Learning how to advertise your business online without losing your shirt can be mind-boggling with all the internet hype you see online these days.
Quite obviously, if you’re a small business owner, you can’t afford to dish out thousands of dollars to purchase your own website, and Google pay-per-click will gobble up your money in no time!
Pay-per-click is especially dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Everyone who has been successful with paid advertising has admitted that you just have to be willing to “waste” a lot of money in the beginning until you figure out how to track your success and tweak your ad…
… The idea behind pay-per-click is that you need a strong capture page to attract attention… but that’s not enough!
Once you attract attention, the visitor clicks your link (and you pay) – but then you need a strong sales page to finish the deal – or you’re out some big bucks!
So what do I suggest for how to advertise your business online without paying thousands of dollars on pay-per-click?
Blogging is the new way of how to advertise for free, since the average buyer is looking more to be entertained than to be sold. And there’s no better entertainment and your own personal story-telling or video!
Naturally, for the purpose of making the blog about how to advertise your business online, you’ll want to include links that go to good capture pages and sales funnels.
Even if you learn how to advertise for free using a blogging system, you’ll need to setup a capture page, sales funnel and shopping cart. But your reader is drawn to your product initially by being attracted to your blog.
How to advertise your business online using a blog… (learn what attracts people to your blog)
The fastest action comes from social media, and the long-staying action comes from ranking your blog on Google. Contrary to popular belief, some of the top sites you’ll see on Google are blog sites…
… but it depends on what you’re searching for.
For example, my own personal blog is currently ranking top of Google for “Easy Money Making Blog”.
What makes your blog rank highest?
1. An authority domain
What is that? Anyone can buy a domain (that’s the name of your blog.. most people just use their own name dot com. However, as businesses come and go, so do domains. The ones that Google will pay particular attention to are the ones that have been in operation longest – so domain age is a big factor.
2. Social “likes” & comments
The easiest way to explain this is that you need to build popularity on your blog for it to rank. Social commenting and tweeting will help a lot, so it’s best to syndicate your blog through Facebook, Twitter and other social sites each time you create a post. This will start the ball rolling.
3. Backlinks
When you have a good site, other sites linking to it (“track-back”) will help the popularity of your site. The more popular the site linking to your site, the more popular your site will become.
But when you’re learning how to advertise your business online using a blog, you need to begin with keyword research…
Google’s keyword external tool is actually not as easy to use as it used to be, so I prefer to use keyword research software. This will tell you not only how many people are searching for a particular phrase, but how much completion there is for you to get ranked.
For example, the keyword phrase in this post, “how to advertise your business online” gets over 200 searches monthly, and the keyword phase “free advertising ideas” gets over 1000 searches monthly.
If you’re trying to rank on Google for free, it’s mandatory that you frame your blog post around a keyword phrase that gets very little competition…
Then, simply put that phrase into the “tag” section on your blog. The “long tail” phrase (several words) is notoriously easier to rank.
For how to market a product, the more specific your phrase, the easier it is to rank.
And, your blog visitor will also be more likely to be very interested in your offer. For example, if I’m looking to but a hairspray that works well for curling fine hair, I would be much more interested in reading a post about “hairspray for curling fine hair” or even “best hairspray for fine hair” as opposed to “best hairspray”.
If you’re looking for how to advertise for free, blogging isn’t completely free, as you do have to pay a monthly fee for hosting.
However, if you use the system often enough by blogging daily, you’ll find that blogging is the most cost effective way of how to advertise your business online available today.