Should your domain name be your brick and mortar business name? Many businesses, when they go online to build their first website and start marketing, will assume that their business name should be their domain name. But not necessarily.

Let’s say you own a lumber company named Jack’s located in Denver, Colorado. All the locals simply know it as Jack’s and when they are ready to go buy lumber they just say, “I’m heading on over to Jack’s.” Do you want your website domain name to be Jacks.com?

Chances are, that’s already taken. But you may be tempted to find other variations of the word Jack’s that fit with lumber. The obvious would be jackslumber.com. If it’s not taken then it could be the best bet for you; but what if it is taken? What then?

It’s much more important to have a domain name with your most important keyword in it. In other words, if you had a choice to have a domain name with the word “Jack” in it versus a domain name with the word “lumber” in it then you’d be better off with using “lumber.” The reason is because you want to rank for your important keyword as much as you can and as high in the rankings as you can. While the domain name is not the most important part of your web rankings calculation, the search engines do consider domain name. It’s just one of the criteria that they look at.

Therefore, when coming up with a domain name for your company, try to find one that best represents your company brand and that uses your most important keyword. It’s OK even to create a separate brand online that will serve as an extension of your off line business.

Interesting. A Comscore study reveals large number of growing websites are local. Look at Table 2.

Blumenthals highlights which of those are local and which ones are likely to entail a large local focus. Here are the sectors that completely or mostly local:

• Retail - Mall
• Retail - Movies
• Travel - Hotel / Resorts
• Retail - Tickets

Three out of four are retail. One thing I think this definitely means, particularly in urban areas where there should be a large amount of competition in these areas, is that companies in these sectors should seriously consider a blog, which will increase their competitive advantage in the search engine war.

Google Trends has been useful tool for some now. You could compare two competitors to see which one was getting the most traffic to their website and use the information you find to make your own website more competitive. Google’s newest tool, which can be even better, is Google Insight.

Google Insight allows you to analyze keyword data by region and time. In other words, you can see search trends by month, quarter, year, or across multiple years. You can also analyze search trends by region, which is very helpful for looking at the competitive landscape for your niche at the local level, a limitation of Google Trends.

Let’s say you want to start a state-wide auction site similar to eBay that allows farmers to buy and sell farm equipment within your state. You can see how many searches for farm equipment within your state or region have been conducted in the last 90 days or even the last year. You can also see which search terms related to farm equipment have been the most popular.

Just for grins, I decided to see what the data for farm equipment would look like in Michigan over the last 90 days. Here’s what I found: On June 29, the search volume for farm equipment in Michigan was high. By mid-July, it had dropped to almost half. And by the end of July just tapered off altogether.

Now I’m not altogether sure that those end-of-July figures are 100% accurate, but if I look at the trend over the past year then I can see that the most number of searches for farm equipment in Michigan took place at the beginning of May. Again, I see a huge dip toward the end of July. This makes sense since I know that farmers usually start plowing fields and working their crops in early summer/late spring and by the end of the summer the need for farm equipment goes down. But suppose I want to compare that data for the states of Michigan and illinois? I find that the trend in Illinois is similar to the trend in Michigan, but there have been more overall searches for farm equipment in Illinois.

This is the kind of drill down research you can do with Google Insight. It’s a very helpful tool, to be sure, and can be used to narrow a niche or broaden one that is too small BEFORE you commit yourself to your business model.

According to Greg Sterling, the top 10 Internet Yellow Pages headings in terms of what local people search for are:

1. Restaurants
2. Physicians & Surgeons
3. Hotels
4. Auto Repairing & Service
5. Florists-Retail
6. Auto Dealers-New & Used
7. Dentists
8. Auto Parts & Supplies - New & Used
9. Beauty Salons (tie)
10. Hospitals (tie)

So what’s that mean? Well, for starters, if you own a local restaurant then you should seriously start thinking about advertising your business through the Internet yellow pages. That includes sites like Citysearch, Superpages, and Yelp. The same goes for doctors and surgeons and hotels. In fact, if you do business in any of the above categories then you would benefit from advertising in the yellow pages online.

More and more people are ditching the old print yellow pages and searching for local businesses online. When searching for real estate, most people start their search online. Tourists looking for a place to stay or eat turn to the Internet. Search Engine Land has a pretty in-depth post about the differences between local online searches and off line searches for businesses. There are plenty of similarities. But I think the real issue here is not whether you should advertise in print or online, but rather how you can incorporate Internet Yellow Pages advertising with what you are already doing in print.

Learn more about integrated marketing from Melberg.com.

Since newspapers are raising their rates to keep up with gas prices, where will advertisers go to advertise?

It looks as though it is a never ending cycle. First came the Internet. Newspapers got by OK for awhile, but circulation declined as more and more people went online for the news. Newspapers raised their advertising rates and lost advertisers. Then paper prices went up. Then fuel prices went up. Newspapers raised their circulation rates and lost more readers. They raised their ad rates again and lost more advertisers. It looks like a spiraling decline into oblivion.

In truth, this is the market at work. More and more people are going online to get their news from Internet sources. As they do, advertisers follow. It won’t be long that we’ll be getting all of our news from online, but will advertisers be advertising online? The smart ones will.

Now is the time to start thinking about how to use the Internet for maximum advertising ROI. The opportunities are there, but many local businesses are still a little bit weary of online advertising. There’s really no reason to be. The main thing to remember is advertise in places where your target audience are likely to be. And, yes, you can do that at the local level too.

We’ve known for some time that people shop online and purchase off line, although that may be changing. Nevertheless, according to a study by Nielsen, 80% of people who purchase off line purchase from a store whose website they’ve visited. That’s nice to know, isn’t it?

Well, it is nice to know unless you are the store they aren’t buying from. Keep in mind that if people are buying in your brick and mortar store because they’ve been to your website then your website is the reason they are buying from you. You have to connect the two. Is your website user friendly? Can customers find what they are looking for easily? Could they purchase just as easily from your website even if they do drive to your store to get it in person?

In today’s business economy it is vitally important not only to have a website, but to have a website that beats the competition hands down. For most retailers, your competition is not just local brick and mortar businesses, but online businesses located anywhere. That means the competitive landscape is bi-fold (brick and mortar/local and online/global). You have to compete on both folds.

The No. 1 priority for online retailers with a brick and mortar location for customers to make purchases is to make your website so intuitive that customers can purchase from it if they want to. Due to rising gas prices, many customers will opt to purchase online because it will be cheaper to pay for shipping than it will be to drive. Soon, the only people driving to pick up what they want to purchase will be people who need it now. But even they will do their consumer research online before making the drive. You’d better have your website ready to receive them.

Do you need e-mail marketing for your local business? In actuality, e-mail marketing is one of the most effective ways to advertise your business. It is certainly one of the most cost-effective marketing methods today.

All you have to do to start building your marketing list is to take down your customers’ e-mail addresses at the point of sale. Once you get enough e-mail addresses to start a campaign then you can start sending out e-mails marketing your business. Those e-mails can be electronic flyers and brochures, e-cards, or even electronic newsletters. But it is virtually free to send out e-mail blasts every so often and get people to respond to your messages.

Let’s say you run a local women’s clothing store. If you send out mailers every month to 1,000 homes, you have a certain expense associated with that. But if you ask your mailing recipients if they’d prefer to receive your mailers by e-mail then you can send out less print mailers and more e-mail mailers. By cutting the cost of your printing you can actually save yourself some money. If it costs you $2.50 per mailing to print and mail then you are spending $250 on a mailing. If you can cut that down by 50% and send an e-mail to 500 people for $100 then you have saved some money.

These figures are arbitrary and don’t represent real numbers. I’m just drawing an analogy to show you that you can save money on the production of mail materials by transforming it into e-mail communications. Try it. See if it works!

An article at Small Business SEM made me think that there are two types of small business owners. Type A is the proactive type. A new technology comes along and they are eager to grasp it. They may not adopt it quickly, but they attempt to understand it to see if they’ll ever be able to apply it to their business. If they see a way to use it for their business then they’ll integrate it into their business plans and make money on it. They are proactive.

The second type of small business owner is the reactive one. Instead of embracing new technology, the reactive business owner criticizes it. These small business owners are likely to say that the Internet is killing their business and then make an emotional appeal to their neighbors to “buy locally”. Of course, consumers are going to buy where they get the best service and the best product for the lowest price. If it’s online then so be it.

Are you proactive or reactive? Are you embracing new technologies or criticizing them? Is the Internet your friend or your enemy?

Frankly, if you have not figured out that the Internet is your ticket to the future then you are likely more reactive than any of the people in Matt McGee’s article. Even local small businesses can use the Internet to increase their business revenues. Even in small towns. But you have to get out of your comfort zone, move away from the TV, and learn about the new technology. If you aren’t willing to do that, don’t call the Internet your enemy. You are your own enemy for all progress depends on embracing the new, not criticizing it.

What do Proflowers.com, Office Depot, Lands End, Oriental Trading Company, and eBay have in common? They’re all among the top 10 online retailers by conversion rate for April 2008. According to Grok.com.

This is a fascinating list because these retailers all have different brands in different industries. The surprising one to me is eBay. I thought it would be higher up the list. But it’s interesting that Office Depot is second on the list and equally interesting that Proflowers is the highest. It’s not February, after all, when lovers are apt to send their beloveds flowers for their kisses. But it is spring and that may have something to do with it.

What’s even more interesting in the Grok.com report is what follows the list of the top 10 retailers. Remember, that list is by conversion rate. But Grok.com includes other benchmarks that are noteworthy. Among them:

• Page Views Per Session
• Product Page Views Per Session
• Average Time on Site (in seconds)
• Average Items/Order
• Shopping Cart Conversion Rate
• Shopping Cart Abandonment
• New Visitor Conversion Rate
• Referral Conversion Rate

All of these are important metrics to measure, even for a local retail business. If you are not looking at these statistics for your local retails website then you should be. And you should also be comparing them to your in-store statistics. Do you know what products sell better online versus in your store? Do you know how long visitors stay on your website and whether they were referred by someone else? Do you know if your online purchasers are local or people located elsewhere on the globe? If you don’t know these things about your website visitor then you need to start measuring the statistics on your website and looking at it a little closer. Online retail sales are going up and it’s important - even for local retailers - to know how people are using their websites.

Integrated marketing is all about getting creative with getting your message to your target market. I discuss this concept in detail with Chris Witting on his Internet Talk Radio Show, “Tracking Business Leaders.” Among the topics we discuss on his radio show are:

• Blogging
• Really Simple Syndication
• Podcasting
• Website Design
• SEO
• Online Marketing
• Mobile Marketing

These marketing tactics are relatively new for small business owners, but many small business owners are using them very effectively. I’d like you to listen to Chris’s interview with me and take some notes because this is a unique format that you’ll only get to hear if you listen to the TalkZone radio show that Chris hosts. To listen to the interview, click here and grab a cup of coffee.