If you have been in internet marketing for a while, you would have acquired search engine optimization skills that can help you to make more money, you can use these skills to make money by helping local businesses develop an online presence.

This is a very good way to make money from home without selling any product. You simply have to position yourself as an SEO consultant to these local businesses.

The Opportunity

A lot of local businesses are not doing well because of the prevalent economic problems all over the world. They will be glad to pay for your services if you can help them to reduce their marketing costs, get more customers and generate more sales on the internet.

Read Also: SEO Services As A Way To Earn Extra Income

You can easily find businesses that will benefit from this service in your local area. Just look through local newspapers, business directories or even Google Maps. You can either call them to ask for an appointment or send them an email with the details of the services that you offer and the benefits to their business.

The following are some of the ways that you can make money by helping local businesses develop an online presence. Here are some things you can do.

• The Opportunity
• Offer a SEO service
• Create a strong presence on social networking sites
• Come up with a Strategy
• Maintain a Constant Presence
• Set a Goal
• Actively Engage Your Audience in Relevant Ways

Offer a SEO service

Quality site engine optimization can greatly increase the visibility of local businesses on the internet. The direct result of this is that the business will attract more potential customers and consequently make more sales.

Offer a comprehensive SEO package that will ensure that the company’s website is at the top of search engine rankings for the most important keywords for their business. You may also have to check the company’s website to make sure that it is properly optimized for search engines. You could also provide web design services.

Make sure you do a good job for the first few local clients that you get. If they achieve high ranking on Google with a resultant increase in sales, they will be happy to continue to pay for your services and they will also recommend your services to other companies in the area.

If you are not proficient in certain areas of SEO, you can outsource it to another company. When you achieve good results with your first few clients, you will be able to move on to bigger companies that will pay you more money.

Create a strong presence on social networking sites

A strong presence on social networks sites is a very good way to advertise products and services that are targeted at local or regional markets. This form of advertising is cheap and it is very effective.

Let the companies that you approach know the value of promoting their products on social networks. A restaurant can easily sell more meals by having a Facebook page where special promotions are offered. Other platforms include:

• Facebook: the largest platform, has 2 billion-plus active monthly users, and the site is ideal for businesses that want to generate leads and build relationships
• LinkedIn: the platform for business networking can be used by both B2B and B2C businesses to create trust, build authority, and engage audiences
• Twitter: whose platform is immediacy, is perfect for businesses whose major audience is under 50 and who need to stay apprised of time-sensitive information like breaking news, announcements, and trending topics
• Pinterest: the photo sharing site, is a fantastic platform for businesses with visual appeal (think restaurants, fashion, art, travel, and weddings), and it’s great for driving sales because so many users look to the site to plan purchases
• Snapchat: the expiring content platform, is one of the fastest growing social networking sites, and businesses can leverage it by offering promotions, providing personalized content, giving exclusive access, and building relationships with influencers in order to drive brand recognition and loyalty

Come up with a Strategy

Having a goal for improving your social media presence is great, but it’s only the beginning. Once you know what you want to achieve, you have to come up with a plan to help you get there.

Start by designating the person or people who will be part of the social media team, and break up their roles and responsibilities clearly so everybody knows what’s expected and when.

You should also decide on your posting frequency, and create a content calendar that will help you plan posts and make sure you don’t miss days. The content calendar is a big part of your strategy because it should lay out:

• Who your audience is
• What topics and subjects your audience is interested in
• The usable content you already have
• What kind of content you still need to create or curate
• When and on what platforms content will be published

Maintain a Constant Presence

Social media isn’t a one and done deal, and it takes time and patience to cultivate a reliable presence. With the right automation tools, you can minimize the time you’ll have to dedicate to social media, but even still it will require at least 15 minutes a day to monitor your channels and respond to questions and conversations. In terms of posting frequency, the right number really depends on the platform you’re using.

For LinkedIn and Facebook, don’t post more than once a day, and limit posts to five times a week. Twitter, on the other hand, changes so quickly that the more you post, the better. With Pinterest, 11 pins a day seems to be the magic number.

Set a Goal

Being active on social media has a number of benefits for business, and there are many things you can accomplish with your social presence, such as performing customer service, engaging customers, generating leads, expanding your audience, driving sales, increasing web traffic, gaining valuable insights and feedback, and much more.

But in order to achieve these with any measure of success, you must have a goal in mind that you can work toward because you’ll need to create a strategy to get there.

Your techniques for driving sales, for instance, will be different than your approach if you wanted to improve your customer service offering, so it’s important to know what you want to accomplish.

Actively Engage Your Audience in Relevant Ways

Although content is supremely important on social media, it’s not enough to just post your content and walk away. Social media is also about connection and engagement, and that’s the only way you can foster the relationships you want to build and gain the trust of your audience.

Read Also: How Can Social Media Influence Your SEO Marketing?

There are many ways you can engage with your audiences, and they include:

• Commenting on posts
• Starting and participating in conversations
• Sharing relevant information
• Sharing user-generated content
• Posing and answering questions
• Addressing complaints and criticisms
• Showing appreciation for customers

Your social media goals will determine the metrics that matter to you, and it’s important to measure these to ensure you’re on the right track with your strategy.

For instance, if you wanted to increase traffic to your site, then you’d want to pay attention to the amount of referral traffic coming from your social networks.

There are many resources you can rely on for metrics, including Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics and page insights, Sprout Social, LinkedIn company pages report, Keyhole, Twitter analytics and keyword reports, Buffer, and BuzzSumo.