Thursday, August 23, 2012

Search Engine Marketing for Home Based Businesses (part 1)

Search engine marketing for home based businesses can be challenging. ?You must establish trust and legitimacy without the backing of an established office location, rise to the top of the search engine rankings from among hundreds or even thousands of competitors carrying the same products and marketing the same items, and find a way to place your business in local listings without using an address as your anchor. ?Fear not, however, all of these things can be done and smbSEO is here to show you how.

Overcoming Trust and Legitimacy Issues

Your first challenge in search engine marketing for home based businesses is establishing trust and legitimacy without an established office location. ?There are two main ways you can deal with this problem: 1) Content creation; 2) Joining organizations; and 3) Ratings and reviews.

1. Content Creation

Content is the heart of a website. ?It showcases your knowledge and expertise and gives visitors a reason to return for more. ?Content, such as a blog or newsfeed, shows visitors that you know your business and your customers. ?This proof helps to establish that you are a business owner the visitor can trust and that your business is legitimate.

2. Joining organizations

Joining professional organizations not only provides links back to your website from those organizations, something that by itself can help raise your site in the rankings, but it also shows that you are serious about the topic your website covers. ?For example, if you are a health food products vendor, joining an organization like the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association makes a lot of sense if you are looking to build credibility.

3. Ratings and Reviews

Ratings and Reviews are one of the single most important ways that you can establish trust and legitimacy for your home based business. ?Offer incentives for customers to leave ratings or offer reviews. ?The truth is that even a negative review is worth more to your business than no reviews at all.

Overcoming Local Search Challenges

In the past, local search such as Google plus Business Pages used to ignore home based businesses unless they had a physical office address to put on the listing. ?This is no longer a problem. ?You can now list your business by service area or by distance from a specific area. ?For most home based businesses, your best option is to list it by the service areas you cover. ?For example, if you operate a home based business out of Plano, Texas you might want to list your service areas as covering Allen, Frisco, and McKinney as well. ? Google also allows you to specify whether you will come to ?your customers or your customers should come to you, reducing the chances of unexpected visitors.

This covers part one of Search engine marketing for Home Based Businesses. ?Join us tomorrow night for part two.

About mike (53 Posts)

SMB SEO Director of Search Marketing, Dallas SEO Advertising Consultant


Source: http://www.smbseo.com/search-engine-marketing-for-home-based-businesses-part-1

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