Is the Long-Tail Important for Your Business?

First, lets talk about the phrase, “long tail”. What is it?

When your website is found through Google or any search engine there are a number of keywords it can be found on. There are the small group of keywords that everyone seems to target that best describe their business – and maybe there are 5-20 top keywords in anyone’s well-defined business niche. Let’s call those the short tail keywords.

In addition to those people that choose the common words to search for a business like yours there are hundreds, and even thousands more that people use to search for a business like yours that are part of the long-tail.

The long tail is made up of the vast majority of keywords that searchers will use to find your business – but that can be uncommon terms you might not have thought of to find your business with. Let’s show an example…

If your business is aloe vera gel to help relieve sunbathers the pain from a skin burn some of your top terms would be: aloe vera, aloe, aloe gel, and alo vera, alo vara, phrases that match exactly what your business is about.

Now, on the long tail side you will have many other words that people may search on to find your product. If someone can’t remember the name of the plant they may search on “green gel”, “green jelly”, “sunburn stuff”, or other words that relate to your business, but don’t really hit it on the head.

The short-tail keywords aren’t easy to own in Google’s search results. There is a lot of competition for them, and most businesses spend the majority of their time focusing on them. This can be a mistake.

If instead, you were targeting long-tail keywords you would spend less time optimizing your site for them, and if you used a pay per click system you would be paying less money per click because there is little competition for those keywords.

Long tail keywords are usually general, uncommon, and un-focused. Their power lies in their ability to send the majority of traffic to almost any website in existence. Even though a keyword phrase in the long tail might bring just 5 people to your site in a month, it’s a powerful part of the long tail group. As a group the long tail is almost always more powerful than the short tail group.

Web statistics for one site showed 33 words in the short tail and providing over 30 visitors to the site per month. Every keyword sending less than that was part of the long tail. The long tail is very long and the short tail – very short. In this case the long was made up of 134,000 keywords, some of them sending one visitor per month, some two, and so on.

How can a business make money without focusing on the short tail keywords?

Simply by trying to incorporate as many long tail keywords into the content as possible. Of course you’ll want to use the short tail keywords too – and you must have them for Google to be able to understand what your website focuses on. But, as you write – also incorporate many long tail keywords into the content so you can be shown in Google’s search results sometimes for those keywords. It’s very easy to own the long tail keywords if you focus on them. Very few businesses do.

If you set about creating 50 articles about Aloe Vera that were informative, easy to read, and filled with short tail keywords you might barely break into the aloe vera business online. You would probably get ranked on a couple of the short tail keywords, but really you would have to build hundreds of pages of content to really become one of the top three websites about aloe vera.

If instead you focused on the long tail keywords you could create 50 articles filled with them and see a lot more results. Over the long-term if you added content routinely you would see great results and your whole business could be sustained on using them.

As you start your online business website and you are trying to decide which keywords to focus on as you develop your site you should really take the long tail into account and proactively develop content that targets some of them.

Is Email Marketing the Ultimate Way to Market Your Florida Business?

There are entire businesses that are based on just email today, as there were a decade ago. In the past the emails were untargeted and sent in large enough volume that a.05% click through rate gave the person sending emails a couple thousand dollars at a time. Do this over and over a few times each day and that’s a business. A great business as long as it’s legal.

Pay close attention – this is how some savvy online companies are using email as a model for their business.

Email companies first build sales pages called “landing pages”. This is where they will send potential buyers of their products. A landing page, and you’ve seen them before, are usually long and filled with product information. The entire purpose of the landing page is to create a sale for anyone that lands there. Another goal might be to collect an email address so a sale can be made at a later date and after some more email.

Converting these potential buyers to email leads so you can contact them later (permission based marketing) can give you nice profits over time. The typical strategy is to send numerous emails giving free value to the client before you ask them to buy something from you.

You might want to take a minute and look up “Adam Short” in Google. Adam devotes all his time to creating email campaigns for small niche sites he created to target small markets. At a count of 90+ websites that collect leads in different niches, he has a considerable amount of people on each email list. He sends them an automated series of emails from his Aweber account and counts the money as the orders come in. The series of emails he sends is a sales tool that is designed to give a lot of free value, all while selling one of his short eBooks for about $14.95 each. Adam makes 6 figure income per year from these sites.

Here’s basically the process Adam follows:

Visit Amazon.com and look at “Books” main headings in the drop-down menu. Once in the book section choose a category. Self help category works well. When the self help page opens you’ll see subcategories to choose from. Try any of them. next page pops up there are sub-categories I can choose from. I chose the topic of “Eating Disorders”. I think it couldn’t be too difficult to create an eBook to help someone with eating disorders conquer their illness.

I go more sub-niche and decide my eBook will be about helping people cope with binge-eating. Using Microsoft Word I create the 48 page eBook – really putting some effort into it so I can help someone conquer this horrible issue. If you’re not a writer you could outsource it to someone that will write it for a couple hundred bucks. You can probably sell your eBook for $19.95. Many authors choose that as a price.

Back to your email campaign. You should create 10-20 brief emails filled with great information for your target audience. In this case, those with binge eating problems. Give away a lot of information for free in these emails. You’re building trust at this stage and it must be done.

Don’t even ask readers of your email to buy something until the 3rd or 4th email. Ask only sporadically – maybe every 3 or 4 emails you send out. Don’t ask every email – that gets old immediately. Some interesting internet marketing studies have shown that most sales happen after the potential customer reads about six emails from you, not just one or two. For your automated business email campaigns it is tough to beat Aweber – the industry standard.

On your niche website offer something free in exchange for the visitors email address so you have permission to start mailing them your 10-20 auto emails. There are heaps of online sites about how to build effective landing pages that help you convert readers into buyers of your eBooks. Use them.

From each email in which you’re pitching the sale of your eBook make the links go back to your landing page which should have a higher conversion rate after a number of emails read by buyers, in comparison to those visitors that saw your site one time and then your landing page. A long-term relationship with customers is what is indicated for success right now. Follow that plan and grow your email list, your eBook products, and your business.

QUICK! Throw a Net on Your Website Visitors!

There are 3 basic functions a website can do well. It provides information – by default. You can add as much or as little as you wish. It can act as a sales funnel and conversion process – your own automatic online sales person. Lastly, you can collect leads on your website. Leads are people that find your business interesting and could be buyers in the future.

Regardless whether you look at your website as a sales tool or an informational piece you should be collecting leads too.

Collecting a list of leads through a process known as “double-opt in” will allow you to legally email that group whatever information they opted in to receive… along with newsletters or offers for things they might want to buy.

If you don’t get started on a leads list you’re probably way behind your competition. Gathering leads online isn’t difficult, and, it’s one of the main benefits of having an online business presence.

An opt-in email list gives you permission to email the group and let them know more about your products, services, business, and you. It’s a way to reach people that are somewhat interested in what you have going already. There are many tactics you can try to keep your list happy, building trust and authority all the while. One of them is giving things away for free to those that subscribed to your list. It’s one of the best ways to keep the members on your list happy. Give them added value for having joined your list.

How do you go about building a list of leads from your business website? What works best is to straight out offer a bribe. The bribe can take the form of something that most people in your business niche want already, or would find interesting and helpful if they had it. Informational products – ebooks, articles, or videos work well in this regard.

You can also try coupons, a free short-term subscription to some ongoing program, entrance to a web seminar you’re holding about some hot topic in your niche, or even giving something tangible away – like free golf balls or something.

Building a list is rapidly becoming the ultimate goal of business owners online because there is a lot of power in that list. Some internet marketers say that if you have 1,000 good subscribers to your list – people that are crazy for your business and products, you can make a great living just off that list of 1,000 members. This varies depending on what niche you’re targeting, but it has a lot of truth to it.

There is a company that specializes in helping you to build your leads list – the name of the business is Aweber. Look into their program, they are basically the leaders in the field, and have been for a number of years now.

You can configure Aweber to mail your pre-written emails one at a time on a schedule you choose. Each person subscribing to your list will receive the emails on that same schedule, regardless when they sign up. The best plan seems to be – use your license to email your list to help you build trust among those that joined. Don’t try to sell something every time you email them – give information that is valuable and make your subscribers crave emails from you. That’s the ideal anyway!

If you aren’t focused on gathering leads for future email campaigns – and to stay in touch with people that like your business and are interested in the niche you’re in, you should start today.

A Company Built for Change?

As said before, recently and far in the past – we believe that you have to build a Florida company that is flexible and embraces change as a welcome, and as a given.

Traditional employees don’t thrive on change. Some are looking to get by on as little effort and change as they can. You’ll need to find those employees in the hiring interview, not after they’re already hired.

You need employees that are ready to change their focus from one project to another for as long as is needed.

Successful companies in Florida and elsewhere are able to incorporate change with a minimum of problems.

Meetings should mention change often – and build up the idea that change is good, it’s essential to a successful business. Expectations should be kept very clear when there is change, because this is the one area that tends to play havoc with employees. If they don’t understand the why and how of the change – they might not be wholly on-board.

Plan ahead for a change of ownership of the company in the case of your retirement or selling the business. Grooming leaders to take over when you depart is crucial to the business surviving.

Marketing Your New Florida Business Online: Comments

One easy way to market your new Florida business online is by participating in the conversation going on about your products and services or others’ products and services that are similar to what you’re offering.

Online marketing is becoming the most effective way to market to consumers. Why? It’s targeted to people that want to see information about topics they’re researching online.

Television hits the whole group of viewers with the same ad… maybe you’re watching Seinfeld re-runs and you get an ad for Florida Botox Clinics as a commercial. That ad is targeted toward people that might want to try Botox injections (I think they’re illegal now – this is just an example). All those that could care less quickly flip the channel to watch 30-90 seconds of football highlights or something else. TV advertising is not all that targeted.

Contrast that with internet use. On the internet you type in “Florida football news” into Google or Yahoo and you find sites all focusing on football in Florida State. You choose one. On that site you’re likely to see ads that Florida state football watchers would have some interest in. Bingo – the internet is targeted marketing at a higher level than TV or Radio could ever reach.

How do you market your Florida business using “comments” as alluded to in the title of this article?

Many websites allow comments on written articles. You can best find websites which allow this by starting your search at: Google’s Blogsearch Engine.

This will search all blogs for whatever subject you choose. A blog is different from a traditional website because it’s more interactive. It allows input from visitors much easier than did traditional static websites. Blogs usually offer the visitor a chance to “comment”. This is where you can market your Florida business.

Doing a search for Florida Incorporation might bring you here to our blog. You might find this article about leaving comments on blogs as a way to market your business. In the comments section below you might write something designed to show your expertise about incorporating in Florida or you might write something about a product you offer that those that incorporate in Florida might be interested in. Maybe you have a corporate kit that you’d like to sell to newly incorporating businesses.

Owners of blog sites can choose which comments they allow and which they reject. Some they’ll reject as spam instantly. How can you get past the automatic and human filter that will surely look at your comment to decide if it’s spam or not?

Here are some tips for gaining approval for comments you leave at blogs:

1. Read the whole article you’re going to comment on and choose one point to comment about.

2. Comment about that point of the article – and add something to the conversation. Usually it’s best to find something you agree with as every writer likes to have some pats on the back, you’ll get further with this than vehemently disagreeing with what the writers says.

3. Offer something of value to the other readers of the blog by saying something like… I also posted an article about this <a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/yourarticle.htm”> same idea at my site that readers might be interested in. This will sometimes get through and sometimes not. If not, see step 4.

4. The best approach is to comment on various articles and let the site owner get to know you based on what you’re adding to their site. After 5 comments or so that were approved by the owner you can drop a little link for your Florida business and see if it goes through. It probably will. If he’s approved five comments of yours already that he though added value to his site he will likely approve your one blog link. You can continue to do this over and over up to a certain number of links before the owner of the site will realize that the whole point you’re trying to accomplish is marketing your own Florida products and services through his blog and established readers.

PS: Don’t try this at our site as we’re ruthless about weeding out spam comments!