How to Use a Wordpress Blog for An Offline Template

Some guy was talking about seo, keywords and using a wordpress blog for setting up an offline marketing business by putting up websites for brick and mortar stores. He wanted to use static pages in a wordpress blog setup and thought that he wouldn't need the part of a wordpress blog that does the dynamic posting..... I suggested if he was just setting up static sites, he might as well use Xsitepro because it would give him the most bang for the bust! He must have been a newbie because he had some very basic questions. Nothing wrong with being a newbie, so I thought I'd post part of his question along with my comments below....maybe you might be able to glean something from it.

I really need to contact this fellow and show him my Xsitepro Offline Marketing Template. Using an Xsitepro Template for setting up brick and mortar businesses makes a lot of sense since these sites get indexed so quickly. In case you haven't seen my directory yet, I've been experimenting with The Mchenry Business Directory ...an online directory listing Mchenry businesses.

His Question

Basically, I'm going to try and create a stable offline business by providing a certain offline service, to customers which I plan to partially get through organic Google traffic. These customers would only be based locally. I have researched quite a few really nice local keywords, some with 4K+ monthly searches and I'm not really sure how to go about this.

I've decided to use WordPress for the website because of the ease of use and because it's SEO friendly. The website contains a welcome home page as well as faq, contact, terms of service, privacy policy and services page which describes the services that are being offered. The reason for not knowing how to go about this is because the whole website is static nothing really changes on it since it's meant to be a business website. The local keywords I have researched seem to have a fairly low competition although some seem hard to dominate.

My Answer and Comments

You've got a lot going on and some big questions. I'll give you my 2 cents for one small part of it. You're talking about using a wordpress blog for a buisness blog which will be composed mostly of static pages.

First based on my experience, if you're planning on creating a static site I would use Xsitepro. I use Dreamweaver or just plain ole notepad for developing sites and Xsitepro produces results that often times out do Wordpress. So, if you're serious about setting up multiple offline sites, composed of 3 or 4 pages....get a copy of Xsitepro and use it... Your pages will be indexed in some cases overnight and usually stay there with little to no updating. That's my personal experience. Just make sure you use the rss function and create a xml page, ping it and submit it to the directories

However!

Wordpress offers so much and to limit yourself to a couple of pages per site is a big mistake. Many big corporations switch to a wordpress blog...using it as a CMS. There is tremendous potential in using wordpress for your offline sites that you're really missing.

If you want to create a static front page that's fine. But don't dismiss using the blog as part of your site and its entire promotion.

I find a blog is the perfect offline business platform for developing websites and I incorporate both static and regular posts.

You mentioned you have a couple of keywords...I image it wouldn't be too difficult to come up with 50 or more keywords for your niche....especially if it's localized.

This is how a the blog portion of the site would work.

Use the blog to create or build a story about the business. You can expound on any aspect of the business, create a category and post weekly or daily blog posts using your keywords. Your story could virtually be a diary of daily business happenings. People love to read about the more personal side of a business. You could profile the employees....you could follow one employee through the entire week.

I can't think of any business that you couldn't develop some sort of story around. Heck, you could even have a cagegory that focuses on the office life of the business....isn't there a hit TV show called "The Office"!

I like to chronicle various projects, jobs, cases or patients within a business or service.

Let's say your site is for a local chiropractor. You can set up the front end of the site to make it look professional....but don't dismiss developing the blog because this is where you can effectively use your keywords or keyword phrases and start getting organic traffic.

Keeping with the chiropractor example. Find a patient to blog on. Let's say he has arm pain from a ruptured disc. Have the Chiropractor or you blog weekly on the patients treatment and progress. You'll be able to use keywords for the treatment...such as "decompression therapy in Mchenry" or "muscle stimulation therapy in Mchenry Chiropractor".....you'll have enough material for a full year. Use your imagination.

Consider a hardwood flooring company.

Do the same thing, set up your static front page as an introduction to the company...make sure you have an optin form. Then you could set up some blog categories such as "materials" where you would talk about the various hardwoods, finishes etc. Or how about a "projects" category. Pick a couple of good projects to blog about in a diary form. Once again, when you're talking about oak flooring, you would use the keyword "oak flooring in Mchenry" or "hardwood floor sanding in Mchenry".....man, you have more material for an offline blog than any blog on internet marketing or some adsense blog.

You can literally blog about any aspect of any business, talking about information that those familiar with the business would probably think is uninteresting. As the website developer you're presented with an opportunity to use this information to stick important keywords or keyword phrases.

Although you mainly blogging to get your site indexed for certain keywords, by no means, dismiss the fact that people really enjoy knowing the inner workings of a company. People are nosey...they want to know the gossip and whether people are happy with a business......you can provide that information by blogging.

I've purchased and read many offline marketing guru's and nobody talks about what I just did....use this information to beat any and all competitors!

Concerning backlinks.

This forum is full of ideas and methods to get backlinks....some as white as the driven snow and others dark like midnight on a new moon look around and do some searching there are plenty of experts here on keywords.

I can tell you that a handfull of decent backlinks for most keyword phrases for offline marketing will almost always get you on page one and at the top. That being said, why don't you set up a network of blogs for your own links. Set up some blogger and wordpress.com blogs. Then there is always the old fashion method of asking for a link to your site.

You can find a some guys here offing backlink packages.....so getting backlinks should be the least of your problems....just make sure you build it into your pricing structure.

Oh well....I wasn't going to say anything about linking or backlinks...wanted to leave that to someone else.

Hope you get the idea about how you can use a wordpress blog more effectively for your offline sites!

Scott

Local Business Directory with Xsitepro

Xsitepro is the perfect website development software to use when developing a Local Business Directory. Portal sites for local businesses are rapidly becoming popular but they either look like a first grader put it together or it's a very complicated wordpress or joomla template.


Xsitepro with it's template driven websites makes it really easy to build and maintain a local business directory like this one: Mchenry Local Business Directory.

I've been working on this xsitepro local business template for offline marketing and it's almost done, you can find further information and sign up for a notification list with discount at Xsitepro Local Business Directory.

've been working on a Xsitepro Offline Marketing Template that is a little more complex than the standard Xsitepro Template.

This template is designed to be used by the offline marketer to go from city to city or town to town with the intent of advertising and marketing local business operations....driving traffic to their websites, advertising their business through appropiate keywords and marketing their businesses by offering list building through optin forms.

The Xsitepro Offline Marketing Template is designed to provide a multitude of monetization models. Across the top are 3 ads with images. These appear on each page and can be sold for $100 plus per month. The ads can be stationary or rotating.

Below the 3 ads across the top is a xsitepro's dynamic menu. I'm working out a few kinks but it should serve perfectly as an easy method of navigation.

The main panel is configured with a premium advertising space. The premium ad could start at $200 plus a month, of course it depends on the traffic you're getting. The space would feature an image along with an advertising message which would contain a link back to the advertiser's site.

I haven't really developed the left navigation colum yet. I'm not sure I like the scrap paper look....but we'll have to see how it works out. The nav colum could feature more ads or banner space to advertise along with providing some standard nav links. A rotating banner space could work out well....something like special of the day or week. Again, this feature would be sold as an add on.

I think one of the most interesting features is the premium advertising page here's an example xxxxxxxxxx. Many small businesses don't have a web presence, they do not have any type of web page and the thought of getting online scares the crap out of them. The Premium Advertising Page is basically a single one page website they can have. It includes their basica information along with an advertising message and a few images. Most importantly this page can be used to get them on Google Local. I have a few things to do on this page yet, but take a look and see how you might use this page.

There's more but this will give you an idea of what Xsitepro Offline Marketing Template will offer. All pages will come with basic templates that you simply copy and paste. Of course Xsitepro's full compliment of features will be able to be used on the entire site. This will give you, the offline marketer, tremendous flexibility and power.

I have to say the income potential with this type of template is unlimited. You are limited only to your imagination and ambition. You won't get rich over night sending out a few emails....but if you approach this as a real business, get on the phone, knock on doors and figure out how to set up a local business directory in your own neighborhood, town or city.....you can then take this worldwide.

You Can Make Money As An Offline Consultant

If you are considering working as an Offline Consultant you should have some kind of knowledge of basic internet marketing skills such as: -working with pay per click campaigns such as Google Adwords -setting up and autoresponder account like Aweber -writing a press release and submitting press releases -writing and submitting articles -creating a website or blog and using a program like Xsitepro -optimizing a website for the search engines

At first glance, all the above skills might make it look like you aren't qualified to do offline consulting, however, there is an easy solution. Many who promote offline marketing also suggest that you subcontract the above costs by outsourcing at least some of these projects. This would require that you learn about outsourcing and freelancing while making any necessary adjustments in your project selling price for the added project costs.

The services that offline businesses are looking for (and need) the most, are:- Optimize for Search Spiders (SEO)- Long Tail Keyword Research- PPC like Google Adwords- Writing & Submitting Articles- Creation of Press Releases- Having An Autoresponder Setup

Of course you aren't limited to just the above services. You'll make more money if you know how to perform these services yourself and you can easily find pages of tutorials by searching on Google. You might also consider searching online to see what your competition is charging for the same services, we call this Market Research!

Next you need to get out there and promote your offline consulting business to those who need it by using every marketing and promoting trick you can think of, such as posting ads on craigslist, printing up fliers, dropping off business cards, knocking on business doors, sending out mailers and putting ads in the paper to name a few. You will be surprised how easy it really is because there is a great need for local businesses to have an online presence and you, my friend, can be the answer.

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You can also cash in on your experience and knowledge by writing a small report, ebook or even creating a screen capture video series on some aspect of offline marketing. If you know a lot about setting up an Aweber Autoresponder you could explain all the steps involved in setting up an autoresponder for offline business clients and even further explain what options the local business owner has when setting up an autoresponder. You can write a short, easy-to-understand report or a longer eBook on the subject and sell it to other internet marketers and/or offline business owners who want to learn how to perform these tasks themselves.

The local business man or woman really needs what you have to offer which makes the offline niche very profitable for those who go out and work it. Offline Marketing could be one of the most real and attainable business ventures you've looked at since you've been online.

This book will help you explain some of the facts of Offline Marketing and it has facts and figures you can actually show the customer....a very good resource! Copy the next series of article posts and create a pdf, show them to your client along with this book, Offline Marketing Guide For Selling Online Services to Offline Businesses

For Successful Marketing Understand Your Target Market

Before you can do any good advertising your product and service or undergo any decent marketing campaign you have to know your target market. In the world of internet marketing you need to be able to know as precisely as possible all the information you can gather so you can custom tailor your marketing mix to be more effective.

You will need to know about their demographics. On any online marketing campaign you need to know who it is that you are reaching out to. What does your ideal customer look like? How old are they? What income bracket are they in? Where do they work? Where do they socialize? What are their buying habits? The marketing strategies that you incorporate are going to use all this information. Fortunately it doesn't take much to find out much of this. If you are targeting a certain geographic area, use the internet to find out as much demographic information as possible. In the US use the chamber of commerce for that area.

For your market targeting you will also need to know about their geographic location. What is the culture there like. Get familiar with ti and find out what things are typical for that region. Make sure you find out not only what marketing strategies are popular but find out also what things are taboo. What may seem harmless to one region may be a death sentence to your marketing strategy if your marketing research doesn't find this information out.

You also need to see what other factors might affect the buying decision and behavior of your target market. What styles are in fashion for your target markets? What type of climate is it? Are they freewith their money? It may seem like a lot of work but if you want your marketing plan to work, all of this research is going to pay off.

The most important part of your marketing research will be understanding your customers needs. The more you understand this, the better able you will be to create an ad campaign. This will help bring about some effective branding of your product and services as a viable part of their buying pattern.

Your best way to find out about your target market, though, is to spend time where they are. If your hope is to have a coffee shop, you are going to want to see first hand what works and doesn't work You will want to know what the atmosphere is like in a successful coffee shop and spend time talking to customers to find out what they like and don't like about it. The same thing is going to be important for any online marketing plan.

Wherever it is that your potential customers go to find out more about what you are trying to offer them, go and spend time there. If there is a forum that is used by those who typically are interested in your product or service, be a member of it or spend time reading what is going on. Get in the shoes of your target market and find out what it is like to be them. The more you can understand them, the more effective you will be a marketing to your target market.

Learn the basics of internet marketing and then take it offline to show brick and mortar stores how to market effectively using internet marketing.