Green Apple Sales Blog

In this article, I’d like to take a break from the content we normally put out and tell you about the recent goings-on at Green Apple Sales!

Just this past week, our team had the honor and pleasure of attending the special, invite-only Corporate Sponsor Dinner hosted by the Share Your Soles organization. This organization is responsible for donating shoes to impoverished, shoe-less people literally around the world.

All the major sponsors of the organization – those who have financially contributed to it the most and helped make it the success that it is today – were invited to join Mona Purdy, the founder of Share Your Soles, for a private dinner at the Chicago Yacht Club.

It was such a blast! (We have pictures to prove it!)

This was a huge deal for us, after our direct involvement with the organization over the last several months. We’ve been working very closely with Mona to build a website for the organization that would give it a professional yet personal feel, which I think we’ve accomplished. (You can check out the website here).

We’re very excited to have been able to work with Mona and fully support everything that she’s done (and continues to do!). This woman works her tail off and it’s great to see such a noble cause accelerated by the support of both the sponsors and volunteers dedicated to helping her in her mission. We’re extremely glad to have been able to build the website that serves as the central hub of her online efforts.

In addition to the corporate sponsor dinner from Share Your Soles, Dan O’Callaghan announced that Green Apple Sales will be the Title Sponsor of the 18th Annual Herb Didier Memorial Golf Outing. This outing is being hosted by the Lincolnshire Morning Star Rotary Club and Share Your Soles in order to raise money for their charitable organizations.

I don’t know how we’ll shoot on the course, but I do know that we’re grateful to be able to help the cause of these 2 organizations, and will continue to do so in the future.

Green Apple Sales

Right now, even at this very moment, Small Businesses are experiencing a economic climate where they need to adapt in order to thrive. Or, more appropriately, to even keep their doors open.

If you’re one of those business owners that think:

• “My business won’t benefit from being online.”
• “I need to be online, but I don’t know how and I don’t have the time.”
• “These new trends (like Twitter and Facebook) aren’t here to stay; I won’t worry about them.”
• “Who cares about Google? I don’t need to be listed and ranked in there.”
• and so many more…

…Then you need to read every word on this page.

The business environment has shifted and to reach your customers and target audience, you now need to go to where they are: online.

This scares most business owners since they have no idea how that’s done. And that’s what I’d like to talk to you about today.

At Green Apple Sales, we KNOW how it’s done and have helped numerous businesses capitalize on this potentially exponential growth by tapping into the digital marketing strategies that are making and breaking businesses right now.

I’m going to be breaking down several different strategies in the next few posts, so you’re going to want to revisit this very frequently (or, to make it easier, just subscribe to my RSS Feed). But, the first digital marketing strategy I need to tell you about is your web presence.

Solid Web Presence

You know how in a mall, for example, people come there to walk around and look at stores and if they like the look of one they stop in? The idea behind this is that stores in malls are positioning themselves to be exposed to all that “mall traffic”… They’re putting themselves in front of people who may be interested in what they have. Sure, not everyone that goes to the mall stops at every store, but each store will attract a target crowd.

Essentially, that hasn’t changed with the rise of the digital business marketplace; however, how you position yourself to your target crowd has become more difficult.

To have an effective web presence, you first need to optimize your site so it’s one of the first sites that’s displayed when your customers search for you in Google (or the other major search engines). This is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which I’ll be covering very in-depth in a later post.

Digital Marketing Strategy

After you’ve established your site and have it ranked in the search engines using SEO, you then need to focus on other methods of driving visitors to your site.

There are so many ways to do this, and each one strategy – if applied correctly – can be a lead-generating powerhouse for your business. You can get a glimpse of some of the methods on the main page of our site. I’ll be expanding on each of these in the upcoming posts as well.

At this point, what I’d like to do is talk to you about your business; see where you’re at and what you’re doing with your digital marketing strategy. I’d like to schedule a free, no-strings-attached 1-hour phone consultation to blueprint exactly what you need to do to get from where you are to where you need to be.

Please, don’t hesitate to call me. My number is 312-569-9420. I’d love to talk to you and see how we can help. It will be more than worth your time.

Thanks and talk soon,

312-569-9420

Digital Marketing Firm

PS- Don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS Feed so you don’t miss any of the upcoming posts! And I’m serious… Call me if you have any questions on any of the content or would like to see how we can rock your business. We’re here to help.

The #1 thing small businesses struggle with is Search Engine Optimization. That is, having your website show up at the top of Google whenever someone searches for your business, or is looking for a business in your industry.

You NEED to be at the top, there’s no doubt about it. The businesses that are there right now, if they’re ranking for the right keyword, are crushing it right now. As a trained SEO expert (in addition to having an even better one at Green Apple Sales), I’m going to share a few of the top strategies small businesses can use to get to the top of Google. But first…

These some interesting items to note:

• For any search, on average, the #2 result gets about 40% less views than the #1 result
• The #5 result gets an average of 60% less views than the #1 result
• Each result after the #5 result gets an average of 20% less views than the one before it

What does this tell you?

1. If you’re not #1, you’re missing the boat and your traffic is suffering because of it.
2. If you’re not #1, then one of your competitors IS. And they’re probably taking the majority of your internet-driven business
3. If you get to the #1 position, you’re going to see a very positive increase in traffic, leads, business, sales, etc.

I hope those are good enough reasons for you. More business and more sales? Of course that’s a good deal!

So now the big question… How do you climb to the top of the search engines? How does the mysterious “Search Engine Optimization for Small Businesses” really work?

Here are some tips for you that you need to be implementing yesterday:

1. Target the Right Keywords!

So many times business owners can’t seem to rank because they are targeting the totally wrong keywords.You need to choose the keywords that are:

1. Less popular (less searched-for)
2. Local-related

Here’s an example: let’s say you have an auto repair shop in Joliet, IL. If you tried to rank for “Auto Repair” or “Auto Repair Shop” in Google, not only is there ridiculous competition for it that would take tons of money and time to rank for, but it’s completely untargeted!

That’s a general, nation-wide search we’re talking about, so yeah you might be at the top of Google for “Auto Repair Shop”, but what if 60% of the searches came from Orange County, CA? What if only a handful of people that searched for that phrase were even in Illinois? You wouldn’t be able to service those customers and you’d have wasted tons of time and money!

So instead of going “wide” as they call it, you want to target keywords that are highly relevant to your business. Instead of choosing “Auto Repair Shop”, you’d want to target “Auto Repair Shop in Joliet IL” or “Auto Repair Joliet IL”. Those searches only get a fraction of what a general search gets, but it’s infinitely more targeted. If someone searched for Auto Repair Shop Joliet IL, you know 3 things:

1. The person is most likely in Joliet, IL.
2. They have an automobile that they need to repair.
3. They’re looking for a local business that can do it.

See how that’s so much better? Sure, “Auto Repair Joliet IL” may only get 100 searches a month, as opposed to the 800,000/month searches “Auto Repair Shop” gets, but if none of the people searching for that are anywhere near Joliet, IL, it doesn’t matter.

Final note on this: choose the right keywords. Target the keywords that highly correlate to your business, and preferably use a local keyword (such as Joliet, Plainfield, or whatever town/city you’re in).

2. Get Relevant, One-Way Links Back To Your Site

I wanted to mention this simply because there’s so much information out there, in addition to expensive services based around that information, that just isn’t accurate.

One very popular way to get backlinks in the past (as in the last 4-5 years) was to enter your website in tons of different directories and participate in link exchanges.

Newsflash: link directories and link exchanges are almost useless anymore.

There are still services out there that actually charge upwards of $300 to “enter” your website in thousands of directories, but these links mean next to nothing to the search engines.

You need relevant, one-way links; that’s the key. If you “exchange” links with another site or company, you’re essentially just zeroing out that link, so that’s useless. As an SEO specialist, I’ll dominate any site that does link exchanges or only has links from directories. Hands down, every time.

The interesting thing is that most small business owners, those trying to rank for keywords on a local level and small-scale, don’t know how to get the quantity of relevant, one-way backlinks to their site, so when I step in there I can make sure your site gets to the #1 position.

And finally, the last tip I want to share with you:

3. Do Your Research; Keep Up-To-Date on the Search Engines!

The best thing you can ever do to compete in the search engines is to do your own research! I can’t stress this enough. The search engines are always changing, always updating to make damn sure they provide people with the most relevant search results.

By the time any given book makes it to publication, there’s usually things in it that are either different or entirely obsolete. Often times, the internet changes so quickly that even former “specialists” or “experts” are out-dated.

At Green Apple Sales, we have people dedicated researching, testing, and tweaking SEO concepts on a daily basis, so we’re always up to date with how the search engines are ranking websites. It’s that kind of knowledge and power we bring to the plate when we rank YOUR website at the top of Google.

But it all starts with doing your own research, discovering things for yourself that others might charge you hundreds for that don’t even work any more.

That concludes today’s article on SEO For Small Businesses. I hope you learned something. If you have ANY questions at all, DO NOT hesitate to call us at 312-569-9420. I’d be more than happy to go over anything and help in any way I can.

See you in the next post!

312-569-9420

Digital Marketing Firm