This post is for those really small businesses (that are usually based in someone’s home).

I’d define a really small business (RSB) as one that operates out of someone’s home or other residential location.  The RSB does not have a ‘main office’ or even a place for customers to drop off checks or view products.  A majority of these businesses have a website, and rely on it for most, if not all, of its revenue generation.  Most of these businesses have one to five employees.

Since these RSBs rely on their website, and thus their marketing/ranking of their website for a majority of their income, it would make sense that they need to rank well for local terms.  It would also make sense that they would prefer not to use their local address (ie home) on places such as Google maps, Yahoo local, etc. - yet they really need to be listed on these sites.  Plus, these websites won’t accept PO Boxes for addresses.  They want a real physical location.

Well, these businesses can have a ‘real’ address, not a PO box, and can use that street address to add their business to these sites.

Everyone knows that the UPS store will ship things, but you may not know that they also provide post office-type services as well.  They have PO boxes, but with a twist.  Instead of your address being PO Box 123, you can use their street address and then use a Suite # or Room # to distinguish your business.  This gives you a real street address for your business.

For example, my hosting business is run from my house.  But I don’t want people showing up at my house, and I don’t want to list my house address for my business on Google maps.  So I went up to the UPS store and bought a box, at a whopping $8/month, and now I have a real address which I can list on all the various websites.

Lighthouse Technologies Web Hosting
1243 Water Tower Place
Suite 180
Arnold, MO 63010

I could also say

1243 Water Tower Place #180

or even

1243 Water Tower Place
Room 180

The goal here is to get a physical street address, which this accomplishes.

I should also mention that there are other companies that do this as well.  MailBoxes Etc is a good example, and there are other local ones that may work for you.  The trick here (pay attention) is not to get the cheapest one, but to get the service that is physically located the closest to the center of your town, or the town you are targeting.

Why? Because when someone searches Google maps (for instance), they may type in something like ‘widgets in Utopia KS’.  If your fake PO Box address is located closest to the center of Utopia, KS, chances are you’ll be the first listing for widgets in the area.  This, of course, means you’ll have to optimize your business listing to have the word ‘widgets’ on it, which isn’t a hard task.

So how do you find the ‘center’ of town? Easy. Simply type in the name of the town into Google maps.  This will give you what Google maps considers to be the starting point of reference for anything related to that town.  In most cases, it will actually give you a street address.

Now you can go do a search for local mail box providers (make sure you weed out mailbox manufacturers and sellers, like hardware stores), then get a box there.

It should also be noted that it’s not necessary to get a box in your town.  If your ‘target town’ is one of more affluent people, then get a box in that town!  Wherever you think more people will search for your products or services, that’s where you need to list your address!

Lastly, there’s no rule that says you can’t have more than one address, neither.  If you can afford it, get a box in several target towns!

As a followup to my first post Five Things You Can Do to Your Website Right Now to Achieve Higher Rankings I thought I’d give you another five. Hopefully you’ve already done those, and you’re ready for a few more. Here goes:

1. Add a meta description tag to your home page
   Really you should add a custom description to every page on your website, but at least you need one on your home page. Put in a few keywords, and remember that this description is what shows up in the ’summary’ area of a SERPS page. So you’ll want to make it something that encourages searchers to click, yet it needs to be accurate and informative as to what your website it about.

   <meta name=”description” content=”Find custom widgets in various colors. Build your widget online and have it in a week. We offer free shipping of widgets to all US locations.”>

2. Modify your .htaccess to avoid duplicate content penalties
   Many people don’t realize that yoursite.com and www.yoursite.com can be considered two separate websites to the search engines. So just publishing a website creates an instant duplicate content issue - one you can fix with .htaccess

   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !^post$
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com [NC]
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301]

   What? Don’t have the ability to modify or add a .htaccess file? You need to get a better host. May I suggest my company, Lighthouse Technologies? Very SEO friendly and customer support is awesome </plug> =)

3. Add text navigation
   Many businesses get caught with this one - they build a nice website with pretty navigation buttons along the top or left and don’t have any text versions of the navigation. This can cause problems - search engines can’t ’see’ graphics.
   While the page looks good, and it functions well, the search engines really need to assign a text name (or anchor) to each page of your site. It can do that if you have a text link to each page.
   If you have a site with the scenario above, consider simply adding a sitemap, a page with text links to every page on your website. Another easy way to fix this is to add text links to your main navigation pages along the bottom of your website. Not many people scroll that far down, it won’t look that bad, and the search engines will be happy with you.
4. Add (and verify) your site to the search engine’s “tools” programs
   This is an easy one. Submit your site to Google’s Webmaster Tools and Yahoo’s Site Explorer. They’ll give you a little snippet of code to add to your home page, or a file to FTP up, and then you’ll be verified as a ‘real human owner’ of your website.
5. Remove staging files/sites that are online
   Here’s a good one for web developers. Often we create subdomains or own entire domains that are particularly for staging/building new sites. We send these links to our clients and have them check out the site, submit changes, etc. Then when the real website launches, we forget to go back and delete the staging version. Suddenly, we’ve got more duplicate content issues.
   NOTE: A good developer will add a Disallow to their robots.txt file for the subdomain anyway, but I’d be willing to bet few do.

I know these aren’t the easiest 5 things you can do to help your site rank, but they aren’t all that hard either. Do some or all of these things and your site will continue to creep up the SERPS.

Many people stumble across SEM and think that it’s too hard, or too saturated to make any real money.  After a few months of pushing through something you’re probably not really interested in, you give up.  Small checks come, but it’s not the big payday you thought you’d get.

Well I’m here to tell you that hard work and persistence pays off.

In October 2004 when I stumbled across an Internet Marketing ebook, I started promoting timeshares, lemon laws, and teleconferencing.  None of them ever paid, but I kept at it.

In Feb 2005 I met Derek Chew, then a self employed (and single) SEO.  We hit it off, and I mentioned to him that I was averaging $5/day between Adsense and the few little things I was trying to promote.

Cutting to the chase, I’m now averaging over $3000 a month in side money.  That’s right, I’m still working part time on an Army web design contract, which provides me a nice steady income, and making that money on the side.  I recently bought my wife a nice GMC Denali and have my eye on a Cadillac STS.

If some country boy from Arnold MO can do it, so can you.

Most people hire a web designer based on a very fragile set of criteria, mostly because they have very little knowledge of the design process or industry.  Since about 95% of “web designers” don’t understand the marketing side of web design, they fail to realize that they are not helping their clients by ‘doing what they do’.

It’s really no fault of their own, heck for years I was just that.  I’d pump out a site a week. Clients were happy to have a site, and I was happy to have their money.  They ended up with an online brochure.

An online brochure is ok if that’s all you want, but most likely you want more than that.  A $2000+ investment ought to do more for you than just look pretty.  It should bring you revenue, customers, or members.  Whatever your goal is with your business, your website should simply be another means of getting that result.

With that said, here is a list of ten things most businesses can do to their website today that will help them rank in the weeks to come.

1. Fix your title tag
   Search engines read this tag to help it decide what your website is about. So put something that makes sense; something that a potential customer would type into Yahoo to find you.
   Something like “Bob’s Widgets - Widget Repair and Manufacturing - St Louis Missouri” is better than “Welcome to our Website” or “Home”
2. Don’t waste real estate
   If your designer thought it’d be cool to put a bit of blank space at the top of your page so that it looks ‘centered’, he was wrong.  Since everyone around the world uses different screen resolutions, its pretty much impossible to vertically center your website copy on every one of them.
   Sure, you can build it for the most common resolution, but why?  Just put your info at the top so you’ll be sure that everyone can see it.
3. Put your contact info on every page
   This should be a no-brainer.  The purpose of your website is customers, so make it as easy as possible for them to get a hold of you!
   To further this point, make sure your contact page has a form they can fill out to get more information.  You need more than just an email address, because many people don’t know how to configure their browsers to handle email links.  A form they can fill out will make sure you don’t lose that technically-challenged customer.
4. Get yourself a real street address
   This is one many small and home-based businesses overlook.  They’ll use their home address or a PO box, which is actually losing them customers.  Go up to the UPS store and fork out the $8 bucks a month for a ‘real’ mailing address.  Then put this address into Google maps, Yahoo Local, Yelp, Insider Pages and others.
   People like playing with maps, and with SmartPhones getting overly popular, you’re going to need a real street address to capture those users when they type ‘Widgets in St Louis MO’
5. Get the visitors email address
   Face it, they came to your website for a reason.  Even if they’re remotely interested, you’ve got a lukewarm lead.  Offer them a free whitepaper on ‘Trends in Widget Colors’ in exchange for them signing up to your newsletter.
   Then, of course, don’t forget to do a newsletter at least once a month.  Market to those leads!
6. Bonus tip: Get rid of Flash
   No matter how cute, and no matter what designers say, Flash still sucks when it comes to ranking your site.  “cute” don’t pay the bills.  Ranking does.

If you run a local community or small business website and are needing ideas on how to get some free press, why not piggyback off the local items of interest?

There are two top news stories this week in Saint Louis.

• Flooding

I’ve already started a photo contest related to the flooding.  Take a picture of flooded areas, or perhaps a teenager filling a sandbag, or perhaps an elderly gentleman donating water to workers.  I’ll post the pictures, send out a press release about my contest, and get more traffic and brand recognition.  The winner will get a $25 gas card, which appeals to pretty much everyone nowadays.

• Anheuser Busch Takeover

Several ‘web-people’ have already taken advantage of this, launching sites such as SaveBudweiser and SaveAB. Smart because they’re getting free mentions on all the news broadcasts, radio stations and links galore from beer lovers and proud Saint Louis bloggers.  They’ve started petitions (even if useless, these encourage people to spread the word about the website) and forums to discuss the takeover.

Check out the news. Even if its depressing, there is still plenty of goodness to be found if you’ve got a somewhat creative mind.  People are happy to jump on a bandwagon, all you have to do is hook up the tractor and get in front of them.

Many of my readers wonder if they’ll ever get to the point where they’re making a decent income from their online affiliate programs. Well, I’m here to tell you that yes there will be a day when you’ll be able to quit your ‘regular’ job and live off the income that your websites take.

I started doing Internet marketing in 2006. I had no idea what I was doing. I bought an ebook (no longer available) and was inspired to give it a whack. I made some MFA pages and after several months got to about $5/day.

That sucked. But it was enough to keep me motivated.

Two years later and I’m pulling in a nice set of checks each month. Usually I deposit them and put most of the money back into my business, and I spend some on the kids.

But this month I thought I’d treat myself. And I did.

That’s me this past weekend on a 57 foot charter boat off the coast of Alabama. I’m fighting an Amber Jack and eventually I win.

I took my 15 year old son, left Friday, rented a nice apartment on Dauphin Island, and drove back on Monday. The entire 4-day trip was paid for with just two checks from affiliate marketing. It was awesome.

So for you that are wondering if you’ll get there, you will. Stick with it, learn some search optimization for your website, build links and you’ll have checks bigger than mine. Then you can tell me about your adventure.

As more and more people go online to look for local deals, check out products online before buying locally, etc, it is becoming more and more imperative that your website gives more than just information about your products.  Getting them to your website is a great first step.  More traffic means more face-time with potential customers.  More face-time means better branding. It’s all good, but it isn’t all paying the bills.

In order to pay the bills, you need conversions. 1000 people to your website doesn’t guarantee 100 or even 10 sales.  Once they see your products, are they engaged to find out more?  No?  Why not?

Every single product page on your website should have some sort of ‘find out more’ button.

• Click here to find out more about our blue widget
• Want more info? We’re glad to help
• Need a blue widget for your home? Let us find you the right one

Something needs to encourage them to click.  And once they click, they provide their email, phone or other way of contacting them.  Now you’ve turned that casual visitor into a warm lead - and you’ve got a way to communicate with the customer, thus fortifying your position as the subject matter expert of blue widgets (assuming you really know what you’re talking about).

Engage the visitor with a button on each product page.  Try to make the subsequent form that they fill out as short as possible, and with a little fancy coding you can even put the name of the item in the form for them.  Make it easy, thank them once they submit the form, and make sure you get back with them in a decent amount of time.

Personally I dump all of these inquiries to a database where I can keep track of them, and I also note down their referrer if its available.  I email myself (web designer) and the store owner a copy of the inquiry so they can follow up quickly.  Lastly, I send a thank you email, customized with the product name, to the potential customer.  Another opportunity to get my clients brand in front of them.

What are you doing with the visitors to your site?  Don’t just sit back and expect them to call.  Engage them, get some info from them, and provide outstanding customer service.  Even if they don’t end up buying from you, you still had the opportunity to make more of an impression on them, and that’s worth a lot.

Here’s a couple quick ways to keep up with the latest trends in your industry.

Set up a custom news feed with Google

Go over to http://news.google.com and type in your phrase. This will bring up all the latest news that mentions that subject. If you need a specific phrase, make sure you put it in quotes.

Then click on the RSS button in the lower left corner and sign up for this custom news feed. Now every day you’ll have the latest news about your industry right there in your RSS reader.

Over time, you’ll see mentions of related items that you don’t want to read about. I suggest you go back to the Google News page and rewrite your query, using delimiters such as the plus and minus.

Get Google Alerts

While the Google news thing is cool, it’ll only give you updates on actual news items that have been submitted. Since many people are publishing items in formats besides press releases, we want to be able to capture these additions to the web, too.

To do so, we’ll set up a Google alert with our same phrase(s).

Go to http://www.google.com/alerts and you’ll see this page:

In the “Search Items” box, put in your same search criteria that you used on the news site. You can use quotes and other delimiters just as you did above.

Depending upon how often you want these alerts, choose the correct option in the “How Often” area. If you’re running a news site, you’ll want to put the “How Often” to “As it happens”. That way you can get that info onto your website as soon as possible. If you are just trying to keep up with trends, leave it at “once a day”.

Now plop in your email address. Now every time Google indexes a new page on the Internet that includes your specific phrase, you’ll get an email.

You can use these same methods to keep an eye on your competition as well, your own business name, or even mentions of specific products that you carry. Watch for bloggers that are mentioning your business and drop a comment on their site. They’ll be blown away that you visited their blog and you’ll have an even stronger chance of getting future referrals from them.

By the way, this should not be confused with Google Trends, an online way of watching search trends over time. That’s a nice tool too, but not what I was going for here.