A St. Petersburg storage facility could increase their revenue by employing several Internet marketing methods. 

One of these marketing methods that are free and automatic to users of the Internet is search engine optimization or SEO.  Search engine optimization is placing keyword rich articles on a businesses website in order to attract the three major search engines – MSN, Yahoo!, and Google.  These major search engines send out “feelers” in order to locate the keywords and keyword phrases within the articles on the websites and then rank the websites according to a special formula.  Keyword phrases and keywords are the words potential customers use in the search boxes on the search engines in order to find what they need or want.  Therefore, having a high ranking on the search engine is beneficial to any business because the majority of people who use the search engines to look up even a local business do so with the intent of looking at the first few Internet websites brought back by the search engine. 

Many consumers believe that the first few websites on the search engines are the most popular, the most in demand and the best.  However, this is not always the case. It is simply a matter of having the correct amount of keywords or keyword phrases according to the special formula set forth by the three major search engines.

A St. Pete storage facility could use that same keyword rich article in an article exchange with another relevant business and website.  An article exchange works in the same way a link exchange does; however the exchange is on a larger scale because an article is usually 300 to 500 words long.  An article exchange could be with a relevant company such as a company that provides moving boxes or moving vans or anything someone might need before, during or after self storage.  A non-relevant article exchange would include a storage facility and perhaps one of their longtime customers such as a manufacturer of solar signs.  A solar sign company may use the self storage facility to store their many unpurchased signs until they are needed or overflow from their warehouse of various signs and machinery.

Since search engine optimization is always working, it does matter where a keyword rich article and a website combination is found.  The same keyword rich article placed on a storage facilities website and used in the article exchange could also be used as a blog entry to make contact with a whole new group of individuals who might be interested in storage facilities and might not otherwise know exactly how they work or anything about them until they have read an article about storage facilities.

Using an article instead of a plain link to a website will give potential customers more information, which will help them make up their mind regarding what they want.