Bitterroot Communications

Internet Marketing For Small Businesses

June 28, 2011
by Yvonne
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Is Google Apps Right For You?

Google Apps brings the familiar free tools available to individual users to both small and large corporations.  For a fee of $50.00 per user per year, you can create an office in the cloud.  Offices can have one email, shared documents, collaborative tools, and an endless supply of third party apps.

With Google Apps, you can reduce your software and IT costs.  Implementation of Google Apps is simple and straightforward and can be accomplished by using an outside specialist or training someone in your organization with Google’s step-by-step instructions. Technical knowledge for setup does require that you be comfortable with editing DNS records.

Mobile organizations such as a remote sales force or realtors can especially benefit from the Google Apps tools.  Imagine being able to make the sale and sign off on contracts all from a mobile location.  However colleges and other organizations can benefit from the lower costs.  The state of Wyoming just made the switch for 10,000 users, saving the state 1 million dollars per year.

For more information or an overview of these in the cloud tools, check out http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html

May 9, 2011
by Yvonne
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Get The Most Out of Your Website

This article is just a quick check list to see if you are doing everything you can to get the most out of your website from a search engine’s perspective. So, why worry about your web page if you are concentrating on local listings in search engines? If you are a service provider, you need to think about your web page as the front door to your business. It should have a pleasant design, your business name, address, telephone number somewhere at the top and visible, and the services you offer for customers.

What Search Engines Look For

Bottom line. A search engine looks for text. That is simple isn’t it? Search engines don’t care about fancy graphics or photos; they just see text. Let’s look at a listing for a plumber that comes up on a google search for “Melbourne Florida Plumber.”

East Coast Plumbing Co., Inc., Palm Bay Florida Plumbers
- Feb 7
For expert plumbing services you can count on 24 hours, seven days a week, call us first (321) 724-5588. We provide prompt, affordable service throughout Brevard County.

The business name and location comes up in the title tag followed by a description of the business. This business gets bonus points because their phone number shows up in their description. So how did they do this?

Inside your webpage is the source code that controls the way your web page looks. At the top of your page, there are three html tags that you need to care about for search engine placement: “title,” “keywords,”, and “description.” Your web editor should let you edit these fields.

The information from the title tag appears at the top of the webpage and should contain your business title, and the service you provide. For example,

“title”

<title>East Coast Plumbing – Palm Bay Florida Plumbers – (321) 724-5588</title>

Make sure that you have your business name and local keywords represented in your title. If you don’t know how to change this, ask your website designer or consult your web site design documentation.

“description”

This section contains a description of your services. I would also include your location as well as your telephone number.

Notice, that this business used the keywords plumbing services, Brevard, and a phone number.

“keywords”

Although a lot of search engine experts don’t believe the “keyword” field is important, I still include it. Keywords are a list of words related to your business. For example, plumbing, contractor, plumbers, palm bay florida, etc.

If you modify these three items in your web page, on the next search engine update, your listing will come up towards the top of your city and contain a useful description for customers looking for you.