Business Services

26 Small Business Websites You Can Trust

With so many scams and rip-offs prevalent on the Internet, I decided to compile a list of small business websites you could actually trust and rely on. In order to compile my list, I surveyed hundreds of small business owners, and asked them which small business services they used, trusted and would recommend to others. Whichever company received the most votes in each category are the companies you see listed here. I had two main criteria for a website to make my list: Proof of Customer Satisfaction. The service had to have legitimate, verifiable customer testimonials. If I couldn’t verify the testimonials, the website was disqualified. It’s that simple. Stability.

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26 Small Business Websites You Can Trust

Article marketing: Writing Attractive Headlines

Content is King in article marketing, but no one will see the content if the headline does not attract readers. “A comprehensive discourse on piscatorial product promotion methods” is a nice enough title if you are looking to attract old English professors who are interested in starting a website to sell fishing tackle online, but the rest of the online population will probably pass up on reading it.

Keep in mind that your article headline will pop up in a list of many articles, so it has to engage the reader immediately and effectively for them to select it. So your title should:

1. make it clear what the article is about
2. get the reader’s attention
3. not focus only on keywords
4. be search engine friendly
5. be accurate

An example of a not-so-obvious bad title would be “Little Rock guitar tutor: 5 things to look for”. The article deals with tips for finding a guitar tutor, not specifically guitar tutors in Little Rock. The location should be used only when the article specifically targets a location; for example “How to hail a New York Taxi Cab”.

There are three types of titles that you can experiment with which are popular and have a high rate of success due to their search engine friendly format.

1. How to - “How to oven roast a duck”, “How to create your own napkin rings in ten minutes”, etc
2. Top 10, 50, 100 - “Top 10 Cookie recipes”, “Top 10 Guitarists of all time”, etc.
3. Keyword - This is a tricky concept and should be used with care. Keywords should only be a part of your headline and should be used appropriately.
Always keep in mind that your headline is the “worm on the hook”, the better the bait the better the catch.

For those  that need help of experts in this area, we recommend Article Writing & Submission services of social media marketing company iclimber.

Website Promotion - Know the Basics

Once you have developed your website you need to tell everyone that it is available. If you do just the basics right, you should see traffic starting to flow to your website within a matter of days. Here is how to do it.

Search engine submissions - make sure your website is search engine optimized. Add meta tags, meta and title tags and make sure that the web page is in order. Submit your page at as many search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing and Alta Vista. These search engines will crawl your page, but that could take weeks. Therefore it’s better to submit it manually to see results faster. Here is a good search engine submission company.

Submit to Directories - Submitting your website to directories like Yahoo, Looksmart and AOL means that users of these directories can easily find your website under a specific category. Being listed in a directory also helps with link popularity. Follow the guidelines for submission by the directory owner as your site will be reviewed by humans and will be accepted or rejected based on specific criteria.

Build Link Popularity - Building link popularity is important for search engines to find your site and rank it and for people to navigate to your website. Having a blog means you can link to others while writing and they will most probably link back. Post comments on related stories on other blogs and articles thus creating a link back to your website. A good way to tell how powerful your link popularity is, is to check your Google PageRank. You can read here how Google Pagerank works.

Advertising - once you have used up all the free resources, you can use online advertising to promote your site further. Google, Yahoo and Facebook are great places to start.

Why Internet Promotion Thrives In A Recession

Why does Internet promotion thrive in a recession? It may not be surprising that it does when one considers that online retailers, such as Amazon.com, were designed to virtually demolish traditional brick and mortar stores. Even such traditional store owners saw how much more money they could make by selling products they could sell online, and they started websites. People from all over the world could buy a product from someone online–even from an individual with a website in Smalltown, U.S.A.

Internet promotion will thrive during the recession, because advertising online is cheaper than other advertising. Online ads can be for as little as one day, and there is no long-term commitment with such advertising. One can even cancel banner ads with only a 72 hour notice–far less than might be required for television ads. Online advertisements provide a great chance for promotion to current customers–which saves money in a recession. Online marketing can be targeted to those interested in your products.

Some Internet experts say Internet promotion thrives in a recession because start up costs for running a business online are minimal. A person can keep his day job while operating a business online in his spare time. Even though there have been changes in the economy, people still buy products, so people have the chance to make money during this recession–if they sell the right products. At all times, but especially in a recession, people want bargains, and if you can offer them, you can make big money.

Businesses selling Twitter followers face closure

Twitter could soon be taking preventative measures against a company that sells followers for profit.

On Monday morning, a marketing company called uSocial sent out a press release to say that a brand-management firm hired by Twitter had contacted it to express concern over spam messages it was supposedly sending through Twitter.

The ’spam’ in question is uSocial’s trading of Twitter followers for money - which Twitter views as unethical - but that uSocial insists does not fall within the definition of spam. In the uSocial press release, CEO Leon Hill defines spam as “using electronic messaging to send unsolicited communication.”

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Businesses selling Twitter followers face closure

For social media marketing services visit Climebr.com