Archive for June, 2009

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Local Business Resources

June 25th, 2009

What are some Local Online Marketing resources available for local and small businesses?

Domain? There are easy inexpensive domain registration options available.  My favorite is Godaddy.  Make sure you don’t buy into any of their other services, just stick with the $10 domain registration.  Make sure you register for at least 3 years.  This will tell Search Engines that you are in it for the long haul, creating valuable content.  Don’t use the private registration either.

Website? For a simple no cost domain, Google Sites is your answer.  If you want a little more control that just a web template, try Bluehost.  Expect to pay around $7-$10/month.

Email? I currently use and have used Google app mail.  For small businesses with less than 100 employees, it is a great solution.  Your mail will be unavailable a few times a year, but hey its free and all web based.  You don’t need to buy an email client.  Make sure you just do the free hosting, don’t pay for the premium service.

Web design/logo? The basic web design will be taken care of through your web hosting company.  However you probably need a logo created.  For a cheap do it yourself solution, logomaker.  It really does give you some nice designs.  For a more professional look, the sister website to logomaker is logoworks.  Expect to pay about $300 for a few designers to submit their designs.  You pick the best one and make changes as needed.

Business cards and letter head paper?  The two biggest players are logoworks sister site, MarketSplash and VistaPrint.   Do a search on the internet and you will find they offer free business cards.  They are both participating in aggressive competition.  You as a small business owner can take advantage of that.

Local Advertising? As a local business, the best resources you have are the local resources offered by the big three Search Engines.  Google local, Yahoo local and MSN(Bing) local.  This will get you the most bang for the buck.

And last but not least, Local Online Marketing?  There are many full service companies offering PPC (pay per click) and SEO(search engine optimization).  Typically for a local or small business, you don’t need these services.  There are also a lot of learn it yourself sites that I am sure you don’t want to spend the time, nor care to learn.

This is where I pitch our company, Boostability for local online marketing.  We give you the easy to use tools and resources to effectively run an SEO compaign.  We tell you what to do, how to do it and why.  No need to pay someone or take a college course to get yourself found on the search engines.

Does anyone else have any other resources that local and small businesses are looking for?

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Are there SEO best practices by Google?

June 22nd, 2009

Local Business trying to do their own Local Online Marketing are asking themselves the same questions. What are SEO best practices?  What can I do to improve my Search Engine Visibility on Google?

Although Google doesn’t publish a best practice guide, they do have a resource called “Webmaster tools”.   Within the help section there are a few notable sections ( Webmaster tools checklist and Webmaster Guidelines ) and a PDF document called Search Engine Optimization starter guide is available.

Before Google released these resources I think they really frowned upon companies helping other companies rank on their search engine.  They viewed it as cheating the system.  Granted there are SEO companies that do try to “beat the system”, but there are many that just help companies follow best practices.

Google should really embrace these types of companies, because they are helping search engines become more relevant.  I’ve recently read some articles claiming to be discriminated by Google because of what they do.   I can’t see why any search engine would do this as long as they are following their rules.   Are they unreasonable?  Maybe, but they are just trying to keep people from abusing the system.

At Boostability, we try to follow what we think would be Google best practices.   What are their best practices?  From their published document Webmaster Guidelines.  Here is a brief summary.

  • Website needs to be in a easy readable format for the search engines.
  • Structure needs to be easily followable for crawler.
  • Format content in a way the search engine can tell what the site is about.
  • Never buy or trade links.
  • Don’t spam with automated submit programs.
  • Automated queries checking ranking is a no no.

There you go, my top 6. :-)   Just a joke on my 1001 tips blog entry.

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Negative reviews

June 18th, 2009

Reputation management.  This has been a problem for many businesses. Most recently my previous company I worked at has had this problem. They even had the CEO do some sort of Internet radio interview and talked about the issue. What wasn’t addressed is what causes people to leave bad reviews?

First, you may have a bad product. If I purchased a car and 3 days later I am stranded on the freeway. You bet I will not be happy with the product and want to tell people about it.

Second, bad customer service. I recently had a bad experience with a Dell laptop I ordered. I spent 4 hours on the phone trying to resolve a problem. I had rude customer service reps on top of the frustration I already was feeling. I even wrote a review on hubpage that ranks on the first page results for “Dell XPS 13 review”. Around 50-100 people a day read my review.

Third, fake reviews meant to defraud your company. Above I talked about my previous company getting some bad reviews. They are claiming they are fraudulent reviews possibly left by a competitor. In fact Boostability even had some fake reviews pop up before we have even launched our product. Search for Boostability scam and you will find it.

The first two reasons are easily fixable. Treat people with respect and give good customer service. You will never get a bad post even if you have a crappy product if you make things right with them. Using the example above of the car that broke down. What if the dealer offered me a rental or even agreed to buy the car back. There would be no reason to leave bad feedback.

The third reason is really out of your control. This is a problem lots of customers have. The best thing you can do is respond to the complaint publicly. Be truthful but don’t attack the post. I like to add a little humor into my responses. This lets potential customers know that you want to take care of the issue and you are responsive to complaints.

There is one issue that I am not sure how to deal with. One of our competitors created a review site that they own, so we cannot respond to it. Do a search on “boostability compare”. The top listing is done by a company called Vizad who owns Lotus Jump. I guess they view us as competition, we don’t think they are even in the same league as us. Their solution of creating a fake review site is very unethical and fraudulent. If anyone has a solution, let us know.

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Posted in Online reputation management

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