Small Business Shift

Google announced a new service called Hotpot (notice it is “Hotpot” not “Hotspot”) a month or so ago. This could be important for local businesses, because Google plans to use Hotpot for tying together local business reviews and social data, which should make online reviews even more powerful in determining the success of a company. […]

TMP Directional Marketing/15Miles has released new survey results detailing the behavior of individuals looking for local business information.

“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.” – Wikipedia

There are a variety of ways to market on Facebook – today we’re going to look at the company’s paid advertising system, Facebook Ads. This can be a great venue for small business marketing, as it’s relatively simple to setup, can accommodate small (or huge) budgets, and provides options for precise regional or demographic targeting.

Facebook introduced its new Places feature last week. Designed to compete with the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla, Places allows Facebook users to “check-in” wherever they are at. I’m going to take a look at what Places is and how to claim your business’s Places page.

I’ve been experimenting with Google Tags for about a month, and have some data to share.

Universal Business Listing is a service that lists your business in a wide variety of places across the Internet. This can be helpful, both for driving traffic to your website and increasing local search rankings

Consumer reviews, left at sites such as Google Maps or Yelp.com, are becoming increasingly important (and will be even more critical in the future). The question is, how can you get more of these valuable ratings?

The future, when word of mouth is all-powerful, is on its way. Is your business prepared?

The search engines use links between websites to help determine which are the most important. Your business can benefit from this, by looking to attract links, and appearing before your competitors in relevant searches.