http://www.home-office-guide.com Thoughts and ideas from our own experiences running small businesses Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:11:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Avoiding the carpetbaggers These days search engine optimisation for business websites is booming. More and more small business owners are beginning to realise that just having a website isn't enough, it has to rank well for the terms people are using to search for the products a business is selling. For people ... http://www.home-office-guide.com/2008/07/02/search-engine-optimisation-for-small-businesses/ It's another beautiful and crisp winter's morning here in Hervey Bay. The sun's shining, the birds are singing and I've got some the Concerto for 2 Horns by Telemann playing while I wrestle with some HTML for a client. At the moment it's getting the better of me so I thought ... http://www.home-office-guide.com/2008/06/26/a-lesson-for-all-small-businesses/ I think I lost a potential client just a little while ago. He knows that his small business website has some major problems ... it's four years old and only has one page indexed in Google. I put together a 9 step programme that would cure all the sites ills but ... http://www.home-office-guide.com/2008/06/23/sometimes-quick-fixes-are-only-the-start/ Some competitors are close ... round the corner ... down the street ... up the road ... maybe even next door. They're close geographically speaking ... but they may be so far behind you that you're not even close to them. On the other hand some competitors are far away ... ... http://www.home-office-guide.com/2008/06/22/a-lesson-from-a-distant-competitor/ I guess that if you've read my ramblings here you could be mistaken and think that everything about our small business is sweetness and light ... problems never arise ... the wheels never fall off ... and we simply go on from strength to strength. If that's what you think ... http://www.home-office-guide.com/2008/06/20/when-things-go-wrong-in-your-small-business/ So many people want to be able to work from home but don't want to be in the position of having to go through all the hassles of starting their own business. For them it's a shame that there aren't more companies like Dotspots who have this to say about ... http://www.home-office-guide.com/2008/06/16/working-from-home-2/ For someone who has spent a large part of his working life outdoors, on the road, dealing with people in crisis working online has and will continue to be a lot of fun. Helping people make money from their websites is even more satisfying than helping people survive bad financial ... http://www.home-office-guide.com/2008/06/15/the-joys-of-working-online/ While some of us build our small businesses from the ground up others prefer to buy in to an established business. There are definitely pros and cons for both options but when you're buying into an established small business sometimes there are some hidden traps lurking behind those great ... ... http://www.home-office-guide.com/2008/06/05/thinking-of-buying-a-small-business/ One aspect of our business specialises in the design, hosting and ongoing maintenance of websites for small businesses. While we certainly haven't cornered the market in this town we certainly do have a lot of very happy customers because their sites always rank well for important search engine terms and ... http://www.home-office-guide.com/2008/06/04/small-business-websites-2/ I've come to the realistation this morning that there's one sad fact that relates to our small business that I just have to face. The desk in my home office is a total mess and the parts that you can't see are even worse than the parts that you can see. ... http://www.home-office-guide.com/2008/05/31/a-sad-fact-ive-got-to-face/