It may seem strange at first to hear that I recommend local Businesses include article marketing as part of their business marketing strategy.
After all an article written by a Minneapolis Pest Control expert may not be relevant to readers in Brisbane, Australia, or London and yet the article will be distributed pest control in London worldwide once it is posted on an internet article directory.
It's not likely even that a home owner fighting bed bugs in Madison, Wisconsin will call on this Minneapolis business. Why then bother?
Well, there are a couple minor reasons and one major. Let's deal with the minor ones first.
The very act of writing an article tends to focus the mind. You know your business inside and out, but can you effectively communicate it to others? Writing an article can help you identify your unique selling proposition and put it into words. Now many business people can do that in a flash, while others will struggle with it at first.
Learning how to communicate in an article will help you in all other presentations and it has the great advantage of allowing you to rip up your false starts until you get a solid statement composed.
The second minor reason is that in addition to impressing your spouse or even yourself, you are now an author. And that in and of itself carries with it a perception of authority and expertise. Now of course you are an expert in your field, but your status as an author helps reinforce that image with others. And that's a good thing.
But the real reason to write articles is the power article marketing has in raising your web page higher in the search engines. It's not the article per se that matters, it's the back link you get from the article directory that publishes your article. This by itself is good news, but the power of article marketing isn't in just getting your article on the directories.
Far more powerful is the result of it getting it republished in many different blogs, and ezines around the world. A well written article, that makes a clear point and is easy or even fun to read is likely to be picked up by others. And each time it is, you get another back link to your web site.
There are many factors that play an important role in how well your web site is rated by Google and the other search engines. But once the basics are taken care of, the dominant factor is how well respected your web site is. The search engines measure this my taking note of how many other web sites are linking back to your web page and who those sites are.
Within a local market, like my home town of Minneapolis a doctor, photographer, dentist, window replacement contractor, etc doesn't need to have the most popular web site in the world, just the most popular in the Minneapolis area. If they are they will rank higher than most if not all their competitors.
And since these days more people search for businesses online rather than via the Yellow pages as they did in the past, this is a significant advantage. An advantage that results pest control in London in more new customers and more profits.
And that is exactly why I advise local business in the Twin Cities area and elsewhere to market their business using article marketing as a significant part of their business marketing strategy.