When your customer base is small, you can be exceptionally responsive to the needs and desires of those customers. But what about when the goal is active growth? Your website acts as a natural extension of word of mouth (not a substitute for it). [Read Full Article]

In February, Darren Shaw of Whitespark presented the much anticipated Local Search Ranking Factors (2017) at a Local U workshop. Let us break it down into the executive summary you need to run it up the chain. [Read Full Article]

Looking back on the past year, the importance of maintaining your business in the digital realm is readily apparent. Gone are the days of thumbing through a phone book, reorganizing your Rolodex, and coupon-clipping apart your local paper. Real-time information, mapping, and customer reviews are ubiquitous in local search. A wealth of information is at the click of a button - at least it’s expected to be -- if you’re a consumer. Consider some of this data. According to a Cisco update, global mobile data traffic grew an overall 81 percent last year. To help put that in perspective, consider that mobile data traffic this year was almost 18 times the size of the entire global internet data traffic in 2000, and more than 500 million new mobile device connections were accounted for in the last year. The growth is exponential. At the end of 2013, a Busin... [Read Full Article]

Some of the new TLDs that have been talked about for months are now available. [Read Full Article]

I read a WSJ article this morning announcing that for the first time in more than a decade, a whole slew of new and descriptive domains are scheduled to roll out this year. The actual domains haven’t been revealed yet, but apparently we may see domains like .plumber and .newyork. [Read Full Article]

If your business doesn't have a webpage on the internet already, you're way past overdue to get one. [Read Full Article]

Business blogs are great. Not only do consumers get information on company's marketing campaigns, successes, and industry news, but also insight on the company itself. Blogs used correctly will draw people in, and create a great business-customer relationship. Those blogs which fail at creating this relationship and are used incorrectly could prove detrimental to your business. There are a few simple things that your business blog can do stop your blog up for business failure. Do you want to run your business into the ground? Don't Include RSS Feeds "Who cares about making it convenient for those who are following you? If they want to find your blog, they will. What's the use for an RSS feed?" RSS feeds are a great way for your loyal readers to receive updates immediately each time your blog is updated. These people could include employees, customers, potential customers, competitors, or random people on the internet looking to gain in... [Read Full Article]

Tips from March 18, 2010 The Small Business tips today discuss SEO (search engine optimization) for blogs. Keep your content fresh. The easiest tip for SEO is to have great content that will get you found without much promoting. The quality of your work and original content will get you found on the top search engines. Keywords - Important words that people will search for search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, or Bing, are important when creating your blog post. Keywords should be in your title, subtitle, URL, and tags. Posting links to your blog in outside sources provides links back to your website. Unfortunately, this could also be labeled as spam if done incorrectly. Keep posting your blogs on comments to other blogs in your industry, or those that you know personally and professionally. Don't get too carried away, you could ruin your reputation. Social media provides a great way to provide a link for others outside your... [Read Full Article]