In America, the small business owner has been used to sitting on the sidelines and watching whilst the large corporations dominate all areas of industry. Many small business owners have gone out of business whilst others often struggle to survive. One of the reasons behind this was that the Bush administration tended to offer very little support, instead making tax cuts for the corporate world. With the election campaigns now in full swing, Barack Obama has pledged to help small businesses survive and enable to thrive in the coming years.

Obama has put a number of measures in his manifesto that could help small businesses to take root and grow in the world of business because he fully recognizes that they are the heart of the American economy. Small businesses provide valuable jobs and income to millions of Americans up and down the country and, were they to go out of business, could actually make the economic situation worse. In fact, in some quarters, financial experts are touting the possibility of a recession on the scale of the 1929 Depression. By keeping small businesses alive and healthy, it can strengthen the economy and give Americans everywhere a little security of peace of mind.

Tax Issues

Obama has pledged to help small businesses by putting a series of measures that may help them into place. For example, he has pledged to reduce the burden on the owners of small businesses that may struggle to make ends meet by providing them with a little tax relief. Every small business owner has to pay both employee and business owner taxes, but with the $500 tax credit per worker that Barack Obama is proposing the burden of those payments will lift somewhat. This in turn leaves a little in the coffers to fun expenses like health care, gas prices and energy bills, all of which have risen in the past few years.

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The ultimate goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to drive traffic to your site. Many people don’t know why, but they aren’t achieving this goal.

The key is staying current and evolving with the times.

Way back in the good old days, SEO was a lot easier and we saw results quickly. What do I mean “we saw results”? We ran a ranking report and we were able to see what words held what positions in the various engines. And admit it now, when you received your ranking reports, you promptly pulled up Google or Yahoo and did a search, waiting with baited breath to see your results right there in the top 20. Ahhh, the good old days.

Now, you get a ranking report and you don’t see all those wonderful rankings you have seen in the past. Competition is fierce and even though your site deserves to be on top, it may take a while to work its way up there. So, what do you do? You call your SEO Firm, you complain, you work on a strategy to get the results you want.

The missing piece here is called Analytics.

A well optimized site will bring traffic from many engines, for various keywords that are related to your site. Those keywords may not be on your “approved keyword list” – however they are words people are looking for and they are driving traffic to your site.

Many people don’t give credit to their SEO company for these words – however they are mistaken. The fact that your site was properly optimized and content was added is what made the site get noticed by the engines, so the optimization is directly responsible for these “bonus” keywords that are driving traffic to your site.

Because most people don’t understand this, and they don’t give credit to their SEO Firm, many SEO Firms don’t bother looking at or sharing Analytics information with their clients. They simply care about rankings for the keyword list.

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There is always a lot of talk on SEO Forums about penalties. Recently there was some discussion about 3 specific Google penalties:

• The “-30 penalty”
• The “-950 penalty”
• Index Exclusion

There has been a lot of debate about whether the drop of a website’s rank by 30 or 950 spots in Google is really a penalty for unethical SEO tactics, or is it simply a result of an algorithm shift (and the particular site just didn’t measure up against the new algorithm so it dropped).

Many people insist there is no penalty (except Exclusion for really blatant “Black Hat” techniques), and rather it is all about Filters. If you do something that triggers a filter your site won’t rank as highly. Whether you call it a filter or a penalty, the results are the same. If you don’t follow best practices, sooner or later your site will be penalized or filtered out of the top rankings.

It is widely accepted that the -30 penalty affects the whole domain, however the -950 penalty only affects specific URLs for specific keywords.

Rather than actually moving your site back by precisely 950 spots, I think it is more likely that you are just going to be banished to the end of the results. It also appears to be specific to certain search queries. A site may go from first page to last page in the SERPs (search engine results page) on one keyword, and still hold a top ranking on another keyword.

Both of these penalties are associated with shady optimization practices. Some say these penalties happen when there is keyword stuffing, while some others say that these penalties are because of shady link building practices.

It is widely believed that getting too many links within a short time span and with similar anchors can raise red flags with Google. I personally believe this to be true and always tell people to be careful with their link acquisitions.

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It is time to look at those SEO questions from the folks who need help and guidance. Let’s take a read of some of the Dear SEO Drama Queen email which floods her box every day.

Dear SEO Drama Queen

I want a number one ranking for my web site. The keywords are clothes, sneakers and hats. I read so much out there on how important it is to be on Google. Can you promise me a #1 ranking for my 3 keywords?

Thanks
BA

Greetings BA
Of course I can guarantee #1 ranking’s on Google for those very generic keywords that compete against missions of other sites. An SEO who couldn’t isn’t worth their wait in gold. It is easy. First, I need you to purchase about 100,000 shares of Google stock. Once you are a major holder, we can then bribe Google to either place you on top or we will sell their stock to Yahoo.

Let me know when you have made the purchase
Best
SEO Drama Queen

Dear SEO Drama Queen
I contacted an SEO company and they stated their fees are $300 a month for 6 months. They stated they needed to access my site, make changes to code, write content, and help me decide on keyword phrases, build link shares and on and on. I think this is a rip-off as I have seen SEO for $25 a month and they do not need to work on my site or have me make changes, they just submit the site to 1000’s of engines. Should I go with the less expensive company?

Thanks
ST

Greetings ST
Cheaper is always better. Why should anyone actually do anything to your web site. Do not use your valuable time on making your site better when you can have someone do everything for $25 bucks. I mean, why should you suffer, it is only your business, so do not put in the effort if someone can do it cheap. Let’s face it, your $25 bucks pays for them to spend a minute of time placing your URL in an auto program and pressing a button.

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A lot of people think summer is slow and not the time to focus on their websites.

So many people are out of town, some businesses slow down. Not to mention we all have concerns about the economy right now.

I want to propose a different perspective.

1. People are sticking closer to home because of high gas prices. You’ve all heard the term “Staycation” thrown around by the media. If you watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart you heard John Hodgeman (the PC guy from the commercials) create his own new word for the “stick closer to home because gas is way too expensive” phenomenon: “Holistays”.

No matter what you call it, people are sticking closer to home. People are shopping online even more.

It’s a great time to offer a shipping special. With the cost of shipping going up, again due to the cost of a gas, a shipping special is much appreciated right now.

You can tap into this situation by playing it up. Just as The Daily Show created a segment that was funny and garnered a lot of attention; you can find a way to make the current situation work in your favor.

2. If things are a little slow, it is actually the perfect time to devote some of your time to your website.

It is suggested that you review your website and refresh it at least once a year. Just a handful of suggestions for you:

• Now is a good time to check the links and pages within your site and make sure everything is in working order. Get rid of those pesky 404 errors from broken links.
• You could also come up with a summer special.
• Jazz up the site.
• Add some testimonials.
• Look at your web stats and see if you can increase conversions.

3. Now is when you absolutely must start focusing on your upcoming holiday campaigns.

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The primary thought behind all techniques should be: “What is natural”?

If you are constantly asking yourself,
“Am I using this in a way that the search engines will view as a natural enhancement to my site and not as an overused and abused method”?
then you should be fine. So, Keep it Natural, Don’t (Over) Use and Abuse should be your new mantra.

Let’s look at specifics.

RSS Feeds:
• Do: Use them to enhance existing content.
• Don’t: Use them in place of hand written, unique content

• Do: Limit the number of feeds you use on any given page to 3 or 4.
• Don’t: Clutter every page on your site with endless feeds.

• Do: Target feeds are specific to the keywords you are using on each page.
• Don’t: Put feeds that are about other topics that are not relevant on your site.

• Do: Turn your hottest, most newsworthy content into feeds to get out there to other people. Blog posts are a natural for feeding content to other people. Blogs are often updated very frequently and are about the hottest topics in your industry.

Article Syndication:
• Do: Post your article on your own site first, and wait for it to be indexed by the engines before you syndicate it out.
• Do: Date each article with the date it was written.
• Do: Interlink your articles to other articles on your site that you have written that are relevant to the topic.
• Do: Update your SiteMap when you add articles to your site.
• Do: Link to your article from your Blog.
• Don’t: Post the article on your Blog and on your site – that is duplicating content and can be considered spam.
• Do: Take the time to create different versions of your article. When syndicating articles out to various article sites, use a handful of different version.

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If you’re anything like me, there are probably times when you’ve booked onto a networking event and then when the day arrives, you question whether or not to go to it. My reasons are usually around the stack of work I’ve got building up on my desk and I debate whether to stay in the office and plough through it or to make the effort to go to the event.

And I’m obviously not the only one who feels that way, judging by the amount of no-shows that an event usually gets. Nine times out of ten though, I do turn up, partly because once I book something in my diary I tend to stick to it and partly because very often when I do go, it’s worth my while.

Just the other day, I attended a networking event, that to be honest about half way through I was thinking “why did I bother”. But then, the 10-minute speaker stood up. He was excellent and gave me a couple of really good marketing tips that I hadn’t come across before. That in itself was worth my time to go to the event.

So, why is it then that people in generally don’t go to the event? Well, like my reason above, I think the number one reason is probably time – as in something they consider more important on the day has come up and the person has to stay and do that instead.

The second most common reason is probably the “can’t be bothered” excuse. I know I’ve certainly felt like that, or it could be that I’m not in the mood to socialise and be nice to other people.

Other excuses could be that the person is ill or an emergency has happened. I’m sure there are other reasons too. But, you see, that’s where there seems to be a bit of a conflict. I hear business owners say that they want to get more business and yet they will also say that they haven’t got time to go out there and get it – so it comes back to a choice of which one is more important to you.

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Pitch your book and you have a certain number of stories and media hooks. Pitch yourself, your life experiences, your anecdotal stories and your book and you’ve suddenly broadened the bulls eye…

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