How to Create Quality Backlinks for Small Business Websites | Small Business Odyssey

Backlinks: To Buy or Not to Buy, That is the Question!

October 15, 2011 By Ron Passfield 1 Comment

 

Backlinks are one of the core measures that Google uses to evaluate a small business website/blog and determine where the site will appear in search engine results. 

Unfortunately, many small business owners have been convinced by some Internet marketers to buy links to build up the ranking of their websites.

via smallbusinessodyssey.com

Internet marketers are reporting that Google is on the warpath over artificially created backlinks. Some websites have been sandboxed by Google where the owners have bought numerous links, others have been removed from the search engine results (SERPs). This post discusses the issues.

Posted via email from Ronpass posterous

smallbusinessodyssey.com - Part 2

Social Media: Where Are Your Customers Conversing?

By Ron Passfield on Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 | No Comments

 

With the growth of social media, small business owners face new challenges in terms of locating their clients/customers.  Added to this is the fact that recent estimates show that 80% of people who have access to the Internet start their search via the Web, not via printed media (e.g. Yellow Pages or newspapers).

via smallbusinessodyssey.com

Discusses the importance of knowing what social media your small business customers are using and knowing how to locate them and connect with them. The blog post stresses the importance of participating in the online conversation.

Posted via email from Ronpass posterous

Turn Photos into Animated Music Videos

Turn Photos into Video to Promote Your Small Business

By Ron Passfield on Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 | 1 Comment

 

One of the easiest ways to market your small business is to turn your photos into video.  You must have lots of photos lying around that you can use for this purpose.  However, if you want to make the most of this highly effective marketing option, you can be more deliberate about what photos you take and the videos you create.

via smallbusinessodyssey.com

Here I discuss how to use Animoto to turn your photos into videos for the purpose of business marketing. The steps are simple but the results can be quite stunning:
http://animoto.com/?ref=tzolcekr

Posted via email from Ronpass posterous

Check Your Business Listing in Local Business Directories | smallbusinessodyssey.com

Are Your Listings in Local Business Directories Accurate?

by Ron Passfield on Monday, October 10th, 2011 | No Comments

I was checking the search results for my business name, Merit Solutions Australia, in Google and was surprised with the results from local business directories.

A lot of the entries in the first two pages of Google results were listings from local business directories.

These directories create business listings (much like Google and Facebook have done recently) by scraping content from the Internet.  The only problem with the local business directories, as I found, is that a lot of the information is incorrect (because it is out of date).

via smallbusinessodyssey.com

While it is great to have your small business automatically listed on Local Business Directories, one of the problems is that the information is often inaccurate and this can be a real problem when people are searching on your business name. This blog post looks at the impact of the local business listings and what to do about them.

Posted via email from Ronpass posterous

smallbusinessodyssey.com - Part 2

Small Business Marketing: A Personal Odyssey

By Ron Passfield on Sunday, October 9th, 2011 | No Comments

Human Resource Consultancy

Our small business was created in 1996 and following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008, we found that we had to become actively engaged in online small business marketing.

Up until the GFC, our gross income had been growing at around 20% per year and we did not have to actively market our small business.  Most business arrived by word of mouth through the professional services provided by our HR consultants.

However, with the GFC, our business income dropped by 50% in six months.  So we had to look at ways to improve the income from our small business.

via smallbusinessodyssey.com

This is the post that launched my new blog, http://www.smallbusinessodyssey.com

I am sharing my journey into online marketing of my offline small business. I'll share the strategies and tactics I use in day-to-day marketing of our business:
http://www.meritsolutions.com.au

Posted via email from Ronpass posterous

Google Plus and Google +1

Google has recently started to change the Search Engine landscape,
partly as a response to Facebook.

Google is in the process of a fundamental paradigm change:

• from content to people
• from "page rank" to "author rank"

Google has established its own social network in the form
of Google Plus which is only open by invitation at the moment
(ask your friends or contacts for an invitation!).

It has also introduced the concept of "author rank" via the +1
buttons that you see proliferating the Internet.  This rating
scheme operates similar to Facebook "likes", although it
has more powerful effects.

You will soon start noticing members of your Google Plus "circles"
appearing in your search results because they have indicated
a +1 rating for the relevant search result.

Author thumbnails will also appear in the right hand column of searchresults where the author is part of your circle and has indicated
(by coding) that they are a real person and the actual author of the
content.

The impacts of the new Google Plus and Google +1 are explained
in these resources:

Ed Dale Video - The Google Revolution That Changes Everything

Michelle MacPhearson - Getting Your Thumbnail in Google's Search Results

Ryan Malone - Google Author Markup Tutorial


The best how-to training resource I have come across so
far is listed below (not an affiliate link):

Google Plus Attack

****************************************************

Ron Passfield, PhD, Giant Squid100, Co-Founder of Wizzley
and Director of Merit Solutions Australia.

Wizzley: A Writers' Community Launches

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