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We've been saying this for years... Even "local" businesses need a web strategy.. Does yours?

In these stats lies a big - but fleeting - opportunity: serving local businesses by helping them use online well. By this, I don't mean doing what local newspapers have been doing: trying to sell them display or directory ads, just as they did in papers but in a new medium. Instead, I mean redefining what it means to help them succeed online. This might mean helping them place ads smartly on Google with good SEO (see Fred Wilson's tweet out of our New Business Models for News Summit at CUNY). It might mean finding was to help local businesses interact more meaningfully with their own communities.

You typically have to create some number of social interactions to leave the trail of signals of quality to make Google want to trust a site enough to put it in front of a large traffic stream, especially if you are starting a brand new site and are trying to operate within Google's guidelines. As Bob Massa says "search engines follow people."

There are two points in this post that I want to emphasize... First off SEO is an ongoing process. There isn't a magic trick that pushes your site to the top of rankings. It takes work.. Rinse & Repeat. Analyze & Tweak. Secondly there is a great point that if you hire an SEO expert you will get your site in front of the thousand other relevant people in your niche. This is very hard and takes a lot of work. So, you should create Outposts. Creating outposts is part of a content marketing strategy where you distribute your content among various networks to build up multiple sources of traffic... Great quote from Bob Massa explains it perfect!

Know your objectives in advance. Start small, when possible: think "proof of concept." Track the metrics obsessively. Make sure that your interactive marketing efforts are tied to the sales funnel (e.g., your vp of sales ought to be able to determine where most leads are coming from online). Report frequently.

Although social media channels seem to be mostly qualitative in nature, user activities can be easily quantified. Although users interact with channels in different ways, four common factors quantify social media success: Attention, Participation, Authority, and Influence.

Testing your ad copy and your landing pages can significantly improve your paid search efforts. Of course, building a solid keyword base, creating an optimized account structure, and executing a well-planned bid management strategy are also crucial. However, testing allows you to understand how to optimize and improve your communication with your target audience. Conducting thorough tests on your landing pages can deepen your audience interaction and increase your conversion rate.

At a recent social media workshop a participant asked me to reveal my social media routine - how I track, converse, communicate and otherwise curate all my various social media activities. I paused to think about it for a while because I never really considered what I do a routine, but it occurred to me that, in fact, I do have a systematic approach to social media. (No surprise really, I'm a systems thinker and I just do it habitually - ask my wife, I have a system for making the bed and loading the dishwasher.)

It's a great idea to create social media systems, or "processes" that allow you to automate some research and setting time and tasks for different aspects of social media - whether listening or interacting.

A great guide on trying to get more user interaction with your blog or website. Comments are the first and easiest way to start a discussion... Discussions with your community are KEY to an effective web strategy.

But even when your blog software hands you all your commenting capabilities, there are other things you can and should do to get people to comment. So here it is: the 7 step guide to getting more comments.

The study found that local search - the practice of using online search tools to find local businesses, products, or services - grew 58% in 2008, reaching an annual total of 15.7 billion searches. By comparison, overall core US web searches grew at a much smaller rate of 21% year-over-year, nearing 137 billion searches by the end of 2008.