December 14th, 2011 by Dana Prince

Small businesses who leverage powerful software tools can do better at having more time to manage and grow their business. Check out some areas you’ll want to check out software for as well as get some recommendations for small business software that could work well for you:

The Complete Guide to Small Business Software

accounting, business tools, invoicing, marketing, sales tracking, small business software

December 11th, 2011 by Dana Prince

This marketing tips post is a combo of advice on the importance of your website’s page speed and an Infolinks review. I started working with the Infolinks contextual link ads program last month as a way to keep my Payoneer account active (since I’m now no longer bidding on Elance and Infolinks pays via Payoneer accounts).

I’ve implemented Infolinks ads on several of my blogs and I believe this is probably the first blog monetization program I’ve used in almost 6 years of building my online business that I’ve hit payout in the first month with. I highly recommend them so far. I also want to say that since finding out that they’re not impacting my websites’ page load speed, I’m even happier. I know that a slow page load can result in a high bounce rate.

Apparently, your page speed can impact how Google feels about your site, which will impact your site’s SEO and page rank. Infolinks posted a blog stating that they are a Google Speed Champion and are much faster at loading than many other programs. Check out the below Infolinks infographic for more info:

Make Money with Infolinks:

Infolinks is easy to use. Once your submitted blog is approved, you can simply paste some code in the sidebar of your blog to create relevant in-text links. Clicks range in price but across several blogs in the last month I’m now earning about as much on Infolinks as I am on Google Adsense and best of all, a few off the sites I know Google ads wouldn’t work, I’ve now got monetization through Infolinks.

Sign up at http://www.infolinks.com/.

Infolinks ad program, Infolinks infographic, Infolinks page speed

August 11th, 2011 by Dana Prince

When it comes to marketing online, online clout is good.  Creating good clout online is an important aspect of online reputation management. It helps people want to visit your website and it helps your site get linked to. It also helps you build trust and get seen as a trusted advisor and good influencer. When you get linked to, this can boost your page rank with search engines as these links are often like popularity votes and Google and other top search engines often take those popularity votes as a sign that you deserve more traffic.  A lot of your prospective clients will look for evidence of your reputation before they go ahead and buy from you so be sure you put some effort into helping people ascertain that you are, in fact, someone worth doing business with.

Here are some ways you can go about getting some online clout:

1. Write link bait web articles.  Write a fantastic article on your website and promote the heck out of it. If it’s as good as you hope it is, people will link to it. They’ll mention it on social media sites and you might also get a flock of attention to it. If it’s a really good article, it can have some staying power and drive both search engine and human traffic to your site.
2. Guest post on great websites. Find some of the most respected websites in your industry and pitch that you’d like to write a guest post for them. Be sure you have a great idea. Hire a professional web writer if necessary. That post can include a byline back to your site. Be sure you spend some writing something valuable for the guest post and before you submit it, spend some time getting great content on your website (hint: have your SEO specialist optimise it before you publish that post so that new traffic will have a great experience when they land on your site!) and your byline will direct them there.  Don’t forget to participate in comments sections of the site, too. This helps demonstrate your professionalism, personality, openness and helpfulness.
3. Create online profiles. Create profiles on sites that allow you to create professional looking profiles that link back to your business site and / or social media pages. You’ll find general sites, such as LinkedIn (hint: create professional profiles on LinkedIn and join industry groups and also create your own group, if possible), and you’ll find industry specific websites and directories that will offer opportunities to create corporate and professional profiles. You’ll find direct and indirect benefits of using many profile sites. Some of these sites rank very well online so you’ll create additional clout for yourself when you dominate the search engines with your name and professional image.
4. Get a professional quality headshot. Use it online everywhere. That professional image will become closely linked with your name and will demonstrate that you are a true professional.
5. Post testimonials on your website. There are various web design methods of doing this. You could have a marquee banner turn up on all your pages with rotating testimonials or you could also create testimonials links on each page to point people to proof that you are, in fact, a reputable company. It doesn’t hurt to use video testimonials and to show proof, through case studies, as well. The more info you supply on your website that helps visitors overcome typical sales objections — the better!

marketing tips, online clout, online klout, online reputation management