Local SEM - Internet Marketing For The Local Business

32 Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization Activities You Should Be Doing Now

Of course, not all of the suggestions below will apply to your business, but you can probably envision many of them helping you increase sales!

1. Are you capturing specific prospect and client information for your lists including names, email addresses, postal addresses, fax numbers, phone numbers, past purchases, family details etc.? Are you asking every client and prospect you talk to in person, on the phone etc to sign up to your email list? Do you have a sign up form for your email list on every one of the pages on your website? Do you offer a desirable targeted incentive for prospects and clients to join your email list?
   
2. Are you following up with your clients offering them back end products and services and giving them gifts, thank you notes added service...taking steps to build solid long term relationships?
   
3. Are you educating and following up your prospects with gifts and offers by email, direct mail, phone and/or fax?
   
4. Are you making it easy for your clients, joint venture partners and key people or businesses who are “centers of influence” to send you referrals?
   
5. Do you have a Web site marketing plan in place? Does it include optimizing your site’s pages to attract the search engines? Do you have an active pay-per-click campaign running that you regularly maintain?
   
6. You should focus most of your time and energy on these first 5 steps. If you're doing all 5 effectively you will almost certainly have a very successful and profitable business. Most of the methods that follow serve one or more of these vital steps.
   
7. Are you using time limits on claiming some of your gifts to increase the frequency your clients buy from you?
   
8. Do all of your front end lead generation offers have matching high priced or highly profitable back end offers?
   
9. Do you have your special incentive to join your email list on the back of your business cards?
   
10. Are you printing business cards for your employees to give out with the special incentive on the back?
    
11. Are you regularly adding pages to your website with highly targeted, high quality content optimized for lucrative search engine keyword phrases?
    
12. Do you have a blog or blogs on your website for you and your staff members where you add quality, targeted content regularly?
    
13. Are you regularly posting on other blogs and forums to gain credibility in your niche and traffic to your website?
    
14. Are you using eBay to sell products and/or generate leads?
    
15. Are you split testing and tracking pay per click advertising bidding on a wide range of highly targeted long tail keyword phrases to bring in qualified leads to your website and make real sales?
    
16. Are you gathering testimonials from your happy clients and posting them on your website?
    
17. Are you using images to match the keyword phrases they represent to increase your search engine traffic and give your site more visual impact?
    
18. Do you have captions that draw your readers into your body copy underneath the images on your site?
    
19. Are you using online video to demonstrate your products and services effectively and do you have video posted on major video sites like YouTube?
    
20. Are you actively seeking out and setting up joint ventures with other business owners to cross promote your products and services?
    
21. Do you have your own product funnel with progressively higher priced products and services as your clients gain more and more trust with you and your business?
    
22. Are you using information products like your own valuable report or audio as a lead generator for your business? Are you using online sales letters effectively to sell your lead generation reports and audio and your other products and services? These days you must sell even free products!
    
23. Are you following up with your prospects and clients by emails leading your prospects and clients to high quality content on your website, gift offers they can claim by contacting you or coming into your business or product and service offers?
    
24. Are you suggesting in your emails that your prospects and clients forward them on to their friends and associates to help them go viral?
    
25. Do you have “tell a friend” scripts on the pages of your website with high quality free content?
    
26. Are you paying generous commissions to people who recommend your lead generating products?
    
27. Are you adding the personal touch by sending handwritten emails, letters and notes to key prospects clients?
    
28. Do you have a system for answering your business email within a few minutes of receiving it or at worst at least twice a day?
    
29. Are you using a special event calendar to create exciting ongoing promotions for your business that you can send by email, direct mail, do in house or by phone or fax?
    
30. Are you promoting other products and services to your lists and getting commissions in return or cross promotions from the businesses you promote?
    
31. Are you frequently brainstorming ways to improve your marketing, profits and the ways you effect your prospects' behavior on your website, over the phone and in your business?
    
32. Are you identifying and focusing your energy on the 20% of online marketing that is getting you results?