To be clear: I don’t refer bad fits to my clients. At least, not intentionally.

The criteria for choosing a web developer for a client referral seems like a no-brainer to me. I pick the developer best suited to meet the client’s web development, budgetary and professional needs. Period.

But I’m consistently surprised at how many web developers in my network don’t “get” this philosophy. Some think that I should refer ALL my web development projects to them, regardless of their past customer service. Others think that because they’ve subcontracted me to do copywriting work for them, I owe it to them to send any web development projects that come my way to them. A rare few maintain the philosophy that the best way to get referrals from me is to provide consistent product quality and customer service. (Can you guess which type is my favorite?)

Just because I’ve done work for or with you doesn’t mean I owe you my clients’ business

This assumption has me flummoxed. Maybe it’s because I’m idealist Gen Y who believes that product/service quality trumps all; maybe it’s because I’ve never taken a sales and marketing class in my life and don’t “understand” how “real” business etiquette works. Whatever the reason, this old-school philosophy doesn’t sit well with me. At all.

Yes, I appreciate each and every business opportunity that’s presented to me. I value each one of my clients and show my appreciation by providing the best service I possibly can, at a reasonable price. But when it comes to choosing which service providers I refer my other hard-earned clients to, obligation simply doesn’t factor in to my decision making process.

I’ve had several clients who offer SEO and/or development services come out and tell me that they expect me to return the favor by sending projects in their direction. While I understand this old-school “I scratch your back you scratch mine” sales model/philosophy, I don’t feel it applies to the freelance/indie business world. I’m not my clients’ sales rep. I’m their copywriter/SEO/whatever. Likewise, I don’t expect subcontractors I hire to be golden business retrievers for me. Like my work? Great. Refer me. Don’t like my work? Fine. Don’t refer me (but do tell me why, so I can improve myself).

My bottom line = my business reputation, not my profit margin

As I was trying to explain this philosophy to an agency client of mine (who was irate that I would not choose his company to do web development for an SEO project he had referred to me), I was shocked when I was told:

“Well, I guess it would make sense that you would choose an independent web developer over our company, since an independent would be cheaper and there would be more room for project markup for you.”

Um…excuse me?

The idea that the bottom line always = the highest profit at any cost is, in my opinion, another one of those old-school sales model ideals which, as I’ve already established, I think is bogus. My bottom line = maintaining a phenomenal reputation for quality product and service, period. The idea behind this is that a shining reputation brings more business than a mediocre one, and more business = better, more sustainable profit. Putting quality first is a win-win, in my opinion (and that of a lot of other Gen X & Y entrepreneurs).

In this particular case, profit margin was far from my mind (you can tell I majored in the arts, not business); rather, I was looking for a developer who could deliver a cutting-edge, dynamic product to the scale of the project, something I felt the client’s old-school agency couldn’t deliver.

Show me the quality!

It’s really quite simple. If a web developer’s end product is high quality, delivered on time and according to the client’s (or my) expectations, it’s very likely that I will refer his or her services. If a developer doesn’t meet those criteria, then why would it make sense to refer a client to his or her services? After all, each referral I make reflects my own expertise and reputation.

Let’s face it: there are a LOT of web developers out there. Just like there are a lot of SEOs and copywriters out there. I don’t expect to gain new business through obligation and handouts; I grow my business by striving to stay head and shoulders above my competitors in terms of product quality, customer service and use of modern strategies. If you’re not doing the same in your web development business, I simply can’t afford to refer my valued clients’ business to you.

Professionalism and customer service (get polite or get out)

This is another criteria that seems like a no-brainer to me, but with which many developers I’ve encountered seem to struggle. The truth is that providing a fantastic product alone isn’t enough – not if it’s not backed with great customer service. A web developer/designer who is obstinate and uncooperative about meeting the client’s design expectations isn’t providing a great service. Same goes for developers and designers who routinely miss deadlines, fail to communicate clearly with the client or who surprise the client with invoices that are outside of the project agreement.

As a general rule: if I have to spend time mediating between you and an unhappy client I’ve referred to you for web design and development, your services = fail.

Google Places & online directories vs. the phone book

If you compare the costs of advertising in the phone book versus Google and small business directories, it’s a no brainer. Yellow Pages routinely asks upwards to $5,000 or more per year from small business owners for slightly more prominent print listings – combined with something like a whopping estimated 90 extra visitors per month from their online listings (of which I’m very skeptical, considering yp.com is nowhere to be found on the first – or second – page of Google for most local business terms).

The cost of claiming and optimizing Google Places and other online small biz directory listings: $0

Unless you hire a consultant to do the job for you (hint hint). Even then, you’re still looking at only a fraction of Yellow Pages’ asking price for minimal exposure.

What is the O-Pack?

The first – and really most critical – online space for small businesses to dominate is Google Places. Google Places listings (formerly known as Google’s Local Business Center) are local business listings that appear both in Google Maps and in Google’s regular web results, when you search for local business terms.

Depending on the search term, Google’s main web results page displays from zero to seven Google Places listings above regular website results. Most common local business search terms yield seven Google Places listings, aka: the O-pack.

How to optimize your Google Places listing

While there’s still some mystery surrounding Google’s ranking formula for Places listings – even for us SEOs – there are several proven, basic steps business owners can take to boost their Places listing’s rankings. Optimizing a Google Places listing is, thankfully, typically much easier than optimizing a website. No SEO hocus pocus required, just common sense.

Ok, maybe just a little bit of SEO hocus pocus – but nothing most small business owners can’t handle.

1) Claim your listing. If you haven’t already, then this is where you need to get started. But first – check to make sure your business doesn’t already have a listing (you don’t want to create a duplicate – that can cause problems). If you’ve been in business any amount of time, chances are you do.

To search for an existing listing, search for your company’s name under Google Maps. If your business pops up, click on the hyperlinked company name, which will bring you to the Places listing itself. From here, click “business owner” in the upper right hand corner and follow the steps to claim your listing.

If you don’t find your business listing, simply go to google.com/places (while logged in to your most frequently used Google account) and follow the instructions for adding a business.

Keep in mind that in order to verify your ownership, you’ll need to use either the phone number (instant) or mailing address (2-4 weeks) associated with the business listing.

2) Completely and accurately fill out contact info, hours, service radius, etc. This is a simple but important step. Be as complete as possible when filling out company info and contact info – including (and especially) your company’s website, phone number and physical address. Google will cross-check this information against other citations of your company online, so accuracy is important.

Pay special attention when editing your “service area”. For example, if you would like to provide service to customers within a 30 mile radius of your physical address, then include that under “Service areas and location settings”.

3) Use descriptive keywords in listing description & categories. This step is critical! When writing your company description, be thorough, and use keywords that are descriptive of your products and services.

For example, if you own a women’s consignment clothing boutique, you will want to make sure the words “consignment clothes”, “women’s clothing”, “shoes”, “apparel”, etc. are contained within the description. Don’t make Google guess what it is that you do/sell.

Same goes for filling out categories. Don’t simply pick one category – use all five, if you can, including peripheral services and searching for alternate ways of phrasing your products/services to ensure they’re being represented.

4) Upload photos and videos. Upload your company logo, pictures of your storefront, products and/or staff. The more, the better. If you provide a service, include pictures of you on the job. If you provide products, upload ample product pictures. Videos aren’t a deal breaker, but if you have them, certainly add them to your company listing.

5) Get reviews! Now the fun part! Once your company listing is complete, it’s time to start giving it some clout – and that means consumer reviews. There are plenty of ways to go about getting customers to review your listing, starting with posting a link to your shiny new Places listing on social media sites and asking customers to review your business.

Other methods might include:

- asking for reviews and linking to your Places listing in email newsletters

- making online reviews a part of customer satisfaction surveys

- offering incentives for reviews (e.g. 20% off next purchase)

6) List your business in other online small business directories. Google Places listings dominate Google’s results pages, but below the O-pack are results to other important small business directories. Like link building for website SEO, the more often your business name/contact info/address/website are cited online, the more credibility your Places listing will have. In other words, take advantage of as many free small business listings as possible. You can start with my top ten list:

- Yelp.com

- MerchantCircle.com

- Hotfrog.com

- Yellowbook.com

- Kudzu.com

- CitySearch.com

- Superpages.com

- YP.com

- Manta.com

- Yahoo Local Listings

7) Repeat steps 5 & 6 continually.

A few qualifiers

There are never any guarantees when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), and Google Places is no exception. While the above steps are by and large accepted as best practice by most SEO professionals, they’re not failsafe, and Google doesn’t always spit out the results we expect.

In the O-pack listings in the image above, for example, you would expect XO Asian Cuisine – a business owner verified listing and holder of 63 Google reviews – to rank above Angel’s Thai, which is not owner verified and only has 16 listings. But it doesn’t.

When you look more closely, however, these do seem to be playing by the rules – albeit not in the order we would expect. Angel’s Thai has a ton of citations around the web, including mentions on some powerful local media websites, while XO only has a few minimal listings in other directories. In this case, it looks like Google is giving Angel’s Thai’s listing more authority because other, authoritative websites are talking about the business, sidestepping the fact that XO has more than 3x the number of reviews.

Just another reason to give your business visibility in as many online sources as possible. A well-rounded local SEO campaign should include more than just a Google Places listing – which will, ultimately, end up helping your Places listing!

Using stock photos online is something a lot of small businesses are guilty of – myself included (well, a few, anyway. I have a weakness for stock lightboard diagrams). They’re cheap. They’re easy to get. And they look FANTASTIC on your website. But let’s get one thing straight:

you’re not fooling anyone. Everyone notices your stock photos, and not in a good way.

Customers know that this chick:

is not actually on the other end of the phone. Neither is this guy (much as we might like him to be).

They know so because a) they’ve most likely seen the same stock image on another (possibly a competitor’s) website, and b) because, let’s face it, people this pretty generally don’t work in customer service – not over the phone, anyway.

Similarly, website visitors, leads and customers have a pretty good suspicion that the people in stock “our team” photos don’t actually represent your business either.

So what? you ask. So my website has photos of people who are prettier than the people who actually work here. Shouldn’t that be a good thing?

Unless your business sells clothing or makeup, then no. It’s not.

5 reasons why stock images are just plain tacky

1) They’re not authentic/personal. Customers and potential customers visiting your website want to know about your products/services, sure, but they also want to know you, your company’s people, what you’re about. Stock images don’t give visitors any sense of who your company or your people are. They just take up space.

2) They’re unoriginal (i.e. you = your competitors). If your website is using stock images, chances are it has some of the same images your competitors are using – or very similar. Good marketing is all about standing out from the competition, so using the same images your competition is using to represent your brand is kind of shooting yourself in the foot.

3) They make it look like you’re not trying very hard. Putting stock images into your website requires the minimal amount of effort, which doesn’t send a great message about your brand.

4) They lack transparency. Failure to disclose company information – like authentic photos of you, your staff and/or your facility – can also send the wrong message: that you have something to hide. Or, at the very least, that you’re not proud of your staff and/or facility.

5) They’re not as interesting/appealing as they could be. Sure, the models in stock images are pretty, but they also tend to have that cookie-cutter look. With the help of a good photographer, photos of your real-life business and workers in action have the potential to be far more vibrant and full of life than the prettiest stock image.

Real photos of your real-life business = better branding

Photos that you have gone to the effort of hiring a photographer to take can make a world of difference in how you represent yourself online. Rather than rehashing the last five points, take a look at a few small businesses that, despite having limited marketing funds, have gone above and beyond in the creating-unique-content department (in addition to having me write their web content, of course):

616 Lofts (an urban property management company)

Muskegon Brake (an ASE certified auto repair shop)

616 Lofts gets compliments on its website (which is actually a simple WP template – ha!) all the time, and it has a lot to do with its images. Even the images of the city are original – and don’t they just pop?

Similarly, I love how Muskegon Brake’s photos capture the personality of their staff and brand as a whole. The images really depict how personable and playful the company is, which is important, since customer service is one of their key selling points.

Authentic website photos and SEO

While not always the case, I feel it’s important to point out that original photos also open up linking opportunities you wouldn’t have with stock images. 616 Lofts, for example, asked one of their tenants and her friends to pose in a photoshoot for them. She was happy to do so, and when photos of her and her friends were posted on their website, she blogged and tweeted about it – links to their website included. Booyah!

Additionally, photographers will often link to live samples of their work within their online portfolios.

Notably, I’m linking to their websites right now just to point out how cool their images are. Case in point: great content attracts links.

Don’t you want your website to be the kind of site people link to as an example of how to do things right?

Creating & Sharing Information in an Advanced SEO Campaign

discussion leader: Marjorie Steele

Definitions & terminology

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the ongoing process of making websites rank in search engine results pages (SERPs) for their most profitable, relevant terms by ensuring their value is reflected both on-page and off-page.

What are the two key elements of SEO?

On-page SEO: Works with all the content (text, images, video, RSS, etc.), site structure and meta data on the website itself.

Off-page SEO: Deals with links that direct from other websites and social sites to the website (including both main domain and internal pages).

What is the goal of SEO (aside from the obvious)?

To ensure that both the website’s on-page content and its reputation off-page (i.e. links) reflect the purpose of the website accurately (for search engines), provide the website with authority (for s.e.’s and consumers) and attract qualified visitors to the site (for sales).

What is website content?

All the text and media contained on a website. Content conveys brand personality, core message, service information and expertise to both search engines and consumers. It’s both the “face” and the “meat” of a website.

Content & SEO – inseparable

Search engines can’t read images (yet), or interpret brand logos, so they have to interpret a website’s authenticity and authority based on the content – specifically text-based or text-supported content – contained on the website itself.

Creating and sharing new content is also a key way of attracting fresh links – as well as driving traffic.

Search engines like to see:

• websites with plenty of content
• fresh content
• content that is 100% original
• content that is relevant to the rest of the website (meta data, link text, etc.)
• content that is well written (i.e. not spam/keyword stuffed)
• content that attracts and engages readers

Why is content so critical for SEO?

There are many peripheral benefits of great content, in terms of branding, creating an online buzz, representing yourself as an industry expert, etc., but when it comes down to brass algorithmic tax…

1) Each time new content is added to a website, search engine spiders are forced to crawl the site, index the new page’s content and re-analyze how it has indexed and ranked the rest of the website’s pages. It tells search engines that the website is being actively maintained and is an authority on its key terms, prompting search engines to place the website higher in SERPs.

In other words, it puts your website at the top of search engines’ minds – and, consequently, at the top of their results pages.

2) New on-page content attracts new links from other websites and social sites. The more value people find in the content, the more links it will attract. More links to your website’s domain causes search engines to consider your website an authority – and, consequently, to boost your website’s rankings.

SEO really IS just a giant popularity contest, after all.

3) Content authored by you and published off-page opens up lots of link opportunities. Press releases, guest blog posts, tweets, Facebook posts – all these not only drive traffic to your website, but much-needed link juice as well.

What are the key types of on-page content?

• website copy (home page, service pages, about, etc.)
• company blog (RSS, baby!)
• images (accompanied by optimized anchor text)
• videos (can also be optimized w/ meta data)
• whitepapers/articles (great for attracting links)

What are the key types of off-page content?

• social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr – etc)
• press releases
• article marketing
• guest blogging
• third party media (Mlive, TheRapidian, etc.)
• local business directory reviews

What’s the best way to employ these content ideas for SEO?

Any well-rounded marketing campaign is going to contain many of these elements. Remember: content is not only about SEO, it’s about boosting your brand’s reputation. Boost your brand’s reputation and create buzz around your company in the digital sphere, and you WILL be doing SEO automatically.

Things to look into doing:

• start and maintain (consistently!) a company blog
• get engaged in Facebook and Twitter (but only once you know how to use them properly, please)
• publish press releases about your company online, regularly (use syndication services like 24-7pressrelease.com)
• connect with local media, share their info on social media, and let them know if there is anything noteworthy going on with your business (get links in any articles published about you)
• author content – guest posts, white papers, etc. – and give it away (in exchange for links, of course)
• create fresh content in the form of blogs, videos, images, social media, all of the above
• keep an eye on your local business directory reviews – and respond! (Google Places, Yelp, CitySearch, etc.)

Great!

The organizer (who was was self-admittedly no expert in social media) choose to organize the group on the platform that was handiest: Facebook. A closed Facebook group was created, the organizer became Facebook friends with all the speakers, and we were all invited to join the group – and also to become friends with one another on Facebook.

While there isn’t anything particularly wrong with this method, the more I thought about it, the more I thought about how I would do – and recommend things be done – differently. In my opinion, LinkedIn is the more appropriate platform for this kind of professional networking, for several reasons.

But before outlining why, let’s look at some of the key similarities – and differences – between Facebook and LinkedIn.

Facebook

main function: Creating and maintaining personal connections, as well as connections to favorite businesses, entertainment groups and/or media outlets.

key capabilities:

1. status updates/newsfeed (from friends, media & businesses)
2. interact with friends (from personal profile)
3. create and manage events (personal and otherwise)
4. create and manage groups (the sky is the limit)
5. create and manage business pages
6. run ads for businesses or otherwise

LinkedIn

main function: Creating and maintain business connections with former/potential employers, employees, fellow professionals and professional organizations.

key capabilities:

1. status updates/newsfeed (from business connections)
2. interact with business connections, industry experts and professional groups
3. create and manage events (business related)
4. create and manage groups (professional, industry or regional)
5. create and manage company profiles
6. run ads for your business

Granted, different people use Facebook very differently. Some people – indie online biz addicts like myself, even – use it as a way to stay connected to business contacts and to promote their business, although I think it’s important to point out that a lot of this business activity takes places on Facebook’s business pages – not personal profiles.

(If you are using a personal Facebook profile to promote your business, stop immediately, read this article and get yourself a business page ASAP)

Personally, I use Facebook almost exclusively as my personal, let-my-hair-down-and-be-obtuse playground. I intentionally keep fewer than 200 friends (I won’t even friend my pinoy cousins in law), and I keep everyone who isn’t a close personal friend on restricted profile (i.e. they can’t see my wall posts and pictures). Mostly because I swear too much. And because my private information is…well, private.

Aside from my own personal preference, though, as you can see by my Facebook/LinkedIn comparison, Facebook’s uses are by and large more personal than they are business-oriented. At the very most, Facebook serves both personal and business purposes. LinkedIn’s uses, on the other hand, are invariably and universally business-oriented.

Why Facebook just doesn’t work for business networking

Several reasons.

1) Everyone uses Facebook differently - which means that while some people might be totally okay with friending other professionals for business networking, other people won’t be. For some people (read: me), asking them to become Facebook friends with a colleague or business contact is like asking them to give a client their home phone number. It’s an invasion of privacy.

2) Because not everyone has an open door Facebook policy, acquiring connections and/or contact from some people on Facebook might be difficult – i.e. if they have made their profile invisible to non friends, have made contact info inaccessible, etc. Keep in mind that in order to invite anyone to a Facebook group, you must be friends with them first.

3) Learning about people’s professional backgrounds is more difficult. Unlike LinkedIn, which requires you to build a virtual resume as your profile, Facebook profiles offer little insight into your educational background, work experience and connection with other professionals.

4) Most people aren’t in “business mode” when they’re on Facebook. For that reason, the tone of conversation in groups and discussions may lack the clarify and professionalism they need to serve their purpose effectively.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. There’s a reason you don’t “friend” people on LinkedIn – you “connect” with them, because that’s a more accurate description of your networked business relationships. Everyone’s professional information is available on LinkedIn (if yours isn’t, stop reading and go fill out your LinkedIn profile – now!), and there’s no personal risk to expanding your network of “connections”. Like business networking in the pre-digital era, the more LinkedIn connections you build, the better it is for your profile/career.

Lastly, the predominant conversational tone on LinkedIn is business casual – perfect for having business-related discourse.

First steps to using LinkedIn for events, group discussions & networking

In the case of the marketing workshop I mentioned earlier (at which I’m sure there will be plenty of LinkedIn training sessions!), there are a number of ways LinkedIn could have been leveraged to create a more open, easily accessible conversation – not only between speakers, but between attendees as well.

1) A LinkedIn event. Creating a LinkedIn event page for the workshop would create a public link for people to see, share and discuss. LinkedIn members could mark themselves as attending or not attending, etc. Events on LinkedIn work pretty much the same way Facebook events do. On LinkedIn, however, workshop organizers could promote the link in their own status updates, company updates and relevant professional groups to create buzz within the business sphere.

2) A LinkedIn group for discussion leaders/speakers. An invitation-only group for would be the perfect place for people leading the workshop to dialogue within a closed setting – while getting to know and, hopefully, build connections with one another as well. Discussion leaders could have easy access to one another’s professional background and specialties, facilitating a more informed conversation.

LinkedIn groups can, of course, be used to facilitate networking and discussion for any kind of affiliation – industry specialties, professional associations, the list goes on.

What do you think? Do you have a different Facebook philosophy, or a good reason for avoiding LinkedIn? I’d love to hear your response.

Groupon has become a heavy hitter in the small business marketplace by combining the power of collective selling with discounts juicy enough to attract the most coupon adverse consumer. $20 for a 90 minute massage? Yes, please. $30 for a month of unlimited hot vinyasa yoga? Sign me up. Groupon offers enormous potential – not only for selling large quantities of a certain product or service, but also for expanding brand awareness online. (It offers some pretty powerful link juice too, which makes SEOs like me happy)

But, as with every marketing strategy, getting the most out of your small business’ Groupon campaign takes a healthy dose of planning and preparation.

How it works

Groupon leverages the power of collective buying to

a) offer customers a particular product/service at a deeply discounted price, and

b) drive significant volumes of customers to small businesses.

To run a Groupon, small business owners select a particular product or service they want to promote, then they negotiate with Groupon sales reps to agree on a sale price (usually 50-70%) and percentage of that sale price (usually 50/50) that Groupon will take as its cut. The sale is offered by Groupon as its “Daily Groupon” via email and mobile apps, and as long as a minimum number of users buy the Groupon, the deal is pushed through.

As Groupon is becoming more established in cities across the country, Groupon nearly always makes each deal’s sale quota.

Why & when use Groupon?

When you’re trying to kick start a new or ailing small business, nothing hits the spot like a flood of new customers – which is exactly what Groupon offers. I’ve seen brand new businesses – like Grand Rapids’ own wildly popular Funky Buddha Yoga Hothouse – go from opening their doors to full to capacity by starting off with a Groupon. It’s perfect for promoting impulse buys, like kayaking tours, teeth whitening or restaurant fare.

Groupon tends to work best for small businesses that are either

a) dependent on sale volume – i.e. more sales = more profit, such as drive thru car washes,

b) new or rebranded and looking to improve brand awareness, or

c) looking to promote a brand new service, product or location.

Keep in mind that due to the nature of Groupon’s deep discount – and the company’s cut of profits – profit margins resulting from Groupons are typically very small.

How to get the most out of your Groupon

Groupon isn’t only an opportunity to sell large volumes of a certain product/service and create buzz – it’s an opportunity to increase your following and activity in social media. But in order for that to happen, your website and social media need to be well established, easy to navigate and consistent with your brand – in short, up to snuff. After all, wouldn’t you clean your house from top to bottom and invest in a new dining room rug before inviting 300 people over for dinner?

Website, website, website.

Having a website with excellent functionality and brand appeal should go without saying. Groupons happen primarily online, and chances are that potential customers will want to visit your website before or after making a purchase, so make it easy for them to fall in love with you. Make sure your website is aesthetically pleasing, in harmony with your brand, easy to navigate and contains all your key information in all the right places. Make sure it’s properly plugged into your social media accounts.

Search engine optimization (SE-oh my gosh do I have to?!)

For pity’s sake, make sure your website is optimized for search engines BEFORE running a Groupon. There are two reasons I emphasize this:

1) Consumers are intuitive about what kind of effort you put into your online branding, and while it may not translate into a direct ROI, your online presence and reputation matter. Make it easy for customers to find you, and to learn more about you online.

2) Groupon will have an enormously positive impact on your website’s SEO – but that positive impact can be dramatically lessened if your “house” isn’t already in order. Groupon.com itself and the buzz your Groupon generates is bound to send some hefty links in your direction, so do your business a favor; have an SEO audit of your website (or enlist an SEO’s help, if you’re developing a new site) before doing a Groupon, then sit back and let the link love roll in.

Have well established, active social media accounts.

The week before your Groupon begins is not the best time to finally create a Facebook business page and Twitter account. You want to show potential customers that you’re an established business with an established online presence – not a newbie with 40 Facebook “likes” who posts nothing but coupons. Have your key social media channels clearly identified beforehand, and take the time to create your accounts and establish concrete strategies well in advance.

You should already have a Facebook business page with a unique URL, a decent number of followers (100 or more would be best) and a regular posting routine. Other social media channels should be similarly established. Have your Twitter profile fully completed and be following relevant users; have established a decent if somewhat modest following, and – most importantly – be active in the conversation so that new customers will know what they can expect from your Twitterfeed. Same goes for Flickr (have galleries and username already established), LinkedIn (have company profile completed and up to date) and any other relevant platforms.

How to avoid a Groupon disaster

Last fall, a disgruntled small business owner who had an unsatisfactory experience with Groupon made her story public, and a whirlwind of negative press around Groupon’s service ensued. Without going into too much detail, it seemed that this business owner had an unusual experience with a potentially rogue sales rep who pressured her into making decisions that were unwise for her business. In short, she didn’t leave enough room in her discount and negotiated cut for Groupon to make a profit, and she didn’t put a cap on the number of allowed sales, causing her to lose money on the deal.

While this was fairly unusual for Groupon, it’s still important for business owners to know exactly what they’re getting in to before running a Groupon, to avoid this kind of situation. A few things to keep in mind:

- Know how much money you need to make on each discounted product in order to pull a profit, and make sure your final cut of the product/service after discount and Groupon’s cut is above that price.

- Set a reasonable discount rate. Groupon encourages businesses to discount between 50-70%, but keep in mind that lower discounts will mean lower profit margins, so be smart when calculating this figure.

- Don’t go below a 50/50 profit share with Groupon. Groupon reps negotiate what their company’s cut of your product sales will be on a case-by-case basis; keep in mind that the higher your cut, the better your chances are of making money when all is said and done.

- Find out ahead of time what sales volume your business can handle without losing money, and, if need be, place a cap on Groupon sales to make sure you don’t go over this number.

- Make sure your business/website/employees can handle the influx of traffic! Groupon has a great checklist of tasks businesses need to complete in order to make sure they’re ready for the volume a Groupon brings.

When in doubt, connect with your bookkeeper or a CPA to help you crunch the numbers to make sure Groupon will help your business make money rather than losing it.

Google's Panda is cracking down on spammy content

Google’s latest algorithm changes may have been written about by the SEO community ad nauseum over the past few weeks, but that doesn’t necessarily mean our clients know what’s going on. Or what Panda means for their business and SEO in real, concrete terms.

At the risk of regurgitating old SEO news, Google’s Panda updates (as they’ve been nicknamed) represent a major shift in search engine results and effective SEO strategies, and I think it’s important to take a look at how these are affecting small businesses. Besides, some of my clients actually read my blog (at least they tell me they do), and I promised to keep them informed.

What IS the Panda Update?

At the end of January, Google announced the launch of two major algorithm changes which target “‘content farms,’ which are sites with shallow or low-quality content”. Essentially, this is an attempt to keep craptastic, keyword-stuffed spam content from seeing the light of Google’s page 1. Low-quality articles, often written for pennies per page, are often used by gray and black hat SEOs to build cheap links quickly, or to attract traffic to a web page by stuffing that page with certain keywords.

Google has long given lip service to its commitment to promoting high quality content over spam content, but writing quality is a difficult thing for search engine robots to quantify – until now. The latest round of algorithm updates are aimed at giving less weight to content mill websites and spammy content.

What will the Panda updates do to search and SEO in general?

In the past two months since Google’s announcement, Google’s search engine results have seen more fluctuation than usual, and a lot of content sites (such as associatedcontent.com and wisegeek.com) have taken a hit. Generally speaking, the updates will negatively impact the ability of poorly written, keyword-stuffed sites or articles to rank in search engines. It will also limit the amount of “link juice” (let’s call it SEO karma) that links contained in this kind of content is able to pass on to other websites.

In terms of SEO and web marketing strategies, these updates are having the biggest impact on article marketing. If you’re unfamiliar, article marketing is the process of writing articles containing links, then publishing these articles on content sites around the web for the purpose of building links to one’s site.

Many of the sites used to publish articles for article marketing purposes are being hit hard by Panda, meaning that article marketing has lost much of its SEO power.

What it means for small businesses and their SEO campaigns

I’ve often used article marketing as a part of my off-page SEO/link building campaigns for small businesses, with excellent success. I never outsource my content, so my articles are always accurate and well-written in addition to being optimized for search (NOT keyword stuffed); search engines have seemed to like my articles, especially those published on Ezinearticles.com. Roughly 90% of the articles I publish end up on the first page of Google for their target longtail keyword within a month or two.

With Ezinearticles.com’s traffic down 86%, have Google’s Panda updates killed article marketing?

That depends on who you ask. After reviewing the rankings of many of my articles I’ve submitted to content sites in the past and finding them largely unchanged – many of them still nestled at the bottom of Google’s page 1 – my answer is not quite. While Google’s content quality crackdown has affected content sites as a whole, individual article pages still maintain a small amount of page rank (link love) in and of themselves. That means that high quality articles still have a chance to prove their quality to Google, and if their quality attracts links, they can develop a higher page rank than a crapply, low quality article published on the same site, passing that link love along to the client’s site.

The articles won’t be sending as much link love or quality referred traffic our way, but they will still be sending SOME.

In summary: moving forward, article marketing won’t offer the same SEO power it did before, but it will still offer some, if high quality articles and reputable content sites are used. With that in mind, it’s a good idea for us to look for alternative ways to build links for small businesses to make up for the gap left by article marketing.

Alternatives to article marketing

While some content sites are suffering as a result of Panda, social media sites are flourishing. According to SEOMoz,  LinkedIn’s traffic is up 15%, Etsy 17%, Blogspot, YouTube and Facebook 12%. That means that involvement and linking on social media sites is going to be more important than ever for SEO. LinkedIn in particular is often overlooked in small business social media campaigns, and with far more business networking and B2B capabilities than Facebook, I see a well-rounded, active LinkedIn profile as a must-have for any white hat small business SEO campaign.

The power of blogging shouldn’t be overlooked, either. Regular blog posts provide websites with fresh content, encouraging Google to revisit the site often, which is great for rankings. Well-written, valuable blog posts may also attract links from other sites. Similarly, maintaining an active blog opens up opportunities for guest blogging on other websites, another great way to build links naturally.

And it doesn’t. In fact, no one watches it at all. You’re pretty sure that the 15 views it’s received are half from you and half from your mom, who is flabbergasted that you’re on the internet.

So what happened? Why isn’t your YouTube content working?

Like your website, Facebook page, email newsletters and any other web marketing strategy, leveraging YouTube content to build your business requires a little bit of foresight, planning and a dash of SEO savvy.

The 7 Golden Rules of YouTube SEO

1) Create interesting content. If you read blogs like this often, you’re probably tired of being told to create “unique” or “valuable” content, but get used to it. Creativity and originality are critical when it comes to video. I mean, have you SEEN YouTube? That video of the cats playing pattycake with the dude voiceover is hilarious! And that’s what you have to compete with. Stupid, hilarious cat videos are vying for your customer’s attention, so don’t bore them with a 5 minute single shot video of you talking about your business. Be creative, be original, and above all, create useful content.

I’m not saying your video needs to be hilarious; comedy is difficult to do well and easy to do terribly, so stick with what you’re good at, but stay creative. A good rule of thumb when drumming up content ideas is to ask yourself: “what questions are my ideal customers asking about my product/service?” Or, to put it another way, “what do my ideal customers want to see/know/hear about my product/service?” If you’re an auto repair shop, your customers likely want to see your mechanics in action, so why not do a stop-animation video of a transmission replacement? If you’re a graphic designer, showcase your best work to a sweet, catchy tune. If you’re selling health insurance, do a webinar series of short, 1-2 minute videos educating your customer base about how to find insurance that best fits their needs. Make your content short and juicy – in a word: linkworthy.

2) Keep it short and sweet. What are you more likely to watch: a one minute video which answers a specific question, or a 15 minute lecture on the finer nuances of xyz industry? Studies have shown that consumers tend to lose interest in YouTube videos after about 45 seconds – tops. That means you have about 30 seconds to rope your viewers in before they lose interest and click away. If you have a lot of ground to cover in a video, break it up into smaller, bite-sized segments to keep viewers interested. Segmenting videos into smaller, specific topics will also help you keep each video’s SEO more targeted.

3) Optimize video title. You may know what your video is about, but search engines and viewers won’t know unless you tell them. The video title is the most important in terms of keyword visibility, so it needs to very descriptive, enticing, keyword rich and, of course, as succinct as possible. Do NOT simply make your business’ name the title and hope search engines and viewers will guess the rest. Oftentimes, planning out a video title around your targeted keywords before shooting the video can help keep the content more focused, which viewers will appreciate. Remember: the closer your main keywords are to the beginning of the title, the better.

4) Optimize video description. This is your opportunity to tell viewers more about the video than you could in the title, so use the opportunity to rope them in with an interesting, pithy description. The description is also important for SEO, so be sure to make the description keyword rich (NOT stuffed). It also gives you an opportunity to create an extra link or two for yourself, so be sure to include a clear call to action and a link to your website or landing page at the end of the description.

5) Optimize categories & tags. YouTube uses the categories and tags you use in your video to catalog your video under its most appropriate terms, so it’s important to take the time to fill these out accurately. When adding tags, choose a small handful of short yet descriptive keyword terms which you know your customer base is searching for. Don’t go overboard; if you stuff this category with a bunch of irrelevant keywords, YouTube is less likely to give weight to the keywords that are appropriate.

6) Optimize your YouTube profile. Just like any other social network, your YouTube account is assigned a profile, complete with fields for a personal/company bio and website URL. This is another great place to insert a clear, targeted call to action and website link, so be sure to completely fill these out.

7) Share, tactfully. After title and description, one of the biggest metrics YouTube uses to rank video results is the video’s popularity, or views. The only way to begin getting views is to share the video and link to it wherever it’s relevant. If you’re on Facebook, post the video to your business profile page and ask your “Likes” (we can’t really call them fans anymore – thanks, Zuckerberg) to give their feedback by commenting on the video. More comments will attract more viewers and help with rankings as well. If you’re on LinkedIn, share the video with your followers, or post it in a Group discussion and ask for feedback. If you’re on Twitter, post it 2-3 times at different times of the day/night asking your followers to retweet. The “pls RT” is not to be abused, so don’t overuse this, and be sure to thank followers that do.

If you need a more concrete example, take a look at the title, description and bio in my video below. I’m a little ashamed to use this video as an example, since it’s my first and I pretty much hate it (and consequently have done nothing to promote it, hence the pitiful # of views), but it was quite successful in search engine rankings. It ranked within the top 5 results for “small business SEO” within a week after posting it, rankings which lasted about 3 months – until YouTube realized that I wasn’t going to do anything with it and stuffed it to page 2. Still, it’s a good example of how well optimized page titles and descriptions can give you targeted visibility.

Are the rates I’m charging too high?

Am I not charging enough?

How do I compensate myself properly without scaring away new customers?

Let’s face it: no matter what industry you’re in, finding the perfect rate structure is tough. On one hand, you want clients/customers to feel that they’re getting a good deal so that they’ll give you more business (and referrals). On the other hand, pricing your services too low can send the wrong message – that your services are somehow inferior. And then there are the bills that need to be paid. As a former employer of mine put it, “this is a FOR PROFIT organization!”.

Freelancers and solopreneurs are on a perpetual quest to find the perfect balance between adequate compensation and competitive rates, and small businesses face a very similar struggle. When we question our pricing, what we’re really asking is:

How do I get customers to love me and still make money?

This was a popular topic last week on one of the SEO copywriting LinkedIn groups I follow. Several freelancers volunteered their rates to see how they compared, but the most interesting part of the conversation wasn’t about rates at all. It was about value.

One veteran community member (shoutout to @ArtRemnet) made an excellent point: the client does not care whether they pay for SEO copywriting per word, page or hour – what they care about is getting more sales.

In the end, if the service – whether it be SEO copywriting or brake repair – provides genuine value, the customer is happy. Low rates aren’t what makes a customer happy. A service which improves a customer’s business/life/transportation/whatever is what makes for a happy customer.

Proving Value: The Real Selling Point

I’ve gotten my fair share of “gee, your rates seem pretty high” from clients and leads, but it didn’t take me long to realize that there was a deeper underlying fear in this kind of statement. Once the client and I began talking about the specifics of what a project would entail, my methodologies and the client’s goals, their hesitancy seemed to dissipate. As soon as they began to understand what the project could do for their business (value!), they relaxed. Got excited, even.

It seems that most often, the real fear isn’t the cost of the project. It’s whether or not that project will be worth the investment.

Because in the end, it’s not about cost. It’s about value.

Attracting Value-Oriented Customers

Say you own an auto repair shop. Which would you prefer to use as a selling point:

“The lowest priced auto repair in town!”

OR

“Detailed, high quality repairs & maintenance backed by excellent customer service.” ?

The first selling point is not likely to bring in the highest paying customers. As a general rule, customers looking for rock-bottom prices are often the most difficult to work with – not to mention the least profitable. High end auto owners – the kind that are looking for quality, long-term auto services and who are willing to pay for it – are going to be more attracted to the second selling point.

Think about your business and the services and/or products you offer. Leaving price aside for the moment, what edge do you feel your business can offer customers? What makes your service/products unique and valuable? If you focus on the value of your services, you’re far more likely to bring in the kind of customers you want – those who are willing and capable of compensating you properly.

Making Them Love You

Everyone has their favorite restaurant, coffee shop, pub or shoe store. A place you always return to – not because the prices are cheap, but because you love doing business there. You love the food, the ambience, the selection, the customer service – or all of the above.

You love the “it”.

Generally, the “it” we love about our favorite places of business is a combination of a great service/product, great customer service and a sense of trust, all tangled up together. That trust comes from knowing that each time you make a transaction with the business, you will receive value – whether that value is in the form of a full, happy belly or an insurance policy that helps you sleep at night.

A friendly, professional approach to customer service can go a long way in making your customers love you, but it’s not enough on its own. Your business needs to prove its value to your customers, over and over again. For a small business like a restaurant, proving value may be as simple as making consistently great food and serving it with consistently attentive, friendly waitstaff. For other, more technical industries, however, proving value sometimes requires a little extra effort.

For example, auto repair shop technicians who take the time to thoroughly explain repairs, what parts are used and why the repairs are necessary are helping their non-mechanic customers understand the value of the service they’re paying for, which builds trust. For freelance copywriters and marketers like me, proving value requires demonstrating expertise in the form of successful case studies and a willingness to walk clients through the why’s and how’s of a campaign.

By helping customers understand what they’re paying for and why, the conversation shifts from cost to value. Customers suddenly have a reason to get excited about your services – something that lowering your rates could never do.

So what is a link profile, and why is it important to your business?

Link profiles are one of those nitty-gritty aspects of SEO that most of the world couldn’t care less about, but they have a significant impact on a website’s online visibility, particularly in search engines. And when I say significant, I mean critical. Like really, REALLY critical.

Essentially, a website’s link profile is all the web pages which link to it. A link profile is comprised of all the pages, both internal (pages on the same domain) and external (pages on a separate domain), that are linking in to it; a closer look at a site’s link profile will also include examining elements like nofollow tags and link anchor text usage. More on that in a moment.

Let’s take this website as an example. If you were to plug www.creativewebbusiness.com into a backlink checker tool (like SEO Moz’s), you would see:

- a dozen or so links coming from business directory sites like localfirst.com

- a few dozen links from blogs posts on which I’ve commented

- a handful of internal image and text links connecting internal pages to one another

These links are a mix of image and text links, follow and nofollow links. Text links have varying anchor text, such as “seo copywriter”, “marjorie s” and “www.creativewebbusiness.com”. (To brush up on your link building terminology, head over to our SEO 102: Link Building tutorial). More about nofollow tags in a moment.

In a way, link profiles are rather like a website’s resume, and search engines are like the employers. Google, Yahoo and Bing (Google especially) scrutinize a site’s link profile to determine what the site is about, how important it is and – most importantly – where it should rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). You could say that search engines “judge a website’s character” based largely on the site’s link profile. After all, you are who you associate with, right?

So what does a good link profile look like?

As with any other aspect of marketing and SEO, what kind of link profile you need to achieve to get great rankings depends largely on your competition. In other words, a small, locally-based shop website would need far fewer links than a large, nationwide ecommerce store in order to rank for its key terms. Ranking for “organic coffee shop grand rapids mi” is a heluva lot easier than ranking for “buy womens shoes”.

With that in mind, let’s break down the definition of a healthy link profile into a few key points.

Types of websites you want linking to your site. Sure, more links are always excellent, but after years of search engine algorithms evolving to weed out spam, quality COUNTS. Spammers and blackhat SEOs have a tendency to buy links from other websites, often in large volume, to get the link juice they need to get specific rankings. Search engines combat paid links by placing value on link relevancy. In other words, the websites linking to your site need to be relevant in some way to your business.

E.g., most of the websites which link to my site are either SEO/copywriting/marketing blogs, business directories or articles discussing web marketing topics. I don’t try to obtain links from, say, a surfing apparel store or a porn website, because neither of those have anything to do with my business. And Google KNOWS.

Another important factor is the quality of the site linking to yours. Does the site have good, informative content? Is is a reputable brand/company/directory? Is it “getting found” in search engines? These are all key indicators that a website is in good standing with search engines, and these are the types of sites you want linking to yours. The more important/popular a website is, the more valuable inbound links from that site become.

Diversity of websites in your link profile. Not only does Google want to see links from relevant, high quality sites in your site’s link profile; it also wants to see a diversity of sites. In other words, your site’s links need to be coming from a variety of websites. Local business organizations; part suppliers and affiliates; online business directories; blog post comments; social networking sites – these are the types of websites which need to be linking in to a small business site in order to create a diverse, healthy link profile. Having links from a variety of websites, large and small, assures search engines that you are building links naturally, rather than attempting to take a shortcut with purchased links.

The more follow links, the better. Essentially, a “nofollow link” is used when a website wants to tell search engines it doesn’t want to be associated with the site it’s linking to. Blog comments, for example, will often tag a commenter’s links with nofollow to protect themselves from spam. Translated to small business owners: regular “follow” links are best for your link profile, but nofollow links are far from useless. Aim to get as many regular links as you can; a smattering of nofollow links will only enhance your link profile’s diversity.

Varied anchor text usage. Anchor text refers to the actual text that is hyperlinked in a text link. Traditionally, Google has used link anchor text as a way of telling what terms are most relevant to the website being linked to. Stuffing keywords into link anchor text used to be an easy way to get better rankings for the keywords being used, but times have changed and so has Google. To combat spam, search engines are beginning to prefer varied anchor text, including branded and URL terms as well as keywords. For example:

Keyword-rich anchor text link: Michigan seo copywriter

URL anchor text link: www.creativewebbusiness.com

Brand anchor text link: Creative Web Business

Random/miscellaneous anchor text link: goddess of the interweb

A healthy, diverse link profile will contain some of all four of these types of anchor text. This is important to keep in mind when listing your website in directories or other listings. Because many websites use the URL as the default anchor text, you likely won’t need to focus too much on building links with URL anchor text.

Internal links. Unlike building links from other websites, building internal links is EASY. All internal link building means it making sure your website’s pages are linking to one another through strategic calls to action, links to more information on deeper pages, etc. While you don’t want to go crazy with internal links, they do provide an excellent opportunity for you to flag some of your site’s most important pages with essential key terms by using keyword rich anchor text links. For example, I’d like to market my SEO 101 Tutorial for Small Businesses more, so I just created an internal link to it with keyword rich anchor text. If your website has a resources section or key service pages, be sure to link to those pages whenever it’s appropriate. This will also help by making information more accessible to users and creating more user engagement.

Ok, got it. So how do I actually BUILD my link profile?

If you’re a very small business with zero budget for SEO, building a healthy link profile is something you can do yourself, with a little research. You could start by reading my blog posts about link building, my SEO 101 Tutorial, or you could use self-training resources like Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing University.

If you’re a small business with a budget for SEO, it might be less of a headache to hire an SEO who specializes in small business to help with the nerdy heavy lifting.