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 CONGRATULATIONS! If you are thinking about how to market your Smart SIte, you are already ahead of most of your competitors!
Our Smart Sites are built "Search Engine Smart." This means that they are hand-created, hand-coded and are designed to provide you a solid foundation for success on the web. However, further marketing completely depends upon your keyterms and the competition for those keyterms.
The Smart Sites are designed for local businesses. If you are planning on targeting a national audience (Example: targeting the key term "coffee"), then a Smart Site might not be for you. If you are a local business serving a local market and your keyterms are local (Example: targeting the key term "Boise ID coffee shop"), then the Smart Site is for you. However, there might be some more marketing to do in order to get your site high on the search engines. Again, it completely depends upon the local competition.
1) Google Maps: Google, the number one search engine by far, offers a mapping service. When someone searches the web for local services, many times the results will show up with a map that includes listings of local businesses. Take a look at Google's listings for "Prescott AZ Commercial Real Estate" for an example.
2) Local Search Terms: When writing your page text, make sure to include geographical information. Make sure to include the name of the town, city, county or state that you serve. It's generally easier to get listed higher by targeting a smaller geographical area.
- Example: If you have a welding shop, you would not target the key term "welding" by itself. The reason is that you would be competing against other welding sites worldwide. There would be thousands of competing websites.
- Instead, consider saying "Boise Welding" or "Boise, ID Welding Shop" in your page text. You would still have the key term "welding" in your text, but that would be safely supplemented by the local area terms.
- NOTE: Understand that a new website can take months (up to 12 months in Google) to appear favorably in search engines. You can get your site's rankings changed faster by following some of the tips on this page.
3) Directories: There are thousands of free directories across the web. Take some time to search out these directories, find the appropriate category for your website and submit a listing. You probably won't get very much traffic from these links, but you will have something called an "inbound link." Inbound links are very important for your site in search engine listings.
4) Local Advertising: Ensure you include your website address (your URL) in all marketing materials. Include it everywhere you would include your phone number. This includes business cards, signage, brochures, print advertising, letterhead, Yellow Pages, etc.
 5) Get Links: Try to get a link to your site from other websites!
- A link TO your site is called an "inbound link." Inbound links carry a lot of weight when it comes to ranking in the search engines. Essentially, a search engine sees these links pointing to your site and assumes that you are offering important information. They assume your information is important enough that another site wants its visitors to look at your content. The more inbound links, the more important your information must be. If your information is important, then you rank higher. Get it?
- A link on your site going to another site is an "outbound link." These carry no weight in search engines (ok, they do to some extent - but not to the extent that you would be using them). A common mistake that website owners make is to put a lot of outbound links on their site thinking that this helps their website. Not true. However, those links may be of some value to your visitor, so don't completely disregard them.
- You can get links from the Better Business Bureau, Chamber of Commerce and professional organizations. Note that you usually have to be a member of these organizations to get a link. You can also get links from businesses you work with, site directories, blogs, message boards, etc.
6) Cost-Per-Click (also called Pay-Per-Click):
- Google AdWords offers CPC campaigns that can be targeted to a visitor's geographical location. You can even set up your campaign so that your ad will only show for people located within 20 miles (any amount of miles) from your business!
- You can target campaign keyterms such as "Prescott Real Estate" or "San Diego Dry Cleaners" to ensure that only realistic prospects click on your ads. If you only target general keyterms like "Real Estate" or "Dry Cleaners" then you will get clicks from all over the U.S., and spent a lot of money unnecessarily.
7) Write an Article on Your Business
- Consider writing an article on a subject that you know about. You can submit that article to one of the many article sharing sites online. One example is ezinearticles.com.
- Include two links to your website in your article. These links carry a lot of favorable weight with search engines and will help your site improve in ranking.
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