Want to know what Google sees?

SEO Tip - Hit Ctrl-A when viewing a site. The areas in white are text, and thus readable by a search bot. Everything else is invisible in Google’s view. So, if your front page is all flash and graphics there is nothing to search.

Also we tell the search bots what is on our site by using H1 tags and anchor text (the words you use in the link). Many of us use links like "click here" or "buy now" erroneously tell the search engine that the page we are linking to is about the keyword "click here." You links should be about the keywords on the linked page - for instance "sf booking services" instead of "click here."

On the Cheap?

Last Saturday, I headed over to the 1^st annual BiztechDay conference. Because who needs to sleep in on a Saturday?

The event touted over 500 attendees, mostly small business owners looking to leverage technology and a slew of service providers. The keynotes reminded us all of the state of the economy – uh thanks? We’re in a “Five Class Rapid, a Financial Earthquake . . .” and a few other bad analogies in case anyone was sleeping through the 24-hour news cycle.

The main keynote of the morning, Tim Feriss was pushing a new book “Four Hour Workweek” despite this his address was hopeful as he pointed out the advantages of being a small business in the current turmoil.

• Talent will be cheaper, as there will be more unemployment.
• Service providers will be cheaper as they try to remain competitive.
• Hiring small businesses as consultants will be cheaper than staffing a full time position.
  

His recommendations were to leverage sites like elance.com to secure talent for projects. To learn more “Four Hour Workweek”

Most attendees were business owners looking for free or low cost solutions to stretch tight marketing and operating budgets. Social Networking remains a buzz among the tech set as a means to leverage low cost of free solutions to network.

We have set a free Ning.com network called FITbiz to allow business owners to network, exchange business lead, chat and more.

Overall, the conference offered some interesting technologies (many of which we may be already using – blogs, networks, newsletters) that will allow small businesses to leverage technology without spending a lot of cash.

The Update . . .

About a month ago, I mentioned that I had been neglecting this site and it was time to for an update. At the time (9/22), Dohertyassoc.com has a traffic rank of: 3,740,178. Currently, it is 1,969,422, so we’ve moved passed not quite 2.0 million sites traffic wise. Not bad, but still a long way from #1, eh?

I’ve updated the look and feel of the site, and begun blogging more regularly. All good things when it comes to driving traffic. We went through our Google analytics tool (Make Google Happy) to clean up redundant meta tags and errors.

We are still in clean up mode. So, the next two items on the list are to updat the blog software (we are going to move over to WordPress for greater flexibility and features) and look for errors using a Check Server Headers Tool.

SEO is not a quick fix (those promising it is are likely using black hat techniques); it is a long term strategy and a way of thinking when it comes to building your site.

Welcome to our experiment in social networking

As online social networking continues to evolve beyond the MySpace teenage crowd - we will continue to explore Web 2.0 solutions that help small businesses work smarter, not harder.

Small businesses can easily get out of shape — just like their founders – too easily tired to keep up with what’s required, flabby with stress and saggy where they should be taut. Day-to-day demands can take the focus off the core. Are you relentlessly sweating your receivables? Have you even begun to sculpt a marketing plan for the frame and shape of your business? Can you go the distance without huffing and puffing?

Check out FITbiz and FITbiz Tools

We'd love your input. Melinda & Mike

Take a deep breath

The news and the business blogs have been telling us how bad it is out there. Nothing like a 24-hour news cycle to pound reality home. Yes, thank you. I get it. Times are tough.

So, now what? Return to the basics. Last week, Sequoia Capital gathered all the CEOs of their portfolio companies together and presented its new Get Real or Go Home approach to running businesses. If you can get through all the graphs, the message is tucked away on slide 53. My guess is slides 1-52 are for those that had somehow slept through the last few weeks.

Slide 53 talks about returning to the core, cutting the fat, and focusing on the bottom line.

First and foremost, take a deep breath.

Second, remember the basics of the OODA Loop.

• Observe – The market is tough, cash and credit are tight.
• Orientate – Become a lean shop.
• Decide – Take action. Avoid the “deer in the headlight” scenario and actively plan a strategy to weather the downturn.
• Act – Implement cost cutting strategies and eliminate excess inventory while reviewing costs and overhead.

And most importantly, remember the exercise is a loop. Once you taken a course of action go back and observe the outcome and start the process again.

Press 3, if you’d like to be in a continuous loop without ever making human contact.

One of the advantages of being a small business is customer service. We don’t have layers of management; we don’t have a complex sale force - which means we can actually engage with our clients. The guy that cuts my hair knows I forget to schedule appointments, so he always seems to call when I’m getting shaggy. My local coffee shop always has a dog bone for the pooch. My local video store knows I have penchant for Almodóvar films.

Sure big organizations have many advantages, but not when it comes to engaging customers.

• Am I talking with the owner? - Whether it’s a buying decision with a vendor or solution with a client – they are talking to the decision maker and a decision is made. When I call a big company, I am often told a supervisor will call me back in 3-5 working days – Don’t bother, I’m already gone.
• Let me talk to your supervisor – If a customer isn't happy - being forced to deal with policy instead of people means he will leave. As a business owner, you’re on the front lines - you can be responsive or at the very least offer to make it right. When is the last time a big business took that kind of responsibility?
• Are you being served? - You can provide personal attention because you actually know your customers. You know what they like, you know their histories, and you might even know their hot buttons. And when you make them happy, they tell others. You just can’t beat word of mouth.
  

Customer service matters. We all just want to be treated nicely and given a sense of worth. Like our business matters. And with small business, it really does!

It’s not pretty out there –

Part of my business is speaking engagements – often booked months in advance. Not usually a big deal. But tonight, I get to talk about raising capital. Uh – hello?

• SBA loans to small businesses have plummeted compared with the same period last year. Volume in the agency's principal loan program has fallen 30%, with 28,000 fewer loans approved this year (USA Today,9/28/08)
• The financial crisis has touched off worries among entrepreneurs about the status of their business loans and credit lines (BusinessWeek.com, 9/26/08)
  

It’s time to return to the basics. In talking with a client the other day, she said she had multiple plans of execution based on available capital. Certain projects or purchases would have to wait until the capital became available.

Many of us need to rethink our businesses and overhead if we plan to weather the storm.

1. Focus on your core business - what do your customers need?
2. Be your harshest critic when it comes to purchases– measure and focus on ROI.
3. It’s a business, not a hobby. If you’re not making money, do something that will.
4. Reduce overhead where you can without impacting customer service.
5. Pay down debt any chance you can.
   

I don’t expect the next few months (years?) to be easy. But those that can adapt will come out the other side stronger, leaner businesses.

Make Google Happy

There are thousands of search engines out there, but only one commands 68% of the search market –

So, yes you should aim to make Google happy. And Google is willing to help. If you care about your ranking on Google, then start at the beginning – Google’s webmaster tools. Start with diagnostic – what Google sees on your site that should be fixed. Start with Content analysis - See potential problems with site metadata, such as title and meta description information.

There is an old adage about Cobbler’s children having no shoes – so big surprise - we’ve be a little remiss in keeping up with Google’s web tools. So by way of bad example – here are our Content analysis: www.dohertyassoc.com

While we were crawling your site, we noticed some issues with the content of your pages. These issues won't prevent your site from appearing in Google search results, but paying attention to them can provide Google with more information and even help drive traffic to your site. For example, title and meta description text can appear in search results, and useful, descriptive text is more likely to be clicked on by users

We need to clean up the meta descriptions on two pages, and interestingly the duplicate title tags are a result of a blog created by blogger (a Google ap) and using tags in the keyword descriptor.

Start at the beginning and check out what Google sees when it looks at your site.

Get the latest news and updates from Google.
Google Webmaster Central Blog

Meet Alexa

We all spend plenty of money to launch our websites. We spend endless hours creating content and writing blogs. Why do we do this? Traffic, of course!

Sadly, many small businesses subscribe to the "If we build it, they will come" brand of online marketing. Like anything else in your business, to see if something is working, you have to measure it. That's where one of my favorite free web tools - Alexa.com - comes in. It provides you the page rank of your site (or any other site, for that matter), which reflects the amount of traffic running through your site.

You've launched a new SEO campaign, is it working? Check your page rank. You've sent a mailer, offering a discount to your web customers, again check the page rank to measure its success.

Some other nifty things at Alexa.com include a free broken links tool under the developer's corner. There is nothing more frustrating to your reader than to hit a broken link.

And the number one key to building traffic is in bound links. Alexa lets you see who links into your site (or who links into your competitors). Simply pull up the site info on your site and select Sites Linking in.

Did I mention it was free?