There is a reason why many local newspapers and major national newspapers are struggling in this down turned economy, online marketing. Many businesses have slashed their marketing budgets and/or are choosing to spend what budget they do have as wisely as they can, to reach as many as they can, for as long as they can.

What many small to medium sized businesses are now discovering is that the $5,000 or more they used to spend with a local newspaper for a small one time ad can reach thousands on the internet for an entire year with Search Engine Optimization (also known as SEO), Pay Per Click advertising and targeted banner advertising.

Five years ago few business owners and business managers were even aware of SEO, but now many companies have tried and had successful results from SEO and have spread the word. As well, major business magazines have featured SEO as a viable marketing strategy and many business conferences now include this as part of their marketing content. In 2010 it’s rare to find a business owner or manager who isn’t aware of what SEO is.

Local SEO is predicted to be the top marketing initiative amongst small to medium sized businesses in North America in 2010. And why not when it can be found for as little as $1200 to $1500 for an entire year, ensuring not only top local results in Google, Yahoo and Bing but also the ability to stay and hold that spot year after year for a fraction of the cost of a local newspaper ad or Yellow Pages listing

Google is also helping to support this initiative by its Google Maps Local services. Business owners through a Google Account can login and verify their local business information and even go so far as to advertise coupons and discounts for free, all which will be displayed in the local search results at the top of a search page or in a search from within the Google Maps section.

So if your small or medium sized business is missing out on the local search engine action it’s time to start looking at working this into your marketing strategy as you are surely missing out on a lot of local traffic and exposure and the longer you wait the harder it will be to get top results as other businesses jump on the bandwagon.

Well as more and more of our clients are seeing and hearing about the “new” Bing search engine from Microsoft I’ve had quite a few questions.  The biggest question is of course that we will include it in our SEO work, which of course we do.

However, from everything I’ve witnessed about Bing after trying it out and after viewing the first SEO ranking reports to come out since Bing’s launch as far as I’m seeing it, it’s the same crap, just a new box.  If it were a product in a grocery store sitting on the shelf they couldn’t even legally call it “new and improved” as nothing essentially has changed except the home page.

The rankign results for all our clients were the same in MSN as they were in the release of Bing.  What does that essentially mean?  Nothing changed, it’s not a new algorithm.  Microsoft as usual just doesn’t get it.  People don’t go to Google because of a nice simple home page and they aren’t going to win people over by calling it a “decision” engine or any other flashy glitz.  People go to Google and stay with Google because they give relavent top ten rankings - plain and simple.  By not changing the algorithm they are not addressing the major reason why they have fallen from 12 % market share to 7% - their results are terrible and people waste valuable time trying to find what they are looking for.

Sure the flash and glitz and multimillion dollar advertising campaign will get visitors to their site, but quickly people will realize that the top ten results are still junk and they will ultimately go back to what works - Google.  Why else would they currently hold 80% market share?

Having a content management system is the great new thing for all new website owners.  There are many different CMS systems and any shopping cart site has a CMS system allowing the owners full reign over all their content.

What many website owners forget, however is that how their content is placed on the page is as much of the design as the graphics are.  Unfortunately I’ve seen website owners use unusual fonts that don’t match the design or bright colours or different fonts on different pages or use irregular spacing or photos that look stretched as they weren’t resized properly.  All of this affects the overall look and feel of the site and unfortunately sites that have beautiful graphics and designs are now marred by these changes loosing their wonderful design.

So if you have a CMS here are the things you want to be careful with:

Fonts: Keep your fonts consistent with the design or at most add one font that is complimentary.  Stick to web safe fonts that compliment the design.  i.e. if you have a modern design don’t use Times New Roman as your font.

Font Colours: Keep your font colours the same but choose one call for action colour that is used consistently from page to page.  Having too many colours on a page causes a confusing and busy look.

Photos: If you add photos to your site most CMS systems have a way to resize with “constraints”.  Constraints mean that it will retain the same proportions and shrink the size consistently without stretching the photo one way or the other.  If your CMS doesn’t offer this than buy a simple photo editor like Adobe Elements for $99.  Having poor photos on your site will hurt the over all look and make your site seem unprofessional.

Spacing: Some website owners feel having double spacing or larger spacing between lines or indenting their text makes the site easier to read and it may, but the overall look will make a site look strange as no other sites do this.  Stick to formats that still look professional and similar to what other sites look like.

Having a CMS puts the responsibility of maintaining the professional look of your site on your shoulders and whenever in doubt keep it simple.