Archives

December 2012

Men Who Influence

portfolioDec 27th, 20120 comments

Women Who Influence

portfolioDec 27th, 20120 comments

Black Leading Men

portfolioDec 27th, 20120 comments

Blog For Your Success

portfolioDec 27th, 20120 comments

Demystifying Search Engine Optimization by Corbin Grimes

thSearch Engine Optimization (SEO)

So, you need to bring in more customers and get your products and services in front of more people but you don’t know where to start. You’ve got some knowledge of marketing, but don’t have much of an understanding of this new “inbound marketing”, internet based methodology. It sounds technical and complicated, and you think you can’t tackle it. You are not alone. Many small business owners are just beginning to understand what internet marketing is, and how to leverage it.

Inbound marketing is different than outbound (traditional) marketing in that inbound focuses on “findability”- that is, the ability to be found easily. Unlike outbound marketing that focuses mostly on a more invasive methodology of putting your product or service in the face of a prospective buyer (like telemarketing or direct mail), inbound marketing simply makes your business easily locatable and contactable via marketing channels like websites.

Contrary to popular believe, small businesses can engage in this new form of marketing easily and almost immediately. This article demystifies one of the most impact-full and highly popular elements of internet marketing – search engine optimization (SEO).

In this post, we’ll break down organic SEO (not paid) into manageable, actionable phases that can have an immediate impact on your business, and help explain some of the various things you need to be keeping in mind when considering SEO for your small business.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics

SEO is the practice of optimizing your website so that it ranks highly, and is compliant with search engine requirements. The end-game – get more visitors to your website by being on page one of Google and Bing.

SEO is a process and like all marketing, it takes money to make money. SEO is not an overnight, easy button for small business success. However, when planned and then executed properly, a good SEO campaign can yield some of the highest ROI (return on investment) of any marketing method. What’s more – SEO can pay great long term dividends to your business if you keep up with it and maintain the higher ranks in search engines that you’ve worked so hard to get.

Search Engine Optimization Planning

A good SEO company will slow you down, and collect all the required information they need up front to do a good job. A good SEO partner will tell you like it is, so be prepared to hear that you might need to make some changes tot hat website your daughter build for you as a college project. ;)

This planning phase is key, and almost always determines the success ratio of your campaign. It pays to take the extra time to do proper competitor research, keyword analysis, and strategic planning before you engage in an SEO campaign. If you choose to skip this step, all the money’s you allocate to your SEO endeavor can be wasted.

It all begins with gaining an understanding of your target markets and the strategic objectives you wish to aim for over a period of reasonable time. Here are just a few things that take place during this phase.

  • Competitor research
  • Keyword analysis and profitability research
  • Budgeting
  • Content creation and management planning

Search Engine Optimization – The On-Site Phase

Post the planning process, on-page optimization takes place where your sites website code is dialed in to near perfection. A series of numerous tasks occur, some of which are very technical in nature and others of which you can easily assist with on your own. This all depends on your level of competency in the given task. In any case, being involved in your SEO campaign is good best practice.

In this phase you optimize your sites code, content, art, etc. so that those individuals in that market find you when they seek for businesses like you online.

Here are a few activities and tips/tricks with on page optimization. HINT: If you don’t know what these things are, consider hiring a professional!

  • Improve Use of H1, H2 Tags
  • Use proper title tags on your pages
  • Create XML and HTML sitemap files, robots.txt files, etc.
  • Add a “quick contact” hovering sidebar, making it easier to connect with you.
  • Add Internal navigation links that link to and from other pages in your site.
  • Use anchor text in your links
  • Utilize Breadcrumbs which make it easy for visitors to move to track where they are in your site navigation
  • Optimize images to have relevant and keyword rich names, alt tags and short descriptions.
  • If your business is a service, add a page about best practice techniques and include a video on the process hosted at YouTube
  • Etc.

Search Engine Optimization – The Off-Site Phase

After on-page work is completed, a more lengthy off-page phase begins where your site and content talking about your services and products is distributed strategically across the internet, ultimately yielding in sources that point to you and your website. These tasks often include:

• Social bookmarking
• Link building
• Directory submissions, etc.
• Article marketing
• etc.

If you are a service provide who caters to local clientele, you’ll be placing heavy emphasis on local SEO. Local SEO entails, more specifically, focusing on ensuring prospects whom are seeking you in and around the city they are in and finding you over your competition. Getting properly setup with local directory sites like Google places (now called Google Plus Local) is key to ensuring you are located first over others.

Here are just a few must have Local SEO listing (please notate if a paid subscription is required)

  • Yelp.com
  • YellowPages.com
  • SuperPages.com
  • Facebook Local
  • Yahoo Local
  • CitySearch.com
  • Manta.com
  • YellowBook.com
  • DexKnows.com
  • MerchantCircle.com

While this phase doesn’t seem like rocket science, it pays to invest the money and have a specialized firm handle the work and handle it correctly.
If you choose to do this yourself, here are just a few local SEO tips you’ll want to keep in mind:

  • Add a newsletter signup functionality for specials and sales.
  • Add City and State names in your Title tags, Meta descriptions, and the content on your site (as it fits, don’t just force it in there.)
  • Make use of Schema local markup to better help search engines identify and show your location
  • Include a KML file on your site (Keyhole Markup Language)
  • Create a dedicated city specific landing page on the store, wheelhouse, etc.
  • Add reviews – get the folks who gave you a testimonial to add legitimate reviews. Focus on Google places listing.
  • Standardize your NAP (Name, Address, Phone.) No abbreviations. This will be used in citations. A citation is defined as any place online where a site mentions your company by name and address, but not necessarily linked to it.
  • Put NAP on every page of site
  • Increase Number of citations.
  • Consider using a paid service like Yext to make sure that the information you’ve set up at your Google Places profile is distributed across all of the other major local platforms, in the same standardized format. Each of these entries will become a valid citation, which is extremely valuable in local SEO.
  • Use paid tools like the WhiteSpark local citation finder to locate ideal citation sources for your specific city.
  • Guest blog posts are a great way to add citations (manually approved by web master)
  • Focus on getting new citations, social mentions, and reviews consistently

Search Engine Optimization – The Importance of Analysis

Now that you’ve got all your on and off page work done, you’ll want to be keeping a close eye on your results and making the required adjustments where needed. There are a ton of monitoring tools out there to assist you in this vital phase.

Keep in mind that SEO changes, as it’s an incredibly dynamic field. You’ll want to stay on top of new trends, search engine algorithm changes (like Penguin and Panda), new techniques, and changes in poor practice penalty.

Using tools like Google Analytics is just the start. Arm yourself with the proper arsenal of research tools (free and paid for) to see how you can one-up your competition and squeeze in that extra rank improvement in the SERP (search engine results page)

Search Engine Optimization – Setting Expectations

SEO can benefit your business in as little as one month, to as long as one year. It all depends on budget, your market, your product, your competition and the SEO company you choose to work with. If you choose to outsource your SEO(often a smarter choice) choose a company that practices white hat, ethical search engine optimization practice and will take the time to teach you about the service as you go – making you a better, smarter marketer. After all, your involvement (or lack of involvement) can play a vital role in the success in an SEO campaign.

At the end of the day, SEO can be on of the most effective marketing tools available to a small business owner. Although it’s just one of many (and you should choose wisely where you spend your marketing dollars), it can be the most rewarding.

 

business blogDec 27th, 20120 comments

The Benefits of Business Blogging by Douglas Fanning


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Businesses are now conducted both online and offline; however, more and more businesses have online sites so that they can reach the far corners of the world. Many internet businesses have become successful and profitable and one key is through blogging.

Business blogging is becoming a necessity nowadays especially for online businesses. If you can combine blogging with other keys to business success, your online business can keep up with the extreme competition online.

If you want your business enterprise to become successful in the future, you have to learn how to blog. You don’t need to hire the services of other bloggers because you can blog yourself. By being your business’ personal blogger, you can save money.

Instead of paying bloggers to blog about your business, you can do it yourself and use the saved money to finance other expenses of the business. Many business owners are into blogging because they can derive many benefits from business blogging. If others can do it, then why can’t you? Here are some of the benefits that your business can derive from blogging.

There are many kinds of businesses. If you want to establish your business’ name, you can use blogging. Aside from that, you can familiarize your prospective customers about your particular business enterprise. If your customers can connect with your business effectively, they will be more interested to do business with you.

The business industry is large and your emerging business is like a tiny dot. Through the use of effective business blogging, you can turn that tiny dot into a huge and marked one.

If you want your business to make some noise online, you must learn how to blog. Many people are now reading blogs everyday and so you can expect that your business’ website will have more traffic. Blog readers often pass links to their friends, relatives, and loved ones. If you post interesting blogs, your link can be passed on to others. You can gain more customers by having your link passed from one individual to another. Whenever you post business blogs, you have to catch the attention and interest of your readers and subscribers.

If you’re able to post effective blogs online, you can also improve your website’s ranking in search engines. If you’re among the best searches online, your business will have higher chances of success. Many individuals conduct researches online and if your business is among the top searches, more traffic will come to your site.

With more readers visiting and reading your business blogs, you can expect more customers to call you up and place orders or seek their needed services. So you see, your business will surely earn huge profits if you post blogs regularly.

If you’re planning to put up an online business, you should first learn how to blog. Blogging is not that difficult. You can find your needed blogging resources online by conducting a bit of research. Once you’ve gathered all your needed information, you can start posting blogs.

Your website should also be easy to use. Customers and readers must be able to maneuver effortlessly within your website. This way, more customers will visit your site repeatedly and they can even recommend your business’ website to other people they know.

For a successful and profitable online business, try business blogging. The benefits are endless, so why not try blogging? I wish all the best in your blogging hope the article is some help.

 

 

business blogDec 27th, 20120 comments

How To Be A Proactive Networking Superstar

 

By: Adrian Miller

We’re all out there networking our little hearts out.
Morning, noon, night, meals, speakers, presentations, cocktail parties.

Our dance cards are full.

We’re all in this together in the hopes of making contacts and connections that lead to “real” business (aka the revenue producing kind!)

And so we hope, but hoping rarely does it.

Many of us fall victim to the situation known as “you’ve had lunch, now what.”  We spend time and money making the contacts but the follow-through and follow-up OVER TIME is sadly absent.

We all know that staying on the networking grid is one of the keys to success. We also know that being “proactive” in your introductions and connections makes you visible, credible and respected as a networker.

We agree that this is true but how often does it really happen.

So let’s discuss being proactive, the total opposite of waiting for some to say something like “Adrian, I need a ________, do you happen to know someone that can help me.”

Sure that situation can and does occur but it simply doesn’t happen frequently enough especially in this up and down economy.

So what does being a proactive networker really mean?

  • It means that you take the initiative to make an introduction even when the other person has not specifically asked for one.You make the introduction because:
  1. Both individuals network with a similar category of referral sources and you introduce them thinking that they can mutually expand their network of referral sources by knowing each other. (Of course, they are not competitors.)
  2. You introduce two people because they do the same thing but work with different markets or have a different approach and can possibly collaborate with each other.
  3. You introduce two people because you know that they are both terrific connectors and within 15 minutes will have opened their smartphones and have started the introduction dance for each other.
  4. You introduce two people because they share a hobby or interest and this bond will help them to develop a relationship that will potentially lead to business connections.
  5. You introduce two people because you know that their businesses are very synergistic (think PR, marketing and sales) and down the line they should be able to share a client.
  6. You introduce two people because you just have a hunch they their professional lives will improved by knowing each other.

Yes being proactive may mean getting just a wee bit out of your comfort zone. It also takes time and requires some thinking but the personal satisfaction from making these connections more than makes up for the effort.

Make a networking game plan. Each day, week or month review your contacts and connect 3, 5, 10, 20 individuals. Use email for cyber intros, schedule time for 4 or 6 of your contacts to meet for a meal or get old-fashioned and make a few calls.

It really doesn’t take all that much time if it becomes a habit and if it doesn’t become a habit, well it just might not get done at all.

Anything less is well, less. So ask yourself, are you a networking superstar?

 To Learn More about this Author go to  http://www.adriansnetwork.com

business blogDec 17th, 20120 comments

Demystifying Search Engine Optimization by Corbin Grimes

Corbin_Portrait_180x241Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

So, you need to bring in more customers and get your products and services in front of more people but you don’t know where to start. You’ve got some knowledge of marketing, but don’t have much of an understanding of this new “inbound marketing”, internet based methodology. It sounds technical and complicated, and you think you can’t tackle it. You are not alone. Many small business owners are just beginning to understand what internet marketing is, and how to leverage it.

Inbound marketing is different than outbound (traditional) marketing in that inbound focuses on “findability”- that is, the ability to be found easily. Unlike outbound marketing that focuses mostly on a more invasive methodology of putting your product or service in the face of a prospective buyer (like telemarketing or direct mail), inbound marketing simply makes your business easily locatable and contactable via marketing channels like websites.

Contrary to popular believe, small businesses can engage in this new form of marketing easily and almost immediately. This article demystifies one of the most impact-full and highly popular elements of internet marketing – search engine optimization (SEO).

In this post, we’ll break down organic SEO (not paid) into manageable, actionable phases that can have an immediate impact on your business, and help explain some of the various things you need to be keeping in mind when considering SEO for your small business.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics

SEO is the practice of optimizing your website so that it ranks highly, and is compliant with search engine requirements. The end-game – get more visitors to your website by being on page one of Google and Bing.

SEO is a process and like all marketing, it takes money to make money. SEO is not an overnight, easy button for small business success. However, when planned and then executed properly, a good SEO campaign can yield some of the highest ROI (return on investment) of any marketing method. What’s more – SEO can pay great long term dividends to your business if you keep up with it and maintain the higher ranks in search engines that you’ve worked so hard to get.

Search Engine Optimization Planning

A good SEO company will slow you down, and collect all the required information they need up front to do a good job. A good SEO partner will tell you like it is, so be prepared to hear that you might need to make some changes tot hat website your daughter build for you as a college project. ;)

This planning phase is key, and almost always determines the success ratio of your campaign. It pays to take the extra time to do proper competitor research, keyword analysis, and strategic planning before you engage in an SEO campaign. If you choose to skip this step, all the money’s you allocate to your SEO endeavor can be wasted.

It all begins with gaining an understanding of your target markets and the strategic objectives you wish to aim for over a period of reasonable time. Here are just a few things that take place during this phase.

  • Competitor research
  • Keyword analysis and profitability research
  • Budgeting
  • Content creation and management planning

Search Engine Optimization – The On-Site Phase

Post the planning process, on-page optimization takes place where your sites website code is dialed in to near perfection. A series of numerous tasks occur, some of which are very technical in nature and others of which you can easily assist with on your own. This all depends on your level of competency in the given task. In any case, being involved in your SEO campaign is good best practice.

In this phase you optimize your sites code, content, art, etc. so that those individuals in that market find you when they seek for businesses like you online.

Here are a few activities and tips/tricks with on page optimization. HINT: If you don’t know what these things are, consider hiring a professional!

  • Improve Use of H1, H2 Tags
  • Use proper title tags on your pages
  • Create XML and HTML sitemap files, robots.txt files, etc.
  • Add a “quick contact” hovering sidebar, making it easier to connect with you.
  • Add Internal navigation links that link to and from other pages in your site.
  • Use anchor text in your links
  • Utilize Breadcrumbs which make it easy for visitors to move to track where they are in your site navigation
  • Optimize images to have relevant and keyword rich names, alt tags and short descriptions.
  • If your business is a service, add a page about best practice techniques and include a video on the process hosted at YouTube
  • Etc.

Search Engine Optimization – The Off-Site Phase

After on-page work is completed, a more lengthy off-page phase begins where your site and content talking about your services and products is distributed strategically across the internet, ultimately yielding in sources that point to you and your website. These tasks often include:

• Social bookmarking
• Link building
• Directory submissions, etc.
• Article marketing
• etc.

If you are a service provide who caters to local clientele, you’ll be placing heavy emphasis on local SEO. Local SEO entails, more specifically, focusing on ensuring prospects whom are seeking you in and around the city they are in and finding you over your competition. Getting properly setup with local directory sites like Google places (now called Google Plus Local) is key to ensuring you are located first over others.

Here are just a few must have Local SEO listing (please notate if a paid subscription is required)

  • Yelp.com
  • YellowPages.com
  • SuperPages.com
  • Facebook Local
  • Yahoo Local
  • CitySearch.com
  • Manta.com
  • YellowBook.com
  • DexKnows.com
  • MerchantCircle.com

While this phase doesn’t seem like rocket science, it pays to invest the money and have a specialized firm handle the work and handle it correctly.
If you choose to do this yourself, here are just a few local SEO tips you’ll want to keep in mind:

  • Add a newsletter signup functionality for specials and sales.
  • Add City and State names in your Title tags, Meta descriptions, and the content on your site (as it fits, don’t just force it in there.)
  • Make use of Schema local markup to better help search engines identify and show your location
  • Include a KML file on your site (Keyhole Markup Language)
  • Create a dedicated city specific landing page on the store, wheelhouse, etc.
  • Add reviews – get the folks who gave you a testimonial to add legitimate reviews. Focus on Google places listing.
  • Standardize your NAP (Name, Address, Phone.) No abbreviations. This will be used in citations. A citation is defined as any place online where a site mentions your company by name and address, but not necessarily linked to it.
  • Put NAP on every page of site
  • Increase Number of citations.
  • Consider using a paid service like Yext to make sure that the information you’ve set up at your Google Places profile is distributed across all of the other major local platforms, in the same standardized format. Each of these entries will become a valid citation, which is extremely valuable in local SEO.
  • Use paid tools like the WhiteSpark local citation finder to locate ideal citation sources for your specific city.
  • Guest blog posts are a great way to add citations (manually approved by web master)
  • Focus on getting new citations, social mentions, and reviews consistently

Search Engine Optimization – The Importance of Analysis

Now that you’ve got all your on and off page work done, you’ll want to be keeping a close eye on your results and making the required adjustments where needed. There are a ton of monitoring tools out there to assist you in this vital phase.

Keep in mind that SEO changes, as it’s an incredibly dynamic field. You’ll want to stay on top of new trends, search engine algorithm changes (like Penguin and Panda), new techniques, and changes in poor practice penalty.

Using tools like Google Analytics is just the start. Arm yourself with the proper arsenal of research tools (free and paid for) to see how you can one-up your competition and squeeze in that extra rank improvement in the SERP (search engine results page)

Search Engine Optimization – Setting Expectations

SEO can benefit your business in as little as one month, to as long as one year. It all depends on budget, your market, your product, your competition and the SEO company you choose to work with. If you choose to outsource your SEO(often a smarter choice) choose a company that practices white hat, ethical search engine optimization practice and will take the time to teach you about the service as you go – making you a better, smarter marketer. After all, your involvement (or lack of involvement) can play a vital role in the success in an SEO campaign.

At the end of the day, SEO can be on of the most effective marketing tools available to a small business owner. Although it’s just one of many (and you should choose wisely where you spend your marketing dollars), it can be the most rewarding.

 

Business BuzzDec 15th, 20120 comments

10 Steps to Growing Your Business by Blogging

by Diana McCray


940x400_slider2Blogging for business growth and development is imperative in today’s market.  As a business owner providing valuable content on a consistent basis is essential.  The businesses that are conversing with potential clients online and off are attracting new clients while maintaining their current client base.  Blogs are dynamic, encourage conversation, create communities,  build relationships,  search engine friendly, can look like a website, cost effective, generate more traffic and will build your credibility as expert in your business.

  1. Platform: As a business owner you want to use a platform that allows you to have static pages and allows you post valuable content on a regular basis.  WordPress is the best blogging platform for your business.  Its the most used blogging platform on the internet. For more information go to their website. www.wordpress.org.
  2.  Plan: Just like you would tackle any other business project – you need a strategic plan for your business blog.  What is your vision and mission with this blog? This plan will keep you focused on your goals and objectives. Your plan should include your target audience, purpose, content, marketing and  any resources you need to maintain your business blog.
  3.  Purpose:  As Steven Covey suggests – you should begin with the end in mind.  What  outcomes are you looking for?  Do you want to attract new clients, build relationships, create a community, provide information or teach.  Think about what action you want people to do when they come to your blog- ie. listen to a podcast, watch a video, join your email list , comment or purchase a product or service?
  4.  Personality : There are millions of blogs on the net so creating a business blog around your personality is essential for attracting and maintaining a subscriber base. What makes you different from every other business expert  in the market place.  Personality is your image, packaging ,energy , how you write, your perspective and your communication style.  Personality is  basically what you bring to the table.  Be yourself.  Let your personality shine through on your blog.
  5.  People: Who are you targeting and what problems are you solving for your target audience.  People are looking for solutions. Do your research and find out what keeps your clients up at night.  Google offers a lot tools you can use for research.
  6.  Professionalism:  You have a few seconds to capture a person;s interest when they visit your blog.  Make sure your blog looks professional and your content is accurate and polished.  Your blog is your online business portfolio. Make sure its sharp, simple and savvy.
  7.  Partnership: Competition is out and Collaboration is in.  Team up with another person and share your copy and resources.  Invite them to be a guest blogger on your blog and ask if you can be a guest blogger on their blog.  Business people are looking for ways to promote their businesses.  You can create a team of experts and ask them to be  regular contributors on your blog.  This is a win win for everyone.
  8.  Publish : Take an integrative approach to publishing content.  People want video, audio and writing.  The best blogs include all three.  You can also stream live video and audio from your blog. Create a schedule and publish content on a consistent basis. The search engines love activity and so do your followers.
  9.  Promotion:  Promoting your blog is promoting your business.  Here are ways to promote your blog : Use feedburner to get subscribers, put your blog in your email signature, list your blog with rss sites, send out  press releases and use as many social media sites as possible and find tools to create back links to your site. You can make money  selling ad space with your blog once you have substantial subscriber list.
  10.  Process:  Set up a system for managing your blog.  The key to success with blogging is consistency.  Whose going to be writing for the blog, who will be doing the promotion, who will be taking care of the behind the scenes work?  How much time can you allocate a week to work on your blog. Do you need to hire staff? Make  sure you have an ironclad process in place.

business blogDec 7th, 20120 comments

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