Supplement your online presence with ApexPages.com

I’m happy to announce the launch of apexpages.com.  Not only is it a great way to get your small business online for the first time, its also a great way to supplement your existing small business online marketing campaigns.

ApexPages.com is based on an experimental revenue model.  I realized in talking with small business owners that many aren’t yet online and aren’t ready or able to spend the money to hire a website developer to build a site for them.  What they really want is a free method to get established online to limit risk.  Paying for results isn’t a problem, but most of the time they are just paying for a website that may not ever get them new client leads.

What ApexPages.com has done is build a simple template system to allow small business owners to create a simple page for their small business in 5 minutes or less.   You pay nothing to create it and, as you’ll see when you create your listing, its a super simple looking web page with a description of your business, a tagline and a very visible contact form. 

Clients will find your site via search engines or through the small business directory and, once they fill out the contact form, ApexPages.com immediately emails you to let you know about the new client lead and you can view the description the client left about their inquiry.  If it looks like a good match for your services, you can visit your account page on apexpages.com and use a secure link to purchase that lead’s contact information for $1.99.  Its a simple low-cost way to get your small business online and you only page for results.

Three Tools for Website Competitive Analysis

There are a wealth of free tools out there for checking your website, but there are three great tools you can use to check out how your website stacks up to your competition.

1) SEMRush.com – This is the main website I use for competitive analysis on my websites.  If you type in the URL of your website or one of your competitors, you can quickly get a ballpark figure on the amount of traffic each site receives (organic vs. paid), a list of top keywords you rank for in natural search and a list of competitor sites that rank for the same search terms.  You can also type in a keyword and semrush.com will give you average search volume for that keyword, average cost per click for that keyword if you purchase PPC ads for it and a list of websites that target that keyword.  Pretty awesome stuff.

2) Alexa.com – A lot has been said about how simple it is to trick Alexa ratings but, at the end of the day, they are still a decent yardstick for putting a simple number on how your website ranks against your competition.  The whole process is very simple, just visit their site, enter the URL of your site and they’ll give you a number.  Maybe it’ll be 10,000,000, maybe it’ll be 100,000, maybe it’ll not even register at all, but the point is that you’ll get a number.  When you compare that against your competition, you can quickly get an idea of just what kind of competition your facing.  The core of Alexa’s ranking system is based on users using the Alexa toolbar that visit your site.  While there are a *ton* of users with the Alexa toolbar installed, their metrics aren’t the gospel.  Take them with a grain of salt, but the point is to measure how you rank against your competition and work on the basics to improve your search engine rankings.

3) Google.com – Great Google rankings is the object of many an entrepreneur’s affection.  Fortunately for you, Google can also be used to analyze your competition so you can hone in on their weaknesses and attack.  The process is simple.  Find the keywords you are targeting, do a google search for that keyword, and look at the top ranking sites for that keyword.   Analyze your competitors and learn what kind of content they have, what sort of search engine optimation they’ve done on their site and who links to them.  To find out the last part, who links to them (a critical part of building authority for your site), pop over to www.yahoo.com and type in ‘link:<url to website>’ (without the quotes) to find out who is linking to the site.  The “inlinks” button towards the top of the results page will show other sites linking to you. 

These three tips will get you started on a great competitive analysis for your website.  Enjoy!

Search Engine Marketing Made Simple

I started SimpleCosmos.com as a way to provide useful, real world tips to those seeking internet marketing advice.  Internet Marketing doesn’t have to be complicated.  It is easy to get caught up in the technical aspects of marketing your internet site but what it really comes down to is a series of simple tasks.  Today’s post is about search engine marketing and, guess what, its simple.

The Three Pillars of Search Engine Marketing Success

1) Focus.

Target the keywords and key phrases you value the most.  These are the heart of your internet marketing campaign.  If you don’t know the keywords that you want to target to attract customers, put yourself in your customer’s shoes.  If they wanted to find your product or service online, what would they type into the search engine?  I suggest you focus on 3 or 4 key phrases to get started.

2) Content.

Write solid content that your users will find helpful and search engines will find relevant and unique.  They say “Content is King” and they are right.  Without relevant and unique content built around your key phrases, its unlikely you’ll reach your search engine ranking goals.  Write technical documents about your products, write sales pitches for your products, write articles about the benefits of your product, write about recent news in your industry, write about the history of your product, write about case studies of customers using your product, write, write, write.   Search engines are great at processing your data and using it to establish relevancy and authority of your site.  If you write high-quality, relevant content, you’ll be rewarded.

3) Links.

Build links to your content.  Get involved in forums and message boards that discuss your topic, write articles that link back to your site and share them with industry publications, add yourself to free directories, ask other sites in your industry to link to you, etc.  Every link to get to your site is a vote for you.  More links = More Votes = Better Search Engine Ranking.

If you can master the three steps above, you’ll be miles ahead of most businesses on the internet.  I know the three steps above look simple but they work.  The search engines really have one goal in mind, they want to provide the most relevant results to their users.  If you have a great product, focus your efforts on your key phrases, write great content on your topic and build authority through linking and site promotion, you will start seeing results in the search engines.  Yes, its extremely competitive out there, especially in some highly profitable industries.  If you’re in an industry with a lot of competition, narrow your focus to a specific niche.  Focus on your niche and attack it with everything you have.  If you master that niche you can move on to others.  Remember, keep things simple.  Quality content, laser focus on your key phrases, link building.  It is simple.