Google Local Business Center
Posted on 27. Jan, 2010 by admin in
Why add your listing with the Local Business Center?
It’s simple: the Local Business Center gives you the most control over the way your business listing appears in Google Maps. Since more people search for businesses online than anywhere else, it’s important to make sure your business listing can be easily found on Google.com and Google Maps. When you submit and verify information through the Local Business Center, you provide the most authoritative information for your business listing.
Get started at Google Local Business Center
The 12 Step, do-it-yourself, SEO solution.
Posted on 18. May, 2009 by admin in
Over the past 8 years, in my experience with servicing our clients and my work growing our own web projects, search engine optimization (SEO) has been a buzz word that continuously hums in the background. I have learned that there is no quick fix for SEO, and firms can charge exorbitant fees for a one time SEO fix that rarely is worth the expense over time. If you read a variety of small businesses blogs, you’ll quickly see all the uncertainty over what makes up a successful SEO plan, not to mention the misinformation about SEO strategies and tactics that is floating around.
So what do we do about SEO?
Commit yourself to the process. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment. I would like to share the 10 steps I take, on a daily basis, to improve our site’s traffic over time. This strategy can be implemented in 10 minutes a day.
1. Install web analytics. You obviously need to track your progress, install the Google Analyics code on every page of your site, and monitor it daily.
2. Include a site map page. Be nice to the spiders, some tend to get lost without a map. Your pages will not be indexed if the spiders cannot crawl them. A site map will help spiders find all the important pages on your site. If your site is large, make several site map pages. Keep each one to less than 100 links. UseGoogle Webmaster Tools to understand how the spiders see your sitemap, and monitor it’s health daily.
3. Use friendly URLs. SEO-friendly URLs are important. Use keywords in your URLs and file names, such ashttp://www.automobiles.com/2009/03/automobilescom-to-offer-free-classifieds/ Also, use hyphens in URLs and file names, not underscores. Hyphens are treated as a “space,” while underscores are not.
4. Keywords. Keywords. Keywords. Chose a few words that describes your page and type them intoKeyword Discovery or WordTracker. Look at the relative volume of one keyword to another, and keep them in mind when choosing text for your page. Another good free tool is Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool.
5. Use unique and relevant title and meta descriptions. The page title is one of the most important on-page SEO factors to consider. It’s rare to rank highly for a primary term (2-3 words) without that term being part of the page title. The meta description tag will often appear as the text below your listing in an index, so it should include the relevant keyword(s) as well, but be worded to entice searchers to click on your listing. Keywords meta tag is close to meaningless. If you use it, put misspellings in there, and any related keywords that don’t appear on the page.
6. Use your keywords as anchor text when linking internally. Anchor text helps tells spiders what the linked-to page is about, instead of just using the phrase “click here”, which does nothing for your search engine visibility.
7. Build links intelligently. Submit your site to quality, trusted directories such as Yahoo, DMOZ,Business.com, Aviva, and Best of the web. Seek links from authority sites in your industry.
8. You domain needs a blog! Google seams to love blogs for the fresh content and highly-structured data. Reading and commenting on other blogs can also increase your exposure and help you acquire new links. Publish your blog on your domain, such as www.cs3solutions.com/blog so your main domain gets the benefit of any links to your blog posts.
9. Use social networks effectively. If you’re a service-oriented business, use something like Yahoo Answers to position yourself as an expert in your industry by answering questions that relate to your service. Be an active, contributing member of the site, you can interact with potential customers. (More on using social networks effectively later.)
10. Use the free tools. Sign up for Google’s webmaster Central and Yahoo’s Site Explorer to learn more about how the search engines see your site, including how many inbound links they’re aware of.
11. Don’t put all your traffic sources in one basket. Google may bring you 70% of your traffic today, but what if the next big algorithm update hits you hard? Newsletters and other subscriber-based content can help you hold on to traffic/customers no matter what the search engines do. Creating great content, starting a blog, using social media, etc.—will help you grow a loyal audience that may help you survive the whims of search engines.
12. Content is King. This is important for everyone. “Build it and they will come” does have some truth to it. The IT being great content or a great application. Google’s goal is to connect you with the sites with relevant, quality, trusted content. For example, if you are a retailer, writing your own product descriptions using the keyword research you did earlier to target actual words searchers use may make your pages stand out against the other sites using the standard manufacturer’s product descriptions. Great content is a great way to get inbound links.
One final thought…BE PATIENT. There is no instant gratification in the world of SEO. Think months, not days. As your site grows however, you will enjoy quicker results for your implementations.
You will get the best results over time if you are consistent. Spend 10 minutes every day tweaking your site. Good luck!
Is your client billing solution painless?
Posted on 18. Sep, 2008 by admin in
We have adopted FreshBooks as our new billing system and would highly recommend it to any business in need of an simple, intuitive billing solution that generates invoices (reoccurring invoices too!) and sends them via email or snail mail. No more printing, stamping, and licking. The system can integrate with your PayPal or your current payment gateway.
