Recently I did a segment for Small Biz TV (ItsYourBiz.com) and I thought I’d share it with you.
As a small business owner, there are a hundred things you’ve got rattling through your head at any one time. Along with running your business, you’ve also got to wear the marketing hat – a hat that not many small business owners really enjoy.
While marketing might not be fun, it’s still a necessity. And I’m hoping to make the job a little easier today with these few search engine optimization tips. Click to continue »
The Internet is a giant research tool. Your customers are becoming more and more savvy as each day goes by, researching products, features, benefits and of course prices. If you aren’t taking advantage of that trend, you’re missing out.
SEO
One of the best ways to build more traffic to your website is to take advantage of search engine optimization. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing your website for keywords that your customers are using every day when they do their research. Click to continue »
The experts say that this ‘tough economy’ is going to go on for several years before finally hitting a tipping point back into some sort of stability. Times are already straining for many businesses, and news like this isn’t good for those riding the almost-going-out-of-business fence.
Today I stumbled upon a press release about a local real estate company that hired a lead generation company to help them generate more customers (in theory). The lead generation company’s website gives four easy steps to generating leads:
Next week will be a great week to be a business owner in Saint Louis. There are a lot of events, all of which are focused on helping you build your business and customers.
St. Louis Business Expo – Oct 18
The biggest business expo of the year. An entire day of terrific speakers (including myself) on a wide variety of topics. Also, a speed banking opportunity and tons of vendors!
Using Video to Increase Your Website Traffic & Sales – Oct 20
Another great meetup, this one dedicated to helping business owners get on top of Google, Yahoo! and Bing searches for their industry. This month’s class is all about video & how to use it to get to the top of the search engines. Speaker: Mason Duchatschek
Show Me the Blog – Oct 21-22
The second annual SMTB conference will feature speakers from various Internet Marketing and Social Media outlets. Topics will include new media, social media, SEO, blogging and technology.
There are certain times in everyone’s life when a limo is a great idea. From birthdays to weddings to special nights out, a limo is a great way to make the night even more memorable.
St Louis isn’t a huge town. It’s not like New York or LA where limos are seen every day. If you see one here, chances are it was rented for some sort of event, not because a famous person is cruising by. And this isn’t Vegas, where they’re waiting by the hundreds at the airport.
I imagine that owning a limo rental company can be a bit stressful. Those rides aren’t cheap, they have a somewhat high need for maintenance (especially cleaning) and need to be on the road more often than not. So keeping the limos booked is a huge priority. The following is a few things I’d do if I owned such a company. Click to continue »
Back in May, I spoke to the St. Louis Small Business Meetup Group about getting traffic, climbing the search engine rankings and beyond. It was a great meetup in a small restaurant in Kirkwood – a terrific atmosphere and I think you’ll enjoy this video. In it you’ll learn:
Since the mid nineties, I’ve owned a web hosting company. Although I rarely promote it, it is a terrific complement to my SEO business.
One of the great things about having my own servers is that I can control many of the things that a typical hosting company won’t let you do. One of those is IP addresses. Click to continue »
Will, we’ve heard what you say about blogging being a great way to increase your overall search presence, but we’re not sure where to start. Blogger, WordPress.com and others offer free blogging platforms – is that a good way to get started?
- Mike
This is a great question, Mike. I get this question in nearly every presentation I do.
In short, my answer is no, don’t use a free blogging service. The entire reason that I preach blogging as such a great tool for SEO is that it generates content for your website – for your domain. Ultimately you want to build your domain (website) up as the authority for your industry.
By using a free blogging service, you’re basically giving that content over to another company (another domain). By blogging with them, you are ultimately ranking their domain for your keyphrases. You are helping another business get traffic, not your own.
Don’t be confused, WordPress(.org) is a great blogging tool that you can download and install on your domain. That’s the way you should go.
Keep the great content, tips and how-to’s on your site. Grow it big and kick butt.
It’s been a long time practice for many home based business owners to purchase a UPS box for their business, both for convenience & separation, as well as the advantage of getting an actual street address (which is not your home). The street address can then be put into Google Places, Yahoo! Local, etc and help businesses rank for local searches.
Since this ‘strategy’ has been going on, Google introduced service areas which helped alleviate a lot of the issues related to being a home-based business. But there are still a lot of small businesses using UPS boxes to help rank in different local districts.
I’m not necessarily saying it’s the right way to do it, but there are definitely a lot of them still doing it, and it works in many cases still today. Click to continue »
Will, I’m doing alright on clients right now, but by this summer I know it’s going to dry up a bit, so I’m thinking about doing PPC or a link building campaign. Which do you recommend?
- Jon
I’m not a huge fan of PPC. While I know it works, and works quite well for some businesses, it’s overall a very short-sighted strategy. If you have the budget, pay per click is an easy way to the front page for many terms. Problem is, most small business owners don’t have the budget they need in order to get or stay near the top. Plus, once that budget runs out, the ads immediately disappear and you are literally back to where you were when you wrote this email. Click to continue »
The experts say that this ‘tough economy’ is going to go on for several years before finally hitting a tipping point back into some sort of stability. Times are already straining for many businesses, and news like this isn’t good for those riding the almost-going-out-of-business fence.
How to Build Your Credit Profile – Oct 18
