Quantcast Top 10|Social media|How to|Blogging & Resources|Guides: December 2010

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Starting Your Own Small Business and How to Make it Work

There are a variety of reasons you may consider starting your own business, including gaining freedom from the "daily grind" that sees you working hard for someone else, as a means of self-fulfillment, to capitalize on a great idea or even because of an innate entrepreneurial drive. Regardless of the reason for starting a new business, however, there are a series of steps that new business owners can follow during the startup phase to ensure that they succeed. Just because most small businesses fail within one year of their startup does not mean that yours has to be one of them.



Surround Yourself with a Great Team

This is advice that you may or may not hear often, but it’s probably the single most important thing that a small business owner can do. By "team," I mean the team of professionals with whom you work. This will typically include an accountant, an attorney and a technical specialist. For those whose specialty falls into one of those areas, you can of course serve in place of another professional in that area, but trying to "wear too many hats" is a common failing of business owners.

Make no mistake, you will be responsible for everything from writing the company business plan to taking out the trash at the office and making copies, but when it comes to the specialty areas, don’t skimp on accounting, legal and technical services. A good accountant and attorney tandem can assist with setting up your business’s structure, i.e. - a sole proprietorship, LLC, "S" Corporation or other, and can advise you on things such as tax write-offs, financial reporting, intellectual property and a host of other issues that you will likely face as a small business owner, regardless of the industry in which you will be operating.

Make Sure to Network - It Works

For those who hate to "schmooze," being a small business owner may be a painful experience. Unless you’re starting your small business with a partner who will handle this aspect of the business, it is crucial to get out and network with like-minded people. The number of business opportunities that can arise from casual meetings, a brief meeting over coffee and more formal events cannot be overstated.

Take the opportunity to look for events sponsored by your local Chamber of Commerce and local business associations, then go to the events to get in touch with people who also own small businesses in your area. You may not gain something from each trip out, but sooner or later the continuous contact will lead to some deals for your new company.

You Must Advertise to Succeed

It is generally said that businesses are "growing or dying." If you want to avoid being the latter, make sure to advertise, in addition to networking, to make your business continue to grow. While it depends on your business what types of advertising will work best, a website is a key component almost regardless of what your business does. Likewise, there are a number of online advertising techniques that can be used by a small business owner to establish a web presence that contributes meaningfully to the success of the business. For those with a bit more of a budget, television, print and radio ads may work as well, but in this instance it will likely be best to seek the advice and assistance of a professional.

You’re Probably In for Some Long Days (and Nights)

Needless to say, starting and operating a small business can be exhausting and all-consuming. Even in the evening, when work is supposedly "finished" for the day, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to escape entirely. While there is a certain freedom from operating your own business, keep in mind that you’ll likely be working longer hours than you did in your "real job" - at least for a while. With some hard work, and adherence to the advice above, it really can work.

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Sunday, December 5, 2010

SEO Tip: Google Insights for Search

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The Google Insights let you see what people are searching for.  The first time I used it, I chose last 90 days then I clicked the Search button. The output was a list of Rising Searches of the last 90 days:

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Rising searches are defined as searches that gained significant growth from the specific time period.  This makes sense if you want to know what keywords people are looking for.  It is also a good way to discover popular things that you might not be aware of (i.e. in my case it is red tube, item #4, further search lead me to a porn site!).

To zoom in on a specific locale, choose the country and specific location you want to analyze.  In the example below I searched for Texas, USA:

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The top searches included search engines, youtube, and shopping sites like ebay and craigslist.  The result is too broad as expected, so let’s see if we can narrow it down to a specific category:

To do this, choose a category on the Filter panel.  I chose Lifestyles for the example below:

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The output is now a little more interesting:

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The top 3 searches are bible, names, pregnancy.  Top 5 entry is “baby names”, while top 10 is “babies r us”.  From this alone, I can conclude that Texas could be a good market for companies who sell baby stuff.
Now for the Rising searches… at the top is Shelley Malil, she must be a celebrity or something… this proves my theory that I could be connected to the Internet for the most part of my entire day Digging and still miss a famous person that everyone else is searching for.

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After a Wikipedia research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelley_Malil, I found out that Shelley Malil is not a woman but a man! He appeared in a movie called the 40 Year Old Virgin but people are digging him because he is a suspect for stabbing his ex-girlfriend at-least 20 times!  Indeed gruesome but that is how he got to the top of the searched entries.

The best feature for me of this tool is it’s capability to map out the planet and color code the volume of search for a specific keyword.  I typed in “Paris Hilton” and I got the interesting results below:

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The darker the color of the map, the heavier the search interest.  The Chinese seem to have less interest to Paris Hilton than the Australians.  Makes sense, the Chinese have their own share of celebrities caught on their own homemade videos.  From the list of countries, Honduras tops the list. Seems the Hondurans like to search for Paris Hilton more than the Americans.

Overall, Google Insights is a great tool for researchers and SEOs.  The capability to view the regions (countries) and cities color coded by the search volume is an easy way to gain an insight to what locales are searching for any keyword. The capability to narrow a search via categories are very helpful on identifying a specific target market or audience.

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Friday, December 3, 2010

Get keyword ideas using the Google Keyword Tool

Search engines use keywords to identify which sites match a particular search phrase.  SEOs need to identify which keywords are searched for so that they can use those keywords and get found by the search engines and eventually by their target audience. 


For example, if you want to optimize a website about “computer tips” you should see how many searches for the keyword are being submitted to Google monthly so you can have an idea if readers are looking for you or not. You can do that by going to external Google Keyword Tool:


Enter the keyword or phrase that you want to analyze then click Get keyword ideas:

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You will see a tabular report of all related terms along with the search volume generated for the previous month and the average search volume.

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In this report you will see if you are using the right keywords based on the Google search database. If you think you should target “computer tip” instead of “computer tips” then think again because the difference on the performance of each phrase is about ten times for “computer tips” (22,200 VS 2,400).

Also take note of the advertiser competition information, the longer the bar the more fierce the competition:

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If you are a starting up a new web site and the competition is strong, it is a good idea to start with keywords with less competition then work on those higher volume keywords later.

Another cool feature of this tool is that it can show you the average cost each time a user clicks your ad on the associated keyword.  To add the estimate cost per click (CPC) column on the report, go to the dropdown selection labeled “Choose columns to display” then click “Show estimated Avg. CPC”.

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You should see the CPC column on the report:

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Isn’t it a very convenient way to analyze your web site’s earning potential?  This way you can earn more money by targeting keywords with higher CPC.  Well, that is of course if you can make them come to your website.  We will show you how to do just that in the future articles as we go into more in-depth SEO tips.

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