POST CATEGORY : Marketing

What The Panda Google Algorithm Change Means To Small Business Owners

In February 2011, Google made big news on the Internet by publishing an algorithm change for search engine relevancy.  By and large this was designed to punish duplicate content farms that re-purpose the same written content over and over in different forms.

I’ve seen plenty of panicked content online about what this means to e-marketers and website developers, but little in the way of how small business owners can capitalize on the Google algorithm change.

Winners and Losers

There were plenty of losers that aggregate informational content that are now scrambling to learn what has happened and re-strategize ways to defeat the Google changes.  …

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5 Biggest Website Mistakes for Small Businesses And How to Fix Them

5 biggest website mistakes and how to fix themYour website is the front door to your business. It’s imperative potential clients and customers  know where to find you, and once there, have a clear idea what your company does and how it can benefit them.

Implement these simple, inexpensive tips to ensure your website is achieving those goals.

1. Not claiming your Google Place Page

Look up your business in Google Maps and click on your business listing (or “Place Page”). Your business name will be on the left and a map on the right.  In between, at the top of the page, is a link that reads either “Business Owner?”…

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Keeping Your Customers Coming Back For More

Attracting customers is relatively easy, you just need to have a very convincing marketing strategy. The hard part is getting them to come back. If you are running a website (as most of us are), the challenge is to get a steady, if not increasing, number to visit your site everyday.

keeping customers coming back

It is not as easy as it seems, mostly because some people think that there’s no compelling reason to visit your site again. When you check your site statistics, you have a fairly good idea of what attracts your customers but what if you stray a bit from that? Does it mean that you won’t get enough attention?…

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Perfect Your Small Business Skills With Open Courseware

Perfect Your Small Business Skills With Open Courseware

While yes it is true that one doesn’t need a Masters of Business Administration degree in order to run and manage a successful small business, the leadership and business skills one learns pursuing an MBA can in fact help one launch their business to even further heights. Unfortunately not everyone has the time or the money to return to school in order to learn a new set of managerial and business skills. But thanks to open courseware, it might just be possible.

Open courseware is a term used to refer to free online classes offered by various prestigious institutions such as Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.…

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5 Ways To Be A Social Media Authority

Social media is an all – important avenue for all business types since business owners realize its worth. When it was a new trend, not many people thought that it was going to live up to its hype in the world of business but just look at how it evolved from connecting old friends to connecting business contacts.

5 Ways To Be A Social Media Authority

One could not count on their fingers how many gurus, specialists and trend setters there are in the world of social media. So what makes them believable? Why is it that more people take their word rather than anyone else’s? It’s because they have established themselves as the authority in their own niche.…

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Running A Business Is A Popularity Contest

Have you ever joined a pageant? If not, have you ever watched one? I’m sure you have. Apart from a contestant’s beauty and brains, people look for personality. A kind of joie de vivre which would entice the audience to vote for them and the judges to like them.

running a business is a popularity contest

Running a small business is a lot like joining a pageant, it is first and foremost a popularity contest if you will. The more people know about you, like what you do and what you offer, the higher likelihood that they would actually do business with you. That’s one of the reasons why social media is a great place to market your brand.…

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5 Tools For Testing Your Website For Mobile Compatibility

mobile website testing toolsOn my previous post, I had discussed about some tips on building a mobile business website. Inspired by a comment from Martin Lindeskog, I have decided to share with you, my dear readers, some tips on how to test whether your mobile viewers are getting optimum viewing capacity on their mobile browsers.

That said, I have scoured the net for a cornucopia of sites which can be useful to test mobile compatibility of your site.

Here are some mobile browser compatibility-testing sites:

1.   mobiReady – This site is fairly easy to navigate and the best part is, it’s free.…

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Tips For Building A Mobile Business Website

tips for building mobile business websites

These days, it seems unlikely that there is still a small business owner who doesn’t use smartphones. Since the internet is more accessible now than everybody thought possible, mobility has taken on a whole new different meaning.

Our smartphones have become a bigger part of our lives than we’ve all imagined and it just makes sense then that websites are being rebuilt to be more mobile compatible. But really, how can a small business owner make their site mobile?

Inc.com published an article not too long ago on how to design and build a mobile website. Here are my take-aways:

  • Look for an online service that would enable your site to be available on a mobile version.
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Should Small Businesses Outsource SEO Or Take Care Of It In House?

The questions that plague small businesses seem to never change – only the subjects small business is asking these questions about. Unlike a corporation or large company, resources within a small business are often scarce.   As it is, you likely are doing the jobs 10 or more people would be in charge of in a larger company. SEO may sound like another truffle on your plate that you simply don’t have the stomach for.

“We have a great product, people will find us.”

This is a reaction you want to avoid. The most important aspect of SEO, or search engine optimization, any small business (or large for that matter) must realize is that it is not another “option” in how you market your business, it is a necessity born of a real and fast change in the way consumers search for various goods and services.…

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Tips for Better Email Deliverability

The cardinal rule of email deliverability is to never borrow, buy or rent an email list. Doing so could cause you to end up on a blacklist, permanently crippling your deliverability.

Tips for Better Email Deliverability

To boost the size of your email list, review every interaction point a customer has with your company, and consider implementing a program for each one. Possible options include:

  • Point-of-sale at a bricks-and-mortar retail location
  • Online
  • Phone or call center

For small businesses in particular, the fastest way to grow an email list is to offer a strong incentive to join. Consumers typically have a few concerns when deciding whether or not to join your list:

  • What’s in it for me?
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