Local Social Business Networking

Effective Internet Marketing You Can Do Yourself For Free!

// July 11th, 2009 // Local Business Solutions, Online Promotion, Social Media for Business

A Few Types of Free Internet Advertising

Internet advertising, particularly the free kind, still requires a considerable investment – primarily of time.  Also it will definitely go a lot better for you if you have business graphics in place already, logos, flyers, ads, as these can be utilized in just about every type of free online marketing.

Benefits of Free Online Marketing

Obviously growing your business is the main objective.  With that in mind, these types of internet marketing all create SEO opportunities, primarily if ingrain your advertising with your keywords and, secondly, with links back to your website.  Visit this other blog of ours for more clarification on SEO Basics, and here is a link to Google’s Free Keyword Research Tool.  Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, each of these forms of online advertising allow you to step in front of an audience as the majority of these websites are trafficked routinely by a set of people, each we consider a community.

The types of free internet promotion we cover in this article are:

• Classified Ad Running
• Internet Phone Book Listings
• Free Hosted Blogs
• Social Networking Sites and
• Free Websites on Hosted Domains

Classifieds Ad Running

Tip 1: Develop several ads to run, rotate through and test…

Tip2: Optimize for SEO:

-  Keywords in ad title

- Keywords in content (make sure to use h1 tag if HTML is supported)

- Keywords as  SEO link to your website

Craigslist – This one has the most traffic and allows SEO Keyword text links to your website.  One recommendation is to learn one piece of code to greatly enhance your listings – how to insert an image into the body (so it’s not at the botom, so the image can be the ad, and so you don’t have to upload it every time – just paste in the ad).  Tutorial coming.

Backpage.com (Willamette Week) – a solid classifieds engine that allows SEO links and ranks on Google and Yahoo.  One drawback is that is has some formatting specifics that can kick ads back in an error, but you most likely won’t run into those.

Kijiji.com

Portland Business Journal

Portland Tribune

Angie’s List – Not quite free

Internet Phone Book Listings

-          Google Maps – Local Business Center
-          Yahoo Maps!
-          YellowPages.com
-          InsiderPages.com
-          SuperPages.com
-          Oregon Live (Oregonian)
-          More More More (request a list of 15 internet phone books with instructions on how to post to them)

Advantages:
1. Community Traffic
2. Link for SEO Benefit
3. Significanly bolsters Yahoo and Google Map Listings

Free Hosted Blogs

Free, hosted blog websites can be used to generate traffic at no cost, but require using the right keywords and quality content to attract attention.  They definitely provide quality links back to your website when you implement keyword text links.
- WordPress.com
- Blogger.com
- Blogspot.com
- Suggest others

Social networking sites

Strategy:
– Lead, Follow or Forget It
- Make New Contacts
-  Invite Prospects and Peers
- Invite Partners

Strategy 2: Partner Reciprocation

If we work together we can create an atmosphere of trust – we can take this networking group online.
- Leave each other quality testimonials
- Make introductions to connect with each other’s networks

My Recommended List:
- Linked In
- Biznik
- Facebook
- Twitter

Free Websites on Hosted Domains

They all usually offer upgrade pricing for your own domain.

http://www.weebly.com/ – Simple free websites

http://speaklight.com – More powerful free websites

For help with any of these or other online advertising methods, feel free to call 866.374.8489 and ask for Charles, or use the following form.