When it comes to your website, many home services contractors have been left hanging high and dry with a “dead site”. But what exactly does this mean?

Your businesses website is suppose to act as a 24/7 sales person, that is working around the clock, to attract visitors, and convert them into long lasting leads for your business. If this does not sound familiar to you, then it is probably because your company has fallen victim to the many website development scams that are occurring within the local business marketing community.

We have been there, and so have many of our clients. So, what does it take to have a killer website that increases your traffic and converts visitors into customers?

Give your contractor marketing strategy the push that it needs with Killer Landing Pages That Boosts Leads. On our exclusive webinar presentation, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2011 at 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m, we will hand you the tools and strategies your home improvement business needs to jump-start your website and maximize lead generation.

Reserve your seat today.

This step-by-step webinar will give you an insider’s look at how to:

• Optimize your site for the popular keyword search terms and phrases your top prospects are searching for;
• Create a website structure that is guaranteed to convert visitors into your marketing funnel;
• Apply online tools and measurements to optimize and track your site’s conversion to optimize performance.

Want to find out more? The success of your business is one click away, so gain access NOW!

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/177196786

How To Video: Budgeting For Your Contractor Internet Strategy for Lead Generation

Contractors in the home improvement business understand the importance of developing a marketing strategy for their lead generation efforts. However, many are unsuccessful at establishing a realistic budget for their marketing outreach leaving them broke with no new prospects.

This video blog will show your business how to plan for your marketing strategy including:

• The types of marketing plans that are conducive to your industry and business size;
• The key factors to marketing planning without over spending;
• The type of information your business must include when you begin to strategize.

Increasing your Contracting Businesses Online Visibility with Social Media

The Hootsuite platform is a multi-integral social media management dashboard that has the ability to manage, organize and obtain your businesses social media networks…all in one location. There is a reason we choose Hootsuite for our Surefire Social Clients, and we think that your business should too.

An Online Linking Strategy Made for Contractors

LinkWheel marketing is one of the most strategic ways to drive traffic to your website, while maximizing online visibility for your business. Watch this video tutorial to see how Surefire Social uses high value PR (page rank) web 2.0 networks, and your businesses primary keywords (SEO), to create an online linking strategy to give your business the leads it has been looking for…

How-to-Video on Gaining Quality Contractor Leads, for Less, Using SEO

This video tutorial will give you the maximum amount of contractor leads by optimizing your businesses website to increase your traffic and lead generation profits.This short educational video provides insight into:

• Financial Return on Investment Using Accurate SEO for Your Website;
• How to Optimize your Website with Specific Optimized Landing Pages;
• Building Your Business Online Using SEO.

If you talk to any online marketing professional, they will tell you that one of the most important outlets for attracting customers and increasing leads is a blog.

Blogging is not just for thought leaders or online guru’s, it is a great outlet for businesses to brand their business online. Some of the benefits of

blogging include:

• Driving potential customers and leads to your site through your blog posts;
• Branding yourself as an expert by providing insight and information through your blog writing;
  

  Business blogging is all about providing the knowledge people want, so they keep coming back for more.

• Giving your business maximum visibility by sending the online community updates about your posts.

Now, if you have a blog, do weekly postings, but want to get some more traction, you are in luck. The online marketing community is full of sites and networks geared toward promoting your blog and gaining more followers.

Try these 3 secret ways of gaining more visibility for your blog and driving more potential leads back to your site.

1. Submit You Blog to Online Directories. One of the first steps to getting your blog noticed is to submit it to some of the hottest online blog directory sites. Many people use these online submission sites as places to find blogs within their industry, so it is the prime place for you to establish a solid presence. Check out sites like DMOZ, Best of the Web and Bloggeries and fill out their submission form. Some of them take a little while to activate, but trust me, it is well worth the wait!

2. Send Updates to Your Social Media Networks. Social media marketing is one of the top ways to market your business to potential consumers and customers. Millions of people (daily) are browsing around Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn looking for blogs, like yours, to give them some insight into many of their home improvement needs and issues.

3. Utilize Social Bookmarking to Gain Better Visibility. Social bookmarking sites are a hidden gem of the Internet marketing world. By simply tagging a blog post here and there, you are giving your blog a great opportunity to be passed around by the online community. Try sites like: StumbleUpon, Mixx and Delicious which are some user-friendly, high-ranking authority sites to incorporate into your online marketing strategy.

A blog can take some time, but will have a lasting effect on the lead generation efforts of your business. So jump on the bandwagon and create some awesome content to generate your business some quality, contractor leads.

This week in online social networking, Hurricane Earl seems to be the talk of the town. As of right now, it is one of the top trending topics on Twitter and it looks as if everyone is generating buzz about it all over the web.

Done believe it? Take the Northeast “Snow-Mageddon” this past winter; tips, updates and news were spread about using popular online social networks. Advice and information that was crucial to the safety of many residents along the eastern seaboard.

But, why social media? What does social media have to offer that other “media” outlets don’t?

The answer to this question is simple: because that’s where the people are!

If the social media community is now being utilized to pass monumental information, it is definitely the hottest place online and your business needs to be utilizing it!

The benefits of social media marketing, over other forms of media, are attributed to two key characteristics:

1. Real Time: The main benefit to social media is that it is displayed in real time. Tweets, status updates and messages come to your desktop much faster than a news article or a nightly news update on the TV.
2. Real People: Social media updates are generated (most of the time) by real, live people. These updates can provide you with more knowledgeable information from all different kinds of individuals in different geographic locations and of different professions.

So get online and make a contribution to the online social media community. Make your business stand out and create some long-lasting relationships that will be converted into quality contractor leads for your business.

One of the major benefits to having a WordPress hosted site is the availability of millions of plugins that can transform your site into a traffic generating machine. Check out this WordPress Plugin Report that contains some of the top, free, plugins, designed by WP users (just like you) to make your website more user-friendly for you and your visitors.

WordPress Plugin Report for Lead Generating Websites

If you talk to any online marketing professional, they will tell you that one of the most important outlets for attracting customers and increasing leads is a blog. Blogging is not just for thought leaders or online guru’s, it is a great outlet for businesses to brand their themselves online. Some of the benefits of blogging include:

* Driving potential customers and leads to your site through your blog posts;

* Branding yourself as an expert by providing insight and information through your blog writing;

* Giving your business maximum visibility by sending the online community updates about your posts.

Now, if you have a blog, do weekly postings, but want to get some more traction, you are in luck. The online marketing community is full of sites and networks geared toward promoting your blog and gaining more followers. Try these 3 secret ways of gaining more visibility for your blog and driving more potential leads back to your site:

1. Submit You Blog to Online Directories. One of the first steps to getting your blog noticed is to submit it to some of the hottest online blog directory sites. Many people use these online submission sites as places to find blogs within their industry, so it is the prime place for you to establish a solid presence. Check out sites like DMOZ, Best of the Web and Bloggeries and fill out their submission form. Some of them take a little while to activate, but trust me, it is well worth the wait!

2. Send Updates to Your Social Media Networks. Social media marketing is one of the top ways to market your business to potential consumers and customers. Millions of people (daily) are browsing around Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn looking for blogs, like yours, to give them some insight into many of their home improvement needs and issues.

3. Utilize Social Bookmarking to Gain Better Visibility. Social bookmarking sites are a hidden gem of the Internet marketing world. By simply tagging a blog post here and there, you are giving your blog a great opportunity to be passed around by the online community. Try sites like: StumbleUpon, Mixx and Delicious which are some user-friendly, high-ranking authority sites to incorporate into your online marketing strategy.

A blog can take some time, but will have a lasting effect on the lead generation efforts of your business.

Now that you have spent all this time and money creating a beautiful, informative and useful website, there is still one issue: getting traffic to your site. The online community is a very competitive place for small business owners and contractors, but if you play your cards right, you can make your website the home base for many of your potential clients.

Take advantage of all the networking outlets the Internet has to offer by promoting your site, branding yourself as an expert and creating a name for your business throughout the distributed web.

Here are 4 fantastic online strategies for creating a serious buzz about your website…

1.  Blogging. Even though your blog is probably apart of your website, it is a great reason for people to come back who are seeking some fresh, new content. Keep your blog updated as much as possible and after each post, write a short blurb on your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn statuses pointing your followers back to your blog post.

2. Article Marketing. Write, publish and distribute articles about your contractor industry. Think about the mind set of your target market and give them something useful to take with them. Create some anchor text within your articles (take primary keywords and link them to appropriate landing pages on your site) and write out a solid bio for your distribution sites. These links and information will ultimately send these individuals back to your website looking for more information.

3.  Giveaways. At Surefire Social, we are big fans of freebies. People love beneficial information, and they will love it even more because it is free. By giving away content on your site you are giving people a reason to come back to your website wanting more information about your specific industry and your business.

4.  Email Marketing. Place a web form on your website for a weekly newsletter, or for your free ebook give away, and connect it to an email marketing software of your choice (we recommend using Aweber). Get your site visitors into your marketing funnel and keep them updated with emails, content and articles that drive them back to your website.

Treat your website as the home base of your online marketing strategy. Remember that it is important to drive lots of traffic to your site, but to also ensure that these visitors are hanging around and viewing all the information you have to offer. You never have a second chance to make a first impression, so make your visitors time worthwhile.