Add a QR code to your business card

Is your office in a tricky location? Prevent clients from getting lost by putting a QR code on your business card that leads to directions provided by Google Maps. Another way to use a QR code on your business card is to add a QR code that contains your contact information. Why? Because when someone meets you, all they have to do is scan the QR code with their Smartphone and your contact information will be automatically added to their contact database.

Add a QR code to your business’s print marketing materials

You can show your product or explain your service to a client with a brochure, but let them really see it in action by adding a QR Code to your print piece that links to a video demonstration on your website or YouTube or Vimeo channel.

Use QR codes in your business showroom

When your showroom is busy you may not have enough personnel on hand to attend to all of your customers’ at once. Have a back up plan. Put a QR code that links to an online description which details features and benefits, specs, colours, etc., beside each product.

Use a QR code at a business sales meeting

Running a sales meeting with a variety of seminars and events taking place? Make it easy for attendees to stay on top of when, where and what time things are happening by placing QR code cards that link to an online schedule, throughout the meeting location.

Put a QR code on the outside of your business’s building

Every week people drive by hundreds of different businesses housed in faceless buildings and have no idea what these companies do. One way you can introduce your business to the world is by placing a QR code that links to your website, on the outside of your building or in your window. A few curious, potential customers are bound to scan the QR code to see what your company is all about.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of finding out which words people use when they go on Google to search for a particular topic.

Why is keyword research the place to start your website planning?

In many cases finding the right keywords, and then using On-Page SEO measures to implement them into your website, will be the difference between getting found on Google or not getting found.

For example, according to Google every month, when Canadians go online to search for taps for their bathroom they use the search term “basin sets” 91 times and the search term “bathroom faucets” 18,100 times. Based on this keyword insight, if your were a manufacturer of faucets it would make more sense to implement the keyword term “bathroom faucets” into your website as opposed to “basin sets” if you want more people to find your website on Google.

Use keyword research to structure the design of your website architecture.

When mapping out the structure of a new website, the first instinct most people have is to design the architecture around common category terms like “Our Products”, “Our Services”, etc. No one ever went on Google and searched for “Our Products” or “Our Services”.  Remember, if your goal is to have your new website get found on Google it would make more sense to base the structure of your website around category terms that are the terms people are using when they conduct a search for what you sell.

For example, let’s say you have a dog grooming supplies & training business and you want to find out what keyword terms you should be considering. According to Google, people in Canada search the following terms, so many times per month.

Based on these numbers, it would be more advantageous to structure the design of your dog grooming supplies & training website architecture around these category terms than “Our Products” or “Our Services”.

If you’re about to embark on developing a new website remember start your website planning process with keyword research. It can be the difference between your website being lost or found on Google.

Google as a research tool: let it flex its muscle

Most people don’t realize how powerful a research tool Google can be. To get a better sense of how much more helpful and insightful Google for research can be, let’s pretend we’re in the coffee and donut business and we want to know more about the industry and some of our competitors. To do so, we’re going to employ advanced Google search commands  that are very easy to use and, as you will see, very insightful ways to gain details on your competition and industry.

Google Advanced Search Tips & Tricks: #1 How to Google search a website

One of the keys to search engine optimization (SEO) and ranking well in the Google search results is determining which keywords you should be using in your company website. A great starting point for getting keyword ideas is to explore what your competitors are employing. You can do this by conducting a Google search of a specific website. For example to research how many times the term “filled donuts” appears on www.timhortons.com, you would type the following advanced search command in the Google search box:  filled donuts site:www.timhortons.com

Google Advanced Search Tips & Tricks: #2 How to Check Backlinks to a Website

The number of websites that link back to a competitor’s website has an impact on where they place in the Google search results. Knowing how many backlinks your competition has will give you a sense of how much time you should spend on your backlinking efforts. To check the backlinks to a website, type the following advanced search command in the Google search bar: link:www.timhortons.com

Google Advanced Search Tips & Tricks: #3 How to Find Related Websites

Your current company website is seven years old. You’re ready for a redesign. Before you start giving direction to your website developer use this advanced Google search command to produce a list of competitor websites in your industry that you can then reference for ideas for your website’s new design. This time in the Google search bar, type this advanced search command: related:www.timhortons.com

Google Advanced Search Tips & Tricks: #4 How to find related blogs

One of the best ways to gain timely insight into your competition and your industry is by reading related blogs. Google Blog Search makes it easy. To use Google Blog Search, just go to the Google search page. On the left side, you will see a list under the Google logo. Click on the “more” button at the bottom of the list. This will reveal the word “Blogs”. Click on “Blogs”. Google is now set up to search through just blogs found on the Internet. Check it out. Type the word “donuts” in the search bar and click on “search”. Google will return a list of related blogs about donuts.

Google Advanced Search Tips & Tricks: #5 How to get the definition of an industry term

During the course of your research you may come across an industry term that you’re not familiar with. Let’s say the word is “cruller”. No need to head over to dictionary.com or bug the person next to you. Just use this advanced Google search command. In the Google search bar type: define:cruller and within milliseconds Google will produce a definition for you.

These are just a few of the search tricks and tips that can turn Google into a more powerful tool for research. To discover even more helpful Google search commands visit these websites:1stwebdesigner, hubspot, GoogleGuide.

The benefits of Twitter for your business

To appreciate the added value of using Twitter for your business, you have to stop viewing Twitter as just a social media tool that allows people to tweet 140-character messages. Here are a few suggestions of how to use Twitter for your business.

Use Twitter for marketing your business

Launching a new product today? Want to educate consumers about the benefits of your product? Let consumers and your industry know about it, by tweeting about it–complete with a link back to your website for more information and pics.

Use Twitter to gain feedback for your business

Seeking feedback on a product innovation? Want to conduct an impromptu poll with customers or people in your industry? Need a recommendation for a great sushi place for that client lunch date? Tweet it out to your Twitter followers and ask them.

Use Twitter for monitoring your business competition

Let’s say you were in the donut business and you wanted to keep up to date on what consumers were saying about Tim Hortons. All you would have to do is type #timhortons in the Twitter search bar and a list of tweets people are making that are related to Tim Hortons will display.

Use Twitter as a source of information for your business

Every day people in your field are tweeting insightful links to articles, blog posts, infographics and more. By setting up a Twitter account and conducting a search, you can find influencers in your industry. Start following them. You’ll expand your knowledge base and gain valuable reference material for future presentations.

As you can see the benefits of Twitter for your business go beyond just socializing. When you leverage the power of its search capabilities Twitter can be a helpful marketing, research, monitoring and reference tool.

It was called the Google Panda update, and though it sounds cute and cuddly, it was anything but. With its claws bared, the Google Panda update came out swinging, sending low-quality websites spiraling down the search results.

Even big companies such as J.C. Penney were caught in the path of the raging Google Panda update.  As reported in the New York Times, the 100+-year-old retailer got its hands slapped severely for cutting corners and accumulating backlinks from thousands of irrelevant, low-quality websites. When the dust settled, J.C. Penny had plummeted for a wide number of search terms. For example, for the search term “living room furniture” they went from number one on Google to number 68!

Why the Google Panda update was unleashed

From the very beginning, Google has strived to do one thing: provide users with a list of websites featuring the best quality website content. To do this, it uses an algorithm. Even though it’s never been made public, webmasters and questionable SEO companies have always devised shortcuts, tricks and ploys in an attempt to outsmart the algorithm so they can leap frog ahead in the search results. Because of this, Google is constantly refining its algorithm to thwart their attempts. This year alone, it plans to make roughly 500 tweaks!

What Google likes: good quality website content

Most website owners know that adding fresh website content is important to Google. But now, more than ever, the important thing is not the quantity of content it’s the quality of the content.

As the Google algorithm proves, you can’t fool Google with mediocre or marginal content and backlinks. Therefore, for best results, your web content should be what Google is trying to provide for its users: high-quality, in-depth and original. In other words write website content that will be so appreciated for its insight and value, that users will feel compelled to recommend it to others and Google will deem it worthy of a high ranking in its search results.

Determining the best social media to use for your business is no different than determining any other media your company should employ for marketing…it all boils down to whether your target audience can be reached using that media.

If your target audience doesn’t read the Sports you wouldn’t place an ad in that section of the newspaper. So it only makes sense that if your target audience isn’t on Twitter, you wouldn’t use Twitter to try and reach them.

Determing which social media to use.

The most popular social media platforms for business are currently Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. In some cases, the best social media choice for your business might even be a forum. But there’s only one way to figure out which social media to use…you need to visit each one of these social media sites and conduct a search.

Let’s say you manufacture high end office furniture for those with a discerning taste. One of your target audiences would probably be interior designers.  The next step would be to work through our list and see if we can determine the best social media for your business and figure out which social media to use.

Go to www.facebook.com, and you’ll see a search bar on the home page. Type in the words “interior designer” and hit return. The search results will show you that there are thousands of interior designers on Facebook. Now, in the menu on the left side of the page, click on the word “Groups”. The search results will change to show you all of the interior designer groups on Facebook.

Next let’s go to www.twitter.com.  On the home page you will see a search bar at the top. Type in the words “interior designer” and hit return. The search results will show you everyone on Twitter who has the words “interior designer” listed in their profile. Now let’s say you were really interested in targeting interior designers based in the Toronto area. Type “interior designer near: Toronto” and hit return. The search results have been refined. Now they are displaying interior designers who are only located in the Toronto area. You can also search for tweets and discussions on Twitter that are related to interior designers. To do this type “#interiordesigner” in the search bar.

To conduct a search on www.LinkedIn.com you need to have an account (it’s free). Once you’ve signed in, your LinkedIn home page will display. In the top right you will see a search bar. On the left end of the search bar you will see a grey drop down menu. The default parameter is PEOPLE. If you click on the drop down menu, you will see that you can also search by GROUP. Choose the one you want to start with, enter “interior designer” and click return.

When business owners think of social media a lot of them don’t think of YouTube. But they should. www.YouTube.com is the second most-used search engine after Google. Every day hundreds of thousands of people go on YouTube to search for videos about products and services. You can’t search and see which individuals or groups are on YouTube, but you can get a sense of how often they are watching videos about the type of product or service you sell. For example, on the YouTube home page, type “office furniture” in the search box. Hit return. The search results will display. Beside each video on the right in bold, black type you will see how many views that video has had. If there are a lot of views for videos in the product or service category your business serves you can feel confident that YouTube is another great option for your social media strategy.

Forums were one of the original forms of social media. They may not have the buzz of more recent social media platforms but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t make the best social media choice for your business. To find relevant forums conduct a search on Google by typing in “interior designer forums”. This will produce a list of forums.

In our example of an office furniture manufacturer, all five of these social media platforms proved to be relevant to the target audience we were aiming for, and as a result deserved further exploration. This won’t be the case with all businesses.

The point is, whether your social media effort ends up encompassing all five of these social media platforms, a mix of two or three or just one, the determining factor for choosing the best social media platform for your business comes down to common sense—deciding on which social media to use all depends on your target audience.

What are meta page title tags?

A meta page title tag is not the title or headline at the top of the content on your webpage. A meta page title tag appears in the source code of your web page. The source code is what Google reads when it is trying to determine what your web page is all about.

Depending how you have your website browser set up, you can see the meta page title tag displayed at the top of your screen. In this example, it appears in the blue bar at the top.

Why having meta page title tags on every page matters

When someone goes on Google and enters a search term, Google sets out to find the best possible match. This process involves sifting through millions and millions of web pages. The first thing Google does, in order to differentiate between web pages is, it looks at the text in the meta page title tags found in the source code of every web page.

Meta page title tags are like the title on a recipe card

Think of it this way. If I handed you a recipe box and said find me a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, you’re going to flip through all the recipes, looking at the titles, until you see a title that says “chocolate chip cookies”. Now imagine if there were no titles on any of the recipe cards. It would be virtually impossible to find the recipe because the titles wouldn’t differentiate one recipe from another.

The Internet is like a gigantic recipe card box. Each recipe card represents a web page. If your web pages don’t have meta page title tags on them, you’re making it harder for Google to find your web pages.

How to add meta page title tags to your web pages

If your website has a content management system it may already feature an input area where you can write and update your meta page title tags. If not, your web programmer should be able to add this feature fairly simply. For older websites, that don’t have a content management system, you will have to write your meta page title tags separately and then have your web programmer manually insert them into the source code of each web page. Have a website built on WordPress, Joomla, Blogger or any of the other mainstream blogging platforms? There should be a free plug-in available that will allow you to add meta page title tags to your web pages.

Adding meta page title tags is one part of the on-page seo efforts you should employ. By simply adding meta page title tags your web pages can go from being buried to being found on Google.

After posting video on their company website, Sun Microsystems saw daily traffic jump from 12,000 viewers to 42,000 viewers in less than a year.

In the past streaming video on a website, in real time, just wasn’t possible. But with the proliferation of broadband Internet access and the advancements made in media-playing software, the majority of Internet users (estimated at 97%) can now view online video in real-time. No more hesitation. No more stopping and starting. Streaming video on a website in now as smooth as watching a DVD in the boardroom.

Putting video on a website. How to use it.

Putting video on a website is a great idea. Use it for things like:
1) Demos: products, services and facility tours
2) Customer Testimonials
3) Training and Support
4) Messages from Management
5) Reports on new initiatives and major milestones

Another company found that their prospects and customers downloaded the video version of a case study on their site at a ratio of 6:1 compared to the printable version.

Putting video on a website makes good business sense.

Thinking of adding video to a website? Here are a few bottom-line reasons why streaming video on a website is a smart idea.
1) Convenience: on-line videos are available 24/7 from anywhere in the world
2) Save Money: eliminate video copying and shipping costs
3) Updating the content becomes more cost-effective

Have you added video to a website recently? What are you using it for?

Advantages of blogs.

So why have a blog for business? Can it really make a difference? Are the advantages of blogs really worth the time and effort? These are questions many businesses ask. For companies the advantages of blogs are many. Here are just a few of the benefits of blogs.

Benefits of business to business blogging #1: Reinforce Your Expertise
Within every company there are people who possess a depth of insight about the industry they work in. A blog gives you the opportunity to share that wealth of knowledge with customers, potential customers and colleagues, which in turn will reinforce your position as an expert in your industry.

Benefits of business to business blogging #2: Interact with Your Target Audience
Every time you post content on your blog, the people reading that post can leave a comment. When they do, it provides you with an opportunity to interact with them by replying. This is a great way to build a rapport with new and old customers.

Benefits of business to business blogging #3: Rank Better on Google
When someone conducts a search on Google, Google sets out to find the most relevant websites. Websites that don’t update their content very often are considered less relevant, which means their chances of ranking in the top ten pages of the search results aren’t good. Adding a couple of press releases every year just won’t cut it. By adding a blog, and contributing to it regularly (even if it’s just once a month), you’ve made your website more relevant in Google’s eyes and will enhance your website’s ranking in the search results.

Benefits of business to business blogging #4: Reach New Customers
When you publish more content on your website, your website has a chance of showing up in more searches on Google. The more search results your website shows up in, the more exposure you gain to potential customers.

As you can see the answers to “Why have a blog for business?” are compelling. That’s why companies such as mint.com, Hubspot and even American Express are using blog content as a marketing tool.

Yes, maintaining a blog for business does take some planning and effort, but the advantages of blogs as a business tool are well worth it.

Does your company website have a business blog? What blogging benefits have you experienced?

Why SEO?

As of December 2010, there were over 255 million websites on the worldwide web. The answer to, “Why should I SEO? Is SEO necessary?”, is a simple one. If you would like to increase the chances of your website being found when people search on the Internet for what your company does or sells, you should employ SEO.

What is SEO? What does SEO do?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about doing things to your website to make it easier for Google to discover.

How SEO works. How SEO helps.

To understand how SEO helps and works, you need to understand how Google works. When someone goes on Google to conduct a search, they type in a keyword or keyword phrase. From there Google goes on the hunt, evaluating millions and millions of web pages in order to produce a list of web pages it feels are most relevant to the search term. The more relevant your web page is, the better the chances are that Google will discover it.

The benefits of SEO

Does SEO work? Even implementing some basic SEO measures can make a difference in creating more exposure for your website. That’s where the benefits of SEO start. More exposure should lead to increased traffic to your website. More traffic means more potential customers are being introduced to your products and services. More potential customers means more potential sales.

How has SEO impacted your company? Has it helped increase traffic to your website and introduced your company to new prospects?