Small Business Shift

Google is going to be gradually opening up “Tags” to the entire US. Tags is an advertising feature for local businesses, allowing companies to get a special marker next to their business location, for $25/month.

You’ve seen phone books littering the ground because so many are unwanted. Some of the first political action to make the Yellow Pages opt-in, and end this litter, has begun

David Mihm just published the 2010 edition of his excellent Local Search Ranking Factors. If you want to understand how the experts are thinking about local search, it’s a great resource.

You might have seen my last post on why Twitter is bad for your business. The argument basically says that not that many people actually use Twitter (probably <10% of the US population), and it ends up distracting companies from other online marketing venues. A few people responded that they have had success using Twitter, […]

You’ve probably read stories about businesses using Twitter. As the examples show, there are great ways to use Twitter to grow your business. But for most companies, it’s just a distraction.

Many large websites increase sales by providing a live chat feature right on their website. This can also be effective for small companies – and a variety of providers make easy live chat software for this very purpose.

Updated 8/4/2010. In my small business online marketing guide, I mentioned that the #1 way to start promoting your company online is to claim its local listing on the search engines. For Google, this means setting up your Google Places page.

Google recently introduced remarketing on its Adwords platform. This is great for small businesses, as it provides easy access to a marketing strategy big companies have been using for several years – and that can provide tremendous results. (Just because this is accessible to small companies does not mean it’s where you should start. There […]

There are some people who think so. I can see why – but they’re not. Still, they’ve got issues, which I’m going to explore here… I was reading a series of comments regarding Yext over at Local SEO Guide, and think they are bringing up some interesting points. People are discussing Yext specifically, but a lot of […]