Home Wealth Project
Extensive Research On How To Build Wealth From The Comfort Of Your Own Home.
50 Kit Home Owner Builder Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Apr 9th
Don’t let construction and design mistakes rob your kit home building project of time and money. 50 mistakes and tips. Bonus ebook: 80 Self Build Home Suppliers (Aus,Can,US,GB). 2nd Bonus ebook: Kit Home Groundwork: 5 crucial steps.
50 Kit Home Owner Builder Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Is Your Business Blog Making These 10 Deadly Mistakes?
Jan 13th
In my work helping small businesses improve their blogs, I can say I’ve found some common mistakes. These problems can kill your blog dead — drive visitors away and make them never come back.
Fix these problems, and your business blog will start to get noticed and bring you new clients.
Here are a dozen of the biggest business blogging flubs, and how to fix them:
1. Weak headlines. On the Internet, headlines are make-or-break. If your headline doesn’t entice me, I’m not clicking, I’m not reading, I’m not subscribing, I’m not returning to your blog, and I’m not becoming a customer. If you do nothing else to improve your business blog, learn what makes a compelling headline. Headlines that ask a question can be great. List-based posts often do well, too…like this one. It should have at least one key word in it that relates to the topic or theme of your blog.
To learn more about the psychology of what makes people click on headlines, read Psychotactics’ free report, Why Do Some Headlines Fail?
2. Weak opening paragraphs. Blogs are too short to take five paragraphs to get to your main point. Your first paragraph should include key words for good search engine optimization (SEO), and lay out immediately what you will cover in the post.
3. No social sharing. So many business blogs have no easy way for visitors to spread them around the Internet. At the very least, install a Tweetmeme button, or better yet a plug-in such as Sexy Bookmarks. The latter will give visitors the option to share on dozens of social sites including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. If you’re not familiar with any of these social sites, poll your staff and find someone who’s into social media. Then, put them to work on socializing your posts.
4. No photos. Yes, you have precious written messages you want to communicate to the prospective clients who visit your blog. And you’ll be amazed at how much more interested readers will be in those words if you include an image with each post. This one change will immediately make your blog look more professional. You can get great images that are free (in exchange for a credit link) at Flickr Creative Commons or stock.xchng.
5. Not scannable. Great blog posts have subheadings, or bolded lists like this one. Know that the majority of people don’t read online, they scan. If your post isn’t scannable with at least a few bold headings, they move on.
6. Too-long paragraphs and too-long sentences. People read things on the Internet in a different style than they do in print. They’re looking for a quick read for the most part. If your sentences run on for miles, that’s a big turnoff. The same for long, complicated sentences. Break up paragraphs — two sentences in a paragraph is great online — and break meandering sentences into two or three sentences.
7. Posts are too long. Posts of 1,000 words or more work on a few sites such as Copyblogger, but for the typical small-business blog, shorter posts are a better bet. If you have a lot to say, split your topic into multiple posts or create a blog series, which helps drive subscriber signups. Aim for 400-500 words.
8. Rambling posts. Once you’ve created a strong headline, you need to make your post stick strictly to that topic. Going off on a tangent only confuses readers. If you have a related topic you want to discuss, create a followup post. Make one, focused point, and you’re done.
9. Tone is too formal. I’ve seen business owners sign their posts with a letterhead block including their street address! A blog is not a letter you’re going to mail. Instead of a formal signature, enliven your byline or signature with a link to your site. Also, don’t use jargon that could alienate new readers or legalese. Write like you’re talking to a prospect in person.
10. Links are naked or dead. Newbie bloggers often throw links into posts raw, like this: http://www.mywebsite.com. That’s bad blogging form that tips readers off that you’re an amateur. Enliven words as links instead. Then, check the links to make sure they’re working. It’s a big turnoff to click a link on a blog only to find it goes nowhere.
Got any questions about using your blog to help your business find customers? Leave a comment below, and I’ll try my best to answer.
–Carol Tice’s blog, Make a Living Writing, was recently named one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers.
View full post on Entrepreneur.com – Daily Dose
10 Social Media Mistakes We Bet You’re Making
Sep 24th
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Social media might not come natural to everyone, but there are a few basics everyone should know. I think this does a great job of laying a foundation. |
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Small-business Q&A: Mistakes and missteps | Business
Sep 19th
| Things snowball from there, and the business is in real trouble. The bank won’t lend more funds, vendors won’t extend credit or a big customer won’t or… |
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MediaShift Idea Lab . 5 Mistakes That Make Local Blogs Fail
Sep 18th
| If you go it alone, your business will be single-threaded. Everything will have to run through you before it can happen and you can’t always be… |
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Mistakes to Avoid When Using Twitter As an Internet Marketing Tool
Sep 4th
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By sticking to the above guideline, you can ensure that you Twitter internet marketing campaign will bring you and you business… |
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6 Common SMB SEO Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
Sep 3rd
I’m not an SEO expert. Lucky for me, my partners in crime over at Outspoken Media are. But even though I’m not an expert, that doesn’t mean I’m not careful to pay close attention to SEO best practices when creating and publishing content. Paying mind to search engine optimization ensures that I’m giving the search engines all the clues they need to determine what my content is about, while also giving customers what they need to know, as well. And if someone as non-technical as I can do it, then you savvy SMB owners can do it too.
Below you’ll find 6 common SMB SEO mistakes and how to very easily fix them.
Mistake: Using duplicate Title tags
Your Title tag is the hyperlinked text a user will click on when your site comes up in their search results. And when they click on your link and go to your page, it’s the Title tag that sits at the top of their browser acting as a headline for your page. Both these facts should tell you that crafting a good one is really important. So why are you ignoring it? Spend time writing unique Title tags for every page on your site. The goal of your Title tag is to tell visitors what the page is about, while also making it compelling enough that they’ll want to click through. For example, don’t make the Title tag for your site’s home page [home]. This doesn’t tell anyone what that page is about, nor would it entice anyone to click on it. Instead, use something like [Business Name + Keyword].
Mistake: Having no content
Your Web site needs content. The search engines need something to rank and you need a way to show authority with users and answer their questions. You want to write at least one page of content for every product or service that you offer. I know it’s a lot of work, but this is your business. If you have a retail Web site, don’t just copy the 3-line manufacturer description because everyone is using that description. Write your own. Write a real About page, write a company history page, have a page on all of your employees, etc. Create video content showing people using your product, create a video about how users can hack your product to be better, create a video giving customers a tour of your headquarters. Let them submit their own videos. Write text to go with the videos. Start a blog. Create a podcast. Include text with your images. Use Google’s Keyword Tool or Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions Tool to see what people are asking about in your niche. There are so many ways to get content on your site, take advantage of them. A site with no content is a wasted opportunity.
Mistake: Keyword-less URLs
Don’t STUFF them, but whenever possible you should be trying to get keywords into your URLs to help with your site’s search engine optimization. If you’re using WordPress, I recommend going in and tweaking your settings to better accomplish this. You can do that by going to Settings > Permalinks and selecting the radio button marked Custom Structure. Once you’re there you can decide if you want your URLs to end with /post-name/ or /category/post-name/. Depending on which you prefer, you’ll want to paste in one of the following pieces of code:
- /%category%/%postname%/>
- /%postname%/
And that’s it. Now you’ll be able to very easily alter your URLs to make them as keyword-rich and search engine-friendly as you can.
Mistake: Poor internal linking
We talk a lot about the power of links in SEO. You want people to link to you with keyword-rich anchor text as a way of telling the search engines that you are relevant to those terms. Well, then why aren’t you linking to yourself the same way? When you’re linking between pages on your site, make sure you’re using preferred anchor text to give yourself a boost in the search engines and give users a keyword-rich path to follow. You may not be able to control how other people link to you, but you can control how you link within your own site. Make it count.
Mistake: Using photos instead of text
I see this one a lot with small businesses. Mary owns a bakery on Main Street. The home page of her site is nothing more than a .jpg of her storefront with a link to the food menu. When you click on the Menu link to see what sounds good, you’re shown a scanned PDF version of the menu. This may be usable from a customer standpoint (and even that’s arguable), however, it’s useless from a search standpoint. The search engines can’t see or read your images. To them, Mary’s home page is blank and the menu doesn’t exist. If you want to appear in the search engines, you have to give the robots something to use to rank your site. And that means content. Whenever you’re using a photo, make sure there is also text to accompany it. And don’t rely on photos when words will do.
Mistake: Not using Alt tags with images
Related to the item above, spiders can’t see or read images. To help them get an idea of what the image is about, you need to include alt text that describes the image on the page. If you can, write the alt text to include a relevant keyword to again get that added boost. Again, it’s one of those small, little things that has a real impact.
Those are a few easy ways that you can quickly boost the SEO power of your content. They may seem like little things, but together, they pack a mighty powerful SEO punch.
6 Common SMB SEO Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
6 Common SMB SEO Mistakes (& How to Fix Them)
Sep 2nd
I’m not an SEO expert. Lucky for me, my partners in crime over at Outspoken Media are. But even though I’m not an expert, that doesn’t mean I’m not careful to pay close attention to SEO best practices when creating and publishing content. Paying mind to search engine optimization ensures that I’m giving the search engines all the clues they need to determine what my content is about, while also giving customers what they need to know, as well. And if someone as non-technical as I can do it, then you savvy SMB owners can do it too. You definitely can.
Below you’ll find 6 common SMB SEO mistakes and how to very easily fix them.
Mistake: Using duplicate Title tags
Your Title tag is the hyperlinked text a user will click on when your site comes up in their search results. And when they click on your link and go to your page, it’s the Title tag that sits at the top of their browser acting as a headline for your page. Both these facts should tell you that crafting a good one is really important. So why are you ignoring it? Spend time writing unique Title tags for every page on your site. The goal of your Title tag is to tell visitors what the page is about, while also making it compelling enough that they’ll want to click through. For example, don’t make the Title tag for your site’s home page [home]. This doesn’t tell anyone what that page is about, nor would it entice anyone to click on it. Instead, use something like [Business Name + Keyword].
Mistake: Having no content
Your Web site needs content. The search engines need something to rank and you need a way to show authority with users and answer their questions. You want to write at least one page of content for every product or service that you offer. I know it’s a lot of work, but this is your business. If you have a retail Web site, don’t just copy the 3-line manufacturer description because everyone is using that description. Write your own. Write a real About page, write a company history page, have a page on all of your employees, etc. Create video content showing people using your product, create a video about how users can hack your product to be better, create a video giving customers a tour of your headquarters. Let them submit their own videos. Write text to go with the videos. Start a blog. Create a podcast. Include text with your images. Use Google’s Keyword Tool or Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions Tool to see what people are asking about in your niche. There are so many ways to get content on your site, take advantage of them. A site with no content is a wasted opportunity.
Mistake: Keyword-less URLs
Don’t STUFF them, but whenever possible you should be trying to get keywords into your URLs to help with your site’s search engine optimization. If you’re using WordPress, I recommend going in and tweaking your settings to better accomplish this. You can do that by going to Settings > Permalinks and selecting the radio button marked Custom Structure. Once you’re there you can decide if you want your URLs to end with /post-name/ or /category/post-name/. Depending on which you prefer, you’ll want to paste in one of the following pieces of code:
- /%category%/%postname%/>
- /%postname%/
And that’s it. Now you’ll be able to very easily alter your URLs to make them as keyword-rich and search engine-friendly as you can.
Mistake: Poor internal linking
We talk a lot about the power of links in SEO. How you want people to link to you with keyword-rich anchor text as a way of telling the search engines that you are relevant to those terms. Well, then why aren’t you linking to yourself the same way? When you’re linking between pages on your site, make sure you’re using preferred anchor text to give yourself a boost in the search engines and give users a keyword-rich path to follow. You may not be able to control how other people link to you, but you can control how you link within your own site. Make it count.
Mistake: Using photos instead of text
I see this one a lot with small businesses. Mary owns a bakery on Main Street. The home page of her site is nothing more than a .jpg of her storefront with a link to the food menu. When you click on the Menu link to see what sounds good, you’re shown a scanned PDF version of the menu. This may be usable from a customer standpoint (and even that’s arguable), however, it’s useless from a search standpoint. The search engines can’t see or read your images. To them, Mary’s home page is blank and the menu doesn’t exist. If you want to appear in the search engines you have to give the robots something to use to rank your site. And that means content. Whenever you’re using a photo, make sure there is also text to accompany it. And don’t rely on photos when words will do.
Mistake: Not using Alt tags with images
Related to the item above, spiders can’t see or read images. To help them get an idea of what the image is about, you need to include alt text that describes the image on the page. If you can, write the alt text to include a relevant keyword to again get that added boost. Again, it’s one of those small, little things that has a real impact.
Those are a few easy ways that you can quickly boost the SEO power of your content. They may seem like little things, but together, they pack a mighty powerful SEO punch.
6 Common SMB SEO Mistakes (& How to Fix Them)
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
The 3 Most Common Mistakes When Growing an Idea into a Business
Jul 31st
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Coming from someone who is so… common mistakes I have seen entrepreneurs make when trying to take their idea and grow it into a business: 1. |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
6 Social Media Mistakes Your Company Should Avoid
Jul 12th
| Needless to say, many people were infuriated and they took to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to voice their frustration and upset. |
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