If your website is not attracting good prospects and getting them to buy your products and services, you are losing out to your competition. To be successful in today's challenging business environment, you cannot afford to miss buyers. Either learn to build and develop internet marketing programs yourself or have a professional internet marketer help you.

Can Your Customers FIND Your Website?

Search Engine Marketing Helps Generate Traffic

By Jack Duncan, internet marketing expert, Radiance Road Marketing, Lakeland, FL

If you website is not getting the results you want, there are reasons. Internet marketing is no great mystery. The biggest reason your website is not generating leads is because your prospective customers aren’t seeing your site listing when they use search engines.

Are the Major Search Engines Indexing Your Web Site?

This is easy to check. Simply go to Google, Yahoo or Bing! and search. Start your search with your company name and see if your site pops up. Try putting your company name in quotes (for example, “Radiance Road Marketing”). This would eliminate all the chaff, such as listings where the terms ‘radiance’, ‘road’ and ‘marketing’ might turn up out of context. You can also add your location by using your city (in my example, it’s Lakeland). When you search for “Radiance Road Marketing” Lakeland on Google, you’ll see the top listing as my site (with a text link and www.radianceroadmarketing.com ), a map and my address and phone number. If your company isn’t showing up, then the search engine hasn’t indexed your site yet.

TIP: Submit a sitemap to Google – First, go to www.xml-sitemaps.com and generate a sitemap in xml for free and submit it using Google Webmaster Tools. You’ll need to verify your website so they know you are an authorized user. Use the help menu on the left side of Google Webmaster Tools. Once you do that, you click on your website name, then: Site Configuration > Sitemaps and click the Submit Sitemap button. This is the fastest way to get the search engine to index your site. Once you get listed in Google, the top search engine, you’ll want to submit to Bing! and Yahoo, too.

What Are Your Keywords?

Once you are listed in search results for your name, you’ll want to search for your industry in your geographical market. In my example, since I am an internet marketing consultant, I use the search term “internet marketing” and add my service area, Lakeland. If you search Google with the term “Lakeland Internet Marketing” then you will see that my site comes up on most of the organic results (these are the “free” listings). If you are a plumber, just search for Lakeland plumber or Lakeland plumbing company. Where do you show up in the results? If you are not on the first page for the search terms your prospects are using, they won’t go to your website.

TIP: Use your service or product and city as your starting keywords in your page title for your homepage. If you check out my homepage, you’ll see it is titled “Lakeland Internet Marketing.”. You can use Google’s Keyword Tool to find variations to use. In my example, some of them are “web marketing, marketing company, marketing online, marketing services”. Make sure that you use these in the text on your pages to help potential customers find you. You can also use search results to find your top competitors websites and see what other terms they are using.

Where Do You Go From Here?

Research other search engine optimization techniques, such as article marketing and getting other sites on the web to link to your site. These are the internet marketing basic tools. Search engine optimization just helps prospects find your site. Some people stop at optimizing their site or getting links. Next, you have to give them a reason to go to your site. Once you get traffic to your web site, the other major challenge in marketing online is getting those prospects to actually buy your services and products! This is called “conversion” and it’s WHY you have a website, right?

These basic internet marketing tips will help you get started marketing online. It’s a process that takes time and consistent effort. Not all small business owners find it cost-effective to do their own marketing online. If you choose to seek professional help, don’t fall prey to scams and unscrupulous marketing companies. Choose someone who has s real marketing background, communicates with you and has a serious interest in helping you grow your business. If you are local service company, you may want to speak with a local internet marketing consultant in your area that specializes in small business.

Jack Duncan has more than 25 years marketing, advertising and public relations experience consulting for small businesses. He started Radiance Road Marketing to help Lakeland, FL business owners profit from internet marketing opportunities. Visit his website http://www.radianceroadmarketing.com to discover more tips and strategies to grow your business by marketing online or call him at (863) 668-1086 to ask questions