Adam Pollicino blog - 7 tips to prep your small business for the Holidays

2014 Holiday Season is here.. Is your business ready? check out the 7 tips to getting the most out of the Holidays for your business.

There isn't an APP for that - we need better apps

Where are all the awesome apps at these days? Ok..ok..ok.. I can count calories and map my bike ride.. of course Candy Crush is great too. But why does it feel like there are no REALLY cool apps coming out.. I hope someone can prove me wrong..

What is Social Media Engagement?

Social media engagement is not posting to your facebook page. Engagement is finding trending topics, pages, groups and conversations that are involving customers, potential customers, or people discussing keywords that could make them relevant to you. A good way to take a shot at social engagement is to go to facebook or twitter and search for conversations with a keyword like  "google ranking"  or a phrase like " trying to rank my business in google" and then participate in the convo with something useful like " a great tool when trying to get ranked in google the seoquake tooalbar that lets you know if your website is optimized properly". Cheers

Websites are Great but...

Website are great but isn't it time we thought of another way to experience the web.. why are we not progressing? I still go to websites that look like they were built in 1998!  Can we please get someone to think of a way to " web" better? Thanks..

Marketing Online is getting bigger every year

As you know the web gets bigger every year, more traffic, more users, more bandwidth more photos,messages,emails,websites,transactions we could go on and on.. Web Marketing and the leads your business can get from it are no exception. In recent polls businesses said that web had to do with over 80% of their overall business.  

Small Business SEO Tips

Adam Pollicino knows a lot about SEO, search engine optimization, and he works with clients to help market their companies online using SEO services. The ability to use SEO for a small business online is vital in the Internet world. When people search a product or service online they barely ever go past pages one and two in google search results. Knowing how to use SEO is important for your business and finding the proper keywords for search results will allow your company to make the first page of a Goggle search. Adam Pollicino would like to share these great tips on SEO for small businesses in order to help gain better search results online for your growing company.

Small Business SEO Tips

1) Be realistic. For example, if you’re a merchant who sells previously-owned vehicles, there is almost zero chance you’re going to rank first for the search term “Used Ford Trucks.” Not unless you spend years and years investing your time and efforts in making this happen. And even then you’ll bump up against much larger operations who have also spent years and years targeting the same term. The word “free” as it pertains to SEO traffic is in inverted quotes because there is the sunk cost of investing your time creating all the content and getting all those links.

2) Target mid-tail terms. You’ve possibly heard of the long tail by now; it basically means scooping up many of the searches that no one else is ranking for. For example, if you can finish first for “Best Place to Find Inexpensive Ford Pickups in Boise, Idaho with Bad Credit” -- great! That’s likely one more person on your site every day. But only one. Time would likely be better spent going after a mid-tail term like “Used Ford Trucks in Boise Idaho.” Ranking first on this term could bring you 25 visits every day; this is substantially more efficient than trying to rank first on 25 different long-tail searches.

3) Call in favors. It’s okay to admit you have web friends. We all do now. Ask your network to "like" your company page on Facebook, to follow you on Twitter and to link to your site from their blogs. Social signals are now huge when it comes to SEO; in fact you should view your social media strategy and SEO plan to be one in the same to drive organic traffic to your site.

4) Write good stuff. Everyone knows crappy SEO content when they see it -- such articles are written for bots, not humans. Google and Bing are really cracking down on this low-level content, and the best thing you can do is to create content pieces that people will share. Adding social media share buttons with also helps this process. We recommend Twitter and Facebook buttons as the standard, while also including budding platforms like LinkedIn and Pinterest.

5) Be patient. SEO channels aren’t built in a day. If and when you start working on it you should be committed for the long haul. We’re talking years, not months or weeks. Because of the quality and quantity of traffic at stake, SEO is extremely competitive in almost every single vertical imaginable. 

To read the full article click here: Small Business SEO Tips

10 Easy Ways to Promote Your Site Through Link Building

Adam Pollicino is an entrepreneur and one of his business endeavors includes the company Search Control. Adam Pollicino and his staff at search control help companies build a brand online by using SEO or otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization. Promotion online is what Search Control does best for its clients by using blogs, internal links, twitter and all things Internet related to maximize search results for companies. Here are some helpful tips for your business and ways to promote the company website through link building.

10 Easy Ways to Promote Your Site Through Link Building


1. Create a blog. Creating content on a consistent basis not only builds links internally (by linking out from your posts), but it also gives you the ability to build links naturally, because content is your greatest asset when attracting links. A blog is essential to many strategies outlined here, such as linking out. You absolutely need a blog in today's online environment to survive.

 2. Internal linking. You have pages and posts on your website, so make the most of them. Internal links are huge for link building because you can control everything about them, from the location on the page to the anchor text. This is something that most people overlook--please do not! Make sure to steer your content in the direction of other posts or pages so you can link to them. Warning: Do not use exact-match anchor text in your site's navigation (sitewide links). This will most likely be another spam filter from Google. Related: Creating Web Content That Attracts Attention for Link Building

 3. Resources/links pages. Other webmasters have created links, or resource, pages, and these are legitimate opportunities to get links. If the links on that page are relevant, you've got a chance. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as just asking for a link. The following two suggestions are specific strategies to help you get webmasters liking you before you ask and greatly increase your chance of getting the link.

 4. Ask people you know for a link. Whether it's your friends, relatives, employees, colleagues, business partners, clients, or anyone else, ask them for a link. Someone you know has a website or blog, so take advantage.

 5. Make it easy to link to you. If you want people to link to you, make it easy for them. Create HTML-ready snippets that people can plug right into their content to link to you, because some linkers in your community might not be too web-savvy. Either create a "Link to Us" page or use a little JavaScript to generate the HTML at the end of each article or post. Note: This might not be the best option for every community. Are you in the cement niche? Then this is perfect. Are you talking about internet-related business? Then this might not be your best bet, because the majority of your audience probably already knows how to link.

 6. Research your competitors. When it comes to finding new link opportunities, competitor research is one of the first things you should do. Essentially, you're piggy-backing off their success. While some links are unobtainable (that is, a random mention in a news post), others can be diamonds in the rough (a high-quality niche directory). Try using SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer for this. Plug in your competitors and export their backlinks to a CSV file. Do this for all your competitors so you can get all their links in one place in a spreadsheet workbook. Then you can sort them by various link metrics to find the best opportunities. Related: Promoting Your Site's Best Content Through Link Building

 7. Link out. Linking out is huge. Don't be a link hoarder; you're going to create content, so use it to gain favor with other people.

 8. Build relationships. This is the No. 1 link-building strategy in the world. Get to know people! Build relationships with them, because it'll come back to you in the form of links (that is, if they're the right people). The best part about this is that it's just like real life. Remember how people say, "It's not about what you know, it's about who you know"? The same goes for link building.

 9. Niche-specific directories. As opposed to general web directories, niche-specific directories only accept sites that meet a certain topic criteria. For example, one directory might only accept sites about arts and crafts. Some of these directories are free, while others are paid. One example is Business.com, a directory for business websites. The cost is $299 per year.

 10. Paid directories. Some directories ask for money before accepting your link(s) in their listings. Dir.Yahoo.com, for example, is a paid directory. Once again, while some of these can pass on legitimate value, others offer little and aren't worth your time or money. To read the full article click here: 10 Way To Promote A Site