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Entries in tina grimes (2)

Thursday

Sep222011

ask the expert | What is SEO and what should I being doing about it?

today we have a guest post from our build a little biz partner and ‘online business expert’ tina grimes from online business junction

she is answering a question i get asked a lot: please explain SEO!

SEO De-Mystified

SEO seems to confuse a lot of people. Other people just ignore it completely because they think it’s not important. But SEO is very important for your website and your business, so it’s necessary to understand what it is and how to use it. So I’m going to provide some basic information to help explain SEO and try to take some of the mystery out of it.

So first, what is SEO? It stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is basically a way of making your website easy to find by the search engines and the people who use them. And since so many people use Google and other search engines every day when they’re trying to find websites just like yours, that is why it’s so important to optimize your site so they can easily find you.

Ultimately, SEO done correctly can land your website on the first page of the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages), and that is always the goal behind SEO. Why? Because most people doing web searches will not look past the first, and sometimes the second, results page when they’ve done a search. So the first page is where you want to be. But there is a lot of competition for that first page, which is why you need to use SEO to make sure your website is one of those that appears there…and preferably at or near the top of the page.

6 important aspects of SEO that are essential for a website:

1. Keyword-Rich Content & Metatags: Metatags (Title & Description) and Keywords appear in your site’s code, and keywords themselves should also appear throughout your website. The keywords are the words that people use when querying search engines, and should be relevant to what you sell or offer on your website.

2. Unique & Fresh Content: Search engines like unique content and content that is updated on a regular basis. That’s one reason blogs tend to get indexed more quickly: they’re being frequently updated (which is also a good reason to build your business site on a blog platform). So you need to get new information on your site, especially its main page, as often as possible. And be sure the content is unique—the SE’s don’t like content that is duplicated from other sites.

3. Backlinks: These are links TO your website from other websites and they help the SE’s measure your site’s popularity. These links should be relevant, which means they should appear on sites that have content similar to your own. Quantity is important, but so is quality where backlinks are concerned. If there is no relevance between another site and yours, there is no quality and no relevance, so that link won’t help you. And, in fact, it can hurt you where the SE’s are concerned.

4. Sitemaps: I’m not talking about sitemaps that are designed to help your viewers/customers surf your site. I’m talking about sitemaps that are present only in the background of your site and that are only for the SE’s, as they are invisible to human traffic. These are usually in XML format and are essential for the SE’s, telling them what pages exist on your site. They also need to be updated on a regular basis, whenever changes are made to your website.

5. Robots.txt Files: Once the search engine spiders and bots arrive on your site, a Robots.txt file tells them which pages they should and shouldn’t crawl, and which ones should or shouldn’t get indexed on the search engines.

6. Social Networking: Believe it or not, search engines now look for and expect your site to have a link to a Twitter or Facebook account, or both. And this is now a growing factor in where your site will be placed in the SERP’s. So now, getting social is not just good business, it’s good SEO.

These are the six things I encourage any online business owner to explore and educate themselves on for better SEO. I’ve tried to just highlight the basics to make it all a little less confusing and to help set you on the right path of understanding where SEO is concerned. If you’d like more information and links to other SEO resources, please visit the following links on Online Business Junction...

ask the expert | how to set up an online payment system

karen gunton

today we have a guest post from our build a little biz partner and ‘online business expert’ tina grimes from online business junction

“I need to set up an online payment system, can I just use my personal PayPal account? I have also heard good things about Google Checkout, is that a better option than paypal? Is there anything I should be aware of before I choose and set up and online payment system for my website?”

PayPal

Online business owners should have either a Premier Account or a Business Account at PayPal. PayPal encourages one of these two for anyone accepting payments for business purposes, as opposed to a Personal Account. A Personal Account will only let one accept 5 debit/credit card payments per year, and there's a dollar limit as well. But with Premier or Business, one can have unlimited debit/credit card payments. For a Premier Account, one can operate under one's individual name; for a Business Account, one can use a business name. Premier Accounts are really geared toward people with a high transaction volume, so in most cases, especially for a new business, a Business Account is ideal. A Business Account also lets one accept payments from people who don't have a Pay Pal account, which is important to have, because a lot of people don't have a PP account. Fees deducted from both Premier and Business Accounts are the same.

Additional resources about each type of PayPal account:

Google Checkout

Google Checkout is similar to PayPal, because it allows you to generate Buy it Now buttons. They also have a Store Gadget for Blogger that utilizes Google Docs to create a store on your blog. You can also use their Google Checkout Shopping Cart, which allows you to generate email invoices and coupons, and automatically notifies customers of orders and shipping once orders are processed. Customers can only pay via credit card with Google Checkout, which is the main difference between that and PayPal. Another difference is that you must register with Google Checkout in order to use it, whereas on PayPal, you don't have to be registered to use them for payment.

Fees for both PayPal and Google Checkout appear to be the same; approximately 2.9% plus .30 cents per transaction for sales under $3,000 per month. These fees are an expense to consider. However, these options allow you to continue to sell online affordably, and to accept credit card payments, which is really a must for online stores. No monthly fees or minimums. No contracts. No termination fees. And that's all very important.

I'd say the biggest plus of Google Checkout over PayPal is that there are just a LOT of people that don't like or trust PayPal. So when that is the case, Google Checkout is a great option. It's also fairly easy to use and to integrate into websites. There's lots of documentation at Google and Google support for when help is needed.

Additional resources about Google Checkout

Online Payments

I think the most important things to know before utilizing an online payment system deal with compatibility with your website, security, ease of use, support, and cost.

You want to do your research when choosing a payment system to ensure that whatever you choose can be integrated into your website without a lot of hassle. You either want to be able to do it yourself, or have someone else do it if need be, but without a lot of extra expense (if possible).

Your online payment system also needs to be secure. PCI Compliance (Payment Card Industry) is an utmost priority where credit card information is concerned, so research that topic and know what you must do as an online merchant to be compliant. Also note if you have a merchant account, what fees, if any, will your Merchant Services Provider (MSP) charge you for PCI Compliance. They vary with every MSP and can be very nominal to downright outrageous. You don't want any surprises. (There are no PCI Compliance fees with PayPal or Goodle Checkouts.)

You also want a payment system that is easy to figure out and use. So check into the user-friendly factor from the get-go, and be sure that there is adequate support for the system when you need it.

Cost, of course, is a huge factor. If budget isn't an issue, you're one of the lucky few. You need to pick a system that will work with your budget. Shopping around is key. And read the fine print.

You might also want to check some recent posts I did at OBJ about a credit card processor called Square Up. It's really a great option for affordable credit card payment processing. I just replaced ProPay with it because it's much more affordable, and very easy to use.

please visit online business junction for more information, resources & tools for making your online business a success: website & facebook