Your Online Presence

I'm approached time and time again for advice about how to set up a small business for success online -- many times from those wondering if they even need an online presence in the first place. From the day I started the company that would become YVISA Designs, my passion has been helping small businesses succeed online, so I'm happy to address these questions every day.

We've captured small business owners' most frequently-asked questions about building a successful online presence from audiences at our Small Business Networking Events which take place in communities throughout Richmond, Va. To find the answers to the questions that small business owners across the country are asking, take a look below!

Keep your website updated 
Q: I have a website from the "Stone Ages," do I REALLY need to update it?

A: Absolutely -- if your website was built 10 or even just five years ago, you really need to update it. In today's web, content is king when it comes to helping your website establish credibility and relevance for search engines. If your content or code is dated, your website won't show up. It's that simple. Google continually refines the way it reads your website. You may have outdated software and you probably don't have an analytics tracking capability to influence business decisions. Website style and "look" have also changed over the years, and an old website is not mobile optimized. Today, over 30 percent of all web traffic is generated from a mobile device and it's rapidly growing. Still, there is one benefit with an older website -- reputation of the domain name. This in itself increases credibility since a domain name that has been around for a long time is considered more creditable than a newer website. And your domain names build up in monetary value. But, overall, the negatives of an old outdated, or badly designed website greatly outweigh the positives. You can't build it and forget it.

One size doesn't fit all
Q: What's the most cost-effective solution that will bring the best business return for me? As a new business, where is the best place to start?

A: Well, it depends on your business goals and your target market. If your business is consumer-focused, social media channels -- Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. -- are most likely the best places to start to drive consumers to your website. If your business is more product-focused, you need to build a good website that is optimized to sell. If you're trying to localize your business, a great website that is optimized in local arenas -- Google Places, Yelp, local area directories -- is a good place to start. But, no matter what your specific web needs are, it is always best to begin with a solid search engine optimization (SEO) effort, as SEO takes a long time to build. If you don't begin with a smart SEO plan, your website will fall behind in credibility and organic search engine rankings. The end result is that your prospects will go elsewhere.

SEO is very important
Q: What is the value of SEO? How do I know if my site is optimized? What does Google look at to rank a website?

A: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the primary tool with which Google reads your website to determine organic ranking in a user's search. To find out if your website is SEO optimized, you can simply search Google to see if your website comes up in the search listings. Now of course if you put the name of your business in Google, of course it should come up. This would assume that folks looking for you know the name of your business. Most prospects don't, they first are seeking a solution provider in the form of a product or service. Try to google words that pertain to your business and see where your business site falls on the search ranking.  If it doesn't show, your website is most likely not SEO optimized. SEO is very valuable and is comprised of the technical aspects of your website, how it is built and how you describe the content of your site in the title tag and keywords. On the other hand, it also looks at your website's reach across the Internet -- what are people saying about you on social media? Is your business active on social media? Is your website linked to your social channels? Finally, Google looks at a website to find out if it is going to be relevant to searchers. Google examines the code of your website and the words written in the code. It starts at the top and goes down -- looking at your title tag, page description -- and it also reads images on your website to determine your website's rank.

Making it worthwhile
Q: How do I make Facebook work for my business? How do I increase engagement on my Facebook page? Should I being doing Facebook, Twitter AND Pinterest? 
A: Again, it all goes back to your business' goals and target market. Facebook will work if your target customers are already there; or if they're on Twitter, focus your efforts on that platform. Social media is one of the best ways to increase engagement with prospects and existing customers. It's also a vehicle to drive consumers to your website. Your website must be the nucleus of your online strategy -- and it needs to make use of social media to help build its organic rankings. Once you do so, everything should begin to come together. You need to make sure your business and its website has a social focus, not just a business one. In regards to increasing engagement on your business' Facebook page, you need to know your target market and its behaviors. One good note to remember: 70 percent of a Facebook post's effectiveness disappears within five hours. So, for example, if your core consumer isn't engaging online at 9 a.m., you need to learn their Facebook habits and post your message when you know they are online. Also, make sure your updates always focus on a specific call-to-action -- a coupon or a link back to your website. And remember to keep your personal and business Facebook pages separate.

You need mobile 
Q: Is having a mobile website important? How is the mobile version different from my main website?
A: Yes, having a mobile website is very important. Nearly one-third of all searches are now conducted on mobile devices and 80 percent of mobile searches result in a purchase or other positive consumer action -- so, you need to give your customers a seamless mobile experience. Remember, consumers are looking for pertinent details about a business on-the-go -- address, phone number, time of operation and directions; or they may want to quickly pay a bill or look up a product. A full website that is not mobile optimized will take too long to load and use. Loading time must be quick as consumers do not have patience to wait - instead, they'll move on to your competitor.

If you have a question for me about your small business' online presence, just leave it as a comment 

This Is Small Business Week: Don’t Neglect Your Online Presence

If you own a small business, you know that online visibility is one of the keys to success. And these days, harnessing the Web is crucial to any marketing plan.

“While most small business owners know they need a strong Web presence, many of them are not taking enough action to build and maintain it,” says Tim Carroll, Vice President of Small Business Engagement at Deluxe Corp., a provider of marketing services and products for small businesses.

In fact, of those small business owners who put a high level of importance on Web presence, 70 percent spend less than one hour a week maintaining it, according to a new Deluxe study. In contrast, only 1.2 percent spend 10 or more hours each week on their Web maintenance.

National Small Business Week, May 12-16, is the perfect time to learn how to use the Internet to keep your business top of mind with prospective customers.  And Carroll offers some top tips for maximizing your company’s presence online.

• Interact: Since current and prospective consumers use social media, you can’t neglect this marketing approach. Social media marketing isn’t just about gaining followers. It becomes a vehicle for sharing your company’s message, as well as driving traffic to your website. This will ultimately help generate new customers and referrals.

Don’t be afraid to use Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites to ask customers for feedback and show your personality. Use calls to action to acquire new followers, engage them further and encourage reviews of your services.

Many small businesses turn to consultants or social marketing services for help with developing and executing a social media strategy. When effective, these efforts will place a brand in front of its target audience. Small business owners should look for a service that also tracks results in order to gain insight into how its customers engage online.

• Website: “Today, a business without a website is a business without a face,” says Carroll. “A clean, easy-to-navigate, and mobile-friendly online presence is one your customers will remember.”

Unfortunately, less than a third of small business owners think they are proficient or extremely proficient at maintaining their individual company websites, which is why many seek outside help developing a site and building content.

• Search engines: With 91 percent of Internet users utilizing search engines, according to the Deluxe-commissioned study, search engine optimization can be your key to better visibility online. After all, a website is hardly useful if no one can find it.

Additionally, consider search engine marketing services to help your online advertising and to make use of local searches by more effectively targeting your customer audience.

• Email marketing: Small business email marketing is the centerpiece of any effort to stay in touch with existing customers, while reaching out and finding new ones. Use it to promote new items and offer special discounts to loyal customers or to simply keep in touch.

Small business owners know they need to be online. It just takes commitment and the right tools to capitalize on the potential.

Is Your Website SEO Qualified?

Although search engine optimization (SEO) has definite rules and procedures on the Web, it also allows for user choices, creativity and flexibility for quality site benefits. There is on-site SEO and off-site SEO. In general, on-site optimization enables the site to draw greatly increased notice and attention from search engines, while off-site SEO strongly aids the site in attaining high search engine rankings.

1. Website Page Titles and Descriptions. – Make sure that your site’s homepage lists the exact name of your business or website accurately. The title of each page on your site must concisely reveal the page theme and content. Clearly describe the intent of each page in your Web content to aid your website visitors’ productive use of your site. This will increase your conversion rates and ongoing sales volumes. Create page meta tags that are short, clear and descriptive.

2. Permanent Link Structure and Strength. – The format of your site URLS which show in the address bar of your browser should be simple and direct. Avoid keyword stuffing, or overuse, but include clearly descriptive words about your site content. You can insert hyphens to separate some words for the sake of clarity, but refrain from creating long URLS.

3. Breadcrumbs. – Include a breadcrumb on each of your website’s internal pages. The term “breadcrumb” refers to a series of links, often at the top of a Web page, placed there as a navigational aid for site visitors. When using WordPress or many website builders to structure a site, you will find free plugins to create your breadcrumbs.

4. Internal Link Usage. – You need to include internal links throughout your website. These are links within page content that direct site visitors to other pages of your site. By inserting each link with anchor text, your page content will read smoothly while providing easy access to additional content that is important to your business or site subject matter.

5. Benefits of the 404 Page. – Since the overall purpose of SEO is to streamline and enhance use of your website by visitors, inclusion of the 404 page is helpful. This page will be displayed if a site user incorrectly inserts a URL or searches for a nonexistent page on your site. By saving your site viewers time and effort, you will often encourage them to stay longer on your site, making use of the content, products and services you have made available to them.

6. Optimization of Site Images. – To enhance attention levels of viewer for images included in your website content, use Alt Text to insert descriptions. This is a good place to insert a few keywords, as well. Also include keywords within file names for your images, and be sure to separate keywords with use of short dashes or hyphens. Remember that small images on your website promote site speed. For this reason, when uploading large photos to Web pages, use image editing tools to resize them while maintaining their quality.

7. Enhanced Page Speed. – Google considers page speed an important page rank factor. By increasing your site’s page speed, you will improve visitor experience, productive Web traffic levels and conversion rates. To ensure that your website pages have optimal speed, eliminate any unneeded plug-ins, optimize all image sizes and consider using a caching plug-in or service. By consulting Google Page Speed Service, you can accurately determine your site’s performance speed.

8. Quality Content and Analytics. – As always, all website content must be of high quality for the success of your business or personal interest projects. Written text, photos, graphics, audio, video, animation and interactive features on your site must function well and be appealing to site visitors or customers. Along with good quality, comprehensive SEO, you will want to include good CRO techniques. With use of CRO, or conversion rate optimization, you can determine what areas of your site are most often visited and used, which will greatly assist your future efforts to capture more visitors as site members, customers and ongoing clients. With use of such aids as Google Analytics, you can also track all site activity to better plan your next marketing and ad campaigns for higher rates of profits and success. In addition, make sure your website is mobile-friendly and fully optimized for quality mobile device visibility and use. You can use plug-ins or Web services for professional mobile site optimization.

-George Nielson

Get Your Free Website Report! Get your website analyzed for free at http://www.yvisa.net/analyze-my-site.html

New Ways to Deliver Content that Drives Engagement

As marketers, we all face the same challenges. It’s no surprise that now more than ever, customers control the buying process. Companies that use multiple content delivery methods - and the best matched content for the different stages of the buying cycle - will maximize their selling potential and drive more revenue. 

Integrating platforms with diverse content delivery channels is increasingly important.  Mobile devices, email, blogs, social, and webinars can all be seamlessly combined with marketing automation to help marketers better engage prospects, measure behaviors and response rates, and improve ROI (return on investment). 

Are you looking for new ways to deliver content and drive engagement throughout the buying process? Brian Hansford, client service director with Heinz Marketing, will deliver new, actionable ideas that marketers can incorporate into their plans for 2014.

 You will learn:

• How to map content to personas and stages of the buyers’ journey
• Why it is important to integrate platforms for marketing success & full ROI visibility
• How to incorporate multiple content delivery methods to drive customer engagement 
• How to provide your customers with content according to their terms and their timing
• How to measure success with multiple channels

Speaker:
Brian Hansford, Client Services Director, Heinz Marketing

Click here to register

New Small Business Grants from Chase

Are you a small business owner looking for a grant? Good news! Chase recently launched the 2013 Mission Main Street Grant contest for small business owners. Here's how it works:

Small businesses that register and get 250 votes from their customers, friends and fans will be eligible for a $250,000 grant from Chase. All eligible applicants will have access to online marketing tools and tips from Google. All totaled, the Mission Main Street Grants program is offering $3 million in grants to help small businesses grow. Enter before October 31 by visiting  www.MissionMainStreetGrants.com  to complete a business profile and grant questionnaire.

Business Uncorked

Uncork your potential and connect with members of area Chambers of Commerce and peer business organizations at this casual event in beautiful Hanover County. The agenda is simple: enjoy local wine and make new relationships. Your registration includes one FREE drink ticket and complimentary hors d'oeuvres. Wednesday, October 9, 2013 | 5:30 - 7:30 PM James River Cellars Winery 11008 Washington Highway Glen Allen, VA 23059 Click here to learn more and Register.

Are you and enterprising entrepreneur who is DONE with struggling with your business and chomping at the bit to make BIG money and win?

FREE Call September 12,  2013 at  9:00pm!

You have the drive. The heart. Hell, you even have invested thousands in your business via mentors, coaches, workshops, books—the whole shebang.

But the truth is cold and hard: you are struggling to make this business thing work.

You feel like you are robbing Peter to pay Paul. And if something doesn’t change soon, you are seriously considering throwing in the towel. You are sick of boot-strapping your business and are hungry for big paydays, recognition, and peace of mind.

Here is the good news: you are one call away from boot-strapping it to Big bucks baby!

Join me, and George Fraser, for a breakthrough training where he will share the top 3 secrets that launched Lisa Nichols and Les Brown’s into multi-million dollar businesses  and others over the last 26 years. Just like he taught Lisa and Les these secrets,he will show YOU EXACTLY how to turn the tide on your struggling business.

Click here to learn more and register!

How to Reimagine Your Business and Reach Your Full Potential

Live Webinar

There is a myth – we call it the entrepreneurial myth or "EMyth" – that says just because someone starts a business they are an entrepreneur and have the knowledge and know-how to bring a product or service to the marketplace and create a company to support it.

The truth is many business owners start with a passion to work for themselves. It isn't until they begin to juggle all of the operational "hats" to keep the business they realize they don't know what they don’t know.

Let's face it. There's a lot to know about building and running a successful business.

That's why EMyth exists. From the beginning we've made it our business to understand why so many businesses fail to live up to their potential or fail outright. From that understanding we developed the most comprehensive and pragmatic business development program based on our unique philosophy. From start-ups entering the marketplace to more mature enterprises needing to reinvent themselves, the EMyth approach works.

Click to register and learn "How to Reimagine Your Busiiness and Reach Your Full Potential

How to Reimagine Your Business and Reach Your Full Potential 

Wednesday, September 11th 12 pm ET/ 9 am PT

Presented by: Neil Christiansen, CEO of Capital Financial Network and CEO of Evolve Coaching Group

Join us in Mechanicsville for a FREE Growing Sales Workshop

Sponsored by Virginia Department of Business Assistance, Hanover County Economic Development and CanDo Specialty Printing If your business is looking to grow its sales, becoming a federal, state or local contractor may help.  When you attend our FREE event, you'll be connected with buyers and receive helpful information to put you on the path to success. When you attend, you can take advantage of: *  Networking with local and state buyers, as well as other businesses *  Breakout sessions on social media, marketing and selling to government agencies *  Detailed information on becoming a vendor Attendance is free, but pre-registration is required at http://events.vastartup.org/events/975 .

Wednesday, June 26, 2013 8:00 AM - 12:30 PM Times-Dispatch Building 8460 Times Dispatch Blvd. Mechanicsville, VA  23116

Boom or Bust Part 2: Racing to the Finish of FY13

Don't miss this interactive panel discussion about what small businesses can be doing to win government work in these last few months of FY13.

Panelists will include representatives from SBA and GSA, and several small business leaders in government contracting.

The event will be held in the Tower Club at Tyson's Corner, VA on Friday, June 28th from 7:30-9:30am

RSVP HERE 

Big Results with a Small Marketing Budget

Efficiency  and Consistency is the key to getting big results from a small budget. Prioritize your dollars by choosing marketing channels that deliver the highest ROI. Clearly identify your target market and the best channels to reach them. Integrate social media and email for an even bigger boost.

How do you continue to grow your business when you feel forced to cut back on marketing due to economic adversity? Well for starters, you never want to completely cut back on all of your communications with customers and prospects because they are the very people that can get you through tough times.

Taking important steps to spend wisely can make the difference for a feast or famine season. Here's a quick guide to evaluating some common marketing expenditures:

Print Advertising: First determine whether your print ads are actually working for you. Ask your customers how they heard or read about you either online or in person, then track the number of times a specific ad or referring site is bringing you the most business. If you aren't sure the effect cutting your advertising campaign could have on your business, consider a simple change like reducing your ad sizes or renegotiating positions with publications. Inquire with a custom graphic designer who help you get the biggest bang your bucks.

Email Marketing: You don't have to cut here at all and it's not just because you might be a customer of ours. Many email marketing firms, including VerticalResponse, let you send email for a fixed monthly fee and even pay as you go. This enables you to increase your email sends to your list and continue to grow your business. Reducing the frequency of your email communications actually can lead to an increase in your list members unsubscribing. This occurs when they lose the emotional connection to your communications: It doesn't arrive when they expect it, or they assume you've lost your commitment. The loyalty loss also hurts your best source for referrals and viral marketing.

Tradeshows: Instead of cutting tradeshows out of your budget altogether, you might be able to reduce your presence. Why not share a booth with another complementary business? Do you really need three people to go or can you do it with two? Maybe you can have a smaller table or booth? Make sure you don't skimp on printing business cards, but use the back of your card for a promotion instead of printing on a larger datasheet. There are simple ways to reduce show participation while still getting your message heard.

Start a Refer-a-Friend Program: Ask your customers to refer their friends and share a discount or free gift every time their friends purchase. This only costs you a percentage of revenue or gift and it's a fantastic way to spread word of mouth.

Does Your Website or Online App Target Kids? Stricter COPPA Rules Go into Effect Soon

Do you target children or a youth demographic online? If so, you should be aware of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) – a federal ruling enforced by the FTC that gives parents control over what personal information websites can collect from children under the age of 13. Here’s what you need to know about the revisions to COPPA.

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