The world of marketing and SEO is always changing, in part to customers wants and needs, but also in part to Google algorithm changes. And, February 2011 to April 2012 has been one of the most important 14-month spans in the history of Google’s algorithm changes.

However, since most small businesses depend highly if not entirely on their respective local market, having a highly optimized Local SEO can be a huge boon to your bottom line. And luckily, you can affect that with a few simple SEO tweaks. Read the full entry

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During the past decade, increasing numbers of employers have chosen to perform criminal and financial background checks on job applicants. Today, around 93% of employers conduct background checks on at least some job applicants, and 73% conduct background checks on all applicants. Nearly one-quarter of adults in the U.S. have criminal records, and sometimes people without criminal records are wrongly flagged due to mix-ups like having a similar name to that of a convicted criminal.
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Often times, sales people forget that in most selling professions, when you CLOSE the sale, you OPEN the account.  When you open the account, you begin the process of building the account.  Here are three simple tips to remember for effective account management.

Cultivate

Just as the word indicates, you must build on the relationship by planting.  When you cultivate the soil, you invest time, effort, and good seed.  To get more growth, you fertilize the ground and keep it nourished with water.  To cultivate, you have to feed the growing entity. Read the full entry

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We live in an era of a mobile, yet connected workforce, and the offices of tomorrow will cater to this new reality. In the year 2000, cubicles made up nearly 37% of the office furniture industry’s sales, but by 2010, the figure had dropped to just under 26%. The work style of today is more collaborative and flexible, and office furniture manufacturers are starting to recognize that the era of dozens of workers in identical cubicles is going away.
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Holiday season is the perfect time to say thank you to customers with a promotional gift. Promotional gifts can include things like calendars, coffee mugs and pens that carry a company’s logo and contact information. These gifts represent an excellent opportunity to build trust and promote loyalty with customers. However, they also represent a marketing vehicle that can be used to spread the word about a business for months or even years to come.

The right promotional products will both promote and brand the business. Here are things to consider when choosing the right gifts for Rudolph: Read the full entry

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A few weeks ago Google came out with a smattering of algorithm updates at the same time. A Panda refresh, a Penguin update, an exact match domain (EMD) update, and a page layout refresh all got pushed through in about a week and many sites were left dealing with a penalty or two.

The hard part was figuring out which algorithm update had caused the search engine penalty. Obviously a website with a keyword rich domain that got flagged was tagged by the EMD update, but could Penguin also be at play? Read the full entry

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If you are operating your very first start up business, there are probably several things you do not know about accepting credit cards online. For starters, did you know that your acquiring bank has to register your business with Visa and/or MasterCard if you operate within certain high risk industries? Or did you know that a refund and chargeback are two similar, yet very different, types of transactions?

Do not let this overwhelm you, though —no one expects you to know everything. Your friendly credit card processing expert is here to help! The following is a list of five factors every startup merchant should consider when accepting payments online. Read the full entry

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The hottest debates these days aren’t just Obama vs. Romney and Biden vs. Ryan. Web designers are also going head to head in a heated exchange about something that’s vitally important to their clients — especially B2B firms.

The topic: mobile websites.

The issue: creating separate mobile websites vs. creating responsive websites. Read the full entry

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For start-ups, communication between the marketing, sales and customer service department is simple; all the business owner has to do is talk to herself.

But if the start-up starts to grow, these jobs — once handled by one person — are delegated to new hires. The result? Communication becomes more fragmented.

Cue CRM software.

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While traditional POS systems have their advantages, using a portable credit card machine to process credit cards at your restaurant can be a very useful in processing guest’s credit card quickly and efficiently. Without having to go out back to run a card or frequently check with the table, you servers are able to process more payments faster.

If you’re not sure whether this new technology is good for your restaurant, consider the many advantages, including tableside processing and lower overall costs. Read the full entry

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