LookupPage Blog | Professional Web Presence and Visibility

Establishing Web Presence for SMBs

It seems that discussing the importance of establishing a web presence for a small or medium sized business currently would be redundant. Online presence for small companies is often more important than it is for large ones. The internet has made the world a smaller place. Many companies depend solely on their online presence in order to reach their prospective clients. 

Although the costs that businesses endure in order to create elaborate web sites are still high, when it comes to run of the mill online presence; the type that allows a company to show up when its name is searched on Google, the amount of time and effort that businesses need to put in has dropped dramatically. Online directories and social networks make it very simple for a business to create an online presence and improve the Google CV of a new business rapidly.

A good example is Twitter. If you have a Twitter account and have Googled yourself recently, you are aware of how much credit Twitter is getting from the biggest search engine out there. Businesses of all sizes have figured out that a business twitter account is very likely to rank on the first page results. 

In addition, Twitter can help your business to communicate better with your potential clients. Take for example the food truck service in major cities such as New York. Such services have become very popular in recent years since their overhead expenses are low and allow them to offer great prices on food. In order to establish and maintain their relationship with their customers they use Twitter perpetually. These trucks are on the go; they offer incentives such as coupon codes that would motivate their clients to connect with them online and use the web to inform their customers in regards to their physical location and current specials. One truck gives out a password online on a daily basis and customers who use the password when they order their food get a free dessert. 

Another way for a business to establish a web presence and open an additional line of communication with its customers is Facebook. We are learning that adults ages 35-44 are the fastest growing age group on the popular social network. This essentially means that any company that is using Facebook to target its customers is visible to more age groups than before. 

Creating a fan page on Facebook, enables a business to import an RSS feed from its blog, improve market research by being on the receiving end on highly valuable feedback from its clients and create a buzz for product launches and special promotions. 

5 Tips on Managing Your Company's Reputation Online

 
Managing the reputation of a company requires plenty of virtual foot work.  It takes dedication to your brand and the willingness to work hard in order to influence & improve the way cyberspace views a brand. The following are tips that would help in the process

1. Blog. Search engines acknowledge web sites with fresh content but even more importantly so do existing and potential clients. Blogging enables a company to engage in a conversation with its customers and the feedback that could result in such a conversation is highly valuable. It informs a company what it is doing right and where it can improve.
2. Own your business' name – it is vital that you own all the domain names of your business, such as YourCompnayName.com, YourCompnayName.biz, YourCompnayName.net, etc. We also recommend owning YourPersonalName.com and having content there that would link to your business website. This would decrease the likelihood of someone blemishing your credibility.
3. Create  an Online Profile for your company - search engines and humans prefer a number of different sources for their information. A company profile on a directory can direct traffic in the direction of your home page.
4. Track your company’s online reputation – setting up a Google alert for the name of your business is a good start but it is hardly enough. A business needs to constantly be searching itself on different search engines in order to know how its doing. This practice often influences strategy of a campaign or use of social networking.
5. Respond quickly. If someone online is saying negative things about your company try and find out why and whether you can assist in solving the problem. Ignoring negative feedback can cause further harm down the road and it is advisable to react quickly in attempting to prevent further escalation of the problem.

Why Do I Need Online Reputation Management? KFC Case Study

KFC sells fried chicken in over 80 countries around the world. Its expansion into China in recent years had added even a bigger boost to the company and it is scheduled to open 300 new locations in china in the course of 2009.   KFC is part of Yum Brands, a Group that is publicly traded in the New York Stock Exchange. 

One would expect that who ever is responsible for Yum's investor relations would figure out by this point that the online bashing of KFC is costing his or her company a significant amount of money.

Try Googling "KFC", more often than not you would find “kentuckyfriedcrulety.com” in the first results page. KFC is presented as a company that mistreats animals and hides behind its own Animal Welfare Advisory Council; one that according to PETA was created to appease the public but not does not do anything substantial in the matter. Organizations such as PETA have made KFC their target and the amount of negative content out there that is ranking well and harming the Google CV of this company is staggering.

What should KFC be doing? A judgment aside from the animal cruelty aspect, KFC is a business that needs to protect its online image. There are various things that can and should be done in order to protect the brand. The very first is to acknowledge there is a problem with the online reputation of the company and not to let bad publicity go unchallenged. KFC needs to tell their side of the story and point out the progress they have made through the years on the issue of treating animals.

Another important element is being able to publicly take credit to the positive things KFC has been doing in the communities through the years. Whether it is creating jobs or donating to the local public schools, anything that KFC has done that has improved the lives of the communities where KFC restaurants are operating is something they should be sharing online with their potential customers. 

Reputation Management Tips: Monitor Twitter Streams

Watching trends on Twitter has become even more important recently, as more businesses and individuals have turned to the popular microblog to tell the world about their daily activities and recommend content. For the people who are wondering exactly what the advantages of monitoring streams we offer the following:

1.No matter if you are tweeting for your friends, your business, or your employer you can use monitoring of Twitter streams to figure out what kind of content is being passed around or retweeted the most. This will help in defining the type of content you will come up with when trying to increase your following.

2.The saying “what goes around – comes around “is incredibly true with Twitter; If you decide to retweet someone else’s content that action may be reciprocated more quickly than you might anticipate. Even more importantly, the fact that a business cares enough about your tweets in order to re publish them to his or her group of followers indicates that professionally you have things in common and that may lead to business collaborations down the road.

3.If your business has a blog, it is vital for you to be up to speed with current trends and major stories in your field. That is the only way your blog will continue to be relevant. By monitoring key terms on twitter, one can have an initial indication on breaking stories and the reactions to those stories.

To monitor your stream or the LookupPage stream simply click the bottom right “RSS feed” link on your Twitter page.

Tips on Ranking High on Search Engines and Increasing Your Online Visibility

"Convincing" a search engine that your website belongs in the first page results for any term is not an easy task. Matt Cutts from Google and other industry leaders often discuss what makes a good website in their opinion. It is fair to say that search engines are all in agreement on the basics of what constitutes a good website. They are looking to enhance the experience of their users and to deliver the most relevant content possible. The following is solid advice for improving raking on Search engines and increasing online visibility.

1. Content is king - Search engines love fresh content. When the Triple Crown horse races were taking place last year, one of the major search engines was conducting tests to see which search engine would present the results first. Bragging was quickly followed.
Search engines highly credit fresh and relevant content and therefore send their robots to index websites that update on a constant basis. The way to insure constant indexing is through new content.

2. Using social book marking – since we have established the importance of great and fresh content, it is essential to talk about how to recognize content that is worthwhile. If you read something online that you feel is interesting and informative that is a great start. A good way for one to mark interesting articles online for his friends or colleagues to read is social book marking. A website such as Reddit or Diigo will save those book marks. If more people agree and mark the exact same articles as noteworthy this will increase the exposure of these articles by a great deal. Bloggers or journalists that were able to get a large group of people to book mark one of their articles, significantly increased the amount of people that kept on reading new articles by the same writer. Submitting your own articles to book marking sites is necessary when attempting to increase readership.

3 Ways to Change How Your Business Shows Up on Search Results

The need of an existing business to reach higher exposure online through the use of new content does not have to be associated only with burying negative results on search engines. Businesses today realize that sharing different kinds of information online can increase the traffic that their websites generate.

People are often surprised to find out that Google and other major search engines on occasion will rank a video or a PDF document within the first search results page. The fact that people are searching for relevant information in all shapes and sizes pretty much guarantees that the algorithm that search engines are currently using will continue to produce such results. Search engines are basically saying that if a query is answered correctly by a file that has been indexed, that file will usually get exposure no matter what format the information is in.

The suggested 3 ways, covered in this post, to change how your business shows up are:

1.Social Publishing -Scribd is an excellent tool for uploading a pdf file along with any type of font or images that are a part of the file. It enjoys one of the largest following online and therefore is indexed on a constant basis by Google and Yahoo.
2.SlideShare – Allows its users to upload Power Point presentations and even include sound in them. Similarly to Scribd it is viewed as an authority by search engines.
3. Creating a LookupPage – A LookupPage business profile can enhance the web presence of a website. It is a place that ranks high and promotes useful information about a business. It can focus on what the business specializes in and include follow links that would help the search engine optimization of the business and any colleagues it wishes to promote.

Why You Should Link Between Your Online Profiles?

The word "cloud computing" gets thrown around quite often these days, but in the case of establishing an online presence a cloud of relevant and precise information about our brand is exactly what we are trying to achieve.

Let's have a look at two online services in which you can create online profiles, and how linking the two profiles can improve search engine results. By linking a LookupPage of a business or a professional with a LinkedIn profile, a user is not only making life easier for customers and establishing credibility amongst them, but a correlation is created between the two pages in the eyes of search engines as well. Linking the profiles together increases the probability that the search engine robot will bundle the two profiles for future searches.

Creating a cloud that binds together different online profiles of a professional, a business, or a brand could dramatically improve the Google CV of that entity.

When creating links between profiles what should you be paying attention to?

1. Not all online profile tools are created equal; some online profile tools limit the amount of effective links each profile can create making the additional links nofollow links. For example, a profile created on LinkedIn can have up to 3 links that the search engine robot will take into consideration. LookupPage does not limit the amount of follow links each profile is allowed to have. The practice of not allowing follow links is fairly common; Wikipedia does not allow follow links as it is a user generated content website. Allowing follow links would jam up Wikipedia with a significant amount of spam.

2. Because links are often limited, it is imperative to get the most out of every link you create. Using anchor text [the visible clickable text in a hyperlink] as opposed to just adding the URL of a profile is crucial. Creating anchor text is a way of telling the search engine robot to associate the text [whether it's a name of a brand or a characteristic you wish to promote] with the URL of the profile that is being submitted.

Marketing Your Business in a Recession

In light of the economic downturn the world has been facing in recent years, marketing dollars are being cut in most campaigns. A brand that can no longer advertise in the same capacity is more likely to lose business as a result of its decline in exposure.

Getting exposure for your brand is easier when there is an ample budget for it. However, it is not impossible to promote a brand without funding .The old internet cliché of "content is king" once again resurfaces. A business that shares great information that is useful for its clients is doing leg work as opposed to paying money upfront for its exposure. In fact there are fantastic tools on the web that are either free or cost very little that can do wonders for a low budget marketing campaign.

Search engines love diversity of content. A business that uses a blog to address its clients is on the right track. Choosing to upload a recent presentation the company had given at a conference onto Slideshare would result in new ranking that is relevant, informative and did not exist before online. That content would get indexed by search engines on its own right and could lead to relevant business leads. Search engines credit tools that allow users to upload presentations and PDF files with frequent visits by their robots. New content uploaded into these tools will not take long to show up on search.
 
We can also quickly mention free social media tools like Twitter and Facebook. Twitter is free and widely popular nowadays. It can enable a large amount of prospective clients keep up with what a business is up to. In addition, creating a fan page for a business on Facebook does not cost anything either and has a number of advantages. A fan page can include customized applications that fit the business specifically and allow a place for users to interact with each other enabling the business access to valuable feedback.

Five Seconds of Fame - Jill and Kevin’s Wedding March

The internet has the capability to turn an ordinary citizen into an international sensation overnight and of course, do wonders for your online visibility. In fact, one of the most exciting aspects of the web 2.0 revolution is the ability for content to go viral with the click of a button. Our past subjects, Susan Boyle and Clare Werbeloff are testimony to that.

Viral sharing of this nature has been greatly utilised by businesses and marketers who wish to gain from the ability to extend a campaign and easily (and cost-effectively) reach a wider audience. But this week’s subject, Jill and Kevin’s Wedding March proved that this viral phenomenon can also have important implications for philanthropic giving.

Jill and Kevin decided to tie the knot this year in a ceremony that challenged the conventions of a traditional wedding – with a choreographed dancing entrance by the entire wedding party to the song “Forever” by Chris Brown.

This delightful viral video has been making its rounds on the internet and has accrued 19,332,842 views on YouTube to date – making Jill and Kevin popular household names. The idea behind this viral phenomenon was not for them to gain personally, but when they were met with such a positive response, they decided to direct it toward gaining support for their charity of choice – the Sheila Wellstone Institute. This charity organisation is dedicated to ending domestic violence toward women and children. In the wake of the video popularity, the couple has set up their own website - jkweddingdance.com - where their worldwide supporters are able to donate and find out more about the cause.

Jill and Kevin’s off the wall and entertaining wedding dance illustrates the ability of viral videos to serve as useful tools for charities and non-profit organisations as they can easily spread information and awareness for a cause. The reputation of this dynamic couple has been cemented in history and will hopefully be a turning point for charities and organisations to take advantage of the web 2.0 revolution to bring about more positive change.

''Personal Branding" Search Up Significantly In 2009

With decision makers' looking up potential employees and business partners online as a standard practice, the significance of what a search query returns for a brand has increased through the years.

According to Google Trends more people are searching for the term "personal branding" than ever before. The rise is not only in search volume for the term but also in the amount of news references for "personal branding "online.

As a result of increased availability of the Internet in developing countries and the decline in the technology gap, more people and businesses are online. The internet has the capability of sparking a business relationship between companies that don't necessarily even speak the same language. This increases the importance of what each company will find online about the other.

Personal branding is an integral part of having an online presence; businesses are taking actions in order to establish both their online identity and brand. Searching these terms online is the first step.

Find Out Who Is Googling You

People are taking their Google CV more seriously these days and with good reasoning. Googling someone is no longer just the practice of checking out the history of a potential date but a genuine inquiry that companies make when considering a job applicant or deciding whether to hire company X versus company Y.

It is safe to assume that choosing between two companies whose service and prices are similar could end up in a tie breaking decision that will be made online. Businesses and professionals realize that often only their web presence and online reputation are doing the selling for them.

It is equally significant to know who searches for you online. If a business or a brand is aware of whom its potential clients are it makes it that much easier to target and optimize the message for that audience. There are a number of free and premium tracking tools online that inform you of how many visitors your page had, where the query came from and at times even what the query was that resulted in a visit to your page. Two popular tools are http://www.freestats.com/ and http://www.addfreestats.com .

The LookupPage Business Directory and Link Building

The LookupPage Business directory provides a great network for finding contemporaries and competitors or to simply being found by others. There is a lot of link building potential within the business directory itself, as well as the stand alone profile pages.

The LookupPage Professional profiles include space for:

• Logo or profile picture.
• Your personal biography (available for personal users) - Now is the time to provide some detailed information about your business background and experience. This section can also include links.
• Link section - If the links within your bio body copy weren’t enough, the link section allows you to provide links to your various business endeavours, colleagues and so on.
• About your business - This section focuses on your business, allowing you to provide detailed information on your company, its history and the services offered. And of course direct links to your business website.
• Contact details - Extensive contact details permits the public to get hold of you directly, in a medium of your choice. The most common channels are email via LookupPage, landline telephone, mobile phone, Skype, fax or direct email.
• Located at the bottom right of your profile, the ‘forward’ option allows others to email your profile to their friends.

Every time a link you link to another relevant page about you or your company, there is increased potential for search engine spiders to find your content and recognise the relevance. This will positively impact your company’s Google CV.

Plus, every link created (and supported by credible content) improves the odds of a user finding your business information and navigating through to your website or contacting you directly – making the LookupPage business directory an invaluable tool for link building.

Join the LookupPage business directory today and increase your link potential.