So did you see that Walmart is quietly changing their name? Yep, it is known formally as Walmart Stores, and they are dropping the 'stores' from their name! Why? Because they are the largest company in the world in terms of sales and they want to stay that way! Amazon just jumped into the grocery business, so Walmart wants to increase their online sales because they know the buying online trend is not going away! All the traditional department stores are going more and more to online sales. Once big names like Macy's, Sears, etc., are closing brick & mortar stores and moving to online sales. Malls are quickly becoming a thing of the past, with anchor stores shutting down!

Why does this matter? Why am I telling you this? I am proving that, as more and more consumers and more and more companies are competing for the NEW top location (not the corner lot at the busy intersection), the Google ranking is going to become even more important than ever. But you won't get there by accident!

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89% of consumers now search online before making a purchase of a product or service! That means that only 11 people out of every 100 will pick up the phone and call without searching. If you don't have a website or have one that is not ranking on page one, your business is probably not doing very well. Not only that, but when was the last time you saw a phone book? Even if they are looking for a phone number, they are going to do a search. Here's another shocker, 96% of searchers never go beyond page one of the results page! That means if you're on page 2, you're not getting a lot of visits to your website.

The NEW CORNER lot I mentioned earlier is the top spot in the Google map! 33% of consumers pick the business that is in the number 1 spot. If that's you, you're getting 33 calls or visits for every 100 searches. Big DEAL? #2 gets 18%, #3 about 11%. If you take the 4% away that will continue on to page 2, you're left with 34% distributed among the rest of page 1. But there's more, of that 34%, most will have picked their company before they get to the middle of the page, which is about the 5th or 6th listing!

I promise you ONE thing, most of the time, the company at the number 1 spot in the map, has an SEO person or company optimizing their online presence! They understand that SEO is the bill that pays the bills. Generally, one or 2 sales a month will pay for their SEO costs. SEO is not a one and done activity, this is a dog eat dog world and if you become the #1 business on page 1, you knocked somebody out of that position and they WILL see a hit to their sales. You become the target, so your SEO person or company will have to fight to keep that position! Just as you have a manager for a brick & mortar business, so too do you need a person or company to manage your online presence. That's SEO!

​If you are using a blog to promote a business, enable comments. Many businesses leave their comments turned off to avoid spam. If you allow site visitors to leave comments on your articles within your blog, though, it provides new content for your blog that is unique and free. Since search engines love content that is unique, the comment section can help your search engine rankings increase on your blog.

When creating the URL for your website, use a keyword phrase. Search engines will place more value on your URL when searches are done for those keywords. By using a keyword phrase that is popular, your URL will show up more frequently in the search engines.

Marketing your business through the Internet may seem complicated at first, but once you learn how to do it effectively, it could be very profitable for your business. Not knowing how to properly market your business through the Internet can cause you to lose customers, though, so below we will give you tips to help you do it effectively.

One of the best tips to help you with Internet marketing is to use any available resources at your disposal. Perhaps you have friends or family members that are good at designing websites. Have them help you with yours. If nothing else, they can give input to help your website reach online viewers you may otherwise miss.
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​Being a business owner requires you to take care of numerous things. Keeping a strong customer base is one of the most important things you need to focus on, though. To do this, you must regularly bring in new leads. Below are some tips to help you in your lead generation efforts.

​If your business has a Twitter account, you should be adding new and different content frequently to your feed. This is a great way to simply acknowledge your fans or give them business related information. Your followers will stay interested in your tweets if you occasionally offer them business promotions through them.
When using social media marketing, you should offer your followers special offers. Followers will be more inclined to purchase from you when you give them exclusive discounts on your products or services. Try giving them a fun contest to participate in that will allow them to receive a special promotion or discount. Use social media sites to share exclusive information with your followers as well.

Any website owner can benefit from the process of search engine optimization, or SEO. For your business to thrive, your website needs traffic. Making your website search engine friendly to bring in traffic takes some effort. In this post, we will help you learn more about optimizing your website to make it search engine friendly and bring in more traffic.

When working on the meta-tag section of your webpage, do a little research on your keywords so you can include every variation and misspelling on your list. This will increase your visibility as the search engine bots analyze your meta-tags and include them on your website.
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Even though there are several search engines available, your focus should be on the big ones. Google is the main search engine available, with Yahoo and Bing following behind. As you optimize your website, research what these three search engines look for and customize your site to get their attention. It’s not worth your time and money to optimize your site for MSN or Ask, or any of the other smaller search engines.