Month: October 2015

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Global SEO Tips for Spin-Off Websites Part One

ELooking at Global SEO
Looking at Global SEO

Do you want to reach more customers? Do you have office in far flung countries? Are you not sure how to go about doing SEO for multiple countries?

Here are my tips for global SEO.

1. Get a separate country specific domain so that you look like a real resident. Make sure in the contact information you list the local office and phone number. You can also reference the US information as well but at the website footer and in the header only the country specific address and phone number should be used.

2. Preferably, for country websites that are not English speakers, the website should be in the country’s native language. However readers will assume that when they call they will be speaking to someone fluent in their own language. If your staffing does not allow for this, then leave the website in English, but use the local address and local phone number.

3. Google will not identify websites in other languages as duplications of your own site penalizing you. Which is good news. However for the English speaking countries, you should use the meta tag for Canonical URL just so Google does assign a penalty.

“You might have avoided setting up a .co.uk counterpart for your .com site for fear of Google deeming this as “duplicate content,” since there’s not much of a language difference. However, Google now supports using the rel=“canonical” link element across different domains. This means you can have similar content on both the .com and .co.uk extensions of your site, and use the canonical link element to indicate the exact URL of the domain preferred for indexing. This will make duplicate content a non-issue. Also, keep in mind that this is not required when using different languages. Google does not consider foreign language translations to be duplicate content. But keep in mind that it is something to consider for multiple locale sites in the same language.” For more great info visit this page. 

5. If you decide instead of doing new domains to do subdirectory domains, then make sure a sitemap is done for each subdirectory domain and feed it to the Google Search Console using a different URL in the account. Or for new domains, make sure to implement the Google Search Console, create a site map and select the targeted country in the Google Search Console.

Check back on Wednesday for more tips for Global SEO.

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Tips to Opening a New Business

Nancy McCord
Nancy McCord – has moved, feel her pain!

I have to say after what I have been through in the last three months in closing my Maryland LLC and reorganizing into a Virginia LLLC, that there is really room for a business concierge service to help business owners navigate the process.

It is hard to know exactly what to do and incredibly stressful to navigation the Federal, local and State hurdles to be properly and legally set up. I would have paid for a service to help me or hold my hand through the process. But as there does not appear to be a great resource, I will share some of the information that I have discovered.

Set Up Your Entity
1. Use MyCorporation.com for your setup, but make sure you make the decision from your own research on what is best for your needs. My Corporation has made it very easy for me to get my State LLC and even got my new Federal EIN.

2. They do not get the state payroll tax or state unemployment numbers for you. (I wish they did.)

3. Plan on this taking about a week or less.

Get a Local Business License
Okay, here’s where is starts to get time consuming but let me demystify this for you. One you need a business license to operate even if you have a home office. Typically you need to go to that office first and get papers, they you will go to the local zoning office and then pay there for them to review the zoning on your office location. Make sure you take all your business entity papers with you when you go.

So two stops and typically one payment. Take a check book with you. I was able to get my business license the same day and got the final zoning approval in about 10 days.

You need all this done before you even go to the bank to set up a checking account.

Save a morning to get these steps done.

Get a Local Business Checking Account
You’ll need just about every paper you can think of. It is best to make copies in advance so very important organization papers are not jumbled up or lost by your bank photocopying your records.

Make sure you take your business license. You won’t need your zoning permit. Also take your organization papers and personal identification.

Plan on being at the bank for about one to two hours. You should be able to leave with a new business checking and savings account as well as online access to your money.

Understand that some banks, I did run into this, will hold deposits for 10 days for new accounts so make sure you have access to money during this period. I recommend putting a portion into your new account or paying to take cashier or certified checks for deposit as these will only be put on hold for three days.

After your account is about 30 days old your bank will not hold your money so long. Now for me my money I deposit one day is available the next, but my first deposit was help 10 full days really putting me into a jam.

Call or Get Online and Set up State Withholding and Unemployment Accounts
If you will have employees you need to take care of business before hiring as there is sometimes a delay. Most states allow you to apply for a payroll tax withholding account online. Some will give you a number right away online and others will regular mail it to your address on file. Plan on about a one week delay.

For unemployment, you may get a number right away and in other cases may have to wait several weeks to get one. Virginia where I am does not even give you a number until you reach a threshold.

Plan ahead before you hire to have this in place. Even before you hire though if you have numbers you’ll have to file a zero dollar return. Make sure you know the dates your tax reports are due to prevent a penalty.

Check Insurance Requirements
You may find out that you need special insurance if you hire employees. I have to have Workers Compensation Insurance. It costs me under $300 a year for coverage, but took over two weeks to get it for my business. I had to call several agents to check price. Insureon is a great place to check out. Through them I am using The Hartford for my insurance.

That’s all the super important stuff that you need to know and do to open a business. I found this all out by trial and error and hours on the phone. Hopefully this blog post will help you to save some time and at least know what needs to be done to lower your stress level.

 

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Should You Be Owned by Google or Microsoft?

My Outlook Calendar
My Outlook Calendar

Oh how I love all things digital. I love having a smartphone to connect on the go. I love collaborating with my assistant using Microsoft’s OneDrive, I love to share things with my writers in Google Drive, I love Outlook, and I love the Google Calendar. But at some point in time you have to decide who will “own” you.

My conundrum is that I love Windows 10’s Cortana. I want to use her as my personal assistant more and more, but she does not interface with my Outlook email application. Cortana adds any appointments I ask her to make to my online OneDrive calendar and not my Outlook desktop calendar.

Google’s online calendar on the other hand, does not connect readily or easily with Outlook. Oh sure, you can let Google get its hooks into your entire business process with Google Apps and get syncing into Outlook, or you can buy Companion Link which acts as a bridge between your Google Calendar and Outlook. Which is what I did, but now I am having an increased problem with duplicate appointments appearing now in both calendars when I sync.

Oh how I want to streamline things, yet stay uber connected – my way and without all the privacy issues connecting to Google brings. I want the best of Google and the best of Microsoft all rolled into one super connected platform that connects with my desktop, Android tablet, and Android phone as well as my laptop all together (but just my calendar for now).

For the next 30 days I will try to calendar all my appointments solely in Google and then the next month solely in OneDrive. I’ll let you know how it goes the good bad and the ugly. So today, my test starts! Welcome to the world of Google!

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Bing Ads Revamps and Improves Conversion Tracking

Finally! Bing Ads is updating their quirky and hard to get going conversion tracking.  Here’s their recent video that shows how to do the set up and why conversion tracking is so important to get working right.

Personally I am very glad to see this change and hope it works as advertised. So often we have the code in place properly but get hung up on the set up of the string for their old control panel.

With the new very simple set up that is now finally intuitive, this should be a huge improvement. Bing will also let you know if the tag is active with even some troubleshooting information.

Make sure to look for these new tools in the Shared Library in Bing Ads. If you need help getting your business advertising on Bing Ads, make sure to check out our services and management programs.