Small Business Center

Yelp for Local Online Business Reviews

April 30th, 2008 by Admin

Yelp is a great site for local businesses to get feedback and improve search results for their businesses. Most local business don’t realize how powerful online reviews can be. Reputations can be ruined online by a bad review (know RipOffReport?? Just try to get a negative report off your record!). At first you might not think twice about it but a bad online review can be devastating to your small business (see this example).

More people go online to find out about your business instead of looking in the phone book. A negative review could be one of the first search results that come up when someone types in your business name into Google. That’s why SEO for small businesses is wise -...

With Marketing Savvy Small Businesses Can Rock Online

April 11th, 2008 by Admin

Search Engine Land has a monthly column I like to follow called, “Small is Beautiful.” It talks about small businesses and their online marketing successes.
This month there’s an interview with small business owner who is a musician. Musician John W. Tuggle teaches private guitar lessons and tried making an ebook. He only sold about 5 ebooks in over a year - he was discouraged and ready to stop teaching.

He got help with his online marketing and leveraged new media like YouTube, podcasts, blogging, and Skype. Here’s the result of their work: http://www.learningguitarnow.com

Tuggle is doing well by making his local business global. He teaches people all over the world. Small businesses...