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How To Attract Local Customers – A Quick Guide To Local SEO

If you are running a local business, you may be wondering how you can target even more customers in your region. If you already have a website, that’s a great start, and if you don’t, it’s definitely time to join the digital marketing revolution.

More and more people are searching for businesses like yours online. That means they are using their computers, tablets and phones to find you. If you’re not online, or your website can’t be found, you can kiss goodbye to the chance of doing business with them. Whether you are selling products or services, you could be missing out on a huge chunk of your market.

But I have a website. Isn’t that enough?

No, you need to ensure people can find your website. The only way to do this, short of delivering your website address to everybody in the area by hand, is by making your website known by the search engines. And the only way you can do that is through local SEO.

Local SEO – It’s Not As Hard As It Sounds

When it comes to ensuring local customers can find you, the process is easier than it sounds, but it needs work. It also needs constant maintenance if you want to ensure you stay in front of your target audience and ahead of your competitors. Fortunately, there are companies offering professional assistance with search engine optimisation that can do everything for you, but more on this later.

Here are 5 ways you can improve your chances of being found by local customers:

1. Create a Google My Business account – by claiming your own Google My Business page, you will be joining the millions of businesses that are benefiting from this service. It’s almost like an additional web page, and is just another way to get your business known. This services allows you to add all the important details of your business, and to receive and show customer reviews too.

2. Acquire as many local reviews as possible – local reviews also have a direct impact on local search, and so try to get as many as possible. Use Google, Yell and other review sites, and ask previous customers if they would be happy to leave a review.

3. Optimise your landing pages – every single page on your website is a chance to get your business noticed in the search engines. By using the keywords that your audience is using to search for you online you automatically increase your chances of being found. So, if prospective customers are searching for “roofing”, make sure your pages contain that search phrase.

4. Build a link strategy – business is largely based on trust, but how do you convince people to trust you if they haven’t dealt with you before? The answer is to become an online authority in your field. Blog posts are a great way to do this and will add more keyword juice for the search engines as well as showing you know your stuff. You should look to write blogs on your website that link to good quality sites within your industry, and also look to write guest posts on relevant blogs that then link back to your own website.

5. Don’t forget social media – social media is another way you can boost your search engine rankings, so use it as much as you can. It’s also a great method to build a rapport with your target audience, and yet another way you can advertise your service, communicate directly with your customers and attract reviews.

If You Don’t, Your Competitors Will

Search engine optimisation is one of the best ways to reach your target audience. When it comes to attracting local business, you have a lot of tools and options open, but you must use them well to get the best returns. It’s only a matter of time before your competitors start to take up these methods, if they aren’t already doing so.

Real Free Stuff – An Insiders Guide to Getting Free Product Samples

Everyone has heard the old expression “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” The idea of getting something for free online automatically has any one with the slightest bit of skepticism asking what the catch is. Is it really possible to get stuff for free online without giving over any billing information at all? The short answer is yes, it is possible. You really can get free samples of shampoo, makeup, toothpaste, soap and virtually anything the average person uses. Many times large brand name companies will run legitimate free sample offers on their websites. To request a sample you only need to fill in your information and hit submit. They will have a designated number of free samples to distribute and it will be first come first serve. They wont charge for shipping, and will send you free samples of their products in the mail.

What’s the catch?

The catch is that you can never truly be sure if a sample you request will actually show up. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. There are several factors that play into if a free sample will actually be sent to you. The first and most important factor is supply. Companies have a limited supply of free samples to give out so when they reach that number there might be thousands of people who still haven’t gotten their sample. Also another factor that will play into whether or not a sample will arrive is location. The cost of shipping gets higher for the companies giving out the samples the further away they have to ship them. So, almost every free sample offer is limited to a certain geographic region (mostly North America).

Avoiding Scams

Scams, fake offers, SPAM, call it what you will the end result is the same. There are sites that claim something is free and either by cleverly worded fine print or straight out lying never really send anything to anyone for free. Spotting scam freebies at first can be tricky but once you learn the things to look for it’s really just common sense. How much does the product being offered cost? If it’s more than a few dollars chances are that it’s fake. There is no such thing as a free iPod or laptop. Also, look at the homepage of the site offering the free sample. What business are they in, does it make sense for their company to have samples of the product they are offering? For example: if a site about ringtones is offering free shampoo it’s most likely a scam. But if it’s an online cosmetics store that’s offering small samples of their cheapest lip gloss there’s a better chance that it’s real. Also ask yourself if the information the site is asking for makes sense. Are they saying they are going to mail you something but not asking for your address? There are exceptions but generally most real free samples will ask for your email address, name, mailing address, and phone number.

Avoiding Junk mail

Another thing to keep in mind is spam and junk mail. Unfortunately it’s unavoidable when attempting to get freebies. Even legitimate free samples will still keep you on their mailing lists long after they send your sample. In fact in most cases it’s the reason they offer something free in the first place. But this is easy to manage if you know how. First set up a separate e-mail address that you will only use for requesting free samples. You can’t give a fake e-mail address because you will have to click links in confirmation e-mails before they will mail to you. Next, think up a pseudonym and use it as your name when you are requesting freebies. The fake name is helpful because it makes sorting junk mail easy, and keeps your real name off those pesky commercial mailing lists.

Where to look

Now that you know the basics of how real free samples work, it’s time to cover how to find them. There are many different sites that all serve the same purpose, finding real free samples and letting their visitors know where they are. It is important to understand that these freebie sites are not the party actually offering the free samples. The websites you will become familiar with will actually be more like the yellow pages making the freebies easy to find. How do they find the freebies for their site you might ask? By checking out what the other freebie sites are linking to. What this means is that real freebies spread very very quickly. One freebie site will find a sample and post a link to it. Then 2 more freebie sites will see that link and put one on their own site, then 4 more from there, and so on until it’s on every freebie site. There really is no ONE freebie site that you should use. But rather you should get familiar with them and pick out 2-3 freebie sites to check regularly for new samples to request. Finding these sites is as easy as doing a Google search for ‘free samples’, ‘freebies’, ‘free stuff’, etc…

Playing the numbers game

On average no less than 80% of the free samples you try to request will never show up for one of the reasons listed above. This means that requesting only one or two freebies wont be enough to swing the odds in your favor. Instead visit your favorite freebie sites every day and request every single new freebie you see. On average there are no more than 7-10 new freebies available daily. This may sound very time consuming but there is a great trick to automate requesting free samples. All you need to do is download and install Google toolbar. It’s virus free and wont mess up your computer. Once you have Google toolbar installed go into it’s options then go to the the “auto-fill” tab. There you will be able to type in your fake name from earlier, your real address, and your separate e-mail address and save all of it.

Then when you are on a website asking for that information you only need to click the auto-fill button on Google toolbar and the request form will be filled out for you automatically! This means that without auto-fill it may take over an hour to request 10 free samples, but with it that same amount of request could take under 5 mins. Then it’s just a matter of setting aside 5-10 mins every day to request every new sample you see. If you are consistent about it you will have more than enough requests to swing the odds in your favor. Then your daily visits to your mail box will be like an exciting free sample lottery. Some days you’ll win and there will be a freebie for you. Other days there will be nothing. But it’s always exciting and you never know what you are going to get!

Insider’s Guide to Getting a Job in Manchester

Manchester is one of the up-and-coming cities of the UK. The Greater Manchester area has been growing steadily since 2007 and is one of the areas of the UK that has recovered most quickly from the credit crunch recession. It is the second largest functional financial region outside of London and shows a growth rate of almost twice that of the majority of UK urban areas. The expansion has been fuelled by large scale investment in services industries, particularly the financial sector. Some of the major businesses with offices and large employee bases in the Manchester region are Vodafone, the BBC, Thomas Cook, the Guardian, Kellogs, ITV and the heinous internet ogre Google.

Between them, they provide a wealth of job opportunities, however, the appeal of Manchester to job seekers is that there are also plenty of other industries. The main industry is the financial sector; banking and insurance but other opportunities are available in retail and telesales in particular. Manchester is a centre of excellence for the service sector including logistics. The latter is natural since Manchester is at the hub of the UK’s transport network with motorways and rail links radiating out in all 4 cardinal directions. There are some highly specialised niche industries that have centred on the area for example, biotechnology and environmental technology; perhaps due to the presence of the Manchester Institute of Technology (MiT) which produces many scientific and technically qualified experts.

On a human scale rather than economical scale, the city and its environs are cosmopolitan and there is a thriving cultural scene. The latter has attracted creatives to the city – check any search engine and you will find pages of advertising agencies and other creative companies based here. These include digital and print advertising, packaging design, marketing, media… the list goes on and on! So not is it a great area for technical job searches, it is also great for those on the other side of the coin looking for creative jobs. Whilst looking through available jobs, I found an unusually high (well it seemed high to me) number of jobs for linguists too – the travel industry required Polish speakers; a car rental company needed someone who spoke excellent Norwegian and there were openings fr French speakers in retail!

Salaries in Greater Manchester are very varied. For telesales and basic retail jobs, they are as low as 12,000, but you don’t have to look far for well paid managerial and technical jobs that offer 40 – 50K plus. So in other words, there is pretty much something for everyone, depending on their skills and experience.

How to find a job in Manchester

Online is a good place to start. It will save you a lot of time and several bus fares! There are thousands of advertised jobs on the usual websites like gumtree, Monster and fish4. But a really good site for job seekers is Reeds, a national recruitment agency as you can see how many others have applied for the jobs in which you are interested. For creative jobs, check out ‘The Drum’ and remember to check out the Guardian jobs pages too.

But before you even start, you should re-vamp your CV. This is best left to professionals who, after exploring the type of employment you are looking for, can provide you with an edge over the others. They will advise you on the best type of CV (yes, there are several effective ways to present a CV) and use your skills and experience to paint you in a very positive light. You, after all, are an amateur in the field, unless of course you are in HR!