Once you’ve a good easy-to-update website in place, the next key item is to be found on the net – This means using a variety of Google Business tools.
Google is the foundation for obtaining more business today. Getting found on a Google search is critical to any business today looking for new customers. On the net the saying goes "if you can’t be found, you don’t exist". It doesn’t matter how fancy your website may be or how much it cost. Time and effort spent optimising for search engines is well worth it.
It is harder today to get found online. When the net was young, website designers just added some keywords to their site and Google did the rest – automatically. Today this simple approach never ever works. The competition is higher and you’re just one of millions in your segment.
But done right, a small business selling locally actually has a big advantage over others selling nationally or internationally. The new Google Places service (also known as the Google business centre), is a key part of this.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a big, highly technical topic. However if you’ve a spare 30 minutes, here’s a great intro podcast on the topic, courtesy of Jay at theMarketingspot, talking to a local SEO guru and a small business owner, showing how her search efforts improved her business.
We sort out your website structure, analysis and employ the SEO tricks outlined in the podcast.
Beyond search
But Google also offer a huge suite of powerful online business applications that help small business to better manage their day to day chores. . e.g. Google Mail, Docs, Calendar, Database and CRM*
Most small businesses are unaware of the range of very low cost services Google (and its various partners) provide. They are a great way for any small, cash-strapped businesses to upgrade their IT infrastructure, for surprisingly little cost. I’ve seen too many small companies needlessly spend tens of thousands on expensive IT upgrades, when a cheap PC, broadband and equivalent Google package would have been much simpler, more appropriate, reliable and setup for under half the cost.
If your local Microsoft IT geek tells you otherwise, then they’re deluding themselves. Some IT companies are now quietly integrating Google’s free gmail technology into their Microsoft exchange server packages, simply because Google spam filtering does a much better job that Microsoft’s own. The scale of Google’s server infrastructure worldwide is immense, now bigger than any other IT company on earth.
The Small Business Benefits of using Google Apps
For small businesses it’s difficult to find better value than Google’s online offerings. Certainly there’s now little need for any small business of under 25 staff to invest in Microsoft’s costly small business server or exchange mail server products. Google offers similar functionality online for minimal cost. It’s not just Business email and docs. Here’s a quick listing of Googles many service offerings for the web developer, marketer and business owner:
NB. Not sure? read more