Small Office, Home Office Information

by Stuart Livesey

I’m often reluctant to recommend anything that’s related to search engine optimisation that you might find online. That reluctance stems from the fact that the information you find online is usually plain wrong or a complete waste of time or downright damaging (or even a combination of all three).

However there are some good tips out there that are helpful for small business people who want to do their own search engine optimisation and you’ll find 21 Essential SEO Tips and Techniques here. I certainly don’t agree with everything Matt says but there’s nothing in what he recommends that will damage your chances of getting a good listing and many of his points are absolute gems.

by Stuart Livesey

If your small business has a website the chances are you’ve been approached at least once by someone promising you that they can get you to the top spot in all the major search engines if only you’ll part with some of your hard earned cash.

Alternatively if you’re thinking of having a website developed by a company you may see that they offer search engine optimisation services as well. We noticed today that one of our local competitors was offering a search engine optimisation service that included submitting their clients’ sites to all the search engines.

Trust me, if the first paragraph resonates with you then pay no attention to any approach like that. The people who are making those approaches are charlatans.

If the second paragraph resonates with you then ask about the experience of those who may be handling your website. To be quite honest you will undoubtely find that they have very little real experience because search engine optimisation is much more than just submitting sites to search engines.

Search engine optimisation is quite involved, takes considerable time and comes at a high price and anyone who suggests otherwise is not going to be worth the money they’re going to ask you to spend.

My partner and I have been involved in search engine optimisation since 1998 and those who think they can achieve any worthwhile results without considerable experience and research are fooling themselves and their clients.
 

by Stuart Livesey

I’m always encouraged when I see big business recognising that lots of much smaller businesses are very important to them. It seems that Microsoft is one such company that wants to offer help to smaller businesses and not just sell them products.

To further their help for small business Microsoft has just launched StartupCenter.com and you can read more about it here

Every month small businesses here in Hervey Bay have the opportunity to get together and network over a few drinks at a local venue. It’s an event that’s been happening for quite some time now and, until recently, it’s been something we’ve avoided.

But not any more. After attending our first gathering three months ago we walked away with three leads from small businesses we never even knew existed. Last night we came away with two more.

So if there’s a chance for you to network on a social level with other small businesses in your area grab it with both hands. Not only will meet some interesting people but you could even end up with some business out of it.

by Stuart Livesey

Keeping your cash flow happening is one of the major problems facing every small business and when the cash stops flowing for a small business the end game is often messy and unpleasant.

Oddly enough cash flow is something that Toni and I have written a lot about - but in other places, not here.  But that doesn’t mean we’re about to change that in this post; instead we’re going to suggest you follow the link to Cash Flow Secrets - you’ll find it very helpful.

by Stuart Livesey

How does your small business handle problems with your customers? Obviously there’s a right way and there’s a wrong way and there’s a lesson here in one person’s experience.

He tried to cancel an online magazine subscription and get a refund after the magazine stopped supplying new editions to the online reader he was using.

by Stuart Livesey

It can be quite hard to believe but the Internet is one of the scariest neighbourhoods on the planet and if you don’t take care then your small business can suffer some serious damage.

Being involved in a computer shop lets me meet lots of people - including small businesses - who feel that it can’t happen to them and so they do little to protect themselves. The problem is that it does happen to them.

If you’re not taking precautions then it’s only a matter of time before you feel the pain of a hacker … or even worse. If you don’t know what precautions to take then Cyber Threats will take you through the basics of staying safe and protecting your business online.

… and it comes from the big end of town.

by Stuart Livesey

You may not have noticed it but currently there’s a bit of a punch-up going on between Google and eBay. For quite sometime now Google has wanted to get their payment option - Google Checkout - added to eBay so users can use Google Checkout instead of eBay’s own PayPal and they haven’t had much success.

So in typical Google fashion they decided to push the issue by really getting under eBay’s skin. To do that they invited attendees at last week’s eBay conference to a big party to push the issue of getting eBay to allow their users to make a choice between Checkout and PayPal.

You might think that doing that was a wise move … but then you wouldn’t want to antagonise your biggest business partner now would you? And that’s exactly what they did. You see, when it comes to advertising, eBay is Google’s biggest partner and eBay promptly pulled all their advertising.

As one industry writer put it:

“…eBay, as Google’s largest advertiser until last week, was a true partner. And offending partners doesn’t make for good business.”

There’s a solid lesson there for small business … courtesy of the big end of town.

by Stuart Livesey 

Well after a couple of weeks where we hardly had time to scratch ourselves and just about all our blogs suffered we’re back.

One of the causes of us being ‘away’ was a very large family gathering that took place here. During that gathering Toni’s sister asked us to have a look at the website she had built some time ago to run in conjunction with her bricks-and-mortar business. It was basically a disaster and you can read more about it at How Bad Can a Web Design Get.

But it seems that our experience with that site is not unusual and many small businesses have websites that are a mess and we’re not the only ones who are seeing those sites. Small Business Websites is definitely worth reading if your small business has a website or you’re thinking of adding a website to the marketing strategy for your small business.

by Stuart Livesey

We’ve come across a competitor of ours in the town where we live who has made some fundamental errors as they’ve expanded their small business. I suppose we could have sat back and watched them go down in a screaming heap … but neither of us are like that.

You’ll probably think that we’re crazy but we’ve offered to sit down with the owner and walk them through some of the things the business needs to do to survive. Of course they don’t have to take us up on our offer of help and they don’t have to place any credence in what we tell them … so we’ll see.

But we just couldn’t sit back and do nothing.