaints provide your company with valuable information that can make your overall package seem much more attractive. If someone complains, don’t make excuses, make them an offer, give them a reward and thank them for their time.

Loyalty program

Loyalty programs come in all shapes and forms. You could offer:

• Instant cash for referrals
• A points system, where buyers can earn and spend points
• A cash back system
• A tiered system based on total cash spent, linked to discounts
• Discount clubs (usually charged by the vendor) offering exclusive discounts
• Price match guarantees

Gathering facts

Think like an engineer; with facts. If you have facts, then you can create a customer relationship strategy that is going to work. Ask questions and act based on the answers that you receive. To make a survey seem more appealing, you could tie it in with an email marketing campaign offer. Ask the customer to fill out the survey, in exchange for the exclusive discount that is being offered.

Gifts

Gifts might seem like an unnecessary cost, but think before you discard this as a viable tactic to use. Ideally, you can give all customers a gift for their birthday. If your business is linked to their hobby and interest, this is going to not just re-instate contact, but give them an idea of where they would like to spend their cash!

This is not just a free gift, it is a gesture. You never know your gift might be a topic of conversation and lead to a referral!