Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 25, 2012

After you develop your website and you’re ready to set it to live and go into business, how do you promote it? I’ve identified up to 12 ways you can promote your new website and drive traffic to your landing pages to get new business. Search engine optimization – The search engines will always be a good source of traffic for your website.

Press Release 168

Press Release Directory Flickr Engineering 168

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 21, 2012

Here’s an interesting blog post on title tags at SEOmoz. I’ll have to agree with Ruth Burr’s conclusion here. Google seems to be doing some wonky things with title tags now. It used to be 70 characters for your title tags was a hard and fast rule that most SEOs lived and worked by. I’d say that’s probably not the case any more.

Guidelines 164

Guidelines SEO Team Questions 164

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 17, 2012

Google+ made history last year when it became the fastest growing social media website to date – in one month. But it has a special significance beyond being a mere social networking website. It’s also a product of Google, which means it has some SEO benefit. Many Google+ users report that their Google profiles have risen to the top of the SERPs just by using Google+.

SEO 164

SEO Google Tools Reputation 164

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 6, 2012

Before you can succeed you need a plan. If you want to get from Point A to Point B, it helps to chart a course and it also helps to have a road map. Small Business Mavericks can be your road map. Our 4-step online marketing strategic plan is real simple. It’s hard to implement if you don’t have direction, but it’s a simple concept.

Marketing 164

Marketing Small Business Course Research 164

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 23, 2012

Guest blogging is a great marketing method. I highly recommend it. You pick a few high profile, highly trafficked blogs in your niche and send them a query or a blog post and hope they publish it. If they do, you get a link back to your website and some additional reputation points. Good for you. But guest blogging is not the only marketing method to pursue online.

Reputation 161

Reputation SEO Meeting Publishing 161

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 7, 2012

If you like Google’s Webmaster Tools, then you’ll likely find Bing’s new Webmaster Tools helpful. Some of these look like they’re mirrored or modeled after Google’s tools. And they probably are. But that doesn’t matter if they’re helpful. Here’s a look at the new tools Bing is offering webmasters and that are now in beta: Link Explorer.

Tools 161

Tools URL SEO Research 161

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 29, 2012

Search engine optimization experts have for a long time survived on cookie-cutter boilerplate plans, and the amazing thing is that they have worked. But I think such plans work a lot less these days. It started with the Google Panda update that first hit the Net back in February 2011. Since then Google has run that update several times. It was targeting what have come to be called “content farms.” A content farm is just a fancy name for websites that make up a cookie-cutter template

SEO 156

SEO Template Templates Education 156

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 28, 2012

Google, as always, is branching out. They’ve recently made two new developments that have already gotten the blogosphere talking. The first one may not seem much, but it could be over the long term. They’ve add an Events tab to the social network Google+. Again, that doesn’t sound like much, but this is a popular feature on Facebook and the fact that Google+ is adding the feature means that they are serious about competing in the social arena.

Google 156

Google Blogosphere Compete Small Business 156

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 14, 2012

Many small business owners don’t have the budget or the resources to manage their own online marketing strategy. That’s why they come to us. But the importance of such a strategy is something that I like to stress because we are fast approaching a time when having no online marketing strategy at all is sure suicide for your business. There is more than one way of course to approach online marketing.

Strategy 156

Strategy Marketing Small Business Research 156

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 11, 2012

What’s the difference? Isn’t an SEO consultant an SEO company ? Are all SEO firms also consultants? No, not really. There are different distinctions. One of the most important decisions you’ll make as a small business is whether or not you should hire a consultant or a full-on SEO company. There are pros and cons to doing it both ways.

Consultant 156

Consultant SEO Small Business Company 156

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 10, 2012

Did you know that 60% of the senior citizens in the U.S. 65 and older are online? And just about every day at that. And half of them are on Facebook. That’s about 10 million people over the age of 65 using Facebook. If you have a product or service that caters in part to people over the age of 65, you might find your audience on Facebook. Are you reaching them?

Facebook 156

Facebook Marketing Products Social Media 156

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 20, 2012

Online content must be more than a string of words thrown together with some keywords peppered in. If all you care about is ranking in the search engines, then you can go that route. But real content says something important. It says something relevant. It says something that your audience wants to hear. But it should also elicit a reaction. You want your readers to do something.

Content 111

Content Small Business Buy Engineering 111

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 19, 2012

According to one study , Americans are falling in love with a new gadget: their tablets. Take a look at these 6 key takeaways from the study. Tablet usage is exploding. Tablets have become embedded in people’s lives. Content consumption continues to dominate tablet usage. Tablet users have an appetite for paid content. After seeing tablet ads, tablet users are driven to actions.

Embedding 105

Embedding iPad Study Platform 105

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 24, 2012

Is it possible to spend too much time on social media? This is a question that I hear every now and again. You might think my immediate response would be negative. After all, I teach small business owners how to incorporate social media into their daily routines. But I have to tell you that I think you can spend too much time on social media. Understand, however, there are no set number of hours that you should spend promoting yourself through any one medium.

Social Media 101

Social Media ROI Small Business Questions 101

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 22, 2012

Just because your business is small doesn’t mean it has to look small. You can look like a big brand with just a little effort. All it takes is a little planning and some ingenuity, then the elbow grease to go with it. OK, scratch the elbow grease. You aren’t tiling your kitchen floors. But you do need to work hard. Branding is a strategy.

Small Business 101

Small Business How To Brands Course 101

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 27, 2012

Web hosting is a necessity for online marketing. Well, if you want a website, that is, and why would you do Internet marketing without a website? One of the important factors to consider when setting up a hosting account is who your neighbors are. This is important because if you get put on a server that is a bad neighborhood – several of your hosting neighbors are spammers – then you could get a bad reputation by association.

Hosting 98

Hosting Reputation SEO Sites 98

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 18, 2012

There are still a lot of small businesses, search engine optimization companies , and Internet marketers who believe the best way to create content is to come up with a keyword and write stream of consciousness copy about it in hopes that your search engine rankings will get better. Maybe they will. But I don’t recommend this content strategy.

Insurance 98

Insurance Content Small Business Engineering 98

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 9, 2012

You might think that one social media account for any business is enough, but I would beg to differ. I think many businesses – even small businesses – can benefit by allowing their employees to participate in social media as well. Yes, your business only needs one social media account at each of the major social media services and the social media sites of which you are a member.

Social Media 98

Social Media Discount Guidelines Small Business 98

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 8, 2012

There’s not just one way to design a website. Every website is different. In fact, today there are so many different platforms to use for building websites that no two web developers will agree on the best one. Many website designers and developers still prefer to use HTML. Though, most of them are still using HTML 4 in the midst of a massive revolution toward HTML 5.

Joomla 98

Joomla Drupal Content management systems Open Source 98

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 15, 2012

LMFAOs smash hit “Sexy And I Know It” has achieved international fame for the group that sings it. Their Superbowl commercial with the M&Ms was one of the most popular during the game and is still playing in many parts of the world. I blame it on the attitude. Being sexy isn’t easy, but it does require a certain attitude. Whether we’re talking about grungy rock stars, chocolate candy, or websites, being sexy begins with how you start your day.

Groups 93

Groups Groups Brands Products 93

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 2, 2012

Google is always making new changes to improve its way of operating, and I don’t just mean to its search product. However, two of the changes I’ll mention do affect search. Without further ado, I’ll jump right into the changes. Webmaster Tools-Google Analytics integration – This one is hardly new. Google has been working on it for about a year now, but they’ve recently completed the changeover.

Google 93

Google Analytics Review Tools 93

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 3, 2012

Have you checked your website’s health lately? If not, you might want to take it in for a checkup. The Web changes and what was considered best practices in web design and search engine optimization five years ago isn’t the same as it is today. You want to ensure that your website follows the best practices and helps you reach the right prospects so that you can help people achieve with the benefits you offer.

Engineering 87

Engineering Statistics Industry Questions 87

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 30, 2012

Every year, Experian Hitwise tells us whether searchers are using more one word search queries or multiple word search queries. In years past, multiple word search queries were on the rise. This year, they’re going down. Well, the report was for last month and represents year-over-year figures, but you get the point. Meanwhile, single word search queries rose by 19%.

Hitwise 93

Hitwise Yahoo Engineering YouTube 93