The “Tools for Online Success” site (http://www.google.com/help/sba) features tutorials, video testimonials, and tips from savvy small business people who have leveraged the web to become more efficient, more cost-effective, and more successful.

“The SBA is pleased to partner with Google to put these important tools in the hands of small businesses across the country,” said SBA Administrator Karen Mills.  “As the web evolves and consumers adapt accordingly, we know that more customers are finding traditional ‘Main Street’ businesses online. With these tools for online success, we can ensure these small businesses reach new markets and customers so they can continue to create jobs.”

“One fifth of searches on Google are related to location, which shows that people are looking to the Internet to make decisions about where to go and what to do in their daily lives,” said John Hanke, Vice President of Product Management, Google. “We want to connect our users with the businesses that provide the goods and services they need, but the first step is for those businesses to have an online presence. We’re excited to team up with the SBA to make that process easier for business owners across the country.”

Google and the SBA unveiled the partnership during a forum held today at the SBA’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C., and broadcast live online to press and small business owners across the country.  Susan Holt, Principal and Owner of CulinAerie, a recreational cooking school in downtown D.C., shared her experiences working with the SBA and explained how she has used online tools like Google Places and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to attract more aspiring cooks.

Holt is just one of the many small business owners from across the country who are sharing how they’ve used online tools to reach new customers. Many are featured in the video testimonials found at the “Tools for Online Success” site.  Each video documents the unique success stories that these small businesses have created using online technology:

• Masha Hleap-Hershkovitz, Owner of Fuego Mundo in Sandy Springs, Georgia, uses social media to request feedback from restaurant customers for improvement. Ms. Hleap-Hershkovitz even used social media to name her restaurant.  “We bounced back and forth with a potential name for months, and we were kind of bottle-necked,” she says.  “We put it out there [on social media], and it came back 70 percent ‘Fuego Mundo.’”  Visit http://www.fuegomundo.com.

• Sean Vahey, Owner of Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream in San Francisco launches new menu items and cultivates a worldwide following for his company’s unique ice cream flavors using social media and Google Places. I don’t have a lot of time do marketing,” Mr. Vahey says.  “I don’t have a lot of time to sit down and reach out to people.  I’m able to get on the computer and two minutes later, I’ve gotten the word out…Our Google Places page is important, because it’s got all of our information in one spot – our website, our phone number, you can see where we are on a map, and you can even get directions.” Visit http://www.humphryslocombe.com.

• Sumul Shah, Owner of Lumus Construction in Woburn, Massachusetts, uses its website and online maps to research projects all over the United States and show potential customers examples of its past work.  According to Mr. Shah, “Customers can see and visualize the types of projects and the complexity of the work we do…In the future, our website will not only talk about how much renewable energy we’re building, but we’ll actually quantify it.  We’ll be able to take live data coming from all the wind turbines and solar panels that we’ve installed, simulate it, and be able to report not only how much energy we’re producing, but also what the environmental benefits are.” Visit http://www.lumusinc.com.

• Aliyyah Baylor, Owner of Make My Cake in Harlem, New York City, redesigned her website to display vivid imagery of its baked goods.  Make My Cake is family-owned and operated, and Ms. Baylor says, “Our website is an extension of our business when it’s too busy for someone to answer the phone. It’s our virtual salesperson, and that is very key.”  Visit http://www.makemycake.com.

• Mandy Scott, Owner of Mandy Scott Flowers in San Francisco uses highly targeted online advertising to help her premium flower boutique compete with national brands on a small marketing budget.  She says, “We are tiny compared to the big players.  I can’t hope to compete with them on any kind of national scale, but I feel locally we do very well.  Showing up in both natural and paid search results is important for us because we want to be on a level playing field with the big guns.”  Visit http://www.mandyscottflowers.com.

• Jessica Soler, Owner of Salon Red in Decatur, Georgia, uses a website and local online listings to help her customers find salon locations and book appointments.  She says, “A great example of how the web helps Salon Red is we were nominated with one of the local papers to be a ‘Best Of’ salon in Atlanta, and tons of people went online to vote for all of our locations.  We just were flooded with business, and it all came from online.”  Visit http://www.salonred.com.

• Christopher Bartlett, Owner of Skaters Landing in West Hartford, Connecticut, uses online videos to teach customers from all over the world how to properly shop for and use ice skating products.  “We really were able to reach out to new markets,” says Mr. Bartlett.  “I don’t look at [our online efforts] as a place to go to and hard sell, but to really talk with people and answer some of the questions that people might have.”  Visit http://www.skaterslanding.com.

• Louis Rossetto, CEO of TCHO in San Francisco brings a start-up mentality to his company’s premium chocolate production.  TCHO uses web analytics to constantly improve its website’s layout, ensuring consumers are engaging with its products in the most effective way possible.  “You can’t be a modern company without using modern tools, and online is just fundamental to being in business today,” says Rossetto.  “Our website represents our direct link to our customers.  We use it to explain who we are, engage our community, and it’s certainly a storefront for us.  You’re inviting the whole world into your store if you do that online.”  Visit http://www.tcho.com.

Continued success stories like these are the goal of the Google/SBA partnership.  Visit the “Tools for Online Success” website for a full run-down, but here are a few easy tips all small business owners should be using:

• Establish your online presence. One out of five searches on Google are related to location.  Most local online listings such as Google Places are free, and if your business doesn’t have a website, there are ready-made site templates and free hosting services that make establishing an online presence easy.
• Use free marketing to reach customers. You can build a fan base with free services like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter that keep your customers in-the-know about new products or specials and aware of promotions. These services are great “word of mouth” platforms – where a customer following you might tell their friends about your business.
• Know your customers.  Easy to use web analytics tools can tell you a lot about your customers by analyzing what search term brought them to your website or what they look at while they are there. This information can help you make smart decisions about what you feature and what search terms you should run search ads on.
• Keep an eye on the latest trends.  The growing popularity of smartphones means that more and more customers are searching for local information on the go.  This makes it all the more important that a business’s online presence be accurate and up-to-date. You can link to your menu, give users driving directions, and even post digital coupons.

Blog or use it as a Content Management System, WordPress is the next best cost effective web solution.

No need to purchase additional software, your site is accessible wherever there’s internet connectivity and most importantly, you own it. No monthly leasing payments.

There are also hundreds of Free and inexpensive WordPress Themes available to choose from that represent several business styles such as: Magazine Editorial, Corporate, and Creative, Retail, Technology, Nonprofit, entertainment and more. You can make simple changes to represent your brand and brand messaging without having a fully custom built website. Example: http://themeforest.net/category/wordpress/

The WordPress administrative area is easy to use to make updates to both your posts and pages. Posts are listed in reverse chronological order and are also displayed in RSS feeds. Pages are static and not listed by date. Your navigation is typically referencing a static page; whereas your posts reference the latest information sorted by date.

WordPress also keeps costs of having a dynamic website minimal because of the long lists of plugins that are available to customize your needs. There are ecommerce plugins, fundraising plugins, social media plugins, All-in-One SEO plugins, sitemap plugins, gallery plugins, calendar plugins, event plugins and more. Example: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/browse/popular/.

Take a look at WordPress as a solution for your business or non-profit. View their Showcase and the many businesses and non-profits that are currently using WordPress as their choice for a publishing platform.

Non-profit Examples

• Walk to Washington
• Joint Use
• American Red Cross Online Disaster News Portal
• Philadelphia Neighborhoods
• Boys and Girls Club of the Midlands
• BigGovHealth
• More Examples

Business Examples

• Great Basin Arts & Entertainment
• Susan Hill Pr
• Westward Strategy & Design Group
• Cardinal Law
• Bartlett Architecture

You can download WordPress for free http://wordpress.org/download/.

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If you would like to learn more about WordPress as a solution for your Reno Business or Reno Non-profit, please give Kristy Crabtree a call at (775) 626-8330.

When I first moved to this area in the 1990’s, I was a small business owner just like many of you, successfully running my own pizza place. Pretty soon, the competition moved in – places like Bully’s, Joe Bob’s and Sneakers. Specifically, they all moved in between our store and the softball fields. If you’re a parent with kids in sports you know that softball teams and fans are a big demographic at a pizza place. I quickly learned that I would have to up my game to stay in the game.  I learned that if I didn’t leave the store and go out to those softball fields every night, talk to the teams, hand out coupons and make my business known, than somebody else was going to do it and get their business instead. By making an effort to develop those relationships I was able to receive and maintain their loyalty as customers.

This is why it’s disturbing to me when I see small business owners who never leave their stores. I usually hear this as a reason for not attending the dozens of events and programs that the chamber offers every year: “I just can’t leave the store – I’ll lose money.” My response to that is: “You can’t afford not to leave the store!” If you leave the store you could be at a chamber event with up to 300 people in the room and make 4-5 quality connections. How many quality connections will you make sitting behind a counter waiting for them to come to you? This doesn’t just apply to chamber events either. I hear stories all the time from the business owner who goes to watch his son play softball, sits next to someone, starts talking business and makes a connection.

This is how you build a client base, using the same timeless principles of creating trust and interpersonal relationships that have always existed in business and always will – digital age or no digital age. Recognition of your business and your name by word of mouth is much more readily received by others because they know and trust the individual they’re hearing about you from. It’s all about building your business, one loyal customer at a time.

My father taught me, “It is better to serve 1 customer 100 times than 100 customers 1 time.” That is how really successful businesses are built, even during tough economic times. People still have needs and the toughest economy in the world is not going to eliminate those needs. Customers are drawn to the people who go the extra mile to service their needs. You can’t do that by sitting in your store. You do that by leaving the store and building relationships.

- Len Stevens

www.sparkschamber.org

You will be asked to create a business profile allowing you to add a brief description of your business, a link to your website, your contact phone numbers, a contact person, your business logo, photographs highlighting your business, hours of operation as well as a few other business specifics.

8 Free Business Listing Websites

1. Google
Local Business Listings
http://www.google.com/local/add

2. Yahoo
Local Business Listings
http://listings.local.yahoo.com

3. Bing
Local Business Listings
https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx

4. Yelp
Real People. Real Reviews.
http://www.yelp.com

5. City Search
Local Business Listings
http://www.citysearch.com

6. Merchant Circle
Free Online Advertising
http://www.merchantcircle.com

7. Trip Advisor
Local Business Listings
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Owners

8. DMOZ
Open Directory Project
http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

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By Kristy Crabtree
Westward Strategy & Design Group

Are you ready to build a website for your small business or for yourself? There are simple search engine optimization steps you should consider during the development process.

The following 12 step optimization checklist will bring you one step closer to maximizing your revenues with smart web design.

1.) Choose a domain name, that is a URL, that is descriptive of what your website will represent:

• Your business name (ex. WestwardStrategy.com)
• Your first and last name (ex. KristyCrabtree.com) or
• Keyword specific phrase (ex. WestwardDesignGroup.com)

2.) Decide what keywords and/or phrase targets the visitors you are looking for, and that best describes what your business offers.

3.) Sub directory names using keywords or phrases should use hyphens in the url: http://url.com/descriptive-keyword/

4.) Title tags are the words that appear on site visitor’s browser tabs as they navigate through your site. Clearly define your title tags for each individual web page making sure that it is accurate and descriptive of the page’s content. Keep it 70 characters or less.

• (Example 1) Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
• (Example 2) Brand Name | Primary Keyword and Secondary Keyword

5.) The meta description is the primary source of information search engines review, and this is also the information that appears along with your site name in the search engine results. Clearly define your meta descriptions for each individual web page making sure that it too is accurate and descriptive of the page’s content. Keep it 155 characters or less

EXAMPLE: Keyword/Phrase Search Results

6.) Develop keyword rich content on all pages including the keyword and/or phrase within the content

7.) Use descriptive words for your navigation when it makes sense

8.) Name all images on website with descriptive image names:

• (Example) chocolate-lab-running.jpg vs. img0893.jpg

9.) The title tags are the words that visitor’s click to reach the hyperlinks behind them. Add descriptive title tags to anchor links

• (Example) title=” Descriptive Title Tag” vs. title=”Click Here”

10.) Setup Google Analytics and see who’s visiting your website and who’s giving you referral’s: http://www.google.com/analytics

11.) Create a sitemap and submit to Google Webmaster Tools and other search engines. The free tools give you a look under the hood at your website performance: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

12.) Add new website to local free business listings and other free directory sites

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Contributed by Kristy Crabtree
Westward Strategy & Design Group

• While working at your cash register, you can instantly tell your loyal customers that the  new shipment has just arrived.
• While having a coffee, you can let all your fans know the Tickets are on Sale!
• You can let your commuting morning customers know that you have just taken the delicious apricot ginger scones out of the oven, as you take them out!

One of our own clients, The Hi Point Cafe near the corner of Rob Drive and Mae Ann Avenue  in Reno, has just opened their doors, and are using Twitter to grow their business.

While big businesses like Best Buy, Apple, Coca-Cola and McDonalds are rapidly developing uses for Twitter, small business are the ones that can really benefit from this powerful micro-blogging tool.

Here is a great article from the New York Times about the power of Twitter for the Mom & Pop business:

Mom-and-Pop Operators Turn to Social Media

SAN FRANCISCO — Three weeks after Curtis Kimball opened his crème brûlée cart in San Francisco, he noticed a stranger among the friends in line for his desserts. How had the man discovered the cart? He had read about it on Twitter.

For Mr. Kimball, who conceded that he “hadn’t really understood the purpose of Twitter,” the beauty of digital word-of-mouth marketing was immediately clear. He signed up for an account and has more than 5,400 followers who wait for him to post the current location of his itinerant cart and list the flavors of the day, like lavender and orange creamsicle.  Read More

The answer may very well be, “no.” Certainly for many, the answer is, “What’s a blog?” Fair enough. It’s quite normal for most business owners (especially these days) to be so busy working to keep their businesses running, they don’t have the time to keep up with the latest techniques for reaching out to new customers and clients. If you’re like many of our clients, however, you may have been saying to yourself, “I have to find a new way to develop more business, because the old ways don’t seem to be working as well these days.” Well, blogging is one of those “new” ways.

If the concept intrigues you even just a little bit, spend just two more minutes of your very precious time reading the list below to see if blogging is for you.

The 10 top reasons you should consider blogging for your business are:

1. Your business is in need of an extremely inexpensive, professional online presence that can be easily found by potential clients and customers searching for your goods and/or services on the Internet.
2. Your business has a product or service that is new to the market, that might need some explanation on what it’s for or how best to use it.
3. Your business offers a knowledge-based service.
4. Your business requires educating the customer in some way.
5. Your business desires to receive feedback from others for the purpose of improving the company’s products and services.
6. Your business offers a product or service that serves a special niche market that includes like-minded people with similar special interests.
7. Your business could use some good press or needs to counteract bad press.
8. Your website is more than five years old and/or has not been optimized for search engines.
9. You desire to create loyal trusted relationships with current and future clients and customers.
10. Your business has competitors that it needs to differentiate itself from.

If you would like to learn more about blogging, you can Google search blogs and learn more than you ever wanted to know about blogging.

Visit our website and check out the information on a Build Your Own Blog Site Workshop , or call me, Debra Deming at the NSBDC Reno office at (775) 784-1717 and make a counseling appointment to talk about your business. All our business counseling services are offered free so it can’t hurt.

1. Optimize for keyword content
To get listed correctly in the search engines, each page of your site needs to be optimized to the best of your ability. Since the keywords that you decide to target will be used throughout the optimization process, choosing the right keywords is essential. If you choose the wrong keywords you will not be found in the search engines. If you are not found in the search engines how will anyone find your site? Pick one core term for each page and write the optimized text around it. To brainstorm top phrases for your industry try reviewing your competitors’ websites.

2. Write unique title tags
The title tag of your page is the most important factor to consider when optimizing your web page for the search engines. This is because most engines place a high level of importance on information found in your title tag. The title tag is also what the search engines usually use for the title of your listing in the search results.

The title tag appears as the description of the page at the top of your browser’s window. It should be a complete sentence that includes your term(s) for that page. Do not overstuff these tags or your website will be penalized in the search results!

3. Implement quality Meta content
Meta is a part of the page html code human visitors to your site rarely see. It is used by search engine visitors (robots or bots) to help them determine what the page is about.

Description Meta should be one or two core-term enriched sentences that do not exceed 250 characters.

Keyword Meta is a space-separated list of terms relating to your page. The core term should appear at the beginning and end of this list. Limit the number of characters to 1,024, including spaces.

4. Content is king
The page content is one of the most important factors to letting visitors and the search engines know what it is you are offering. Improve your content and you will improve your listings in search engines. Each page should have at least 200 words of copy and include your keyword terms. The most important aspect of writing for the web is that you write for the human visitors, not the search engines.

5. Use image alt text wisely
Each image on your page can include a keyword phrase that relates to the image. This text will also help those that may have their images turned off when visiting your site. This text can be included in the alternate or “alt” attribute of the html code for an image. The important thing is to describe the image first and then try to work in key terms.

6. Use a robots.txt file to tell search engines where to go
This simple text file is a roadmap of your website. It should be placed in the root directory of your site, and it tells the search engine spiders which sections they should go into and which ones they are not allowed in. It is one of the easiest tactics you can use to help ensure your site gets crawled. It’s also one of the most overlooked opportunities.

7. Use a Sitemap.xml file, and keep it up to date
A sitemap file is a source of information for the search engines, like your robots.txt file. It tells them the location of all the sections and pages of your website, how important each of those sections are to your site, and most importantly when those sections were last updated. Most importantly, when you change your content, update your sitemap file!

8. Get rid of duplicate content
It’s easy to use the same content for multiple pages on your site, especially if you’re a retailer and the manufacturer has already provided lots of content for you. However, every time you use the exact same content you are taking a chance that the search engines will throw your site out of their results, thereby negating all of your hard work to get there in the first place.

Take the time to rewrite content for each page, regardless of how similar it may be to another page. Get rid of mirrored sites or completely rewrite these as well. Also, rewrite an article two or three times for use in article marketing or syndication.

9. Create custom error pages
If a visitor accidentally stumbles into a section that does not exist anymore, their browser’s default “Page Not Found” message does not give them a way to get back into the content of your site. However, it is very easy to set up custom error pages that have the same look and feel as the rest of your site. They will help keep visitors and therefore search engine spiders from reaching a dead end in your site and leaving.

10. Get validated!
First, validate your code for well-formed HTML. The rules of HTML have changed quite significantly over the years, and it is no longer optimal for you or your webmaster to generate messy, broken mark up.Although not a requirement from the search engines, both Google and Yahoo mention it in their guidelines for Webmasters.

Second, validate your entire Web site through Google and Yahoo. This is a simple task that involves uploading a file to your Web site’s root directory or adding information to your meta tags.You can find more information on this process in the search engines’ Webmaster guidelines.

This tip also serves to build a level of trust with the search engines and lets them know that your site is a current and active. This is a major component in determining how often your Web site is visited by the search engines.

The 10 tips presented here are just the beginning of a well-optimized Web site. The depth of a successful natural search optimization strategy is beyond the scope of this article, but we hope this guide will help site owners and Webmasters improve their natural search optimization.

Written by Kristy Crabtree with Chris Gandolfo.

Kristy Crabtree is the owner of Westward Strategy & Design Group in Sparks, and Chris Gandolfo is a marketing and design specialist with the firm. Contact them at (775) 720-3521 or visit WestwardStrategy.com for more natural search optimization tips and information.

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