The search engines use programs called “spiders” to discover new pages on the Internet. The spiders simply scan every page they know about, and find links to new pages. As they find them, new pages are added to the search engine’s database, or “index”.
It stands to reason, then, that [...] Continue Reading…
Business networking groups and online forums can be an effective way to get your marketing message out to other small business owners. In South Africa, there are a number of groups which meet regularly.
All of the groups have some form of online presence. They generally require you to [...] Continue Reading…
How many SEO consultants does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change the light bulb and another to explain that there are over 100 factors that go into determining the state of the light bulb and it could take 3 to 6 months to know for [...] Continue Reading…
Getting your website to rank in Google is not as difficult as you may have been told. There are thousands of articles about search engine optimization on the Internet, 99.9% of which are complete rubbish.
The first step in the process is ensuring that your site is indexed – [...] Continue Reading…
Google Maps has developed to the point where it could be quite useful for your business.
Here’s a map I put together as an example. This map shows the locations of most of the Outdoor Warehouse stores in Johannesburg:
View Larger Map
It took me about 10 minutes. Click on any of [...] Continue Reading…
Anyone who’s read The 4-Hour Workweek
by Tim Ferriss will know that one of the keys to recovering some of your precious time is outsourcing. Tim gives examples of how he and other people have outsourced all kinds of tasks to Virtual Assistants in India or the Phillipines.
Getting visitors [...] Continue Reading…
If you look at the menu bar at the top of the screen, you’ll see there’s a link to my demo site.
On the home page of the demo site, you can sign up for a short (3 messages) email series which shows you how an Automated Follow-up System works.
There’s [...] Continue Reading…
My apologies to everyone who received a bunch of blog notifications from me earlier today.
My blog notification service, which sends a short notification email every time a new blog post is made, is automated by means of AWeber’s Blog Broadcast feature. AWeber monitors the RSS feed from my [...] Continue Reading…
I had to go out for three hours, but in that time my previous post reached position 8 on the first page of Google. You’ll also see a link to the same post from Digg.com, listed at #2.
There’s no guarantee that the post will stay on the front [...] Continue Reading…
Choosing The Right Category For Your Facebook Page
When you create a Facebook Page, Facebook asks you to choose a category. The page category shows up in Facebook’s search results, so it’s important to get it right.
Many people have had a nasty surprise when they discover that Facebook doesn’t (currently) allow you to change the category once the page has been created. The only way to change categories is by deleting your Page and starting a new one – and if your Page already has fans, that could be a big problem.
It’s also very important to know that the fields on the Info sub-page are different for each category. The “Local” top-level category only offers a very limited set of fields, which may make it difficult to describe your business the way you want to.
You can send visitors who are not yet Fans to a sub-page of your choice, so the first thing they see could be a Note which describes your company, or a custom sub-page created with FBML, Facebook’s markup language. So all is not lost if you choose the wrong category. But careful selection of the category in the first place is a good idea.
There are three top-level categories:
Within each main category are a number of sub-categories.
It’s obviously best if your business fits neatly into a sub-category. As I mentioned, the fields available in the “Local” top-level category are very limited, with no text field available to describe your business properly.
The Product category offers a useful “Company Overview” field as well as a “Mission Statement” field. Why Facebook thinks that local businesses don’t need fields like this is a mystery. Of course, things do change and I’m sure that at some time in the future it’ll be possible to change the category for your Page on a whim!