Targeting "Locals" on Search Engines

Surprisingly, 22 million small- and medium-sized businesses spend 46% of their advertising budgets on Yellow Pages marketing and allocate only 3% for search engine keywords.

If you or your clients have a click-and-mortar or brick-and-mortar business and are not taking advantage of the new local search engine marketing (SEM) programs, you are missing out on highly targeted traffic for a fraction of the price of national SEM.

A New Kelsey Group survey of 3,887 online consumers in early September revealed the following:

-- More than 74% of survey respondents said that they had conducted local searches

-- Approximately 45% of local searches had a buying intent

What's A Blog?

According to the dictionary, a blog is:

"A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and web links."

In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write content on an ongoing basis. As you add content to your blog, new posts are automatically positioned on top of previous posts, so your visitors can see "what's new." Then they can comment on it or link to it or e-mail you if they choose to do so.

A blog can be a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts.

Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.

A blog is often a combination of what's happening in someone's personal and business life and what is happening on the web--a kind of high-tech, hybrid diary/guide site--and there are seemingly as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

How To Backup Your Hard Drive

We all know that we should back up our system as soon as possible. But if you're like most of us, you will get to it tomorrow. The problem is that tomorrow rarely ever comes until you experience a serious computer failure and then it’s too late.

Taking the time to backup your data or entire hard drive is not as painstaking as it may seem. And the rewards of doing so will be great should your system experience a crash.

WINDOWS AND OTHER BACKUP SOFTWARE

If you have Windows XP you will need to install the new Windows backup utility from the Windows XP cdrom. Just place the WinXP cdrom in your cdrom drive and locate the line D:\VALEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP.

Here you see the first letter as D but if your optical drive has a different drive letter, exchange the D with your drive's letter. To install the utility, click on the file named NTBackup.msi.

The backup utility will be installed to the system tools group. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Backup. There is a neat wizard that will walk you through the backup process.

10 Valuable Tips For Ezine Publishers

1. Write your own articles.

Your articles will give you an effective way to build up your status as an expert by sharing your tips and advice with your readers.

Your articles will also help you to effectively promote your business through your resource box at the end of your articles.

Use your articles to get more subscribers by submitting them to article directories and announcement lists with a resource box that promotes your ezine.

2. Recommend the products of affiliate programs you've joined to your subscriber base.

If you've earned the trust of your subscribers your recommendations will help you to successfully increase your commissions.

Only recommend products you can honestly vouch for and that you believe can meet your subscribers' needs.

3. Swap ads with other ezine publishers.

Why Your Brick-and-Mortar Biz Needs A Website

The internet has taken over our lives with a vengeance, and has changed the way many of us do business. More and more consumers are now doing their shopping online and, unfortunately, some business owners have felt the pinch.

But there are many small businesses that have been virtually unaffected by the internet boom. Those professionals in the more service-oriented fields - veterinarians, chiropractors, beauticians, dentists and more - do almost all of their work in what's now affectionately know as the brick-and-mortar
business, and as such can never be fully replaced by internet technology.

However, many of these businesses, from tiny mom-and-pop stores to small health care centers - have yet to merge onto the information highway, and it's costing them plenty; of customers, that is.

That's because, although traditional advertising (phone books, flyers, radio ads, etc.) are still widely used, there is no doubt that the most effective advertising now takes place online.

How and Why to Publish an Ezine

Publishing an ezine is important to any online business. With an ezine, you can keep in contact with your customers and promote yourself and your business. You do this by building a relationship of trust and respect with your readers.

For those of you who might not know what an ezine is..........an ezine is simply an electronic newsletter or magazine mailed periodically to a list of opt-in subscribers. By opt-in, I mean that they have voluntarily signed up to receive your ezine from you.

This means that they have given their permission to receive updates, product recommendations, and other promotions from you. But, you also want to provide quality content for your readers.

DO NOT send your ezine to anyone who has not subscribed. I also strongly suggest that you make sure all your subscribers are double opt-in. This means that after they initially subscribe, you send them a confirmation email asking them to reply to make sure they are the one who has subscribed. This should prevent you from being accused of spam.

What's your Business Online Attitude?

This article was prompted by some customer support work I was involved in for a private members site. One of the paid subscription members wanted someone to look over his website and give an opinion of what we thought of its design.

It was clear from the email that they had been online for a while (over 3 years) but hadn't seen any results from their efforts and were frustrated. Understandably so!

This person had created his own website in which to promote an online Opportunity. The purpose for having your own web site, rather than a static page, (one that you can't personally change, like the ones the most biz opps provide) is it to "Brand YOU".

After all, your site visitor is getting involved with something you recommend and in effect will want you to help them succeed.

Understanding Editorial Guidelines

Editorial guidelines, also known as writer's guidelines, are the rules set forth by publishers for contributing authors. In order to have your article taken seriously you must review the guidelines prior to submission. It is also recommended that you review previous editions of the publication to get a better feel for the types of articles favored by the editor(s).

Outlined below are the typical issues covered in editorial guidelines along with their definitions and any additional information you should know.

E-Learning Increases Profits For Companies

Eight Ways That Providing E-Learning Maximizes Profits and Minimizes Customer Training Problems

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) -- Looking for ways to increase your bottom line and your customer satisfaction? Read on! Find out how you can get a share of this growing, multimillion dollar industry, using your existing training materials and resources.

E-learning (training via the internet) benefits you, your company and your customers. Dave Meyer, successful software manufacturer many times over and currently the founder of 3DCourseWare.net, reveals how e-learning can boost revenues and productivity: