Everyone that owns a website needs SEO these days.

This should be your overall theme when you are preparing yourself for a meeting with a local business owner that is in dire need of a website. But not only in the need of a website, but also in dire need of getting that web site to be visible to the people of that area that are using City/Service or City/Product keyword phrases as there search queries. Having a web site isn’t enough these days. You need a web site that is either going to land at the top of the SERPs or a web site that is created with an amazing landing page for when people click on the AdWords ads that you have set up for your pay per click ad campaign.

When you are at a meeting with a local business owner, whether it be the owner of an Arlington air conditioning company, or a winery in Northern Michigan, you want to make sure you stick to these following points throughout the whole meeting.

You want to be as forth coming as possible. Do not try to hide any of the SEO tactics you use to get to the top of the SERPs. There is no point to. Local business owners don’t have enough time to take part in Do-It-Yourself SEO, and even if what you are saying to them seems like it’s easy enough to understand, it all starts sounding like rocket science jargon once you start mentioning things like link building.

Try to be as simple as possible. They aren’t going to understand you when you start saying words like “algorithm.” To them, that just sounds like a made up word. Start with phrases like: “Well SEO is just a point system Google uses to determine which web sites should be at the top of the search engine results pages (don’t say “SERPs”)” and “Whoever has the most information on the web gets to be at the top.”

Be prepared for things to get a little shaky, but be able to bounce back. Is the company currently in the works with someone else that is handling there web development or SEO? If so, don’t be taken back if they get on the phone right then and there and start asking questions. This is just another reason that you should be up front because you never know the local business owners background with SEO.

Be very honest about your process and what you are charging for every aspect of your business. Break down all aspects of the process of getting the stie developed to getting it to the top of the SERPs and everything in between. What do you charge for graphics? What do you charge for a custom CMS (content management system)? What do you charge for your initial web design or custom template? Are you going to be writing the content? Will there be monthly SEO fees? Most importantly, don’t try to charge three thousand dollars for a simple WordPress theme. Yes, there are many people that get away with this in the Internet marketing field, but that doesn’t mean that you should join the Scam Club.

Each local business situation is completely different and unique. Make sure you talk about ROI and what these owners can expect for their investment. Most importantly, do not guarantee number one rankings to anybody. This is simply a false statement and not even the best SEO’s on the planet can guarantee a feat like this no matter what the niche. Google makes more than 400 algorithm changes a year, and each and every day there is a webmaster out there that is surprised by the change that is made that day. Don’t go ahead and make the same foolish mistake. Besides, that right there is SEO 101 that you do not know what you are talking about.

This article was written by Jet Russell of www.inetzeal.com  Jet helps to run an SEO Company and helps to provide an Article Writing Service along the way. In his spare time he likes to write articles about SEO, SEM, and everything else that has to do with Internet marketing

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If you haven’t used Adwords yet to promote your business, you’ve been missing out. Not only is it one of the fastest ways to advertise (you can get ads up in less than 5 minutes), but it is also one of the easiest ways to reach a massive audience. You don’t need good connections.

You don’t need a big mailing list. You don’t need a massive budget (in fact, you don’t even have to pay for your advertising fees until the end of the month). And you don’t need a degree in computer science to “engineer” a site that ranks well in search engines.

So what do you need in order to be successful with Adwords? First of all, you need an account. If you haven’t started one yet, hop over to http://www.google.com/adwords and open one.

Once you open an account, you will want to start testing some of Adwords’s features. Try out the keyword tool to find new keywords related to your niche. Use the bid tool to determine approximately how much your advertising campaign will cost. And so on. Get familiar with Adwords.

Once you become familiar with Adwords, you will want to consider making a campaign for your business. But before you do that, you need to understand the following two things, which will help you to structure your campaigns correctly:

1. Google Adwords—and all “pay per click” advertising programs—charge you per click, not per impression, action, or sale. What does this mean? It means it is incumbent on you to ensure that you are a) paying the right price per click; b) purchasing the right keywords; c) writing ads that people will actually click on; and d) making sure clicks turn into sales. Google will serve ads for you, but other than that, it’s up to you to figure out how you’re going to get a decent ROI.
2. Two things determine how well an ad is ranked by Adwords (but not necessarily other PPC advertising programs): 1) your bid; and 2) your ad’s click through rate (CTR). What this means for you is quite simple: if your CTR is phenomenal, you can get a high ad position without paying more money per click. If, on the other hand, your CTR is lackluster, you’ll have to pay out the nose to get that same position. So make sure you write an ad people will click on – or prepare to pay.

As a new Adwords user, you certainly have a lot to learn. But if you keep the two things above in mind, you shouldn’t stray too far from making successful campaigns and capitalizing on them.

Now, with that in mind, you shouldn’t forget that there are other pay per click advertising programs available. While Adwords offers high quality traffic in large volume, it also costs more to use (i.e. bids for keywords are higher) than most other pay per click advertising programs.

You may want to consider complementing your Adwords campaigns by creating parallel campaigns with the following advertising programs:

1. Yahoo Search Marketing: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com. While Yahoo has a much smaller market share of the search market than Google, it is still formidable when compared to most other search engines. Additionally, many keywords on YSM are much cheaper than on Google.

1. Microsoft Search Beta: http://advertising.microsoft.com. MSN, like Yahoo, receives a considerable amount of search traffic – although still much less than Google. If you want to scalp some cheap PPC keywords, consider checking MSN out, too.

So there you have it: a brief overview of how to use Google Adwords, as well as a list of its major Pay-Per-Click competitors.

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I’ll be the first to stand up and say I LOVE Google Adsense and the money I make with their ad program. I think anyone who has a blog or website needs to sign up for Google Adsense and make a little something off their efforts.

At the time of this writing, and since May 2004, I have made $38,841.00 with Adsense. And that’s just one of the programs I work with.

There are a few things I’d like to point out about Google though -

1. Don’t EVER click your own ads. Even if you’re curious to see what the ad is! That can get you knocked right out of the program and is called “click fraud.”

If you are curious about an ad that is appearing on your site, simply run your mouse over the ad and in the lower left corner of your computer screen, you’ll see the web address for the organization who is placing that particular ad.

2. Don’t invite family and friends to click! I don’t know exactly to what extent Google is tracking the logistics of clicks, but I’m sure there is something there that would tell Google the same people are clicking all the time – that can get you kicked out too.

Now for the good stuff -

3. When you are logged into your Google Adsense account, make sure to read all the handy little tips they offer. Google invested a great deal of time and money into seeing what programs work best, what ad placements generate the most clicks and it’s all there for your benefit. After all, when you are successful, Google is successful.

If you have any questions about Google Adsense, please feel free to post them anonymously in the comment section here.

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My Comment Commitment: If you leave an approved comment on any of my posts, I will visit your blog and “share it” in some way whether on StumbleUpon, Twitter or Facebook depending on if I can find a nice fit.