You’ve spent a great deal of time and effort optimizing your website for the search engines. Why? Because a stellar search ranking is how you’re going to get visitors and ultimately, customers. SEO has been pegged as the most important – and only – way to cultivate traffic. Your SEO tactics have been successful, and you’re among the top results for your keywords. And then comes a curveball. Siri and Her Effect on SEO and Local Search For millions of Apple iPhone 4S users, and there are more of them every day, your SEO won’t matter. Meet Siri. She’s a clever little witch, and you’re going to have to reassess your current SEO tactics if you hope to please her. And please her you must, because iPhone users rely on her. Instead of opening a search engine and manually typing keywords, they’re just going to ask Siri to find them what they’re looking for. And Siri, being the intelligent voice – Read the full article
Technology constantly affects the way that we are doing business. Without technology, our business is slower, less efficient, and if we chose to ignore the changes, our business could suffer dramatically. One of the best business tools that has revolutionized the way we do business is the Mac by Apple. With the Mac (iMac, iPad, MacBook, iPhone), connecting business deals, emails, and even live conferences, can happen with simplicity. The innovative design offers so many benefits to business users around the world. With a large interactive screen you can be networking, staying on task, and most importantly making money for your business with the click of a mouse. Developers know the advantages of using an iMac as a business tool, and have made some great apps to match, many of which are free. Here are the top ten FREE business apps as ranked on iTunes for your Mac! 10. Chimport Chimport is a business tool that allows you to – Read the full article
It’s great to drive traffic – online and offline – from all corners of the world. But if you’re a smart marketer, you’ll realize you don’t have to be so international – at least not when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Thanks to local search, businesses don’t have to squander resources on attracting customers and visitors that are beyond their geographic reach anyway. One can instead focus on catering to the heart of the locals. Want to find out how? Here’s a list of 17 great local SEO and local search tips, tricks, and tools to help you get started. Claim. Claim your local listing on Google Places. While you’re at it, go to Bing Local and Yahoo Local and claim your listings there, too. Apply best practices. Read our guide on Google Places to put yourself closer to the center of the map. Submit your info to the online yellow pages. Sign up in online directories and – Read the full article
As you’ll notice, we’ve been focusing recently on the “marriage” of search engine optimization and social media – and talking about things like how you can use social media sites for your SEO campaign, or how you can leverage Twitter for link building. We believe that social can have a tremendous impact on search. And by “social” we don’t mean just Twitter and Facebook. We take into account other websites, too, like Reddit. Reddit – a social bookmarking site – is one of the darlings that we’re keeping an eye on this 2011. It has been around, having been launched 5 years ago, but Reddit enjoyed its best year last 2010 when it experienced a 300 percent surge in traffic (thanks largely to the expense of faltering Digg) and record 829 million page views last December alone. The site markets itself as “the voice of the Internet – (with) news before it happens”. Being a social bookmarking site, Reddit delivers – Read the full article
Did you know that 20 percent of all searches on the Internet are for specific locations or businesses? Search giant Google did, and that’s why they changed Google Local to Google Places and began to display – for every search query that may be locally or geographically influenced – the local information for businesses, maps, and directions in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Right now, Google displays seven Places results for every search, as well as a map on the right side of the SERP that shows exactly where these seven places are. Obviously, Google Places pages help customers search these maps for local information while finding businesses within their area that are relevant to their search. Meanwhile, for small businesses, mom-and-pops, stores, offices, and other organizations with a physical address, Google Places is a unique local search tool that can drive and direct those who are searching to those who have something to offer or sell. Leverage this – Read the full article
Foursquare sounds like fun. We’ve said it before: as a location-based social networking platform, it is able to engage mobile users to explore neighborhoods, do “check-ins”, find friends, play social city games, unlock cool badges, win “Mayorships”, and earn points and rewards. And thanks to its innovative social mechanics, Foursquare is making city after city a social media playground. Let’s admit it, though. Foursquare doesn’t sound business-y. It doesn’t exactly have the feel of a traditional corporate strategy – and if you had to present this in the boardroom to your marketing director or CEO, you might be disposed to think you’re speaking in a language that they can’t understand. Here’s some good news. Foursquare – if leveraged properly – is as viable a marketing tool as any, perfect for boosting your business. Foursquare users check-in at all kinds of places – cafes, bars, shops, malls, hotels, restaurants, parks, homes, offices, recreational areas, day spa, and events, among many others. – Read the full article
As a small business owner, you may find yourself going crazy over the number of things you have to do for work. But don’t worry: if you own an Apple iPhone, you’ll at least have some apps at your disposal – apps which can truly help you stay connected to your business and hang on to a little bit of sanity. While the iPhone is a fun device, it can also make for a great business tool – especially if you’re always on the go. Here are several Apple iPhone apps with which you, as a small business owner, cannot go wrong. Money matters A number of apps let you keep track of your expenses and finances. These include BalanceDo, a productivity app through which you can send customer invoices, track receivables or billings, and manage payments through PayPal. If you want to perform credit card transactions with your iPhone, check out MerchantWare Mobile. (You’ll need a Merchant Warehouse account.) – Read the full article
Looking to boost local traffic to your site? It’s a must these days, especially if you’re a small business. Getting listed puts you on the online map. Optimizing that listing lets your customers and potentials know where and how to find you. Local SEO: it’s all about getting local consumers in the door and the phone ringing. Here are 6 things that you absolutely must do when optimizing your local business listing. We say ‘must do’; you don’t want to lose out on higher rankings, do you? 1. Claim and submit. List your business at Google Maps. This, you should know already. But it doesn’t end there. Take advantage of other search engines. Claim your listing at Yahoo! Local, Bing Local and Best of the Web. They’re free to submit your information. On top of that, submit your information to major data providers like InfoUSA, Acxiom, and Localeze. The more listings you have in more local business directories, the more – Read the full article
