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Local SEO for Small Businesses: What You Need and How to Get It — A SEO-News Exclusive Article

Never has there been a more overused and often less understood term than Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Millions (I am not kidding) of freelancers are in front of their PCs across the globe with the shingle out that says “SEO Specialist.” And you know what? Some of them really are. If you’re a business owner with a site on the Internet, unless this is your game, SEO specialists are likely better than you at optimizing your site. But how do you find someone who will make a difference for your business? Why You Need to Be Optimized First, let’s define Search Engine Optimization as all the on page things you can do for your website to increase its Page Rank (PR) on the major search engines, Google being the biggest kid on campus with upwards of 65% of all worldwide searches. Your efforts should be designed at getting you to page 1, and if possible, in return results 1-5 which tend to show up above the fold, or before the user has to scroll down. It is conservatively estimated that less than 5% of online searchers ever get beyond page 1 when finding a source. That means if you’re not coming up on page 1 for your keywords, you are a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it bud

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Local SEO for Small Businesses: What You Need and How to Get It — A SEO-News Exclusive Article

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Why Quora Is the Answer to Your Business Branding Questions – A SPN Exclusive Article

Being a part of a marketing department in today’s world is somewhat exhausting. All day I am stumbling, digging, tweeting, liking, and connecting. For some, this may sound like a foreign language, but for an employee in the marketing field this sounds like work, work and more work. Social media is a great and cost effective way to start growing your company brand, so I love the idea; however, there comes a point when enough is enough. I have always felt that pretty soon consumers are going to fall behind, and it will then become harder and harder to introduce any new social networking site. In other words, if another networking platform is going to try and weasel its way into the hearts of bloggers and marketers, it would have to be pretty amazing. Although I have held this opinion for a while, I have finally found a new site that I think is absolutely worth explaining to the tweeters and stumblers out there – Quora ( http://www.quora.com/ ). Believe it or not, this site is not all that new; it was created in 2009 by the former CTO of Facebook, Adam D’Angelo

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Why Quora Is the Answer to Your Business Branding Questions – A SPN Exclusive Article

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SEO Metrics to SEO Action: 7 Ingenious Ways to Use SEO Reports – A SEO-News Exclusive Article

Did you believe SEO reports were just for SEO companies? Ok, this is just as true as the fact that dough is only used to make doughnuts. Those who provide SEO services can’t do without SEO reports, because they have to demonstrate their progress to clients. However, there are many more ways in which SEOs, webmasters or site owners can use SEO reports. In this article, I’d like to discuss those ways. Please note that all the recommendations provided here are based on the SEO reports generated by SEO PowerSuite SEO PowerSuite – our homemade SEO software bundle.

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SEO Metrics to SEO Action: 7 Ingenious Ways to Use SEO Reports – A SEO-News Exclusive Article

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5 Myths About Creating Video Content

Video is arguably the most powerful way to send your message across to an audience, yet it is surprising that such a small percentage of people use it both for their web content and marketing materials. This is perhaps due to a number of misconceptions that people have when it comes to creating video content, which are clarified below: 1. You Need To Spend A Lot: You may have seen or at least heard about companies that will produce your video for you, but charge an absolute fortune to do it (well, what the average person would consider a fortune). It’s not a necessity to get it professionally done – just take a look at the majority of videos on YouTube. Use your friend’s camera, or just record straight into the computer with a webcam. 2. It Needs To Be High Quality: The content of your video is what matters most – as long as this is helpful to somebody then there’s no reason it should look like it cost a million dollars. Don’t worry so much about your poor acting ability (or your friend’s poor acting ability), or whether the picture is too grainy – as long as the sound is okay then just about everything else is pretty trivial

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5 Myths About Creating Video Content

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Social Media as a Negotiating Tool

Social media has blown onto the scene the last couple of years with the popular websites of Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and many others. Nobody can tell for sure what social media will look like five years from now, but what everyone can agree upon is that the concept of using the internet to socially communicate is not going away. For salespeople, an important question is, “Can social media help in negotiating?” My answer is, “Yes, it can.” I’m not saying you should directly negotiate with another person by way of a social media (although I suppose there might be exceptions where this is possible). What I am saying is that social media is a perfect tool that someone can use to help frame a situation or build their on-line reputation before the negotiations even begin. Negotiations are won or lost in two critical areas. The first is the period of time leading up to the start of the negotiations, when both parties are preparing to negotiate. The second is at the end, when the two parties are working out the details of the negotiation. With regard to social media, I am not an advocate of conducting business negotiations in public.

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Social Media as a Negotiating Tool