Everyone agrees on a broad level that small businesses are vital to the American economy. However, most people would be surprised to know just how important. The United States Small Business Administration keeps records and statistics on small business in the United States and some of their findings are surprising.
First, the typical perception of a small business as a mom and pop operation with just a few, if any, employees is not the entire picture. The Small Business Administration defines a small business as an independently business with less than 500 employees. There are an estimated 23 million businesses in the United States that meet that classification. In some smaller towns in the United States, these businesses represent a major source of employment.
In fact, small businesses as defined by the Small Business Administration represent 99.7 percent of all the employers in the country and employ half of all private sector employees. More than 45% of the private sector payroll is generated by small business. Over the last decade small businesses have accounted for 60 to 80% of all new jobs created on an annual basis.
Although a large percentage of small businesses are in the retail and service sectors, small businesses are rapidly making gains in the technology sector. 41% of high tech workers like engineers, scientists and computer programmers are employed by small businesses. Employees at small businesses produce 13 to 14 times more patents than those employed by larger companies.
The Small Business Administration also offers some interesting observations on small business survival. Two-thirds of small businesses survive for at least two years declining to 44% after four years. Most of the factors that support a small business surviving are well known, such as access to capital and owner's education level. However, a lesser known factor in small business survival is that the business is large enough to have employees.
Similarly, barriers to starting a small business include lack of access to start-up capital and lack of education. However, the number one barrier to small business start up and a primary concern of existing small business owners is access to private health insurance. Individual health insurance for sole proprietors is much more expensive than receiving coverage through an employer. If a small business owner is able to offer health insurance to its employees, the administrative and premium costs are often much higher than those for larger businesses.
Articles About Small Business
Article marketing is an excellent marketing strategy that works like crazy and is virtually cost free. The current massive growth of article marketing to drive traffic to websites, establish credibility and to create backlinks for search engine optimization purposes further illustrates the effectiveness of this tactic. This is one of the best ways to drive web traffic to any new or existing site.
Most importantly, article marketing can build a large stream of viral traffic to your sites as more and more publishers publish your articles on their sites. This proliferation across the web gets your name and site in front of possibly thousands of interested prospects in many different arenas.
What makes this so powerful is that it drives targeted traffic to your website. Prospects that are drawn to your site through a link in your article have pre qualified themselves. By simply following your link they are coming to your site already curious as to what you have to offer and believing that you are knowledgable in your field.
Each article you publish is excellent advertising for your website because at the end of your article you are allowed to place an ?about the author? section, or byline. By placing a small snippet about yourself as an expert in your field this advertises you and your website and builds free traffic to your site and credibility for you if your articles are of good quality.
A good use of the byline area would be to place a link to a web page that gives away a free report on the subject matter of the article in exchange for the prospects name and email address. This is a great way to build targeted mailing lists.
Another advantage of writing your own articles and publishing them is that it can be done for free. This is a tremendous alternative to paying for Pay Per Click Advertising.
Also, by writing and submitting more and more articles you will be more well known and the more targeted website traffic you will get.
If you write articles that stay on the topic of your site, the page where your article appears is more effective as a page that links back because it is more relevant. This increases the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your site too.
Here's a quick example of the traffic you might expect from only writing a few articles a month. If your write three articles and distribute them to 120 distribution websites and they are picked up by 4 webmasters from each distribution site and even if each website only supplies 6 hits to your site per month your article marketing could convert over 8,400 hits per month.
Are you currently drawing that many visitors to your sites? And if so, everyone can use more traffic.
Try to write at least one article a week because the more you write the better you will become. With only four articles a month you will build a steadily increasing rush to your site of choice.
Optimize the Text Naturally. You want your article to pop to the top of a list when someone searches for it. Always remember that you are writing for human eyes, not simply to build back links to your site.
Turn your article marketing efforts into an opportunity to increase your income, not just the number of visitors to your site by doing an honest review of a recently released product that you may have purchased yourself along with an affiliate link.
Now you know how article marketing can help promote your business, it's up to you. By including article marketing into your multi-faceted marketing and sales plan, you too can achieve success in marketing your site. The bottom line of small business web site article marketing is to increase your sales and build your customer base.
Both Jonathon Hardcastle & Michael Harris are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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