This real case is about the owner of the small business who, luckily, was in-tune with the ever changing technology and saw the opportunity to save money and increase productivity.

The owner, let’s call her Mary, managed a staff of 75 and was struggling with the following problems:

• It costs have gone up despite the recession
• Her company was using POP3 email and she was constantly juggling email between her iPhone, a laptop and her office desktop
• Sharing files between employees was a nightmare
• Calendar sharing was out of the question
• As the company grew, backups were a daily challenge and called for expensive upgrades

Mary contracted a local IT provider that had only one answer – Microsoft Exchange; a costly answer that required not only new hardware and software but also a boat load of extra hours for conversion, administration and training of the staff.

Mary contacted me and I offered a simple (almost free of charge) solution – Google Apps. Google – in their infinite wisdom (I mean that literally) presents an alternative to what the IT company suggested; an alternative that can be setup in minutes and solves all the problems listed above.

All you have to do is make some simple modifications to your domain and email setup. Here’s what Google Apps offers in terms of email:

Email, IM, voice and video chat

Each user gets 25 GB of email and IM storage (50 times the industry average).

Anytime, anywhere access to your email

Gmail is securely powered by the web, so you can be productive from your desk, on the road, at home and on your mobile phone, even when you’re offline.

Sync with Outlook & BlackBerry

Get the benefits of Apps on familiar platforms

Search and find emails instantly

Spend less time organizing email and find emails quickly with Google-powered search for your inbox.

Get less spam

Powerful Gmail spam filtering helps you stay focused on what’s important. Postini filtering lets you customize your spam protection. 

These are all free and very easy to setup. On top of all these, several other applications deserve to be mentioned, like:

• Google Calendar Agenda management, scheduling, shared online calendars and mobile calendar sync.
• Google Docs Documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Work online without attachments.
• Google Groups User-created groups providing mailing lists, easy content sharing, searchable archives.
• Google Sites Secure, coding-free web pages for intranets and team managed sites.
• Google Video Private, secure, hosted video sharing.

How does Google do all this without charging? Well – there is a charge of $50 per user per year which for Mary amounted to about $3750 per year. This only in the event that 25GB of email is not sufficient for your users. Compare this and the cost of implementing what the IT company proposed and you’ll see the immediate benefits.

How is it possible that Google can do this? It’s gotta be some kind of conspiracy theory abut I cannot figure it out yet…When I do I’ll let you know. In the meantime, save yourself a bunch of money and a whole lotta of headaches with these awesome Google Apps and you won’t regret it. The link to this great time and money saver is: http://www.google.com/apps/

Cost Savings for Mary
She opted for the free version of the Google Apps and saved a little over $43,000 this year alone. Huge savings for a small company. Maybe she can give some bonuses to her hard working staff instead of throwing them away for unnecessary technologies.

I use Google Apps every day no matter what computer I use. In fact right now I am writing this from an Internet Café. In the Philippines! Via email. Totally secure, totally sweet…

Here are 10 awesome tips on how you can improve the online presence for your business:

1. Submit Your Business to Local Listings
   Do a local search for your business make sure your listing is up to date and accurate so customers get the right information about your business.
2. List Your Business in the Correct Category
   Very often the owner (or the webmaster creating the website) categorizes the business listing in the wrong category. Include as many relevant categories as possible to your business to attract customers. 
3. Add or verify your business listing with data providers for search engines
   Search engines and local search sites use data providers (e.g. InfoUSA, Localeze, InsiderPages, MerchantCircle, etc.) and it’s very important that you update their listing of your business. 
4. When Possible Include product / service keywords in your local business listing title
   This tactic will help customers find your business more easily on search engines and you will be ranked higher in the process.
5. Check the Accuracy of Your Full Name and address on all search sites and especially your website
   A full and accurate address generates a sense of trust for both customers and for search engines so make sure that wherever you appear on the web, your information is up to date, accurate and consistent throughout.
6. Hire a Professional and Build a Great Website with an Optimized Number of Keywords and Good Content
   Your company website is the image project on the web to the rest of the world. Show the world you care about your image, your business and your customers with a unique, easy to navigate website. Stay away from cheap imitations, standard templates and cookie cutters (one size fits all) websites. If you want to stand out from the crows so should your website/blog.
7. Get your customers to write online reviews and testimonials about your business
   Many customers look for objective reviews before they decide where to spend their money. Online reviews of your business can also contribute to your ranking on search engines as they give credibility to your business and puts your potential customers at ease.
8. Encourage your customers to talk well on and offline about you
   Create more “buzz” around your business. Customer feedback is always good and you an use that to your advantage to improve your business.
9. Understand and use social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Flickr, etc. to stay in touch with customers and attract new ones
   Use these sites to form a community for your business – this is a good way to communicate with existing customers, advertise sales or specials, and a good way to be visible to potential customers. 
10. Create a Blog and be active on others as well
    This is the cheapest way to sort of “toot your own horn” on line. It only takes time to research and write on your blog but very soon you might be able to attract more and more people who enjoy your products and/or services. In addition – your website and thus the company’s brand will rank higher in the search engines. This might not be sufficient unless you also find other blogs within your niche and become an active contributor.

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First of all – familiarize yourself with basic SEO jargon like: internal/external links, meta tags, titles, pagerank, etc. 

This way at least you know what the SEO company is talking about when they make the sales pitch.

Personally, I noticed that the shady ones are often hiding behind geek lingo trying to paint you in a corner by throwing these words at you, thus proving that they know what they are talking about.

You can cut that conversation short and find out how credible and professional they are by asking 5 little questions. Here they are:

1. What kind of results should you be able to see and how long will it take to get there?
2. What experience do you have in my industry and how long have you been doing this?
3. Show/send me examples of your previous work and success stories. Can I contact some of these people?
4. Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
5. What other marketing services do you offer besides SEO?

Just keep this list by your phone and take notes while they answer these questions. I’m sure you are a pretty seasoned business individual so you should be able to spot the shady ones right away. You can download a quick and easy PDF document of “Questions to ask a SEO company” right here.

According to Jupiter Research almost 40% of people searching the web actually purchase something. In all cases, they focus on page 1 and sometimes page 2. The percentage of info seekers decreases tremendously starting with page 3 of any search engine.

The dirty little secret you probably don’t know is that 72% of all people who search Google click on the organic search results, ignoring the paid ads section. I do. Don’t you?

Based on these findings, logic will tell you that your website/blog should be listed on the top 1-2 pages of every search engine page. To accomplish this you’ll need a solid and powerful SEO behind your site.

So does SEO matter? Heck Yes!

Here are some things you need to understand before you hire a SEO company or even contemplate on doing yourself SEO for your site:

 1. SEO is an ongoing activity and it stops when your company doesn’t need a web presence anymore.
This is not a “set it” and forget it” task. It’s a long time strategy that needs constant attention and fine tunning as you go.

2. SEO results are not immediate nor permanent.
Whoever is telling you otherwise you should seriously dispute their knwoeldge of the web.

3. If you want to do solid SEO (mainly based on fresh content), think of your site as a weekly or monthly newsletter.
Update it as much as you can and you got yourself a dynamic and fresh site every time.

4. Tag everything (images, links, video, etc.) and link to relevant sites.
Link internally between your pages and ask others to link to your site.

5. Pure SEO is not about TRAFFIC – it’s about QUALIFIED TRAFFIC.
What good does it do that your site list on position 2 on the first page for a “company that sells oranges” when you in fact are “selling space ships”?

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