Anointed CEO

Here’s the video of Matt Cutts, Google’s head of WebSpam team. He gave some tips for small business owners in optimizing their website also some general search engine optimization ideas. This video was taken last quarter of 2007.

Too many small business websites was designed without their target users in mind. I think the web designer is up to please the business owner and had overlooked how the website will actually help the business.

Even worst, most business owners really don’t know what design is good and awful, and yet they call the shot.

Well, It doesn’t matter as long as both parties get what they want.

Poor business owner. Poor web designer.

Confession: That’s my story in my first job as a web designer back in 1999. The time where having a website is considered remarkable for small businesses.

Nine years after, I am still seeing how many business owners are victimized unintentionally by web design firm or consultant.

When will this end?

It will end on this blog. If you’re a business owner or a web designer, I’ll be giving away free information to help you to have a better website for your success. Subscribe to my RSS Feed.

The big “G” (Google) uses a snippet to give searchers a preview of what a certain website has to offer. These are text normally taken from the text surrounded by meta description tag. It looks similar to this:

<meta name="description" content="Free Internet marketing tips for local and business owners. How to beat your competitors using new marketing strategies. Marketing your small business for BIG profits." />

That’s the description of this blog’s homepage.

Since it’s the text being displayed in search engine results, it is imperative to give serious thoughts when writing it so your customers will click your link among other 10 results. Many users will only search one to two times in Google and if they can’t find what they’re look for, they will assume the information is not available online.

So you should take every opportunity to improve your chances that will help your small and local business website to get more traffic.

How can you increase your Click Through Rate (CTR)?

1. Use the keywords or phrase on your description that your potential customers uses to search on your product or services. Google highlight any word that matches the users query. The more highlight the more your link will get attention.

2. Use a call to action like “Click here”, “Download it”, “Get it”, etc. Of course you have to give what you’ve promised on your description page once the user arrived at your landing page.

3. Use appropriate enticing words like “Free“, “Tips“, “Secrets Revealed“, etc. Did you noticed my description?

Think of your description as an ad copy in a crowded ad space. Your customers have a lot of options. To make matter worst, you only have couple of seconds to convince them to click the link to your site.

Note: Your description should accurately describe what the content of a page is. Don’t trick users just to get them to your site and then hope that they will buy from you.

Go ahead and try these tips and enjoy more targeted customers to your website.

If you like what you’ve read, please subscribe to my RSS Feed to receive future tips.

There’s no question that html title tag is one of the most important element in onsite search engine optimization.

If you’ve no idea what it is, check your web page source code and just above the code, you should see similar to this:

<title> Anointed CEO </title>

The title appears on user’s browser title bar. It’s also the text that most search engine use in listing search results.

How important is the title Tag?

Search Engine Checks Title Tag to validate the content of a page
The core information in your web page should accurately reflect on your title. If your in a business of selling dog food. You should have at least that phrase on your title tag. Example of your title could be “Dog Food and Health Care Store” or “Affordable Dog Food Store“. If you would like to target local customers, you may want to have title like “Dog Food Store in Calgary“, “Affordable Dog Food and Supplies in Calgary, Alberta“, or “Calgary Dog Food Store“. Every page of your website must have a unique title based on the content.

I highly recommend using a catchy title so you have higher chance that searchers will click on your link from the search engine results list. Use the terms or lingo your customer use if possible.

Upper or lower cases doesn’t matter on Search Engines. It is not good though to have title all in upper case. Some Internet users interpret upper case as yelling which will not help your small business in anyway.

How long your title is should be?

Many people stuffed their title with keywords they want their site to rank on. Like “Dog Food Food for you Dog Dog Food Store Affordable Dog Food“. You may not be penalized search engines by doing it but I don’t think it will increase your chance to rank or click through rate. It’s annoying for users to see this kind of title from list.

Five to eight words should be enough to describe the content of a web page. Write the title in a manner it is pleasant to read.

The bottom line is, your html title tag should be for your customers first and search engine second. If your title will appeal to your customers it will likely to appeal to search engines too.

Good news to three lucky small business owners in Calgary.

In commencement of EffiStrat Inc., we will be giving away Free professionally designed business website and Internet marketing consultation to its owners. This is no obligation or hidden fee offers.

So why are we doing this? I believe in what the scripture says “Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over.”

If your business has an existing site, we can re-design and implement ethical Internet marketing strategies to your website.

With nine years of experience of our staff, it’s almost guaranteed that your site will bring you new customers few months after its launching.

Remember, we’ll only take three (3) businesses. Here are few guidelines to qualify for this free offer:

1. Business should be registered and running in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
2. Business should be categorized as small and local business.

Send your application with the following information:

1. Business Name
2. Date the business was registered.
3. Location of the business.
4. Industry of the business.
5. Products and services offered.
6. Number of employees.
7. Do you have an existing website?
8. Why do you think your business should be chosen for this free website and Internet marketing services?

This is completely free and you have nothing to lose. Submit your application to support [at] effistrat [dot] com. If you have questions just drop a comment on this blog.

I would like to answer few questions that I know many small business owners have in mind about putting up a website for their business.

The type of business and target customers will define how much you really need a website. Businesses that are into Business to Consumer (B2C) category need an active website more than those that are into Business to Business (B2B).

In Canada (where I live from), there are 22 Million Internet users. That’s 67.8% of the population in the country according to Internet World Stats. 63.7% of Canadian adult uses the Internet at least once a day according to Statistics Canada.

If you’re not impressed and don’t see the opportunities with numbers above, don’t launch a website. Every year, more and more people are using the Internet to find products, services, and looking for the right company to buy or get services from.

Here are the answers to three common questions asked by small business owners.

“Does my small business need a website?”

From the statistics above, potential customers are using the Internet more than ever before. In this information age, having a website has became a de facto to every business owners whatever the size is. Your website is your marketing tool 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Consumers nowadays has more power to choose from by searching your industry online. If they’re not satisfied in your services, they can find your competitors within minutes. Telephone directories like yellow pages didn’t just stay to their print version, they have now an online version. Don’t you think you ought to have one too?

“But I don’t sell anything online. Do I still need a website?”

You don’t have to sell anything online to realize your business need a website. The availability of the Internet has increased over the years. Consumers can now browse through their mobile phone and other hand held devices. They refer to the Internet on every opportunity they can get. People visit online forums, chat rooms, social networks(e.g. myspace, friendster, etc.) to check out products or businesses before purchasing. Think of the Internet is an order menu in a restaurant. If they can’t find you in the list, they won’t order you or from you.

“But my customers are just local, do I still need one?”

You can build relationships and strengthen retention of your local customers using your website. I call this direct response website. Where you use your site as a tool to communicate to them, to get feedback, send promotion, get referrals, and more. It doesn’t matter if your customers are local or not. Building relationship to your customer is essential to any businesses and your website will make it easier for you.

As small business owner, you should take every opportunity you can get to survive or your competitor will over take you. Website for your business is not an option anymore these days. You can be missing a lot of sales just having no website at all.

After lots of thinking I decided to change the core topic of this blog to Internet Marketing for Small and Local Business.

Starting today, I’ll be sharing some ideas for small business owners on how can they leverage the power of the Internet to help their businesses. On occasion I’ll blog on entrepreneurship, personal development, leadership, traditional marketing, and technology.

So, stay tuned.