Northwest Arkansas SEO

We’ve been showing our clients for some time how to optimize their web sites for free organic search traffic.

We have written articles about how and why brick-and-mortar businesses should really consider taking an online approach.

Today we came across a great article from our colleagues over at Early To Rise. If you don’t subscribe to their daily newsletter, you should…it’s free!

Anyway, listen to Edwin as he tells you why…

Search Engine Optimization Is Easy

By Edwin Huertas

About a year and a half ago, a family friend started a business selling women’s active wear. She had no website — and no plans to create one.

She sold her goods by driving door to door, visiting every gym she could find. She was doing okay. But the time and effort — not to mention gas — she was putting into it was crazy.

Her products were great, and the people who purchased them were always happy to buy from her again. But her only follow-up with them was by phone. She worked out of her tiny two-bedroom house. And because she couldn’t afford to have someone else handle order fulfillment, there were so many boxes piled up that you could hardly walk through the house without tripping over one.

I thought to myself … “If she had some way to reach her customers WITHOUT running all over town, she could seriously improve her sales.”

I offered to help her set up a website and bring her business to the Internet. And because she had limited funds, the main business-building strategy I recommended was to drive free traffic to her site using search engine optimization (SEO). (Actually, even if you have a big budget, free traffic is always best in my book.)

She finally agreed. And BAM! She is now selling about $10K per month on her website. She has even picked up a few wholesale accounts from big-name national gyms. And that doesn’t include the phone orders she is still taking.

Needless to say … she no longer drives anywhere to make sales. People find HER on the Web, quickly and easily.

If you have a brick-and-mortar business you want to take online — or if you want to start an Internet business from scratch — here’s how I helped my friend …

I developed a VERY simple shopping cart for her website, using www.OSCommerce.com as her e-commerce platform. OsCommerce is free software that you can easily install to run your own online store. It is used on over 1 million websites, so it’s been tested thoroughly by many Web professionals. (Just perform a search for “Powered by OSCommerce” and you’ll see.)

Then I taught her how to enter in her products. And I taught her how to input product descriptions using targeted keywords for SEO. (I just taught her the basics.) And before long, her website began getting free SEO traffic. In fact, she started getting it quicker than even I expected.

Let me show you what I mean. (I’ve got her permission to do this, of course.)

To view stats and original article, click here.

As you can see, she’s been getting a lot of free traffic from the search engines.

And 99.9 percent of her traffic is for the “targeted” keywords she’s used on her site:

Here are some of the tips I gave her to get that traffic:

1. Make sure the name you enter for each product on your site includes some of your keywords. If, for example, my friend enters a pair of low-cut workout pants, she might name them something like “Sexy Women’s Workout Pants.”

2. When you write a description for each product, insert keywords close to the beginning of the copy.

3. If a product comes in different colors, enter each one individually. This creates more website pages, because each product has its own page in the system. (And for SEO, the more pages a site has, the better.) The trick is to make sure you have different product names and descriptions. They can be close, but not using the exact verbiage.

Search engine optimization is the main technique I used to help my friend get free traffic — but not the only one. Another technique that worked really well for her was to build outside links to her website. In particular, I showed her how to find forums and blogs related to her niche. And I taught her how to post her opinions, ideas, and comments on those sites — and link her postings to her website.

Even if a site doesn’t “officially” allow you to include your link, you can usually find a way to sneak it in. For example, here’s a comment she posted on a website dedicated to health and fitness:

“I was working out one day and my fat thighs were tearing at the seam, so I thought it was time to buy new gear. I found a great place (www.bellamiasportswear.com), and they had some of the hottest outfits I’ve seen in a while.”

Not only did she get her link in, she did it as a third-party recommendation. And that kind of testimonial is probably the best advertising there is.

By the way, it’s important to post useful content on these websites. Don’t just “hit and run” with your site address. Join the conversation.

Throughout the learning process, my friend absorbed the tidbits of information I gave her. Even though she had known NOTHING about the Internet, she merely followed my simple instructions and kept plugging away.

Eventually, she felt ready to manage the website on her own. And she did great.

Now, she’s gearing up to open two websites in different (but related) markets: one for men’s workout wear and one for nutritional supplements.

And to think … before I stepped in, she had never realized how easy it is to make a fortune on the Web.

She had the right attitude. She was willing to learn a boatload of new skills. She pushed forward even though she was unsure. And she was well rewarded as a result.

You can do it too.

If you’re not interested in learning the technical skills, not a problem. There are many freelancers out there who can do just about anything you need for a very reasonable fee. (Because they work from home, they don’t mind charging less than you might expect.)

Bottom line: You really can’t afford to sit back and watch others make their fortunes simply because you don’t dare take that first step.

Like any other business, marketing your product or service online takes a little time to set up. But the financial and personal freedom you’ll enjoy makes it worth it.

The time is NOW folks!

P.S. There are many resources out there that can help you — and you should take full advantage of them, if you can. I know of one, for example, that is tailor-made for those who want to start their own online business. No previous experience necessary. Find out more about it here.

Early To Rise
Issue #2770
Thursday, September 17, 2009

If you’re a local established business or you’re considering starting a business out of your home like in the example above, please consider utilizing OUR services here at Northwest Arkansas SEO, we’ll get you and your web site going in the right direction saving you a lot of time and headaches!

So you want Google to love your web site…

According to Internet marketing guru Howie Jacobson, Google ranks “authority” web sites – sites that provide valuable information on a topic — higher than ordinary web sites.

Here are the 4 things you need to have an authority web site:

1-High-quality content – valuable information that’s free – and lots of it.

2-New material added all the time – so Google sees the site is growing and staying current.

3-Easy-to-use site navigation – including a site map.

4-Inbound links to your site from other authority web sites in the same niche.

Added bonus: Having an authority web site also helps position you as a thought leader in your industry.

Source: Early to Rise, 7/1/09.

Not sure how to go about implementing these strategies?

Get with the crew over at Blogging Beginners and I guarantee you’ll be well on your way!

If you’re a small business owner either new or well established – local to N.W. Arkansas or half way across the globe… you’ve landed here for one of the following reasons:

You realize the importance of properly preparing your web site for the search engines through Search Engine Optimization.

Maybe you find yourself here because you’re finally ready to take your business online for the first time. Maybe sales are down or your tired of shelling out big bucks toward worthless local advertising and you want to take advantage of Free-organic local search advertising.

Or you’re ready to breakaway from a cheesy, limited cookie cutter website in a box that you were tricked into buying years ago and have finally had enough of the high monthly costs, limited ability and the lack of support.

If you’re hear for any of those reason, you’ve landed at the right web site.

For this specific article we will be discussing a few facts about web hosting and why we believe that if you’re really serious about getting your business online, you should consider owning your very own web hosting package.

When I was writing this article, I remembered a discussion that I had with our lead certified S E O technician about what Northwest Arkansas S E O should offer as far as services and the topic of Web hosting surfaced.

I already knew what I thought about offering it but I waited eagerly to see and hear if my technician agreed…and he did.

Here’s an excerpt of our conversation:

“when it comes to offering services I have found that it is in the best interest of the company and it’s clients to stick to what we are all about, SEO, optimization of web sites. Do one thing, offer one service and then guide our clients in the right direction when it comes to all the other components necessary to own and operate a profitable online business.

A company that claims they can be everything to everybody is normally just blowing smoke. If you spread yourself so thin and try to be an “all-in-one-company,” you won’t be able to put all of your time and energy into what you do best, SEO.

On another note: sure, we could offer hosting and just set up an account for them. Charge them a monthly fee and put
them on as an add on domain. But I would tell you from my experience of over 12 years online…that I personally think it isn’t a good idea and it isn’t in the best interest of our clients to allow them to put all their eggs in one basket.

Why? Because in most situations here’s how it works. A company that offers hosting to their clients will actually just have rights to offer one of three hosting packages. Shared, Reseller or Dedicated. With all of these the client is added on to that companies hosting and that company charges a fee for adding their client to their package.

What happens is this, the client may not see things happening for his or her web site as quick as they think or expected.  So let’s say six months down the road they might want to change services? They are stuck where they are and it can be a complicated mess to move them.

Or let’s say they loose contact with the guy or company that set up their hosting (people working online can up and disappear, go out of business, get THEIR hosting account shut down, get their I.P. in trouble with the search engines for one reason or the other and any and all web sites that are under that parent I.P. get slapped and maybe even disappear from the ranks overnight! The clients site would then be locked up somewhere they can’t get too.

Not to mention, on a hosting package offered by a secondary company, support has a tendency to be none existent. Service, there is no 24/7 support. You must go through the company that offered you the hosting to get your questions answered. This could take days or they may not be able to answer your question and then they have to take the time to go through their support channel, the mother hosting company, and then get back to you with the answer!

The clients going to dislike this especially when they get charged for the time spent.”

So you’re probably saying, “what is the answer then for a company that wants to get their business on line but  doesn’t have a clue about hosting their own site.”

The answer is this, your very own web hosting package, tailored to fit your exact needs.  100% in your control and very, very easy to run and understand with 24/7 support center that can and will answer any and all questions and concerns AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE!

Don’t worry, it’s not as big and scary as you may have been led to believe!

The web hosting we use and highly recommend to all of our clients is HostGator.

Just this month, HostGator was named the 239th fastest
growing privately-owned company in the U.S. on the Inc.
500|5000 list for 2009.

New to Web Hosting?

Not a problem, you can even build a professional website in minutes, with out any web hosting experience if you want. Choose from over 4,500 templates!

Coming from another host?

We know how difficult it can be moving to another web host. Get an account with HostGator and they’ll handle the entire process for you.

* – Free Domain Transfer
* – Free File Transfers
* – Free Database Transfers
* – Free Script Transfers

It’s worth considering and there are several hosting packages available to fit any need.

We want to see you succeed on line. You must start with the correct foundation which in our opinion IS your hosting. Then let us do what we do best…allow us to get your SEO in order with our Quick Start SEO Package.

You’ll then be well on your way to top rankings and free organic search engine traffic for your business.

We’ll go one step further by continuing our discussions about different questions that come up about hosting and using c-panel correctly. And if you send us receipt proof that you purchased a HostGator account through one of our HostGator links, we’ll find something special to give you in return for trusting our word about the whole web Hosting issue.

As always– please post your questions and comments on the blog.

Thank you!

David Schaible
Owner/Editor