Ideas for Business

Have you taken a moment to check out Google’s latest offering to the general public? Is has the simple but apt title of “Good to Know” and  has been well packaged with both text and graphics on the opening screen. It is, to a certain extent, a repackaging of content that Google has published over the years. It’s generally related to Internet and data security for users, and the tips are well worth reading. The whole concept is an excellent piece of public relations bordering on a public service announcement. I won’t go into the actual information published by Google, I’m sure there are many others who will – what interests me more is the concept, and whether or not it could be replicated on other websites – and I think it can.

Most websites, whether it’s parenting, photography or pets, for example, publish advice. The ‘Good to Know’ concept is a great way to bring all of that information together, and you don’t need just one ‘Good to Know’ article or page. Most websites could break their content into sections; for example, we could have a ‘Good to Know’ series that covered SEO, social media marketing, branding – I could go on, however, I think you get the idea.

By publishing pages that link to this information, you are helping your readers find information quickly and helping to link related content for SEO purposes. This kind of content, especially if you can utilize graphics in a similar way to Google, is also easy to promote through social media. It’s certainly a novel way to present content to your visitors and certainly worth considering for your own websites – it could also be a great PR tool for your business.

There is an interesting infographic that Dan Zarrella has published that reveals the days that his content receives the most social interaction. What is interesting is that different social media react on different days – for example, Saturday and Sunday are more fruitful for Facebook whilst Friday is the best day for re-tweets. He concludes that, on some days, there is less clutter so his content has less to compete with. From a business perspective, he may be right. From a social perspective, Friday through Sunday are often the busiest days for socializing, and that includes online.

It does raise an important question. Do you know when you receive the most attention through social media, either on an hourly or daily basis? Some marketers insist on publishing at certain times of the day because they receive more attention then than at other times. It is well known that some days are quieter than others as well.

The next question relates to the value of this knowledge. Is it worth measuring?  Two years ago I may have said maybe not; today, interaction with social media is becoming such an important SEO metric that website owners do need to grab every ‘plus 1′, ‘like’ or ‘retweet’ they can get their hands on. If publishing at certain times on certain days delivers more of these ‘votes’, then that knowledge could give you the edge you need over your competitors. It becomes even more useful if you can see that some days are less important than others. You can either not publish on those days, or publish content that, while useful for your customers, is designed more for SEO purposes.

Small business owners have a lot to do in today’s online world. Analytics can often be useful for measuring what is and isn’t working, even in social media marketing. This helps a business owner concentrate on what is working whilst dropping or rethinking what isn’t working. When it comes to social interaction, knowing when you receive the most attention can help you fine tune your own activities.

Gone are the days where a website that was five or more years old with a thousand or more pages could count on ‘age’ as a positive factor in the search results. In some cases, those old pages could be having a negative effect on your search rankings. Search engine users have long bemoaned the fact that search results were often outdated and not relevant to what they were looking for. Sure, you could tweak the results to find the most recent content related to your search term, but that takes extra work, and modern users want the best results first time every time.

Google is now taking positive steps to promote fresh content over old content. I won’t go into the technicalities here  – you can read an excellent article by Justin Briggs on this topic here. It’s not rocket science to work out that fresh data is often more preferable to stale data, even if the fresh data is only rehashing what is in the stale data. As website owner, you need to determine whether or not your content is starting to fall into that stale category. If it is, there are a number of options available to you.

The first option is to ignore the stale content while adding new content on a regular basis. Hopefully the new content fits the ‘freshness’ test and helps to prop up your website. A second option takes the process one step further – you create new content based on your very old content. The key is to make it relevant to today including links out to some of the latest information available. Your third option is to update your old content using current data and links to current discussions or information.

For most business owners, time is the biggest issue. Do you have time to work through your old content to bring it up-to-date? You will also need to consider relevance - is the content written five years ago still relevant to today’s user? If it is, then another option exists; that’s to gain some social media activity around the content and to build fresh links. If the search engines can see that your old content is still relevant to today’s users and that these users are still referencing it in social media and linking to it on their websites or blogs, then rather than being classified as stale, it maintains importance and age once again becomes a positive factor, not a negative. Is your website looking a little stale?

One mistake that many website owners make is to assume that every customer speaks English. In the U.S., the predominant language is English so a website in English is natural. There are, however, over 28 million people who speak Spanish as a first language. That’s almost 13% of the U.S. population. The question then is whether or not to create an online presence published in two or more languages.

I wouldn’t recommend a multilingual website for everyone, however, there are certainly situations where a multilingual website could be more profitable. It’s fairly easy for brick and mortar businesses. If the neighborhood where your shop front is located has a high population who speak a certain language, then it makes sense to market to that language. Almost every major city can point to ethnic enclaves within their community, and most businesses put together marketing programs aimed at everyone in that community.

The online world is different. If you are targeting a world wide market, then it doesn’t make sense spending a lot of time putting together a web site in several languages. However, if your online presence is only targeting a local market, you need to determine the language make up of that market. Would a Spanish translation of your website increase sales – with 13% of the population being Spanish speakers, that could be a sizeable chunk of the market you are missing.

Multilingual websites do come with a few SEO issues. Fortunately, Google has several guidelines that are well worth reading in order to gain a better understanding of these issues. When creating a multilingual website, never take anything for granted. Having a flag doesn’t always clearly indicate another language. Landing pages with language options are popular, however, English users seem to be less tolerant of these pages and this could lead to drop-off in visitor numbers.

Having a multilingual website can provide some businesses with a real boost in traffic. However, they can be high maintenance with every major article published requiring a second copy that has been translated. You then need to ensure it isn’t marked as duplicate content by the search engines.  This is where a good SEO program is a must – if you have a customer base that is from a different ethnic background, consider creating a multilingual website.

To be successful at anything, you need discipline. When it comes to the online world, discipline is what separates the successful from the unsuccessful.  In its broadest terms, marketing is the single most important aspect of an online  business. I say broadest since SEO, PPC and many other activities could come under the marketing umbrella. Why is discipline important?

Discipline affects your mindset. If you are sitting down to write PPC ads, then you need to have the discipline to follow your planned approach. A lack of discipline could see you easily swayed to change your mind – that’s never a good idea without research. The same can be said for a blog or a social media campaign. If you have planned your approach, then stick to that plan.

Humans are emotional creatures and we have a tendency to look at what others are doing and then trying to replicate their actions in our lives. For small businesses, that can have some limited success in the offline world, however, the online world can be very different. This is where discipline becomes an important attribute. Before trying to replicate what someone else is doing, you need to be able to examine and perhaps measure, or predict, how that action will affect your online business. We often see “fads” in the SEO and social media marketing world that work very well for one business but do absolutely nothing for another business. Sometimes they backfire and cause more damage than good.

Small business Internet marketing requires a well planned approach. Once you have that plan, you need to have the discipline to follow it through. That doesn’t mean your plan is stagnant – you still need to measure, review and make changes where necessary, however, that too is a disciplined approach that takes all the variables into account before making a move.

If you are disciplined in your approach, you are giving your business the best chance of success. Of course, discipline will do little if your marketing plans, products, or service are rubbish to begin with. If they too are spot on, then a disciplined approach should lead to high success rates – and that normally means more profit.