There are so many new words, terms and phrases for small businesses to learn these days. Which is why I’m proud to introduce you to the Intuit Small Business Dictionary that I created as a contributing writer to the Intuit Small Business Blog.

The Dictionary contains over 250 brief definitions of phrases and terms that any small business should know, defined and explained in plain English, such as the difference between SEM and SEO; Long-Tail Keywords and Short-Tail Keywords; Drupal, Joomla and WordPress; Guerrilla Marketing and Mobile Marketing; and many, many more.

For this project, my client said, “Big thanks to Gil Zeimer for writing over 250 terms for the Small Business Dictionary we published on the Intuit Small Business Blog. We choose Gil for this project over a larger vendor because he was flexible and fast in response to our requests. He’s also been a steady contributor of articles to the blog, and it’s great having him available to help.”

Please bookmark the Intuit Small Business Dictionary so that it will become an invaluable resource for you –– and feel free to comment on any term you find there.

Water pipes and backlinks? Bradley please, what ARE you talking about?

Brittany Pettengill (Servpro of the Sunset) received a glowing review for her San Francisco fire and water damage company from Carole Isaacs of McGuire Real Estate in San Francisco. Carole had written up a personal account of how Servpro had come to the rescue of a nasty water leak at an apartment building. Carole gave a play-by-play of what happened and then how Servpro fixed it all–complete with an octopus, steam, and a dripping wet bathing suit.

How does this help traffic to Brittany’s site? Because Carole has a well-trafficked site (McGuire Real Estate), it has some weight. Because Carole used terms (keywords) that were relevant to Brittany’s business, it reinforces what Servpro site is about (fire and water cleanup). Because Carole’s site has lots of content and some of it about services that home owners could use, the site is relevant to Servpro’s. This is better than a shoe store linking to Servpro’s site. Because Carole’s post links directly to Servpro’s site, that gives Servpro’s site some “weight.” It’s also good for Carole’s site because she’s adding relevant content for her readers (home owners and home buyers). She’s providing them a service. Still following me?

It’s good publicity.

It doesn’t get much better than a case study written up about your business (well, a positive one!) and then linking to your site.Well, actually, it could get just a little better … if Carole had referred to Brittany’s business using keywords and then made the link to Brittany’s site using those hyperlinks, that would have scored a few more brownie points for Brittany’s site. In other words, maybe she could have written (and note the linked part of the text):

” … when the water was starting to drip through the ceiling of the downstairs, we called the most reliable water damage company in San Francisco: Servpro of the Sunset.”

Do you have clients or partners in your industry who could write up a case study for your site? Ask them if they’d do it. It’s good for them, it’s good for you.

Want to learn more tips to improve search engine optimization for your site?

The other day, I saw a post from another website designer in the WordPress LinkedIn group asking for website hosting recommendations. Everybody and their cousin has a hosting recommendation, but I thought my answer was a little more helpful than many of the others, so I posted a comment. I didn’t just say, “I like hosting company XYZ.” but I took an extra 10 minutes and wrote up what I thought was a more insightful suggestion, complete with links and examples of companies I liked and had worked with. Because this isn’t the first time I’ve had this question (or this answer), I had already written up a How To post (complete with tutorial video) on my own website (Using Google Apps email for you@yourdomain.com) on how to do what I was recommending.

So later in the comments, Rob writes some thank you’s to people who commented. Here they are. I’ve bolded his response to me.

@Lucian, thank you for your vote for JustHost

@David, thank you for your input

@Stephane, thanks for your thoughts on shared hosting

@Bradley, yes, I’ve never bumped into anyone else on Surpass either. I’ve found them to be getting a little worse in the last few months – packing their shared servers with accounts in order to maximise profits.

Thank you for clarifying this whole Google Apps for mail issue. I didn’t realise you could use Google’s vast resources for your own personal you@your-domain.com mail address. That’s awesome! This actually slightly negates my need to move as mail was the #1 gripe with Surpass and literally took me hours to sort out. I watched your entertaining movie a couple of times.

@Paul thanks for your UK based recommendation

@Justin, thank you, you may well have saved me a few dollars there. You’re a star!

@Kevin, thanks, another one for Hostgator

People, I may well write a blog post on the back of this discussion as I think I’ve got some really good opinions and recommendations from some seasoned WordPress pros. Would that be OK?

You’ll see he carefully read through the comments and even went to my site and watched the video. Great, sounds like I helped him out. Of course, he is also helping me out by mentioning my helpful post and video on my site so others might come and see it.

So you ask, “That’s all delightful, but how does it help your business?”

For one, I see the website design business as cooperative rather than competitive. So this helps someone in my industry, my industry is stronger for it. But how it directly helps me are the hits/clicks to my site and the traffic that might follow. Maybe someone else reads this same post and thinks that my post is worth linking to from their site, maybe they Digg it or Tweet it or just mention it elsewhere on the web. These are all links to my site, they’re called backlinks. Backlinks are good. Backlinks are very important. But I’m getting a little technical. The bottom line is that I helped someone using my expertise and didn’t go unnoticed.

This is a project that I recently completed as a freelance website copywriter, using more descriptive copy and two SE0 keyword phrases per page. It was a BNI Embarcadero referral from Bart Saling of Bridge to Bridge Technologies.

As an established IT managed services company serving clients in the San Francisco Bay Area, IPSO FACTO IT SERVICES works with small businesses, medium-sized businesses, large enterprises, and government entities, as well as not-for-profit groups.

Visit the site of approximately 50 pages: www.ipsofacto.info

Copy by Gil Zeimer; Web design by Naoki Nitta.

Built in WordPress, designed by Likoma, maintained by PPGBA.

PPGBA Before

PPGBA After

They liked their design, so we’d keep that as similar as possible, but behind the scenes, Bob can now log in and edit any page of the site.

Before

After

The San Francisco Adult Municipal Softball League (sfsoftball.com) had a website, regular updates, images, banners, and text. Sounds good, right? The trouble was that the updates were too difficult and time consuming to do. They had to learn a certain program and for those who didn’t know that program, updates were difficult if not impossible.

The Solution

Enter Likoma and WordPress. Likoma, a website design shop here in San Francisco, uses only content management systems to build websites. In fact, they use exclusively WordPress. With WordPress installed, SF Softball can now update their game schedules, rain-outs, score tables, and pretty much anything else on the site with a simple “Microsoft Word-like” interface. Now anyone with an Internet connection can update the site easily, efficiently, and without hours of complex training.

The Benefit

SF Softball’s teams, players, and fans now have much more immediate results on their site. WordPress is free, so they no longer have to pay for any software they used to update the old site. More people in the administration of the league can edit more content on the pages asking fewer people for help. By the way, the site got a new coat of paint and looks slick. Have a look: sfsoftball.com.

How did I accomplish this? What’s my “secret sauce?” What’s the recipe for the Kool-Aid I’m drinking?

Four words: “Givers Gain” and “Showing up.”

First, for January through June, I’ve given 80 referrals and received 33, among the tops in our chapter. I also had perfect attendance (only needed a sub once).

Second, of those 33 referrals I’ve received, 11 resulted in closed business in June alone:

• 5 were from members of my BNI Embarcadero chapter for their own writing/editing projects.
• 3 were from members of our chapter who referred me to their clients.
• And another 3 were from members of other BNI chapters for writing projects with their clients.

Third, the bottom line is to be more active. Network more. Have more one-on-one dance cards. Strive to show up every week. Make BNI a priority in your life. Pay attention at the meetings for trigger points in other members’ infomercials. And try to visit other chapters —  I visit/sub at a minimum of one other chapter per month, schedule permitting. This all results in giving and getting more referrals, resulting in more closed business!

NOTE: For the calendar year 2008, my total percentage of closed business through BNI referrals was 56% of my annual revenue. This was up from 50% of my income in 2007 vs. 30% in 2006 vs. 20% in 2005.

“Betty has been instrumental about helping me to create growth and then plan for growth. She’s taught me how to hire the right people and to manage them so that the Golden Gate Company maintains the level of quality its been known for. She’s been a huge part of turning my company from a sole proprietorship into an actual company! Thanks to Betty, the Golden Gate Company is on target to do a million dollars worth of business by the end of next year.”

The case incorporates an Intergrated Voice and Data Telco circuit (IVAD). IVADs dynamically allocated bandwidth between voice sessions and data transport. It is a cost savings strategy. It eliminates the need to purchase both a telephone circuit and an Internet circuit.

This document is for discussion purposes only. Actual costs vary on a case by case basis and are subject to routine change. Various manufacturing promotions from time to time can impact cost. Please contact me with any questions.

abc-corp-hld-uc500-proposal.pdf