Self Employed Success

When people search for you on Google, does your site show up on page 1 — or on page 20 — of the search engine results?

Since 84% of internet traffic goes through search engines, being ranked highly by search engines will send you a huge number of prospective customers.

Are search engines sending you enough traffic to build your business?

For instance, for the phrase “mastermind group” (which I rank #1), Google sends me 23,000 visitors per year. For the phrase “small business coach” (which I also rank #1), Google sends me over 10,000 visitors per year. Just those two search phrases alone send 30,000 NEW visitors to my site each year.

What if you could do the same for the keywords you want to target?

Optimizing your site to get it ranked highly on the search engines can be a complicated subject.  To simplify things, it’s helpful to first understand how search engines add sites to their database. Then we’ll cover some tips that you can put on your own website that will help you to get listed on search engines and get a higher ranking.

The Major Search Players

Let’s start off with the major search engines, the ones that most people use.  Google is the most widely used search engine, getting between 55-65% of all searches.  Yahoo Search and Microsoft Bing lag far behind with a total of 10-15% each. Bing just recently outranked Yahoo and became the #2 search engine after Google.

While there are thousands of search engines, it’s always a good idea to start with submitting your website to the three largest.  Why? Because 95% of all searches go through either Google, Yahoo or Bing.

How Search Engines Read Your Site

There are two ways search engines read your site: automated search engine spiders (also known as crawlers and robots) and human-entered (directories).

Spiders follow the links found on your site and enter your site into their search database based on text they find on your pages.  This text is either found on your public pages, or the text keywords found in behind-the-scenes “meta tags”.

Keyword Density is the number of times your keyword appears on your page as compared to all the text on your page. The higher the density, the higher your rankings. But in case you think you can load your page with keywords in order to fool the search engine, think again.  Search engines are smart and you can be penalized for “spamming” keywords on your website. While there is a lot of controversy in the SEO world around keyword density, for plain ease-of-reading for your visitors, don’t crowd your website pages with the same keyword over and over again.

Human Directories are few and far between. Just imagine hiring enough people to research the millions of website on the Internet!  It’s no wonder they’re steadily being replaced by automated spiders.  Yahoo and DMOZ are some of the most famous human directories, where real people actually evaluate your site and categorize it in their search engine database directory.  Getting your listing in a human-entered directory for free (such as DMOZ) can take months.  Some human directories, such as Yahoo Directory, are charging a fee for business sites to be included in their directory.

How Search Engines Index and Rank Your Site

Search engines use several techniques to determine which category your site belongs in and what keywords people will use to find your site when using the search engine.

When they crawl your site, they check for repeated keywords in your text, looking for a clue as to the purpose of your site or a particular page.  Search engines can not read the text in graphics, so if you are using a graphic-based navigation or have your keywords on a graphic next to your logo, the search engine will not notice that text. There are special ways to code a graphic to insert keywords, called ALT tags.

Some search engines will rank your site based on behind-the-scenes coding called “meta tags.” Each page gets a meta tag for a page title, page description, and keyword list. While not every search engine will read meta tags, it certainly can’t hurt to use them. Most search engines will read your Title tag. Google’s Matt Cutts says that Google definitely reads your Description tag as well. (Matt Cutts also says that Google does NOT use the keyword meta tag to help determine rank in the same video above.)

There are about a dozen more SEO techniques you can use (which I teach in my SEO For Everyone class), but for now, the above techniques should get you started on the path to good SEO.

Submitting Your Site to Search Engines

Once your site is primed and ready for the search engines, then you have to submit it to them.  You have two choices: either go to each search engine and submit your site individually, or use a search engine submission tool.

Remember that the majority of searchers use either Google, Yahoo or Bing so consider submitting to those first.  You’ll often find a link on their main page where you can add a site to their search engine.  If you want to automate the process, use an automated submission tool.  Make sure the submission search tool you select will analyze your site to tell you if you’re really ready to submit, then submit your site to the top search engines for you.

Submit your site to the big search engines:

• Submit to Google
• Submit to Bing
• Note: Now that Yahoo and Bing share search results, submit your site via Bing.

Preparing your site for submission to search engines can feel like a daunting task.  With the above tips in mind, you will save yourself a lot of time and frustration when it comes time to submitting your site and rank higher in search results.

See you on the Internet!

As a small business owner, you can’t afford to have your identity or business information stolen. Using the internet to help run your business is absolutely necessary, but being lax about the passwords you use on banking, hosting and other business sites is short-sighted and dangerous.

So, what makes a good, strong password, one that a hacker is unlikely to discover? Microsoft recommends several strategies in their article:

• We all know not to use our children or pet’s name. In addition, don’t use any word in the dictionary, and refrain from using common words with numbers at the beginning or end of them (like 25melon or george153) as your password.
• On systems that ask you to change your password every 30 days, don’t re-use passwords you’ve used in the past. Even if a site does not require you to change your password monthly, it’s a good idea to change it every few months anyway.
• When creating a password, use 7 or 8 characters, and a combination of alphabetical characters (A to Z), numerical characters (0 to 90, and symbols. Using upper and lower case letters makes it even stronger. For instance, TiMp39AyCgi is a great password. How in the world would I remember such a complicated password? TIMP stands for “this is my password”, 39 was the year my mother was born, and AYCGI stands for “and you can’t get it”. See? It can be easy to create and remember strong passwords if you just get a little creative.
• Finally, don’t store your passwords in a file on your PC. If your PC is compromised by hackers via the internet, they can easily find and open that file, and steal all your passwords in one fell-swoop. If you must create a file on your PC to store your passwords, password-protect THAT file with a strong password.

And remember, if you ever have to give any of these passwords to employees or contractors, change them as soon as the employee or contractor no longer needs to use them.

October is here – the beginning of the last quarter of the year! It’s time to do some “good housekeeping” in preparation for the year-end of your business.

At the end of the year, it’s important to both close-out the old year properly as well as plan for the new year. I recommend you start this process early so that there isn’t a last-minute rush to complete your year-end closing tasks. Even better, do this quarterly so that you remain caught-up with the tasks. Here are some ideas that you might want to add to your quarterly and annual checklists:

Year-End Cleanup and Closing Tasks (some of these can be done quarterly, too!) 

• Enter all revenue and expenses into your recordkeeping system.
• Send final invoices for current year.
• Reconcile your bank account records with bank statements.
• Estimate your last tax payment for the current year (many self-employed people make quarterly estimated tax payments…the final payment is usually due on January 15)
• Mail holiday cards and gifts to clients/customers
• Make holiday offers to clients/customers
• Clean out old files/emails
• Create year-end accounting reports and compare to goals for year
• Tally business-related mileage for quarter/year
• Tally expenses by vendor and prepare 1099’s if needed
• Contact your accountant and discuss year-end tax planning

Planning Tasks for the New Quarter/Year

• Write a list of goals
• Write a list of tasks that need to be accomplished in order to make those goals
• Write a list of projects you’d like to start or complete
• Create an updated marketing plan
• Create an updated budget
• List the topics you’d like to study, the classes you’d like to take, or the books you’d like to read, to keep you up-to-date with your industry and business skills
• Schedule upcoming classes you’ll teach and distribute that Calendar of Events to clients and staff

Cleanup and planning tasks don’t just happen in December and January. If you review these tasks quarterly, they won’t sneak up on you on December 31.