Business Development Tips, SEO & Effective Marketing Strategies

In a recent post entitled Introducing Google Apps for Government, Google announced that “Google Apps is the first suite of cloud computing applications to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the US Federal Government.” For those of you new to the term, cloud computing refers to the creation, storage and management of documents and communications online as opposed to on your desktop or laptop computer.

Offering such a high level, if not the highest level of security, government agencies, institutions, and businesses of all sizes can now “move to the cloud with confidence.” The beauty of the Google Apps cloud is the ability to share documents/spreadsheets and collaborate in their creation in a live environment online. No more trying to email large files or trying to remember which email has the latest version!

Google Apps allows you to share documents and spreadsheets that live in the cloud, viewing and editing them simultaneously with your team members. You can work with confidence knowing your team is literally on the same page with the most current information. Google Apps for Government offers users the highest level of security. However, to accommodate different levels of users, Google Apps is available for both Personal and Business use. Business Editions include Premier, Standard, Education, Government and Non-Profit.

The features and tools of the Standard, Education and Non-Profit Editions are the same and are available to users for free (non-profits with over 3,000 users are offered upgrade to Premier Edition at 40% discount of $30/user/year).  The Premier and Government Editions are more feature-rich, with a cost of $50 per user/year, and include 25 GB of Gmail storage per user. Visit the links included here to learn more about the features and tools available with each Edition.

Google’s cloud promises users “higher reliability, best-in-class disaster recovery and access to a steady stream of innovation.”  With no hardware or software to install and maintain, Google’s cloud may be a great choice for companies looking to reduce travel and IT costs or just the administrative headaches associated with the creation, sharing, and management of important documents, spreadsheets, reports, and presentations among group members.

Tags: cloud computing, Google Apps for Government, Google cloud

Since Facebook launched in 2004 it has expanded its usership to a whopping 500 million plus users. Reuniting old friends and family, as well as offering opportunities to market your brand, more small business owners are taking advantage of Facebook’s advertising model to spread the word about their company.

Comparable to Google Adwords, SEO and marketing experts believe the Facebook model is one of the first of its kind  with the potential to give Google Adwords a run for their money.

So how does the Facebook advertising model work?

Business owners with an online presence can set up a Facebook account and establish a  page for your business. At the top of the page is a “Like” button, which can also be embedded on your online site to draw more users to your Facebook page.

On your Facebook landing page you are offered the option to promote the page with an ad. Clicking on the link, you are also given the ability to advertise your website instead of your Facebook business page. After uploading an eye-catching, relevant image, you are then taken to a page allowing you to choose your advertising demographic. Based on your business model and location, you can strategically target your ideal audience.  This feature is incredibly cool and useful as you see your ads potential reach adjust as you edit the demographic selection criteria.

Considering your personal advertising budget, you can choose a daily amount to spend and a schedule of times you want your ad to run. A bit of careful research on times your targeted demographic uses Facebook could potentially save you a lot of money, while still reaching your target audience. For example, if you were targeting college students, later evenings when they were studying or procrastinating by posting to their Facebook wall, an ad running during that strategic time would potentially reach your target audience more effectively.

Your ad appears only on Facebook currently. When compared to the present rival advertising model offered by Google Adwords, the potential to reach as large an audience seems to be lacking since Google Adwords tend to appear all over the Internet.

On the other hand, there are other benefits to the Facebook model that Google doesn’t offer. For example, through creating a fan page your target audience can  subscribe and “Like,” as well as interact with your company and its representatives, you have the opportunity of receiving direct feedback from your target audience. You can also provide regular updates directly, and everyone in your network will have access to them immediately, keeping them in the know about your brand.

Taking advantage of social media sites like Facebook to market your business may seem like a lot of work, especially if you are new to the concept. It’s a competitive market that requires a bit of personal interaction on a regular basis to keep people interested. In the interim, as more companies, both big and small, begin using social media to their advantage, getting in on the action now will help you get established long before the trend shifts to accommodate the next big thing.

In a recent post by Eric Enge for Search Engine Land™ entitled SEO Implications Of Google’s “Reasonable Surfer” Patent, Eric explains that Google’s newly patented link analysis technology “basically states that all links on a page do not have to carry (or pass) the same weight. The concept is that the value a link should pass to a target page will be largely based on the probability that a user would click on it.”

Enge goes on to explain that the technology’s qualitative analysis determines such things as:

• “Links to unrelated content are highly unlikely to be clicked
• Specific types of content, such as “about us” or “privacy” pages, may be more—or less—likely to get clicked, depending on context
• Location of the link on the page (above the fold should get more weight than below the fold)
• Emphasis to make links more prominent, such as changing size or color, should add weight”

The presentation, placement and emphasis of links on your web pages are more significant now than ever before.

The effect on a website owner of Google’s continued technological improvements to its ranking and analysis systems is greater accountability.

Google wants you to think about everything you put on your web pages and ensure that it is highly relevant and valuable to the end-user. If considered elements your web pages are lacking, your total ranking score will be affected.

As Enge points out  ”the concept of how a reasonable surfer would behave appears to have a lot of merit, and the search engines are investing everything they can in better ranking systems and ones that reduce the impact of spam.”

Another important consideration he expresses is that “basic usability guidelines still apply. Understanding how a user sees your site and their behavior when they interact with it has always made sense. Now consider the idea that this can [not only] influence the ranking of a given page, but also the value of the links it provides to other web pages.”

Search engine optimization is more important now than ever.

Every aspect of your website, from site architecture and content to external linking must be carefully, thoughtfully and strategically planned.

Participation in the search engines, particularly Google, is like an on-going entrance audition. The adjudicators hold a score card of evolving criteria upon which you are being constantly judged. If you want to “get in” and “stay in,” you’d better make sure you aren’t lacking in any way.

Why give them a reason to say “no.”

For more technical information about the effects of Google’s new patented technology read Google’s Reasonable Surfer: How the Value of a Link May Differ Based upon Link and Document Features and User Data.

Tags: Google, Google's Reasonable Surfer Patent, link analysis, outbound links, Search Engine Optimization, search engines, website design

I recently received a request from a reader to clarify exactly what “keyword stuffing” is.

Basically, keyword stuffing is predominantly a black hat seo technique meant to trick (or “influence”) the search engines into indexing a web page for more terms then are relevant to the content found on the page.

‘Keyword stuffing’ is evident when a laundry list of terms appears in the title tag and meta tags.

Worst offenders may include terms that are often searched in the engines yet have nothing at all to do with the page or even site.

If your company sells several things, as most do, all of the terms related to them should not be mentioned in the title tag or stuffed into the meta tags on each page. They should not be stuffed into the web page copy either for that matter.

(For those of you who have no idea what a meta keywords tag is, it is an element of your web page that is used by the web developer to provide more information to the search engines about your web page. It looks like this:  <meta name = “keywords” content=“key word phrase” />)

Because of the abuse of this tag Google no longer even relies on the information placed here to determine relevance.

There are many variations on this kind of keyword deception. Invisible text is another black hat seo technique used to improve relevance by increasing keyword density or the number of keywords on the page in relation to all the text on the page. The keywords are placed on the web page using the same color as the page’s background so that they cannot be seen by people but they will be scanned by the search engine spiders.

Search Engines have matured enough to be wise to most black hat tactics and the penalties for engaging in illegitimate search engine optimization practices are pretty steep. They may include a total ban of the offender’s web pages from the engine.

The best practice is to play by the rules. Keep your web page content highly focused. If you sell many types of products create a product group landing page and then a separate landing page for each product type.

Help the search engines to index and retrieve your web pages by making their job easy.

To learn more about keywords and ranking see my blog post Effective SEO Tip When Looking to Rank for Additional Key Word Phrases.

Tags: black hat seo, keyword stuffing, Search Engine Optimization, seo

According to both the June, 2010 Manufacturing ISM Report on Business and the Non-Manufacturing ISM Report on Business the overall economy continues to grow, joblessness is decreasing  (somewhat), and growth is happening albeit at a slow rate. So what effect can we expect this to have on online holiday retail?  And what do we need to do to get ready for the online selling season?

In an interview with AdAge at the end of the holiday shopping season last year, Phil Rist of Big Research stated, “Whether they were saving on shipping or using an in-store coupon, shoppers dug through every avenue of potential savings before choosing to commit.”

Finding ways to help consumers still have what they desire while realizing what they save may be even more important this year in stimulating consumer spending online. By starting with targeted email campaigns to loyal customers for savings on items you already know to be of interest to them, you are attracting their attention to your brand.  Follow up emails and search engine marketing initiatives with highly targeted landing pages focused on the ways in which they can save will work to maintain that attention throughout the holiday shopping.

Something to keep in mind is women are typically early shoppers looking for bargains while most men are procrastinators who don’t really enjoy holiday shopping and end up spending more money at the eleventh hour. That’s not to say, necessarily, that men don’t like saving money.  Focus your efforts where you are sure to garner the attention you need to get the ball rolling.

Consider solidifying the attention of your loyal customers first, particularly women, who are the early shoppers, and solicit them to use word-of-mouth to help you get new customers. Here’s where social media plays an important role. Get the conversations started early enough so shoppers know to go to you to find not only the quality and selection they are after but most importantly the deals.

Now is the time to start planning and scheduling your online initiatives for the holidays. The best approach online is going to be cross-channel in order to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the search engines, email, your website, and social media. A well-coordinated approach that delivers the right messages to the right audience at the opportune time puts you in the best position to ensure your online holiday retail success.

Tags: holiday retail, online shopping, retail