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What your web guy/gal will never tell you about getting visitors to your website
Discover the challenges of getting website traffic when you are competing with over 15 billion Internet pages
Tuesday, 1:30 PM
From: Allen Oelschlaeger
Dear Martial Arts School Owner,
More and more people are going to the Internet to find local businesses. In fact, it won't be long before the Yellow Pages are dead, having been completely displaced by local Internet search.
Most martial arts school owners think this means that they need a website. So they spend hundreds to thousands of dollars to develop one --- and, in almost every case, they discover it was a total waste of their time and money (please see our report titled "8 mistakes that make 99% of websites a total waste of time and money).
See, for most local businesses, a website's sole purpose should be to generate leads -- and the vast majority of local business websites don't generate any.
Why? Well, one of the primary reasons is that almost all of these websites don't get much, if any, traffic.
That's one of the dirty secret of the Internet that most web developers rarely discuss with their clients. Instead, they focus on such things as graphics, colors, technology, and content -- all with the goal of creating a "cool" website.
But, you could have the slickest site on the planet, and it's a total waste if few people see it --- which is the reality for the vast majority of sites.
Obviously, it isn't your web developer's financial interests to tell you this dirty secret ("pay me a bunch of money to develop a cool website that no one will see")
… that is, unless, the web developer is promoting themselves as a SEO (search engine optimization) expert. Then you might hear that other sites have the problem of not getting much traffic --- but not theirs do due their magical SEO techniques.
What you won't likely hear is that Local Search Marketing (what you need) is a totally different than National Search Marketing (what they probably know).
A web developer who promotes themselves as a SEO expert is probably knowledgeable on how to get traffic from all parts of the world but knows nothing about getting interested prospects who live within a few miles of your martial arts school to visit your website.
So, bottom line -- as a local business owner, don't expect to hear much about the challenges of getting your website any visitors.
But, relative to having success on the Internet, here is the most important point that you will never hear from your web gal/guy.
Developing an online presence for a local
business should NOT start with a website
Sure, if you know how to do things right, investing in a website may be the right decision for your martial arts school --- but this isn't where you should start.
Instead, you should initially focus your Internet strategy on making sure your business is accurately listed in all of the local search engines, local search directories, and local online phone directories.
See, as I said above, the way people search online for a local business within a few miles of their home is completely different than how they search for a national business.
To search for a national business, people are looking for company websites. But, when searching for a local business, they might be just looking for a phone number, an address, or a listing of businesses in a particular category.
To meet this need, an entire new industry has emerged called Local Search, which includes such players as Google Local, Yahoo Local, Local.com, TrueLocal.com, YellowPages.com, Switchboard, com, SuperPages.com, Yelp, MojoPages, InsiderPages, YellowBot, InfoUSA, Amacai, and Acxiom.
These companies exist solely to assist people in finding local businesses in their community. Therefore, your first priority should be to have an accurate listing in all of them -- before you even think about developing a website.
Again, despite that the fact that everyone who pays attention to the Internet should know about the Local Search industry, it will be frozen day in July before you'd ever hear about it from most web developers.
Why? Two reasons:
1. Telling a client about the Local Search industry isn't good for the web development business – because it leads to a website being secondary need
2. Submitting business data to these Local Search companies is complicated and time consuming --- so this isn't an easy area in which to make money
See, to have a local business accurately listed with the local sites is fraught with problems.
First, it is a lot of confusing and time-eating work. You have to:
- Identify all the companies with which submit your business data
- Find the web page on the Internet at which you can make your submission
- Type your business data into the form at each web page you find
- If any information changes, re-submit your data to make sure it is up-to-date
But, there is a larger problem.
Through manual submission you can only submit a small subset of the data you want listed about your business --- so these free submissions often don't do your business much good.
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What to do about this seemingly intractable situation
So far in this report, I've made the following points:
- With almost everyone going to the Internet to find local businesses, it is absolutely essential that your business is easily found on the web.
- Getting a website found is a very difficult proposition – which is why most local business websites generate few, if any, leads.
- You'll rarely hear web developers disclose how few prospective customers will actually see the cool websites they create
- SEO experts rarely know much of anything about Local Search Marketing
- For a local business to develop an online presence, they should NOT start with a website. Instead, they should first make sure their business is accurately listed in all of the local search engines, local search directories, and local online phone directories.
- Manual submission of business data to local search sites is complicated, time consuming, and limited in the amount of data that can be submitted
It is this seemingly intractable situation that caused us, at the Martial Arts Marketing Network, to develop our Website Traffic Generation Services.
We understood how important it was for our Network members to have their business easily found on the Internet --- but no viable solution existed to make this happen. So, we decided to create a solution ourselves.
Our Website Traffic Generation Services come in three versions – Silver, Gold and Platinum.
The Silver version should be the starting point for any martial arts school Internet presence – no matter if they already have a website or not.
With this service, we create an online local business profile that serves as a central master repository for a school's business data, which we can then efficiently submit to the most important local search sites.
Here is how this service works:
1. You complete our online form that includes 26 fields of data about your business and submit a digital version of your logo
2. We review your submission, correct obvious mistakes, reformat your logo for optimal viewing on the Internet, and add keywords specific to your business category
3. We use the data and logo from your submission to create an online business profile page which resides on our online directory. In many cases, this profile – because it is so optimized for the search engines – can actually show up higher in organic search results (e.g., Google, Yahoo) than the website for a local business.
4. We submit your data via a national online data aggregator to over 45 local search sites (representing over 85% of local searches).
5. For double coverage with some search sites, we manually submit your data to the major players in Local Internet Search (e.g., Google Local, Yahoo Local, InfoUSA).
6. You can modify your business data at any time using our online form and we will update your online business profile and resubmit your data to the local search sites.
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Here are the benefits of our online local business profile
1. Ensures that all of the most important local search sites have complete and accurate information about your business – so that:
- No matter where a potential customer is looking for information on the Internet, they will find your business and the information will be correct.
- The local search sites will rank your business higher in their listings (when a local search site has incomplete and inaccurate information about a business, they are less inclined to position that business prominently in their listings).
2. Provides a web page about your business that delivers the following:
- An online business presence with complete an accurate information about your business that is optimized for the organic search engines - which also includes your logo and a map showing the location of your business.
- Another way for people to find your business beyond the local search sites.
- An external link to your website (if you have one) which does two things:
1. Provides another way for people to click through to your website
2. Increases the ranking of your website with the search engines (Google, especially, uses external links to determine rankings)
The good news is that, due to the efficiencies we have as a result of providing this service for many martial arts schools in our Network, we can price the Silver version of our Website Traffic Generation Service at just $249 per year.
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More advanced traffic-building services for martial arts schools that already have a website
As I said above, having a website should NOT be your starting point on the Internet. However, once you have an online local business profile, it is the obvious next step.
But, here is the problem -- 99% of local business websites are nearly useless (for more on this, please see our report titled: "The 8 mistakes that make 99% of websites a total waste of time and money").
If you read this report, you'll learn that, to get new students from your website, there are ONLY two things that matter: Traffic and Conversion. You want lots of prospects to visit your site and you want a high percentage of them to contact you.
In other words,
Traffic + Conversion = New Students
What is so disappointing is how few website developers understand this fundamental principle.
That's why we developed our Digital Enrollment Director. We felt the martial arts industry needed a website solution that actually worked as a lead generation and prospect follow up tool.
Our DED has the following features:
- Includes all graphics, text, photos, reports, and newsletters -- all created by professionals with the specialized skills to develop website content for a martial arts school.
- Offers informative content which pre-sells visitors on why they should enroll in a Network-member school and positions our clients as the authority in martial arts and child character development.
- Provides multiple compelling offers to get visitors to provide their contact information it is possible to follow-up with interested prospects.
- Provides a mechanism to automatically stay in touch by email with visitors who aren't quite ready to make a decision.
- Offers the ability (via the best CMS system on the market) for school owners to manage all aspects of the system - including uploading images and videos - without the need for any technical expertise.
- Provides all of the ongoing technical maintenance services related to hosting, domain registration, software updating and site monitoring.
As great as these features are, we knew that our DED would provide no value to martial arts school owners unless lots of visitors came to the website. Therefore, we did the following:
- Configured the DED to enable optimal use of the main website-traffic-building methods.
- Optimized content for the high-volume keywords and phrases used by individuals searching on the Internet for a martial arts school in a specific geographic area.
This is called "on-site" SEO. However, we knew that "off-site" SEO can account for 80% of the difference in search results so we developed advanced off-site traffic-building services that we include with the Gold and Platinum versions of the DED.
These services include:
- Development and maintenance of the online local business profile describe above
- Complete management of a pay-per-click advertising program (including all advertising costs) using Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search.
- Submission of website to local business directories, national martial arts school directories, and the major search engines
- Management of an online classified advertisement campaign
- Development, maintenance and promotion of two national martial arts websites which include a school directory with links back to the websites of all DED subscribers
- Implementation of a social media link program with MySpace and Facebook
The end result is that our Digital Enrollment Director delivers on our goals of creating a system that delivers TRAFFIC (prospects finding and visiting the website) and CONVERSION (visitors deciding to contact the school) --- and, as a result, the Network Members using this system get several new students per month from their website, without spending a fortune, wasting their time or even caring how it works.
However, we discovered that there were some martial arts school owners who were relatively happy with their existing websites --- but they weren't getting much traffic.
So, in response, we created a Gold and Platinum version of our Website Traffic Generation Services. Here is what is included with each.
WTGS Gold – Basic Website Traffic Generation Services -- adds Basic Website Traffic Generation Service to the Silver version (online local business profile)
- Manage and pay for Google and Yahoo pay-per-click service with expert selection of keywords and optimization of ad copy
- Regularly submit school advertisement to Craigslist and Kijiji (local online classified ad sites)
- Submit website to over 15 online martial arts school directories with link back to website
- Regular submit website to major organic search engines
WTGS PLATINUM – Premium Website Traffic Generation Services -- adds Social Media Link Program and Blogging Technology to WTGS Gold Above
- Social Media Link Program
Set up school "group" and school "profile" pages on MySpace and Facebook
Regularly submit DED to over 30 social bookmarking sites
Provide detailed instructions for school students on how to join your school's group and how to add links from their social networking pages to those of the school
Allows school staff/students to easily add content on a regular basis to website
Includes setting up WordPress blog technology on site domain, installing 12 plugins to enhance search engine visibility and eliminate spam and adding video upload capability
The cost of these services is as follows (the SILVER version costs $249 per year):
WTGS GOLD – Basic Website Traffic Generation Service
- Set Up Fee: one payment of $345
- Monthly Fee: $199
WTGS PLATINUM – Premium Website Traffic Generation Service
- Set Up Fee: one payment of $545
- Monthly Fee: $299
In addition, with all versions of our Website Traffic Generation Services, we offer something unheard of in the Internet marketplace – the Martial Arts Marketing Network TRIPLE GUARANTEE.
- Guarantee #1: 90-day pay nothing if you aren't thrilled
You can use the Digital Enrollment Director for 90 days and, if you are not thrilled, we'll give you a 100% refund. The truth is that, if are services aren't working for you, we really don't want your money.
- Guarantee #2: Cancel anytime with no penalties
The Digital Enrollment Director has no long term contract. Therefore, you can cancel at any time and the monthly charges will stop that month. You are never "locked in" to any long-term commitment.
- Guarantee #3: No risk / unconditional
There is NO fine print. You are either happy with the Digital Enrollment Director during the first 90 days or you get your money back - PERIOD. Then, from 90 days to forever, you can cancel at any time with no penalties.
Our TRIPLE GUARANTEE demonstrates how confident we are that our Website Traffic Generation Services will work for you. Bottom line, we're taking all of the risk. You have a massive amount to gain (more students, better student retention, greater school efficiency, higher value upgrades, less hassles) and nothing to lose!
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How to Order our Website Traffic Generation Services
I hope this report opened your eyes to the challenges of getting your martial arts school visible on the Internet --- and the importance of having an online local business profile as the starting point for your Internet strategy.
If you do nothing else on the Internet, you should --- at the very minimum – purchase the Silver version of our Website Traffic Generation Services for $249 per year.
However, if you want to do more, then you have two options – purchase our Digital Enrollment Director (CLICK HERE to learn more) or subscribe to our Gold or Platinum Website Traffic Generation Services for your existing website.
The simplest way is to just call our Customer Support Center (10 AM to 9 PM CST Monday through Friday; 10 AM to 3 PM Saturday) at 888-893-8952 so we can take your order over the phone.
The second option is to order online. Just go to http://mamnetwork.com/wtgsorder, select which version you want and complete our secure online order form.
Once we receive your order, here is what will happen next:
1. You'll get an email from us acknowledging your order and asking you to complete our online form that includes 26 fields of data about your school and to submit a digital version of your logo.
2. We will use the data and logo from your submission to create an online business profile page which resides on our online directory.
3. We will submit your school data via our national online data aggregator to over 45 local search sites (representing over 85% of local searches).
4. If you purchase the Gold or Platinum versions of our Website Traffic Generation Services, we will launch a sophisticated Local Search off-site SEO effort for your website – including manual submission to search directories, managing an online advertising campaign, and implementing our social media link program
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Certainly, if you have any questions after reading this report, I encourage you to give us a call.
Thanks for taking the time to read this rather lengthy report. Again, I hope you gained some real benefit from it.
Allen Oelschlaeger
Co-Founder, Martial Arts Marketing Network
P.S. Once again, to order the Digital Enrollment Director, you can either call our Customer Support Center (10 AM to 9 PM CST Monday through Friday; 10 AM to 3 PM Saturday) at 888-893-8952 so we can take your order over the phone – or go to http://mamnetwork.com/wtgsorder and order online.
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