Small Business Information

… and also get seen by all the other search engines too.

If you’re reading this then you already understand that although you think your small business’ website is the best thing since sliced bread the search engines might be seeing things quite differently.

So you’re left wondering what you should be doing to get Google and the others to see your site in a more kindly light.

Well, there are some lessons to be learned from one of the biggest retailers on the Net and you can read more about it at Amazon.com: The SEO-Smartest Retailer on the Web?

That’s something that I often wonder about. In so many ways it’s very dependant on small businesses and medium sized businesses and yet it seems to lack the ability to interact with those businesses on any level. It even appears to understand why it needs to interact with us.

Here is an interesting story about the way Google dealt with one Adsense advertiser. The interest isn’t so much in what it did to win back this advertiser’s business but what it hasn’t done for other businesses of a similar size that are also having problems.

This comment from the article left me wondering.

“Google can’t meet one-on-one with every unhappy client.”

Why can’t they?

It would certainly go a long way to changing the perception that Google is arrogant and indifferent to the needs of their customers.

Actually there are 15 rules but they’re split into three lots of five and they really are fundamental to your online survival. Follow the links and you will find:

Five basic SEO rules for small business

Five tips for small business when choosing a web designer

and

Five web hosting tips for small business

But that doesn’t mean they understand it

A recent survey in America has shown that the number of small and medium sized businesses that are online has increased in the last six years. In 2000 53% of small and medium sized business were online and that has risen to around 60% today.

However, it’s obvious that there are a lot of small and medium sized businesses out there who don’t have a grasp of the fundamentals they need to know and understand about how to make their website work for them. One of the problems that we see time and again in the web design side of our business is that these business people don’t understand what it takes to get their websites to the top of Google for the terms that are important to them.

Way too many people seem to think that it all just happens simply because they have gone online. They fail to understand that it takes a lot of work - as far back as the website planning stage - to achieve those top results. Even after the website goes live there is a lot of ongoing work that needs to be done every week to achieve the results your looking for.

And just to make things even more difficult for the small and medium sized business people, the work that has to be done can change because the way the search engines rank the sites they list is continually changing.

Trying to get our clients to understand that is a frustrating part of the business I would rather not have to deal with but it’s something that every web designer is duty bound to talk about with their clients.

If you’re a small business person who wants to launch a website for your business be sure to listen to your web designer when he talks about the work that needs to be done to get your site listed in good and relevant spots. Some will be waffling on and talking nothing but nonsense while others of us will be laying out the facts for you in terms that you can understand.

Please try and listen because there’s nothing worse than telling a small business owner exactly what work is involved - and the time it will take - to get their site to appear in Google and then have him call you two days after the site goes live and complain that Google has no listing for his site.

 No, I’m not talking about ethnic minorities here, I’m talking about the minority of surfers who don’t surf the Net using Internet Explorer. There’s quite a variety of browsers out there and not all will render your website in the same way that IE does.

That means that if you’re trying to sell something online not everyone is going to see your website - or your product - in quite the same way. In extreme cases people who use browsers other than IE may not even be able to buy from you because their browser can’t display your shopping cart.

Even just a minor glitch in the way your site is displayed in their browser could be enough to put them off buying from you. So you really do need to make sure that your site renders correctly in all browsers … otherwise you are going to lose sales.

You can read more about how the online appearance of a site can damage sales here.

Ironically when I view that site in my favourite browser - Firefox - every apostrophe is displayed as a question mark.

Here are the leading online merchants in five important categories for March.

DVD/Video - Amazon

Office Supplies - Office Depot

Consumer Electronics - eBay

Jewellery and Watches - eBay

Toys, Games and Hobbies - eBay

All three companies listed here have affiliate programmes - but, if you’re new to affiliate marketing, don’t rush into advertising any of them. Their commission rates are not big and it is possible for affiliates to earn more promoting other merchants in the same field.

To read more about the top 5 in each of the above categories go here

It seems, much to Microsoft’s chagrin, that many in the small business community prefer XP over Vista. And why wouldn’t we prefer an operating system that’s not buggy, will operate with all our software and doesn’t require big upgrades of hardware?

So how does Microsoft overcome that resistance? Well with Microsoft resistance is futile - especially if you can’t buy a new computer with XP already installed.

You can read more about it here

… but few actually buy.

Yesterday in Affiliate Marketing - The Hidden Benefit for Merchants - I wrote about one of the hidden benefits for merchants (and one of the hidden negatives for webmasters) in affiliate marketing.

Today I’ve got even more ‘bad’ news for those of us who’s small business is involved in affiliate marketing. A new survey has just been released that confirms the findings of several others that were run during 2006 and it doesn’t make great reading for affiliate marketers.

The survey found that lots of people go shopping online but they actually do their buying offline. 68% of consumers research and compare prices for a product online before heading off to make their purchase in a bricks and mortar store.

That means that you really do have to be prepared for a lot of tyre kickers to hit your online stores and you have to work out a way to convert those tyre kickers into people who actually buy from you.

 Small website owners get into the affiliate marketing business in the hope of making money. They display banners and, if they’re more than just beginners, add in some engaging text (or even write a product review or infomercial) in the hope of encouraging surfers to click through to the merchant and make a purchase.

On the other side of the coin the merchant is increasing his market penetration. With the help of affiliates and with minimal upfront costs the product that the merchant sells is exposed to a much greater audience. With an affiliate marketing programme a merchant gets some great advertising that he or she doesn’t have to pay for until a product is sold.

Even if no product is sold by most of a merchant’s affiliates the merchant is still gaining a huge benefit from branding. Every time a surfer visits an affiliate’s page and sees the merchant’s banner there’s a hidden benefit for the merchant.

So if you’re an affiliate what does that mean for you? Think about the value of the real estate on your website. Are you actually earning money from the spots where you’ve placed a merchant’s banners or are you just giving them some free advertising and branding?

If you are giving that space away for free what can you do to turn it into money in your pocket?

Overall sales around the Net are often a little slow in the first quarter of the year. In January people are all shopped out after Christmas. At the end of January and into February people are in shock as they look at their credit card statements and then of course you’re drifting into the northern summer when people are away from their computers.

However sales on eBay have gone against the trend in Q1 this year and are up 14% compared to the same time last year. The number of eBay stores has also risen but store inventory continues to slide.

You can read the full story here