Small Business Marketing: Online Visibility Builds Credibility

Lately, I have experienced quite a few people finding me personally using Google searches. This has resulted in new business, investor opportunities, speaking engagements, an article being published in Inventors Digest, and most importantly reconnecting with my “long lost” cousi
Phil. I hadn’t see
Phil in almost 20 years but he was easily able to find me on Google and got to see what I was up to even before we spoke on the phone.

Allowing yourself to be visible is so important to attracting attention, no matter what you’re working on. People who may be interested in doing business with you, partnering up with you, and even investing would be comforted knowing you are visible online --- that you’re “doing things”. These days, it seems that showing up in an online search is like going to the yellow pages and expecting to find a listing for the business you’re looking for. Not showing up in the phone book may diminish your credibility in my eyes.

In my program, Passion 2 Prosperity, I walk people through over 50 different zero to low cost marketing techniques that can be done very quickly to attract potential new customers. If you’re fortunate to be active in the community at large, and in the media, then you’ll show up naturally in online searches and that’s great.

If you’re not experiencing online visibility naturally, yet not ready to hire someone for search engine optimization, then here are a few strategies that will give you fairly instant results in the search engines:

1. Subscribe to an inexpensive ranking service. This service will get you a #1 position on Google always. Try it for yourself --- qalias.com

2. Start a blog at blogger.com or wordress.com. You can talk about your journey, your business, post images, offer surveys. Blogs are easily picked up by the search engines and allow you to have a high ranking consistently.

3. Post comments online. Places like Amazon, YouTube, and all the blog services are very visible in the search engines so if you post a comment or write a review for someone else, chances are your name will show up as well. Make sure you use your full name and list your website when posting any comments or reviews. I recommend keeping it positive so it stays up there!

4. Submit a short article. There are article sites where you can post content on any topic for fr*ee. These sites are highly visible to the search engines and having your name show up in conjunction with an article will give you instant credibility. Try ezinearticles.com or ideamarketers.com.

5. Social & Business Online Networking. There are many out there now but I find that Fastpitchnetworking.com is great for entrepreneurs who want powerful business connections as well as online visibility. The site has a press release feature built in plus you can link your blog to your Fast Pitch profile which translates into even higher search engine rankings.

Type in ‘maria simone” (use the quotes) in a search engine and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Out of 800,000 entries for “maria simone” I usually occupy the top few slots plus my info spans 15 pages of Google. When you’ve developed the resources and capital you’ll need to launch your business, you’ll obviously have a more focused marketing plan to execute. In the beginning, I would still perform some of these basics to increase your credibility and visibility.