Pay Per Click
One of the best ways to attract new custom is through Pay-Per-Click search engine marketing, however many people see PPC as a miracle solution for generating leads.
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Google Base, Google Maps and MSN Expo
Quite apart from the ability to rank your site using organic listings, there are other routes to the top of the search engine results pages, and other routes to top ten listings from other sites that will work in your favour.
Primarily, if you are selling products, or B2B services, and want to get your products and business onto Google maps, then you must get yourself an account with Google Base. Position Lab can easily arrange this for you if you'd prefer, although it is a simple enough process to do for yourself. As an example of how powerful selling through Google Base can be, take a look at the following searches, this first one for 'London bookshop':
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=london+bookshop&btnG=Search&meta=
The results with the little balloons next to them, by the map image at the top of the page, are all businesses that have pinpointed themselves on GoogleMaps - and they have done this for free! Yes, a number one listing with a map showing where you are and your business details, can be yours for free.
The next search we want to show you, for the Puzzi 100 carpet cleaner (a well known model in the trade) shows products that appear in Google Base and thus at the top of the search. You can place all your products for sale in Google Base for free as well. http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=puzzi+100+carpet+cleaner&btnG=Search&meta=
Notice that in position 5 for that same search (at the time of writing, of course), there is a listing from MSN Expo - the website url is uk.expo.live.com - and this operates on exactly the same principle as Google Base. You can place any product you have for sale into MSN Expo and it will appear near the top of the Google listings, if you apply the right principles to your product submissions. If you start to tie in these various utilities, you could find yourself with several top ten listings without breaking stride. And as you should already know, you can readily find out how to achieve this for yourself with PositionLab.
- You can set up a Google Base account here: http://base.google.com/
- You can set up your Google Maps additions here: http://maps.google.com/
- You can set up your Expo account here: http://expo.live.com/default.aspx
Summary
Remember when signing up for these services that you may want to set up a UK specific account. In this case go through the UK sites for Google and MSN. The services on offer at Google and MSN go far beyond businesses, of course. There are plenty more types of listings you could put up. Personal ads, events, job listings and much more. Just take a look for yourself and if you use a bit of SEO knowhow, multiple listings in the top ten could soon be yours.