Small Business SEO Geek BLOG

By Wendy Suto

Businesses can gain a competitive edge with Google and other significant search engines through relevant link building strategies. The search engines track links in ranking algorithms while crawling the Web. It is advantageous to grow the number of incoming links to your company’s site alongside effective search engine optimization techniques.

There are numerous link building solutions.

1. Free and paid link directories
Link directories all provide either one-way or reciprocal links. Some are free, while others are paid only. Link directories are beneficial because Websites that place your link on their site without requesting a link back to their site are considered more valuable than reciprocal or link exchanges, in the eyes of major search engines. There are many reputable directory sites that are well trafficked by potential buyers for your product. You will find one-way and reciprocal link directories by typing into any search engine search box, keywords like “submit a link”, “add a URL”, or “add link”.

Some small business owners will only link to sites that link back to their site. This creates reciprocal links pages and triangular link patterns. Reciprocal links do not improve a Website’s rankings, and should only be done to give value to site visitors. This is not a savvy SEO tactic or a wise link building practice. Stay clear of SEO companies who use these link exchange strategies; they are not considered real SEOs by other professionals in the field.

2. Corporate Blogging
This is an ever growing Internet trend gaining in popularity with businesses – corporate blogs. Blogging started as personal spaces for individuals to share their thoughts and the events around them, like an online diary. Corporate blogging is then defined as another way to publish business-related content and gain more visibility for your company on the Web. By offering information and sharing knowledge, a company can quickly establish itself as a leading industry expert, get information to customers quickly, increase sales, attract journalists seeking news releases, and attract new customers looking for relevant information.

3. Article Directory Submissions
Article directories are sites that house free reprint articles, allowing authors (people like you) to become known as experts in a field or industry. These sites help authors gain one-way link popularity because others seeking free articles to reprint on their newsletters, Websites, blogs and in print can find them here. Reprint articles can only be used elsewhere if providing a link back to the author’s Website. You also receive free advertising and promotion.

4. Press releases
Submit your company’s news releases to sites like PRWeb.com and PRNewswire.com to allow journalists and bloggers to find important information about your company, its products and services. These releases also build links coming to your site, and attract attention from prospective buyers.

5. MySpace.com
This is a tremendous opportunity for free publicity, through networking with prospects from around the world. Place your business profile, your company logo and business pictures, commercials and videos, write comments on other myspace.com profiles, receive email, instant message, and search for prospective clients. MySpace.com also has a business section that is cost effective and a great way to share your business with people searching for a certain product or service. This is another way to increase your link popularity.

6. Yahoo! Answers
This site is relatively new, and lets people in all industries become an expert in their fields. Answer questions in categories related to your expertise. Choose a subject from an extensive list of categories. Create a profile on Yahoo!, and you get to list up to 3 other one-way links. Yahoo! Geocities offers free a Website template and tools to build a simple Website. All these avenues add a host of easy ways to increase Internet visibility for your business.

7. One-Way Links on other Business Sites
Even with these link building strategies, having one-way links are considered much more valuable than link exchanges, also called reciprocal links. One way links from other related business sites or blogs with pertinent subject matter to the Website is an excellent way to drive traffic to your site. Although it is time consuming asking other sites to link to your site, these methods will assist in building stronger link popularity interest among the major search engines.

8. Business Networking Sites
FastPitchMedia.com and LinkedIn.com are two business networking sites that give professionals and business executives many resources under one place. These one-stop shops give professionals a lot of excellent exposure for free, by housing a database of business owners linked to each other’s online networks. Try something new! Create a profile through these sites, and you will reach other decision makers, stay in touch with others in your network, fill a key position, and keep contact information current.

Whats the problem?

You may have noticed it is virtually impossible for your business to be noticed without being visible in the search engines. A whole science has emerged with respect to getting sites ranked for certain keywords, which is what businesses like SmallBusinessSEOGeek.com market as a service to site owners who have not yet mastered the field. If your site is about photography or a photographer in a particular geographic area, ideally you’ll want to rank number one in Google whenever someone’s searches include the word “photographer” in “whatever geographic area” they are searching.

When performing a Google search, there are often times millions of search results, and for he vast majority of us, only 10 results appear on the first page. Additionally, keywords can be more complex by combining relevant terms making them keyword phrases. In order to engage in proper monitoring of these multiple-word keywords, you need the right tools to check your keyword rankings from time to time.

A site’s position is not determined strictly by keyword ranking. Another important aspect of good SEO is link popularity. Increasing your link popularity is a necessary process to move up the rankings for all your most important keywords.

So, how do I monitor these things?

In order to know what to fix, add or change on a website, you need the correct tools to do so. A savvy web user can find a number of free tools online that are available to help you check your site’s keyword rankings. The majority of which are limited in features and give little more than a brief summary of your site’s status.

What’s the solution?

The tools we recommend are Advanced Web Ranking and Advanced Link Manager by Capyhon.

First, Advanced Web Ranking is a search engine ranking application package that installs to your computer. With it, you can track your keyword ranking across user specified keywords on both a present and historical basis.  You can add as many keywords or keywords phrases as you wish, and you can even compare the keyword rankings of your competitors across the same or a different set of keywords. Plus, all of this can be done manually or schedule at a specific time.

Unless you have a seriously large marketing budget like that of larger corporations, the only real way people will find out about your business will be through searches at engines like Google.  So, if you are serious about your online enterprise, it is absolutely critical to be aware on a regular basis the status of your keyword rankings.  Have you ever wondered why your competitors rank higher? They are undoubtedly engaging in methods to improve their keyword rankings. You must understand that in order to remain competitive, you also need to be aware of the status of your keyword rankings. Here is a complete list of features for website ranking with Advanced Web Manager and more features using the Keyword Research Tool.

The second SEO tool you should consider is Advanced link Manager. Another application you install on your computer, this tool monitors the links that are pointing to your web site.  You can also set it up to monitor the links that are pointing to your competitors’ web sites to see a market comparison.

SEO specialists will tell you that besides the traditional PR one gets from links on the Internet by other web sites and authorities, the search engines such as Google consider links to be a determining factor of the site’s perceived “authority” on the subject or content of the site.  Following accordingly, determining where a web site should rank for any particular keyword is largely determinant on the number of links (i.e. link popularity) pointing to that particular website. Without many links, the site does not rank as well.

However, link quantity is not the only factor in ranking. Link quality or authority is another determinant of keyword rankings. For example, a link from a respected educational institution is considered to be of a higher quality than a link from a site without any links pointing to it. Google figures the more links a particular site has pointing to it, the more of an authority that site is.

You will hear webmasters often refer to the “PR” of a site or a page on that site.  PR in this context merely refers to Google’s PageRank indicator, which runs a scale of zero to ten.  It is not a perfect scale of site authority, but it is Google’s standard bar for measuring. More links, more quality links, a web site or page has, the higher the site’s PR.  For example, ebay.com has a PR that fluctuates between 9 and 10.  This reflects the number of other web sites that have linked to auctions or listings on ebay.com.  Similarly, Google.com has a PR of 10 which is most certainly due to the millions of sites that use Google search on their pages, links to Google, adwords links, and well, it’s their ranking system.

Now what?

Now that you know what you should be doing. Take a look at Capyhon’s website for the tools you need to do it.

Capyhon offers a Free for a 30-day trial period for both packages, the software can be downloaded here for Advanced Web Ranking and here for Advanced Link Manager. After downloading the application, you will have an access pass to all features of the standard, professional and enterprise editions. At the end of the 30-day period you may continue using the software by purchasing a license, the cost for the standard version is $99, and the professional edition costs $199. You can also purchase the enterprise version of the software for $399, which gives you access to every feature the software offers.

Standard functionality allows for link partner discovery, the enterprise features truly make the software stand out. Enhanced features include a domain quality and webpage analyzer, site crawler, Google maps importer, project manager, trigger setting and project proxy setup. The professional version offers all this but is much more report-heavy.

Hardware and Software Requirements for Windows users are at least one free GB of hard drive space, a class four Pentium processor, 512 MB of RAM and Windows 2000, Windows 7, XP or Vista. The Java runtime environment should be 1.5 or later. Mac requirements are at least a G4 with 512 MB of RAM and one GB of hard drive space running OS X 10.4 or later. Mac Java runtime is 1.5 or later. Linux users have similar hardware requirements to Windows users, but the software specifications denote Linux with GNOME or KDE.

Aritcle by Bizymoms

The popularity of the Internet and its wide penetration among the masses all around the globe has boosted a whole new world of business opportunities. It has created a whole new generation of entrepreneurs who are harnessing its power to create new value for the society. There is a wide range of online home business ideas that have proven to be highly successful for the entrepreneurs across the business spectrum. If you are looking at an opportunity to add to your household income, you could consider an online freelance business opportunity as a viable area to create new income.

Online freelance opportunities are available in a variety of fields, and your choice would depend upon your particular skill sets and your keen aptitude or interest in a particular area. If you are good at writing, and it is something that excites your passion, you could work as a professional writer on the Internet, offering your freelance services online. There are many companies around the world that are looking for professional writers for their websites, e-zines, newsletters or other publications online. There is also a niche opportunity for academic writers if you are specializing in a particular educational area where you can write with authority.

If you know a foreign language, you could offer your translation services online for written material. There is no dearth of work available for a skilled person who is specializing in this particular area. You could even start your own newsletter or blog, and gradually build a loyal readership. This will give you the opportunity to earn an online income through advertising.

If you have any strong business ideas for selling a particular product or a range of products, you could start selling it through your own website, and receive orders and payments online. You can promote your e-commerce website through various Internet marketing tools and techniques that are prevalent in the business.

If you do not possess any highly specialized skills, even then it is possible to earn an income online by offering your services for basic online jobs such as data entry or transcription services. There are many large law firms, medical companies and accounting firms that need to outsource data entry or transcription work to freelance operators.

Basically, freelance opportunities that allow you to create an online income are endless. All you need is a commitment and determination to work sincerely and find a niche for yourself in the new technologically advanced world of information and communication.

By Bizymoms

When you work at home there are more financial advantages due to many factors, it helps you spend quality time with your children as well give you financial independence.

Working at home brings you revenue for the work you do, as well as gives you added revenue because you save on gas, parking fee and maintenance of your vehicle which was otherwise necessary when you went to work.

There are other added savings when you work at home because the money you spent on clothes, shoes, bags and accessories (for ladies), earlier when you went to work, you no longer require and thus becomes a saving.

Even the money you spent for lunch and at the vending machine is saved because you are likely to have the leftovers from the previous day and cook fresh dinner later in the day.

When you work at home, you are paid according to you output in most cases unless you are committed to your employer where you are paid for the number of hours you work. Either way, beyond your output or beyond the time you would spend on your work, say 45 hours a week, you are at a liberty to do what you want to do with the rest of the time. If you are flexible in the work you are prepared to do, the options are endless. After you finish your commitment of 45 hours and you are willing to work and you have the time to do so, you can find another part time job to work from home that will give more financial advantages.

The opportunities are endless and the options are many and it is up to you what you want to do and how you want to do it. If you really want to earn more money without comprising your domestic obligations, and you are willing to take on more work, the opportunities are available.

Even if it is not in the same field and even if the options are in contrast to what you are doing and you are still willing to work, you can always find work. But you need to have the right attitude and the right spirit to do it. It certainly gives you more financial stability than you would have otherwise had when you were working at your 8 to 5 job, confined to brick and mortar.

It's up to you, if there is a will, you will find a way to become more financially stable when you work at home.

By Kalena Jordan

Having worked with web sites for the past eleven years, I've seen a LOT of errors, poor judgment and embarrassing gaffs on the web. Sometimes they are the fault of the client, the web designer, the IT Manager, or the SEO, but human error is always to blame. The saddest thing is that the problems are usually preventable.

Here is a list of what I consider to be the Top 10 dumbest web site decisions ever, in reverse order, David Letterman style :

10) Misspelling a Domain

Back in the glory days of the late 1990's when I was working for a large Internet agency, the web designers had responsibility for the registration of domain names on behalf of clients. One particular designer had a face to face meeting with a major client, during which the client asked him to register CarTuneCentral.com (or so he thought!). The staffer did a check and was delighted to see the domain available. He made the purchase and proudly emailed the client.
An hour later his boss called him in to his office to say that he'd had a call from a very frustrated client who *actually* wanted him to register CartoonCentral.com. Needless to say the desired domain wasn't available and the whole office dined on his mistake for months.

9) Letting the Domain Name Expire

Now what type of company would allow their domain to expire a month after site launch? A very large one, that's who. I'll save the company some embarrassment and won't reveal their name but the site was offline for a total of 2 days while they scrambled to pay their registrar, sort out DNS propagation and cover their tails.

8) Flashing your Cyber Underpants

One of the most common web site management platforms provided by hosting companies used to store the site statistics in a common folder called /statistics/. You could password protect this folder, but the default was to leave it open to the public and so many unwary webmasters unwittingly published full traffic data for their site on the Internet, open to any person who knew where to look.

I learned this the hard way in a public forum from a member who said he had just reviewed my traffic for the previous month and was very impressed. Publishing site statistics for all the world to see is what I call flashing your cyber underpants and I’ve never let it happen again!

7) Publishing Sensitive Company Information

Quite a few companies have been guilty of doing this, including AOL, who published a search data report in 2006 that contained the private details of thousands of AOL customers. Although the report was taken offline within a few days, it had already been mirrored and distributed across the Internet. The fallout eventually led to the resignation of AOL’s Chief Technical Officer.

Although not quite as serious, an ex-client of mine once published a page that had notes on it from the Sales Manager about the best way to strong-arm a customer into purchasing a higher-ticket item. Apparently the web designer didn’t realize the hand-written post-it notes were not part of the web page copy. Duh!

6) Using an Insulting 404 Error Page

I clash with the web design team of one of my clients on a regular basis. Earlier this year, my client completely re-designed their web site and so I recommended they ask their web design team to design a custom 404 error page in case visitors navigated to a page on the old site that no longer existed. Their web design team put up a message that read:

"404 Error. You've obviously typed in the wrong URL. Either that or the page you are looking for no longer exists."

That was it! No apology for the missing page, no recommendation to use the navigation to find what they were looking for, just an insulting message that accuses the visitor of being an idiot. Persons viewing that page would be clicking the "back" button as fast as they could.

5) Taking a Site Offline for Maintenance

I find it fascinating that very large sites run by intelligent people still get taken offline for maintenance on a regular basis. Search engines don't understand the "Back in 15 minutes" sign and the longer the site is down, the bigger the risk.

If search bots try and index a site while it is down, they will most likely assume the previously indexed pages have expired and remove them from the search index. This means that all your hard-earned rankings could be flushed down the toilet until search engines can successfully re-index your site. Surely a mirror site for maintenance periods isn't that difficult to set up?

4) Buying a Dot Biz When the Dot Com Was Available

Ok, I'm putting up my hand on this one. I'm not going to reveal the domain but yes, I registered a dot biz domain back in 2000 when the dot com was actually available. The dot com version of my domain was bought by Yahoo a short time later and turned into a product site. Ack! My excuse is that, at the time, dot biz sites were rumored to be the next big thing and all companies were being urged to choose them over dot coms. Ok, I was wrong!

3) Allowing a Customer Complaint to Remain on a Site for 12 Months

When I was working as a public relations consultant, I was given the responsibility of re-writing the web copy of a large real estate client. One of the areas I was asked to re-write was the welcome paragraph on the Customer Feedback page where existing customers of the estate agent chain could login and leave comments about their experience.

While writing the copy, I scanned some of the customer feedback and came across an aggressive message left 12 months earlier by an obviously unhappy customer. She had used some of the most colorful language I've ever seen (and some that I hadn't) and very detailed descriptions of how she was going to take her revenge on the company for allegedly allowing a tenant to destroy her house. Nobody in charge of the web site had even noticed the comment and I still wonder how many potential customers would have been put off from using the estate agent after reading it.

2) Switching a Web Site Off for a 3 Week Christmas Vacation.

Yes, many moons ago, an ex-client of mine decided to take her entire web site offline (without telling me!) while she was on a 3 week vacation over Christmas. Only a month earlier, she had paid me $5,000 to optimize it for search engines.

It had just achieved some impressive top 10 results and all the carefully optimized pages were attracting good traffic when she shut it down and replaced the entire site with a 1 page sign that said “closed until after Christmas”. I noticed the traffic and search ranking declines in her stats and was completely flabbergasted when I found the site gone. Her response when I confronted her? "Why didn't you TELL ME this could happen?"

And the dumbest web site decision I've ever witnessed?

1) Promoting a Domain Name You Don't Own:

My Alma Mater, the University of Newcastle, have spent thousands of dollars on television advertising here in Australia, marketing their new site for online post-graduate coursework: GradSchool Dot Com. There's only one problem. The domain for this site is actually Gradschool.com.au. They don't even own Gradschool.com!

Sadly, this glaring marketing error seems to have totally escaped them and they are happily referring to their brand as Gradschool.com on all their marketing material and throughout their .com.au domain. It's tragic to think of all the potential students typing in Gradschool.com expecting to find the University program. I see that whoever purchased Gradschool.com has slapped up some AdSense code on it so at least somebody will reap the benefits of those thousands of advertising dollars wasted by the University.

Don't let any of these web site tragedies happen to you. Make sure that your site decisions aren't in the hands of dummies!