But you know what? There’s a good reason this is a hot topic right now…

Many off line businesses have been hit by “slow” times and are actively looking for ways to increase business. So opportunity knocks.

My partner Jim and I have been in this arena now for more than a year and we have been seeing first hand how much we have been able to help our own clients. And with our system, we launched Easy Local SEO to help OTHER people market similar services to businesses all over the U.S. and Canada.

I have discovered though, that many people who want to market in this arena have one fatal short coming. They really don’t have any idea how to approach potential clients and get them to listen to what they have to say. My partner and I had this same issue when starting out. Jim used to drive around visiting local businesses for a few hours every day – saying hello, dropping off fliers and business cards, etc. And the people he spoke to were always nice.

However, we made exactly ZERO sales doing this. I learned the hard way that they simply saw us as nothing more than another salesman hawking some product or service. Not what they wanted to deal with, and who can blame them? They have a business to run.

There are a lot of ways to properly approach prospects, get them to listen and perhaps hire your services, but I am going to talk about just 2 things here…there’s a lot more to this, but I don’t want this post to be too incredibly long

• “You’re an internet guy??

The first thing you need to do is very simple. Don’t bill yourself as an “internet marketer”. For one thing you don’t do yourself any favors. If you talk to business owners in a casual environment and ask what they think about internet marketing, many won’t really even understand exactly what that is… and many others think “just some other fly-by-night company selling me a bill of goods about SEO or something”.

Bottom line is, you are looking to help a business increase their revenue. And you are educating them about the power of advertising on the internet. And giving them new ideas on how to get more people to look at their products and services.

In other words, you are a Business Consultant.

Say that to yourself until it is second nature. Because (if you are doing this right) that’s exactly what you are. You just happen to specialize in the many ways the internet can help.

• Show them how they can do it themselves!

Business owners like nothing better than to find other ways to increase their revenue while saving money at the same time. Well, who doesn’t?

So, why not show them how they can use the internet themselves? Show them the power of capturing emails, proper S.E.M., a well-optimized website, the power of social media…you get the idea.

What I am talking about are workshops. Very simple.

Hold a workshop in the area you market to. It’s easy to get the word out (how about the Chamber of Commerce, or local paper – even Craig’s List). And you can actually make money holding them. But there’s an even bigger benefit…

Structure a workshop environment, schedule it for 6 – 8 hours on a Saturday. Charge for attending (anywhere from $97 to $997 – or more if the market will bear it). You need to at LEAST cover the cost of the workshop – most likely for a room at a local hotel to hold the workshop in, perhaps coffee and doughnuts…that kind of thing.

Understand the power here…you will now have business owners coming to you. You are now NOT a sale person, but a potential solution to a problem. They will be MUCH more willing to listen.

The workshop itself MUST be good stuff. Real usable, actionable things these people can do. Focus on just a few things they can do. You want them to have their “light bulb moment”, seeing the potential of what you’re teaching them. But at the same time, you want them to understand just how much time and effort it will take if they take it on themselves.

That’s where the “selling without selling” takes place. They will start asking YOU if you can do this for them. Which of course, you can.

Once you break it down for them in terms they can understand (cost benefits, etc.) the will see that it is simply another advertising avenue. Something they already spend money on – and something they can also write off at the end of the year.

All of this can lead to new clients. Many of them. Hiring you to do everything from website design (or redesign) to SEO to reputation management to social media marketing, to customer database management – and much more.

So now I hear you saying – “A workshop? I never held one of those. I have no content, etc. for this. What do I do?”

Man I hear that. I said the same thing over a year ago when this idea was first presented to me. The answer can only be one of two things: 1) Create the content or 2) BUY the content.

I did number two. And I can tell you it’s the best thing I could have done. Who has the time to write up all this content for the business owners to learn from and keep after the workshop is over?

• The answer to my prayers…

I met Rachel Rofe a couple of years ago at a small marketing lunch. Very nice person and also very talented and a keen marketing mind. While doing some research on line for this niche, I cam across a package she and her partner, Jaime Mintun, put out that is the answer to my prayers…

Their package is everything you need to hold a workshop for off line businesses. Everything from the marketing and sales materials to get the business owners to attend, to a slide presentation, a workbook for the attendees – and so much more.

It’s called “Make 10k In A Weekend” and you really need to grab it if you want to hold workshops of your own. You can literally brand all of the material with YOUR business name and logo and be holding workshops next week. What a time saver!

As I said earlier – there are other ways to sell your services. But none will have the conversion rate that this one does. Think about it – all you need to market is a workshop teaching them how to help themselves. By the end, once they see the power of what you teach, many will seek YOU out asking how much you charge to do all this work for them.

To me, that beats cold-calling any day!

I am going to attempt to reduce this down to laymen’s terms and provide some clarity on this, often times, misrepresented issue. Most everyone I encounter asks for and seeks a number one page ranking on the Google results page. They don’t typically care how it happens they just know they want it! Big problems can arise with this uneducated approach because Google Index Ranking and Page Ranking are two very different things.

Google Index Ranking is what they actually seek because Google Page Rank is a means in which to evaluate the overall quality and usefulness of any given website. So when people tell me they want a high Google Page Rank

I immediately answer… “Do You Want to be Found on Page One of the Google Search Results as Well”?

• Generating Fresh Original Content of All Kinds on a Regular Basis is Mandatory!

The major search engines continually want to know that your website is there to help people. The primary way for them (the SE’s) to ensure your website does that is by continually sending out spiders to check you out! That being said we must also take into consideration how the search engines actually determine your websites overall usefulness. Let’s keep that simple with quick little Question & Answer series below called “As the Search Engines See My Website.”

Each article should be between 300 and 600 words in length and provide useful information that your target audience would find appealing.

When it comes to off-site SEO, it’s all about generating solid back links to your website from relevant authority websites.

There are many different ways of establishing quality back links to your website, including:

• Link Exchanges
• Blog Commenting
• Forum Marketing
• Directory Listings
• Social Bookmarking

Squidoo is an exceptionally popular service that allows users to create one-page websites referred to as ‘lenses’.

With Squidoo being an authority website with search engines like Google, each time you build a lens, you are able to rank for specific keywords used within your page’s title and content itself.  It’s a very effective strategy for generating back links and generating traffic to your website.

With Press Releases, you are able to reach out to a larger market than many other forms of advertising, and in most cases, word will begin to spread within hours of your press release being approved and distributed.  Press releases are also a cost effective method of advertising your info product, and is also one of the fastest and easiest methods of generating exposure for your new product.

Press Releases lend instant credibility to a business, or brand even if it has just launched and by being circulated among leading publishing agents and authority sites, the association alone can jumpstart your business launch in a very powerful and effective way.

The keywords you select help rights of target customers. These are most likely customers who call you.Search engine optimization is the process of selecting the right keyword phrases, these correctly apply to the content of the Web page and links from other relevant websites (backlinking) recruitment. Why is important SEO a lawyer?

Low cost: Blogs can provide a way to low-cost for companies to get a web presence. According to an announcement of 2009-ology study 46% of small companies surveyed do not have a Web site. Blogs allow a business to have a web presence at a lower cost than a custom website and without learning HTML.

Matt Cutts video then announces that he does not recommend any time design and build their sitios.Ahora keyword tags are ignored by search engines.

Where they key words originating from the meta tag?