I’ll start by asking a few questions, and then I’ll share a few thoughts with you.

If you knew then what you know now about your business, then would what you know change the outcome of how you operate your business?

If you could reduce, if not eliminate, marketing spend, would you do this for more customer growth and revenue?

Answering without a shadow of doubt, could the lessons learned propel your business towards generating greater customer growth and revenue?

Often times, life’s greatest lessons are seen with great clarity when looking back. We must learn to respect the past as the key to unlocking the doors to our present and, more importantly, our future.

Much can be found in the past. Sometimes we find subtleties of truth, yet other times the glaring truth of mistakes stare a hole through us.

To say the least, the concept of setting aside one’s personal agenda for a greater cause can be challenging, especially in terms of a business that took the blood, sweat, and tears of leaders and visionaries to launch and claw their way to making the impossible possible.

And the truth be told for certain businesses today, countless numbers are missing potential customers at this very moment.

Why? The short answer is due to the uninformed decision making of a well-meaning business owner.

If you were told the one thing separating your business from generating greater customer growth and revenue for your business was your digital presence, then what would you do?

Okay, this content is quite long… So, grab a cup of coffee and get ready for your mind to be blown with simple concepts to grow your business while reducing its marketing spend. 😉  

Are you ready?  Let’s get started…

I know the entire story about rising advertising costs as I’m sure your wallet has felt the impact too! No matter if you’re a local, regional, national or global business, search marketing is quite competitive and expensive.

Why is search marketing so expensive?

Let’s think about this and walk through the spend. The masses are blindly paying for pay-per-click advertising with YellowPages, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Bing, Yelp, Yodle, and other 3rd-party advertisers.

Then there are companies, and this may include your company too, paying substantial fees on a monthly basis for search engine optimization.

That’s just online marketing spend. We’ve not mentioned offline advertising such as billboards, radio ads, door hangers, classifieds, newspapers, magazines and television ads.

There are so many businesses competing to be at the most visible spot of the hottest and most visited media known in the world. The sheer number of companies competing is growing daily due to new businesses launching throughout the world.

And time is of the essence as no business can afford to wait for months and years to grow their business.

To answer the original question of why search marketing is so expensive, I have businesses look at one thing: their domain name.

We’re kicking of this year with a bang, releasing a MUST-READ ebook topic: Local SEO Marketing.

Yes, there’s an abyss of local SEO marketing content covering a vast number of options for small businesses to locally market services and products.

The list is long, including marketing and advertising options such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Yellow Pages, Yodle, CitySearch, MerchantCircle, Door-to-Door hangers, and many more…

But I’m not covering those topics in this book. I’m sharing and showing you another less traveled road that only a few are dare to travel.

That’s right, I’ve worked quite hard over the last year researching and experimenting with a variety of techniques and strategies to command local market share for a range of businesses.

And I wrote an ebook to share with you and the world about what I learned in my quest to understand local SEO marketing for myself and others.

In short, getting more revenue and customers in a local market can be quite the challenge for the every day small business and it’s owner (that’s you and me too!).

After all, I’ve been there with my own businesses, and executing local SEO marketing is not an easy nut to crack.  Why, you ask?

As 2015 comes to an end, it’s been quite a year for Kickstart Commerce pertaining to SEO and Domaining.

The 2015 recap…

I’ve help quite a few customers determine that SEO MUST be aligned to the needs of their business as well as their overall marketing strategy.

I’ve successfully taught, coached and consulted quite a customers on what it means to always be continuously content marketing with an education slant and not selling.

I’ve also fired a few customers who only wanted to focus on buying reviews, buying links, or create content based solely on keyword focus in an attempt to sell and not educate.

Although I’m working with less clients, my stress levels are down, yet my overall value proposition has increased right along with profitability.

Where we’re headed in 2016…

I’m looking forward to 2016 and focusing less on SEO and more on domaining. I’ll still accept new SEO relationships with customers, but I’ll be more intentional with who I am called to serve and how to serve their business in the most effective manner long term.

That said, with my new found time in serving less customers, you’ll notice that there will be quite more posts about domaining in 2016. You may have already noticed with daily domain auction posts being made within the last week or so.

Nevertheless, the domain industry overall is growing at quite a rapid pace. Namescon, a growing domaining conference, is right around the corner is expecting nearly 1500 domain investors (aka domainers) to attend.

With the domain industry growing, I’m devoting more time to educating brands not only about SEO and content marketing, but adding to my repertoire the value-add services of educating customers about domain investing at a personal level for themselves as well as a professional level for their business.

With the new domain extensions becoming more relevant over the next couple of years, the time is right for me to transition with the vast market growth of the domain industry itself.

As we enter 2016, I want to leave you with my top 10 predictions for where I see both SEO and Domaining headed. At the end of 2016, we’ll see how spot on I was or was not. That said, here are my 2016 predictions…

Only a few days remain in this year, closing in fast to being only hours.

There is a lot to do before year-end as we prepare for a new year.

And as I do every year, I take a moment to perform 11 MUST-DO SEO actions on my website.  Some of the 11 SEO actions I perform consistently throughout the year.

However, even if I lose track of time during the year, I make sure that the SEO actions we’ll soon discuss are completed at the end of each year without fail.

There’s always chatter about the coming year and what SEO this or that will impact a website and its overall search rankings.

I’m not discounting those articles and predictions.  In fact, I have my own 2016 SEO predictions to be published soon enough.

Stick around, and you’ll see.  But I digress.

There are more than 11 SEO actions to perform on any given website at any point in time.  Some of the actions I’ll soon discuss are reactive, while most are going to be preventative.

The preventative steps will aim to help you successfully and safely manage your website’s growing content while keeping it search-friendly and safe.

I’m sharing with you actions that I find and see substantial benefits to performing at the end of each year for my website.

I hope you receive the same benefits, if not more, that I have from performing the following 11 SEO actions.

Not too long ago, I published content in regard to the one action that small businesses often fail to take when launching their website.

Hopefully, you took a moment to not only read the post and view the video tutorial, but my hope is that you made and took the time to implement your very own mailing list subscription for your website.

If you didn’t, then go do it now and I mean that (okay, too serious!).

Seriously, if you didn’t execute the mailing list tutorial, you’ll want to today after reading this post.

Today’s post will be a follow-up to the mailing list tutorial as we take it a step further to create an automated email sending every time you publish new content.

Ready to start?

I consistently meet and speak with a wide range of small business owners. And they all have the same simple request of teaching them to generate more customers and make more money.

And if not, then their request is that I provide them with an SEO solution that will increase rankings and traffic in hopes of increasing repeat sales.

There are many marketing actions and things a small business, especially an online business or a business that depends on its website as the primary source for lead generation, can and must do when it comes to planning and executing sound Internet marketing strategies.

There is low-hanging fruit, such as participating using social media networks such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn, to name a few. Of course, it can pay to submit to the legit directories.

Then there is also pay-per-click advertising for those who desire instant results.

Then there is the old tried and true method of creating content that engages potential and existing customers to share with the masses.

And don’t forget press releases, guest posting, blogging, ebooks, tutorials, and video marketing, to name a few.

But there is one internet marketing strategy that I experience quite often that small business fail to take action on… Guess what action it is?