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Search Engine Marketing Gets Big Results for Small Business

04/24/2007

Small businesses make up a significant percentage of all the businesses in Southern California and the state has more entrepreneurs per capita than any other. And like other businesses, new customer acquisition is what keeps that bottom line looking healthy. The Internet has leveled the playing field and allows SMBs to compete in ways they never could before. Search engines have changed the way people look for information about products and services - according to a Nielsen/NetRatings study 5.3 billion internet searches were performed in February 2006, up from 3.8 billion in February 2005. Search is rapidly closing in on email as the primary daily activity online, making search engine marketing a vital skill for every business.

Learning how to use search engine marketing successfully might seem like an impossible task – Google tends to play their cards very close to the chest and the way they rank websites is a well-guarded secret. Marketers spend thousands of dollars attending search engine conferences in an attempt to crack this code. Now Southern California small business owners have a rare opportunity to get this data straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Google trainers will be at the Irvine Chamber of Commerce all-day workshop Making the Web Work for Your Business on May 18th to help small and medium businesses learn how to use Google AdWords.

In addition to the Google team, local online marketing experts will give attendees an insight into how to make their website Google friendly and how to take advantage of the explosion of social media – like blogs and RSS feeds. Nikki Jackson of Goldranking Website Marketing will show how to help Google find, index, and rank your site and Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus Internet Marketing and PR shows how blogs and RSS feeds can be used to reach potential customers online. Falkow’s blog Proactive has been nominated for the Best Marketing Blog in the Bloggers Choice Award.

Originally a hi-tech marketing tool, blogs and feeds are now used by companies across the boards. Small local companies like Pacific Pavingstone and Ace Concrete as well as Fortune 100 giants like Sun Microsystems have seen dramatic results from the use of these new social media tools.

The afternoon session of this search engine marketing workshop is a practical hands-on, how-to session and seating is restricted to 50. For further information call the Irvine Chamber at 949 660 91112 or register on their website.

Contact

Rachel Bishop

 

rbishop@irvinechamber.com
Phone: 949-660-9112
Fax: 949-660-0829

Technorati Tags: search engine marketing, SEM, Google, adwords, blogs, RSS feeds,