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What SEOs Can Learn From Running an Offline Business

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Offline Business

Probably most people think that Online Business has nothing in common with Offline Business, but that’s not true. There are a lot of differences but there are also similar aspects. Human are the customers for both online and offline business.

Offline Business

If you run an offline business you have to go after your customers, this is why most clothing shops are in malls. In a mall, people come because they get bored and they are eager to spend their time on anything. That’s why you will never see a TV repair shop in a mall, instead, they are around TV shops, so TV buyers can see and come back if they have problems.

Even a certain place is visited by a lot of people, you gain nothing if you just set up there, and no have interest in what you do. That’s why a successfull taxi won’t stay at the hypermarket where most shoppers are coming with their own cars to carry what they buy. Instead, they go to Airports and Train Stations where they can easily find a lot of people who are really interested in having a ride.

The Difference!

The difference for an online site is that your business can be anywhere and the space doesn’t matter. What matters is that the visitors or buyers have to reach you in a way or another (online this time). Most of them will reach you by searching on Google and through social media, but search engine rankings is what a SEOs do, so it is fair to assume that this kind of very targeted traffic is not available so far. This results in a similar problem for offline and online businesses: to be where people are interested in what they offer.

If you want to be a succesfull SEO it is a bad idea to work hard and pay a lot to get your link into high traffic general websites. There are a lot of people that see your ad but most of them are not interested, and the biggest part of those who would be interested are not prepared to use your website.

What you can learn from an offline business is to go to low traffic but targeted places, where the ads have a lower price and there is a less change that you will be accused of spamming. The secret is to get involved in related communities and you will be connected to the topic your website is in. You will know better what people are looking for so you can improve the website and what you should offer to get them to visit and more important, to like it.

The same thing applies for PPC marketing, instead of paying a lot to get top paid position on keywords with a lot of traffic, that may not be completely related to the website you are promoting, you should go for more low traffic keywords which will have lower costs.

Advantages of going for low traffic and more related websites:

  • It is easier to get links because it is not spammed by all the bots and seo newbies
  • The prices for ads and links are lower
  • You get more targeted customers and it is a higher chance that they will like your website and taking an action: subscribe, comment, etc.
  • There is a better chance that you can perfectly blend the links into the content

The best way to get those very relevant and targeted links is to join communities related to your topic, or communities who have a section dedicated to your topic. Only by joining the community you know what type of people are there, what they expect and how likely is that they will follow your links. In the same time you know what they expect so you can write about it and then share with them.

Here is a list with some examples of communities where I am involved and receive good traffic to my websites ( they are mostly related to web and computers ):

  • Digital Point Forums. It is a great place to learn new things about web development, to share ideas, to find deals ( sell or buy websites and links ), and to share your links. They are certainly looking for something you wrote about. I don’t say to spam, just give the response with the resource attached.
  • Overclock forums. This is more related to Computer Hardware, but they also have sections for programming and web development.
  • Android Forums. Well, It is only about Android, I’m involved because i have some sites related to the Android Operating Systems.
  • Yahoo Answers. Despite this is very very general, it is a good way to get some traffic. Their users are asking all kind of questions about everything, so it is a great chance that you will find questions asked related to your website topic. Don’t hesitate to answer, but don’t spam. Link building is possible without spam too.

I will not list all online communities I’m involved in, but these are just few examples for you to see what I’m talking about. In this way I know what is going around and I get articles ideas for my blogs. I can see what people are more interested in, so I can provide this content on my blog to serve their interests, and if I am lucky enough I will get ideas for building new tools that maybe help my blog visitors and those who are interested in the topic of my website, this resulting in more popularity and links for me, because I can host the tool on my website and spread the download link.

I hope you enjoyed my article and to remember that involving and helping communities have a lot of advantages, and please don’t spam.

Filed Under: SEO

About

Lucian Apostol is a web developer and marketer who write articles about web development, internet marketing, wordpress themes, plugins and tutorials. His goal is to help people to adopt new technologies that will help their business and contributes toward the progression of the world.

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{ 36 Responses }

  1. Darren Scott Monroe says:
    Lucian hey good idea for a post. I get what your saying about the top of Google. I would also say that you can target top traffic. But the key is SPECIFICS meaning a plumber shouldn't target plumbing as you said. But instead targeting the keywords Plumbing in Chicago or a nearby suburb or small township in that area.
  2. Saksham says:
    Turning offline customers to online customers helps alot in increasing sales
  3. Val says:
    I can point out one more similarity between offline and online businesses: repeat customers are the best. That's why it is so important to get your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed, mailing list, twitter account, whatever - to stay in touch with every person who is interested in your content and can become a returning "customer" for it. Eventually, you may be able to convert them to actual paying customers, too.
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      Thank you for addition. We can learn a lot of things from an offline business because we can see and understand why a restaurant fails and why other succed, and then think that failing/winning causes can apply to our website too, and then know what to do to improve.
  4. Jack Harold says:
    If anyone can dominate Google Places, then that's where you or any business can win on the Local Search!
  5. Matt says:
    ya I totally agree with you. As we say, some people are so lazy that don’t even want to create a free account. But a single reliable link can worth 100 backlinks on directories and spam websites that are not even indexed.
  6. Shiva says:
    I think forums certainly help a lot in getting a good amount of traffic. I do used to get a good amount of traffic from Digital Point until I stopped using it due to my busy schedule but I will be again starting using it now. Thanks a lot for the tips Lucian
  7. Alex says:
    Salut Lucian, Yahoo Answers is indeed a great way to get targeted traffic, especially if you have a niche that repairs, provides something useful, like android programs or something like that. Also, like you said, making accounts on forums related to what you offer/blog about is always a good way, not only to get traffic but to build some relevant links. I saw that someone mentioned about nofollow, it doesn't work that way (like not passing authority, link juice etc), it only prevents PR leaking (PR wasn't updated in like one year), but it helps in serps so it's a good link. And I want to add one more advantage to having ads on smaller but related websites. Usually those website are way down in the results so they won't get to much traffic, but all the traffic that they get is targeted, because someone digged through all those pages of diggs, stumbleupons, search engine pages and clicked on that particular website. So yet an other way to get super targeted traffic. Great article Lucian, I am glad to see fellow Romanians blogging away :)
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      Thank you Alex. About advertising on small website, there is a gret advantage but you also need a lot of work to find good small sites to advertise on. This is because they have low traffic or even worse you can end up buying ads on a website with no traffic.
  8. Kevin says:
    SEO is definitely part of my to do list for this new year. As much as I dislike it I can't avoid it. Google is a great way to get traffic but I can't say the same about the quality of traffic.
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      You might be surprised if you find out that traffic coming from direct links from related websites convert 5-10 better than traffic from Google. I tend to think that the "great quality" of Google traffic is a myth. I don't say that traffic from google is not worth, but it is more about quantity. Prople coming from google are well aware of other options available to them and usually they open more results at once which makes the overall traffic quality to drop. This happens usually if your google traffic comes from general short keywords. The true google traffic quality is in long tail. The disadvantage of longtail is that the amount of searches is divided on many different key phrases and you can't optimize your website for all, this kind of situations happens naturally, but I can trully say that a visitor from a long tail keyword is worth 100 visitors from short general keywords.
      • Kevin says:
        It's all about quantity! Long tail is more targeted but it's like you said there's too many keywords involved within the phrase. When I search for things on Google I keep my terms short and most of the time broad. I end up finding what I need. But once in a while when I'm stuck on a certain subject I just do more digging and more keywords.
        • Lucian Apostol says:
          Quantiy does not convert well in customers or registered members. Quality does.
  9. Tristan says:
    Thanks for a great article, Lucian. I've been wondering whether I should invest some time in the Digital Point forums. Sounds like you're getting some good traffic there, so thanks!
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      If your website is about web development, seo, internet marketing then Digital point forums are a great place to be in, both for you and for your website.
  10. TrafficColeman says:
    Its about knowing your audience and making yourself available when they are in need..whether that's online or offline. "Black Seo Guy "Signing Off"
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      And very important you must know very well your target so you can provide a good product.
  11. Andreas says:
    Many online and offline businesses share many similarities. When I visited my local dentist, I saw a flyer for a nearby serviced apartment. How different is this from a link between the dentists site and the apartment site?
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      I have a good experience with my dentist too, he sent me to a radiography center near, giving me a flyer with his name on it, so they will know where I was sent from.
  12. Pritam says:
    That is what I think while doing the PPC campaign. You should go with targeted but low competitive keywords. I am using DP and I think this is one of the good site to get target ted traffic.
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      A lot of work is involved in finding good low competitive keywords that have decent traffic.
  13. Pete Carr says:
    Hi Lucian, Offline businesses are turning to the online community more and more to help them get traffic/customers to their shop or business. Like you have rightly said, you can have the best shop in the street, but if you target the wrong people you will fail. Online is no different, we all need to position ourselves in front of the right customers. Pete
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      The websites purposed only to promote an offline business are something different and they have to be very attached to the real business.
  14. technosuman says:
    Well Lucian! SEO is very important for running business that is online. However In your article you explained learning from the offline business. People would have thought that there is no connection with SEO and an offline business. However you exactly explained that. It is really good for people who want to learn every aspect of the SEO. Thank You For Writing Such A Great Post!
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      Thank you. The connection to an offline business is because it will help you to figure out how things will develop online because it is simple to see how an offline business fail or succed, and learn from it, even if you are online based.
  15. Vivek Parmar says:
    have to admit that DP is a great place and its a week only and i getting a pretty decent traffic from DP and now looking further to get traffic from yahoo answers, till date didn't give a try :)
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      Remember: don't spam.
  16. TJ McDowell says:
    It used to be much easier to market to the general public. Run a tv ad, and you're golden. Now if you're not targeting a specific market, you're wasting your money. People see way too many ads each day to pay attention to yours if it's not completely relevant to them. You definitely need to market in the right places and using techniques that don't make you look so much like a boring advertisement.
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      The key right now is relevance.
      • TJ McDowell says:
        Definitely relevant, and not in a way that it's interrupting the consumer.
  17. Mani Viswanathan says:
    DP is perhaps the best place to get quick & quality links (if researched well :P)
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      I have posted a link on a DP thread to a website I know where I offer paid membership. The conversion rate from DP is 5 times higher than the average conversion rate from all traffic sources. Relevance is gold.
  18. Henway says:
    I believe Yahoo Answers links are nofollow, but nonetheless it's still a good way to gain traffic especially if you answer questions that are highly relevant to the theme of your site.
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      Highly targeted traffic is better than do-follow links with no value. As for seo, I've seen many experiments where websites ranked high only with no-follow links.
  19. James Pruitt says:
    I totally agree with you. I have people asking me my traffic strategy all the time and they often get frustrated when i don't just produce a long list of sites to post links on and a step by step plan on how to use them. the fact is, I am in several niche markets and every one is different. the key to marketing successfully is find where your customers are and get your links in front of them. Most people are just too lazy to do the leg work, researching the niche and finding where people are. but they wind up working harder to get the traffic in the long run.
    • Lucian Apostol says:
      You can find numerous ways to post links if you join a community. As you say, some people are so lazy that don't even want to create a free account. But a single relevant link can worth 100 links on directories and spam websites that are not even indexed.