When it comes to Main Street, finding a strip mall without two or three “For Rent” signs along it, is a rare occasion lately.   Sure, the sour economy has taken its toll on everyone from the local mom and pop shop to the Fortune 500s.  We know that unregulated big business brought down Wall Street.  But what broke the backbone of the US small business market? Why are small businesses everywhere continuing to fail?

I started to think about this after passing my town’s local pizza joint that recently became one of the many, “here today gone tomorrows” of our time.  Nonni’s had just revamped itself in hopes of generating more business - new flat screen TVs, a decorative paint job that put you right in the middle of southern Italy while indulging in your pie, and some fancy new furniture.  Unfortunately, the owner invested too much of his time and money in the wrong place.

Unless your over the age of 65 or just plain behind, you don’t use paper publications like the Yellow Pages to find what your looking for today.  Instead, we Google, Yahoo and Bing.  We use search engines that give us exactly what we are looking for (and more) in just seconds.  The problem, for many small businesses lining the sidewalks of Main Street, is that their products and services are not being captured by these search engines.  It’s surprising to see how businesses, from general stores to hair salons, don’t have websites (their most important store front and tool for moving up on the search engine ranks).

I understand they are called “small businesses” for a reason.  Localized, smaller centers of commerce and capitalism - plain and simple.  But today, thanks to technology and globalization, there’s really no such thing as being localized, especially if you want people to know you exist.  Bottom line, the small businesses who have remained too small (i.e., no websites or other forms of online advertising) well their time to get up to speed with the rest of the world has come.  Whether your a one man accounting firm or a 30 person nail salon - you need to advertise your services on the web.  The old pen and paper way of managing and publicizing your trade is out.

Let’s revisit poor Nonni’s to try and zone in on how this establishment could have potentially survived the technology tsunami and the recession.

1. If Nonni’s would have invested the $1,000 to $2,000 that originally went to flat screen TVs on a new website, they would have been able to establish a web presence, making it easier for customers to search for their services, order online and look up the shop’s phone number, address, menu, etc.

2. Having a website Nonni’s could have also hired or performed SEO on their website to help increase traffic to their site and essentially generate more business.

3. After getting more business/ revenue from their website, Nonni’s then could have gauged whether or not to invest in TVs and a new paint job based on whether their clients were coming in for pizza or ordering out.

4. After expanding and hiring a larger staff to deal with increased business, Nonni’s could have had a CRM or Customer Relationship Management designed to help more efficiently run their business.  CRM systems could be used to keep better track of inventory, staffing and employment needs like hours and payroll, as well as manage a client and customer list of emails and other contact info to email blast their customers about promotions, new events at the store, etc.

Lesson of the day: small businesses need to focus on their digital store front in order to keep their actual store front up and running in today’s day, age and economic times.

          It’s not an easy task to determine which keywords to use while doing your SEO (also known as Search Engine Optimization) for your website. Unless you are highly familiar with the concept and dynamics of SEO, choosing a few simple words, well . . . it isn’t that simple.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with SEO in general – I’ll make it easy for you.  Go to Google.  Type in something you want to find or learn about in their search engine.  The first entries that come up and the reason as to why they came up in the order they did, is all due in part to SEO.  

         In recent articles, I’ve gone over what to use, how to increase your ranking, etc. But I never really went over how to choose your key words which is the most important part! When choosing my key words for SEO – first and foremost, I do a test run.  I will run a sample search in google and see what results I get for a specific phrase – I specifically look to see how many sites or pages come up with that EXACT keyword. For instance, “web design Westchester ny” has those key words in every link until about the 20th or 21st page. That means that it’s a pretty popular SEO key word search. From this, I can conclude that it will be a little more difficult to get on the first page since my search resulted in quite a few pages that I’d have to beat out. IMPORTANT: This does NOT mean that this is a popular keyword that people are searching with, instead it is what companies or websites are using as their keywords for people to find. 

         One of my favorite ways to combat my competitors is to use google adwords. Yes I know this is meant to advertise your website on google, however, they actually have a pretty awesome tool called keyword tool. This tool allows you to search a particular keyword and then tell you keywords that are similar and what their monthly search volume is, what last months search volume was, and what level of competition you have. It’s a pretty awesome tool I think! This is where I basically get my key words. You always want to find a keyword (using google adwords keyword tool or whatever tool satisfies you) that has a good search volume and a low level competition scale. A keyword may have a high search volume, but if you can’t get on the first page then it is useless. I would rather have a keyword with a search volume of 100 a month where I am the first link, than be on the 5th page of a keyword with a search volume of 1000.  That could be 100 new potential customers that will visit my site, versus MAYBE 1000 new customers that may never even get to your site. Think of this question… when you search on google how often do you go to page 5?      

        In your keywords you should always try to specify a location, because local SEO is much easier then just doing a keyword of ‘dog walker’. That will be almost impossible to get on the first page unless you are posting articles every ten minutes for years. The more specific your keywords are the easier it will be to get on the first page of a search engine. Don’t think which keyword has the most volume, think of which keyword will get you the potential customers and the sales you need. Another issue I have with SEO is all the websites that ask you to pay them hundreds of dollars to keep track of all your SEO. Google allows you to do this for free with a few of their applications, so don’t fall into the trap of paying $200 dollars a month for a company to just tell you what your stats are. It’s completely different if they are actually doing the leg work to get you on the first pages of google, but not if you are doing the majority of the work and just want to know what your rank is and what your opponents ranks are.

In today’s day and age, communication is faster than ever. To that end, we’ve seen significant changes in the way that even our colloquial styles of speech and writing are used. Thanks to BlackBerries, the iPhone and social networking sites everyone is texting, poking, LOL’ing, or friending a new digital face at some point throughout their day. So, where does this new way of speaking to one another leave us web marketers? What’s the best way to successfully reach the audiences we target via the web? With so much to consider, like catchy headlines, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the latest marketing fads, well; how do we write superstar copy for websites? The biggest conundrum we encounter when writing for the web is whether to take the old school copywriting approach or the SEO approach to copywriting. Obviously, the answer is both. The hard part, however, is finding a balance between the two to make sure you’ve got the attention of both your readers and those search engines. As a freelance copywriter, I will always argue that good prose should be your primary focus. My partner and SEO extraordinaire, on the other hand, will always tell you otherwise. That said, we’re going to explore good prose first (sorry Lex). Maybe it’s similar to the chicken or the egg argument, but, in my opinion, SEO is useless if your site doesn’t compel visitors enough to stick around. As web marketers, we do this in two ways - we sound interesting and we sound smart. I’ve designed my own little ABC approach to writing good web copy based on the key ideas that are out there. A is for Attention. This is the #1 rule of thumb for writing great copy. Whether it’s for a website or for print, you have got to get your reader’s attention. This is done mostly in the headline and sub-headline. How you go about sounding interesting is really up to you. I’ve heard of doing everything from picking randomly worded flashcards out of a hat. B is for the Basics. When writing for the web, readability is key. In order to achieve readability your prose need to stick to the basics. Remember to use short sentences and clear, everyday language. Brevity is of the utmost importance. Making use of bullet points is a great way to implement this (it will also help with SEO). C is for a Call-to-Action. In print, this is the line that starts with, “Call today” or “Fill out the attached …”. On the web, these are the “Click Here” links that bring us to the next page or location on the web – whether it’s to check out a new product or actually buy something, we’re taking an action that increases our involvement with the brand. Now that you know the ABC’s of writing good copy for the web lets take a look at SEO. Our goal with SEO is to include key words and phrases that apply to our target audience so search engines will notice our website. The hard part is using enough of these words/phrases in the right spots on the page without interrupting the message or degrading your prose. This can be achieved using a few simple steps. 1. Place key phrases in the title tag of the html header of the page. 2. Avoid interrupting the flow of your writing by including key terms and phrases in the headers and sub headers wherever possible, preferably within html header tags (<h1> & <h2> tags). 3. Put key words and phrases in bulleted lists in specially formatted text (like bold or italic) and in hyperlinks and image titles or alt tags. 4. Include 2-3 key terms or phrases per paragraph - but make sure it still reads well! Bottom line – there needs to be a balance when it comes to copywriting for websites and for SEO. Moving up on Google’s rankings list is like walking down the red carpet. You can work hard focusing solely on SEO to get recognized, but if you look like crap when everyone’s finally looking at you, you’re site will go from rank to stank faster than you can twitter or text the news to your boss.