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Thursday, October 09, 2008
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How to Recession-Proof Your Income
Washington, DC - Unless you live in the wilderness, you know the news on the economy is not good. Employers have been cutting workers from their payrolls for six months straight, according to the Labor Department, and economists don’t expect the job market to improve any time soon.
Steven D. Strauss is a lawyer, author and speaker who specializes in small business and entrepreneurship. He writes a column in USA Today and his latest book is “The Small Business Bible.” He offers several tips on how to recession-proof your income in uncertain economic times.
Do what you love
Having trouble coming up with a business idea? Starting a small business is not only a great strategy for protecting your income; it’s also an opportunity to make a living doing something you truly love. Start by thinking of all of the things you enjoy doing in your spare time, and then see if you can come up with a way to make them profitable. For example, if you’re constantly knitting clothing for your friends and family, why not offer your products to the masses? Or, if you’ve been collecting baseball cards since you were a kid, you could create a database for people to buy, sell and trade them. The possibilities are virtually endless when you get creative.
Make your home your home-base
Setting up a small business in your home is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to build a start-up -- especially during a recession. In fact, the 2005 U.S. Census says that small businesses have generated 60 to 80 percent of new net jobs annually in the country during the last decade.
“By working out of your home you can avoid the not insignificant costs of a brick-and-mortar storefront, such as rent and utilities. And, by working from home you’ll eliminate all commuting costs, which is especially important with the rapid increases of gas prices this year,“ says Strauss.
Go global without going anywhere
When looking at the various types of home-based small businesses, online businesses are not only the most affordable; they also have the highest impact. Over the last several years there has been an increasing trend for businesses, large and small, to get online.
With an online storefront you can sell anywhere. Even if your state is in a recession, it's important to keep in mind that other places around the world are not, and you can easily reach those global markets with a good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign. Drop-shipping -- a supply technique in which the retailer transfers customer orders to wholesalers who then ship the goods directly to the customer -- completely eliminates all storage costs and keeps your home office clutter-free.
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Wednesday, October 08, 2008
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Video SEO Tips
Most everyone today knows that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) remains as important today as it ever was.
And…
It is no secret how popular online multimedia is on today's web.
Is it possible to SEO with video and reach a positive outcome?
Yes.
Let's look at some key video SEO tips that you can easily implement. There are other video tips to be sure, but our focus will be looking at tips that will combine the two concepts as one within this article.
*** Create A Video Profile ***
What is a video profile?
Many video directories give people the ability to actually create a profile on their system. An opportunity one loses by just using an automated video submission service like Traffic Geyser. Don't get me wrong; Traffic Geyser is an excellent tool to add to your Internet Marketing arsenal. However, when doing so it works to your great advantage to actually logon personally to the different video directories and personalize your profile.
Here's why.
People look at the online profiles of video directories just as much as they do with article directories like SearchWarp.com.
Further, those profiles can and do include things like your name, what your about and perhaps most importantly a URL back to your website. Especially on those video directories that have a high Google page rank like YouTube, you want all the backlinks they will give you. Why pass up a free opportunity?
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Tuesday, October 07, 2008
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Relationship marketing via your company website
In today's globally competitive business environment, there is an ever increasing number of companies embracing the Internet and developing a company presence on the World Wide Web. A company website, however, is not merely a company profile, but rather an invaluable communication and relationship marketing tool. So why then do companies still utilise their websites as a mere ‘window' into their business - when in fact a dynamic and interactive website can facilitate and drive real relationship building with your market?
This relationship needs to be driven by marketing - certainly this concept of ‘relationship' marketing is not new, but what is new is the concept of how business can create a customer experience that challenges traditional thinking and allows consistent re-invention in a changing market environment via their online presence. Today, service and the ability to make customers feel valued is what will keep an organisation relevant - all of which can be well communicated and driven through correct online marketing.
With the advent of technology diversity available to marketers there is no longer any excuse for not maximising customer relationships online - especially if we consider that consumer confidence in the Internet has increased. According to Online Publishers Association, online media usage in South Africa has grown by a staggering 120%* in the past two years. As a result, if companies want to continue to remain relevant is this digital world, they need to give customers a single view of the organisation and utilise the online environment as a channel that supports worthwhile engagements with customers - don't be fooled by the old adage of merely letting customers read content on a site - this is not a worthwhile experience!
We all know that a good website is one that has all of the conventional titbits of company information, including, an overview of the company, its products or services, mission and vision, contact details and generally displays a sense of the company's culture. However, a great website is one that provides the visitor with a rich interface that serves as a business-enabling tool. It is this, together with additional touch points like mobile applications, contact centers, e-commerce and business process outsourcing; which determines the key factors to most buying decisions and therefore closed-loop processes and relationship marketing strategies are essential to ensuring the customer experience is relevant and worthwhile.
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Thursday, October 02, 2008
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SEO Tips: Courting Google with Your Content
http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"> name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12">Google recently made changes to its "Submit Your Content" page, with the goal being to make it easier for people to share their information with the search company.
"As you have put more of your organization's information online, we've introduced more services for organizing and distributing that information. We've heard from a number of you that it's not always clear how to help us find your content — or obvious how users discover your content at Google. Submit Your Content, and this blog, aim to change that," wrote Rick Klau of Google's content partnerships.
Because search engines clearly do a good job of finding Web content — after all that is their main objective — you may think manually feeding your content isn't so important. But given that Google plays such a critical role in e-commerce, considering the majority of shoppers use it to find products, it makes sense to take advantage of any Google submission features out there to be sure that Google is processing all facets of your e-commerce site.
Google has always offered tools for submitting content, but the key features weren't always easy to figure out and news about them, like much of Google's updates, flew mostly under the radar. Google has now reorganized the interface, making it easier to understand the steps in the submission process.
Four Categories for Submitting Content
Here we highlight the new version of the Google site submission page, now organized into four categories: Web, local, media and "items for sale." If you're thinking only the last category is relevant for e-tailers, think again. Each of these categories contain tools, most of them free and fairly easy to use, that can help you optimize your Web shop for Google.
1. Web:
Google describes this entry point as follows: "Increase your visibility by submitting and optimizing your Web site for Google search, and distributing your content across Google and the Web at large." This is where every e-tailer should start, as the basic "Add Your URL" feature is found here, as well as traffic and search optimization tools, found under Webmaster Tools.
One particularly important, and often overlooked, aid in Webmaster Tools is the "submit a Sitemap" feature. This gives Google a blueprint of your site, making it easier to index. In fact, Google recommends the first three steps of any content submission process as: submitting the URL, submitting a Sitemap and listing your business in the Local Business Center. (For more information on Google Sitemaps, see editor's picks and related stories.)
2. Local:
You will want to include your e-commerce information here if location is pertinent to your products or services. For instance, if you sell heavy equipment that can't be delivered, groom or care for pets or provide home spa treatments. And, naturally, if you have a brick-and-mortar store, you need to be listed here. The Mapplets, or mini-applications that run within Google Maps, only take a few minutes to create, and provide you with branded results in Google Maps — and a link back to your site.
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Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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SEO Products: Distinctiveness and Utility
There are varied options available to promote the website and optimize the search engine. Out of the numerous choices of SEO products, it becomes very difficult to arrive at a conclusion as to which SEO product to go in for. Each of the SEO products claims to bring your website at the top by increasing the amount of traffic. Here, it becomes of utmost importance to see the unique features that the various SEO products are offering and then make the final selection. To begin with, let us have an understanding of what is the concept of search engine optimization all about.
As the name suggests, search engine optimization (SEO) is the technique of optimizing the website in such a manner that your website occupies a commanding position in the list of search results displayed by the search engine for a particular keyword. For every keyword, there are innumerable websites that contain articles on the subject matter being searched for. On the basis of relevance of the content, the search engine ranks the websites.
In the normal course, the users of internet are in the habit of surfing the first three or four websites that are shown by the search engine. The prime objective of almost all the websites is to appear on the top three positions. It is here that SEO products play a vital role by highlighting your website and driving the customers towards your webpages. SEO products is a very broad category consisting of SEO tools, search engine marketing guides, SEO books and popularity linking tools. SEO products can be divided into several broad categories on the basis of their function.
Classification of SEO
• Design SEO: This aspect of SEO takes care of the various elements of designing such as pictures, page size, and Flash movies etc that have an effect on the search engine result page.
• Content SEO: Content SEO is all about making the article rich in keywords and ensuring that the matter is relevant. Content SEO includes the optimization of text, right choice of headings and subheadings, usage of the correct font size as well as style and the proper selection of Meta data related to the particular web page.
• Page rank SEO: It is related to the promotion of the specific web pages. Popularity index comprises of inbound and outbound links on the webpage. The inbound index indicates the extent to which the other websites find your content good, which in turn helps to establish the credibility of your website.
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