Small Business Mavericks

DECEMBER 26, 2014

So what does Google look for in a landing page, and how does it actually play out with the real people who visit your site? Here’s what Google says it looks for: providing relevant, useful, and original content. making it easy for customers to navigate your site (including on mobile sites). Think About Experience.

Sites 146

Sites Cost Mobile Google 146

Small Business Mavericks

OCTOBER 8, 2014

If you don’t, there’s a good chance your site isn’t functioning the way it should. I think a content audit should be done about every six months, because you consistently are adding content to your site, and it’s easy to inadvertently change something.

Directory 111

Directory Engineering Sites List 111

Small Business Mavericks

MARCH 20, 2012

Pinterest is one of those social media sites that could be a real boon for small businesses. For those not in the know, Pinterest is one of the latest social media sites to take the world by storm. Big businesses are already finding clever ways to promote their business, perhaps the best is that of Peugeot’s.

Small Business 164

Small Business Marketing Tumblr StumbleUpon 164

Small Business Mavericks

APRIL 21, 2012

Every page should have a unique title, and it should be relevant to the page’s content. It will promise a subject, and your content will then deliver on that subject. It is also considered a good idea to repeat the page’s title in your content, preferably at the top of the pages as an H1 heading. For example, [link].

Engineering 181

Engineering Domain Name URL Small Business 181

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 4, 2011

The three search giants have partnered to launch the site schema.org , which helps webmasters define structured data for their websites for easier searchability. The Schema.org website uses this example: *h1*Avatar*/h1*. For example, it could refer to the movie or it could refer to your Web graphic or profile picture.

Avatar 161

Avatar Yahoo Engineering Project 161

Small Business Mavericks

MARCH 9, 2015

“A site’s URL structure should be as simple as possible. Consider organizing your content so that URLs are constructed logically and in a manner that is most intelligible to humans (when possible, readable words rather than long ID numbers). This helps the robot rank you on the search page results.

URL 70

URL Construction SEO Engineering 70

Small Business Mavericks

MARCH 4, 2012

Ecommerce websites often include content that isn’t permanent, for example, product descriptions – these are often removed once the site discontinues that product. Duplicate content - perhaps not as big an issue as several years ago, duplicate content can still hurt a business.

SEO 98

SEO URL Issues Price 98

Small Business Mavericks

MAY 27, 2012

Some of this debate has focused on link strategies, the quality of sites that you gain links from, and the anchor text used. There are other factors such as the age of a link, however, this is becoming less of an issue with Google showing a distinct preference for fresh content – you can’t have both, fresh content with old links.

Strategy 98

Strategy Engineering URL SEO 98

Small Business Mavericks

MARCH 1, 2012

For example, for the query [lady gaga in ] performed on the US version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in times square], but for the same search performed on the Indian version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in India]. We’ve applied new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before.

Google 98

Google Small Business Compete YouTube 98

Small Business Mavericks

NOVEMBER 19, 2013

If you have a lot of pages with similar but unique, original content and the page titles are very close, then you don’t want your meta descriptions being too similar. with another page on the same site having a meta description that reads. You’re better off without them if you’re going to do that.

Google 101

Google SEO Small Business Issues 101

Small Business Mavericks

JANUARY 30, 2012

Your web pages need to be written so that potential customers can access your content quickly and easily. The article discusses, for example, changing navigation links to match keywords. There’s an interesting interview with Hamlet Batista that discusses how too much SEO can harm a website, and it can.

Google 98

Google Small Business SEO Engineering 98

Small Business Mavericks

JANUARY 10, 2012

I see ‘gurus’ insisting that every online business should be active on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and, in some instances, specialist social media sites such as LinkedIn. For example, if you can garner a decent following on Facebook or Twitter, and that following converts to sales, then your efforts are being rewarded.

Social Media 105

Social Media Marketing Small Business Discount 105

Small Business Mavericks

JANUARY 13, 2012

In most cases, business owners have stuck to their traditional approach, then moaned a little when a Google update has resulted in a drop in their site’s search results placement. Yet those rules are really fairly simple – provide quality content that has been created for your visitors. Links are a good example.

Small Business 87

Small Business SEO Engineering Publishing 87

Small Business Mavericks

JANUARY 14, 2012

As a small business owner, you can use this thirst for information to your advantage since Q&A sites often provide an inexpensive (as in free, apart from your time) way to communicate with potential customers. The most difficult task is to find a Q&A site that best suits your business and your expertise.

Reputation 79

Reputation Brands Knowledge Base Yahoo 79

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 3, 2014

I’ll use mobile advertising as an example because the smaller screen size makes the ads very noticeable. So the push to find an alternative to the easy-to-ignore banner ads is a sub-category of content called native advertising. Native Ads Are Not Standardized & We Interact With Content.

Advertising 79

Advertising Mobile Guidelines Apple 79

Small Business Mavericks

MAY 5, 2014

You control your owned media: the accounts, pages, and sites you have as channels to get your message out. In practical terms, I’d combine the tweets of linked blog post titles with conversational-type comments on what’s happening at the business today or asking for feedback on product suggestions, for example.

Paid Search 79

Paid Search Study Twitter Activities 79

Small Business Mavericks

JUNE 19, 2014

We’ll take writing, for example. In marketing, delegating responsibilities can include: writing quality content for blogs and sites. Part of that is natural ability, part of it is experience, and all of it is part of being human. As they tell you in secretary school … it’s not the boss’s job to spell.

Small Business 87

Small Business Consultant Questions Campaign 87

Small Business Mavericks

FEBRUARY 1, 2011

So, using the example again, suppose that today the majority of searchers looking for small business marketing information used the key phrase “SBM marketing online.&# You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site. As consumers become more educated in search, they change their search habits.

Case Study 98

Case Study Press Release Small Business Adwords 98

Small Business Mavericks

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

People say it’s possible but no one is willing to step up and point you to an actual example. I can’t really imagine telling a client like that to just write great content. And all that really means is if Google catches you at it, then you can expect to have your sites de-listed or penalized. I don’t think so.

Buy 79

Buy Real Estate Case Study Press Release 79

Small Business Mavericks

MARCH 2, 2011

I’ve already written about Google’s recent algorithm update that has resulted in many websites losing search rankings while benefiting WikiHow and eHow, both considered content farms by many SEOs and Internet marketers. Google’s algorithm was intended to address content farms and lower their rankings. But eHow gained.

Small Business 164

Small Business Google Directory Hubpages 164

Small Business Mavericks

FEBRUARY 26, 2014

Faceted navigation is a term given to a certain practice with e-commerce sites that allows users to search from the general to the narrow using navigable patterns built into the website. Visit Amazon.com and you’ll see examples of faceted navigation on just about every product page. They do it well. item=automatic-widget.

Widget 101

Widget URL Patterns Price 101

Small Business Mavericks

MARCH 31, 2012

Unless you live on social media sites like Facebook, and publish reams of content day after day, a blog is still the single most effective way to communicate with both current and potential customers. When it comes to content, that too needn’t take very long.

Small Business 107

Small Business WordPress SEO Publishing 107

Small Business Mavericks

MAY 14, 2012

Other sites such as Stumbleupon, Linkedin, Pinterest and Digg can still generate a lot of traffic. What is important is you some of these sites to best effect. Stumbleupon is a good example. Rather than ‘stumbling’ every piece of content, you need to be far more selective. Add them as friends.

Social Media 93

Social Media Digg StumbleUpon Twitter 93