Top 10 Google Search Features for Your Business

The people at Google are truly inspired! They are evolving their search engine into something that can be an incredibly powerful tool for business. There are a zillion things that Google can do for different parts of your business and in this post, I will highlight the top 10 Google search tools that will help your supply chain.Since Google is just a click away, I think it's a very useful for everybody involved in the supply chain to be aware of how much easier it can make their lives. Everybody from traffic managers, to purchasing people, to accounting people and customer service will likely need to reference what Google can do during the course of the week. There are a lot of people who don't even know all of Google's capabilities. So without further ado, here is your: Top 10 Google Search Tools That Will Help Your Supply Chain1. Package...

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10 Business Blogging Tips to Improve Your Blog Performance

Business blogging is a different kettle of fish to blogging for money and that, in turn, is entirely different to blogging socially. The type of blog you manage will determine the voice, design, and style of your blog as well as the efforts you're likely to put into promoting it. A business blog needs to be professional as well as appear it. Regular posting on topics that your readers will genuinely find interesting can promote you as an expert in your field. A blog can keep the line of communication between you and potential customers open. It enables you to post relevant, keyword rich postings that encourage new traffic and help build your client base. It's far from an exhaustive list but below are ten tips to remember when blogging for business: 1 - Set Your Goals Early In just about every guide you ever read it says "set your...

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"Are You Human" Tests Go To the Dogs, and Cats

A new "are you human" test uses easily discernable photographs to protect comments and product reviews from eager spam bots, offering an effective replacement for third-party solutions like reCAPTCHA. Many spammers use programs or bots to automatically fill out comment or product review forms, and then add links to malicious or scam sites designed to either infect or bilk users. To fight this sort of spam, some developers and designers use third-party solutions like the aforementioned reCAPTCHA. But for the most part, these would-be solutions are nearly untenable, since they are generally unintelligible even to real humans, a significant hurdle to accessibility, and relatively easy to hack. AnimalCaptcha BackWritten's solution to at least some of these captcha challenges is to use public domain pictures of dogs, cats, and other animals to test a user's humanity. Preview Animal Captcha The solution is implemented using JavaScript and server-side scripting. So it will...

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55 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love

Everyone loves a good tip, right? Here are 55 quick tips for search engine optimization that even your mother could use to get cooking. Well, not my mother, but you get my point. Most folks with some web design and beginner SEO knowledge should be able to take these to the bank without any problem.1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow. 2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase. 3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don't want the...

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39 Tools for Marketing Your Small Business Online

Thousands of free online marketíng tools clamor for attention, with new ones popping up every week it seems. You know you should be doing more to reach out to your customers, but just researching which tools to use can be a vast time investment, even if they don't require a big financial outlay. Below is a compiled líst of the most popular (or most useful) low-cost or free small business marketing tools. You might be using some of them already, but you're sure to find a couple that will round out your small business marketing toolkit nicely. And, if you're just starting out marketing a new busíness online, this líst may help point you in the right direction. Directories The Open Directory - A staple of the SEO crowd, this directory can be tricky to get into but well worth it for the link juice it passes along to...

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Branding - For Better or Worse

The point of a brand is to create an instantaneous association in people's minds. The Nike 'swoosh' brings to mind footwear, athleticism, and Michael Jordan. The Toyota 'bull' logo evokes images of compact cars, foreign business competition, and new ways of doing things. The name Budweiser reminds us of everything from the actual beer to those clever talking frogs, and the 'wassup!' advertisements. These are cases of successful, memorable branding. Michael Jordan is retired from professional sports, the frogs haven't been on television in years, and wassup has almost faded from day to day use in the American pop culture vocabulary. However, every one of these elements remains identifiable, and mentioning them to most people will get the typical, 'oh yeah!' response to memories of clever marketing, cementing the image of the brand in the viewers' minds. Branding is the creation of these memories. However, recollections of a product...

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Sincerity: The 'Secret Sauce' for Effective Marketing

Sincerity: The 'Secret Sauce' for Effective Marketing A couple years ago, I was talking with someone who was, for me, a very challenging client. I'm all about cultivating relationships that result in opportunities to sell. This particular client seemed allergic to cultivating relationships for reasons I didn't ever really understand. I remember one such meeting, I was trying to explain to my client the wisdom of first creating trust and credibility before trying to get a sale. And my client was blocking me at every turn with reasons why relationship development would not work for their business. It was maddening. Finally, I cried with exasperation, "Well, why the heck do you want to keep working with me since my approach doesn't work for you?" "Because you're sincere," the client replied. "Who cares" I thought to myself since it didn't seem to be to helping my client grow their business....

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Join Us at our Open House on October 9, 2009

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Easily Determine if Your Website Sucks

If you have ever wondered if your website sucks, here is the answer:An incredibly comprehensive list of everything that could possibly cause your site to suck, including 149 mortal sins that will send your site straight to hell. http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/does-my-web-site-suck/does-my-web-site-suck-intro.html...did you check any of the boxes?If so, try this link next: Fix my terrible website, please!...

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The Web Designer's Declaration of Independence

In the spirit of Independence Day, a document outlining the struggles faced by all web designers/developers:The Preamble"When in the course of online events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the browser based bands which have connected them to the internet and to assume among the powers of the interwebs, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Common Sense and of World Wide Web Consortium entitle them, a decent respect to the standards of web design requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that creativity exists in all designers, and they are endowed by Common Sense and the W3C certain rights, that among those are Web Standards, Sanity, and Creative License. When these rights comes under fire by any establishment it is the right of web community to address them and, if necessary, act...

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