For many B2B small business owners, gaining new leads through Google is their holy grail. At all costs their new website must deliver new leads.  As in many walks of life understanding the beast can help you master it, but many small business owners fail to grasp how Google works at an elementary level.  That’s a real problem. This article from SEOmoz gives a (fairly) gentle overview of the way that Google works and how they’re trying to make improvements to the worlds favourite search engine.  It’s really worth spending some time studying, as once you understand the way…

Yesterday I started talking about how Google works.  If you’re a business owner, and you treat your website as an important source of new business leads, then I think it’s critical to understand the Google machine.  Just a little bit of time spent understanding the way Google works can really help the average business owner drive their website project forward in an informed way. At it’s core Google is incredibly simple to understand, and at the same time massively complex and hidden by a veil of secrecy.  Google aren’t too keen to share their secrets as it will make it…

Almost every business I meet wants more leads.  They want more leads quickly, and with the least effort and cost.  It is, for many business owners the reason their website exists – and their number one priority is driving more leads from Google. Google search results fall into two categories - paid search results (or sponsored links) and natural search results (one’s you can’t pay for). I’m going to start with paid search results, these are the ones that appear in a Google search at the top of the screen and to the right.  They’re boxed out, to draw your…

Following on from yesterdays discussion of infographics, this article from Econsultancy gives examples of other free tools you can use to satiate your desire for data as art. Read on... How to make an infographic online.…

Infographics are a great way to showcase statistics in a clear, striking format, but putting your first one together can be daunting. There are many benefits to creating an infographic, not least that they are very easy to share and link to on social media sites like Twitter. Also, other blogs and sites may link to them if they follow-up on the information contained, which can provide lots of links back to your site and boost its authority in search engines. But what makes a good infographic? Data is key here - a graphical representation of a research area of…

One really common trend last year in blogging was the infographic.   My friend Simon @ Ouno Creative loves a good infographic, they’ve been the subject of the agency’s christmas card campaign for the last two year.  Informative and artistic they were too. But not everyone has the skills, or tools to create a great infographic. Step up Piktochart, a website that makes it easy to create an infographic for your next blog article.  Last year I used Piktochart to graph my achievements in my local business networking group 4Networking. It illustrated the story I was trying to tell, and prompted…

If the route to a good blog is a constant source of interesting questions to answer on a regular basis, how do we go about formulating those questions?  It turns out little research has been done on how the brain works when formulating questions.  This article is a little aside from yesterdays discussions on blogging. Read on... Asking good questions.…

Finding inspiration for good stories for a business blog can be a challenge.  This article from SEOMoz suggests that asking lots of questions is a good strategy. Read on... How to blog successfully about anything.…

Blogging is an artform that scares many micro-business owners. But a well written blog on a website can help humanise the organisation - making it warm, friendly and sometimes even witty.  They are a chance for your to communicate the voice of the brand you’re trying to communicate, and I think they are important.   But where to start?   Through our Simple Sites programme of small websites for start-up businesses, I get to meet  a lot of business owners starting out on the journey to defining the business, proposition and brand.  Many are B2B and many think blogging isn’t for them…

Google is a reputation engine judging your site on the number and quality of links is receives as well as shares on social media sites.  This article from SEOMoz gives a suggestion for how to get more of both. Read on... Get links and social shares.…