Peter Grandstaff

Web Marketing for Your Small Business

Google’s PageRank – What is it?

Websites can be confusing enough without thinking about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Throw that into the equation and most business owners start getting overwhelmed.  You know you want your website to show up in Google, and there are a lot of folks out there who charge a lot of money to make that happen.  If you want to get traffic to your site, you need to show up in Google search results.   You can worry about pay-per-click advertising later, best to start with a strong, organic foundation.

One thing that can be confusing at first is the PageRank system used by Google.  Obviously, you would like for your site to be in first place when someone searches for keywords related to your products or services.  So, a PageRank of 1 sounds pretty nice doesn’t it.  Well, it isn’t.

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8 Amazing eResources That Are Free For Non-Profits

I recently met with someone at a local community outreach organization about bringing their internet operations up to speed. They were surprised to learn that they were eligible for free web hosting simply because of their IRS 501(c) (3) status. I couldn’t help but imagine that there are plenty of others who would love to know about this.

As I got to thinking about it I realized that there must be other great free for non-profit services out there. I’ve been doing some research and below you’ll find 8 useful eResources that are completely free to qualified non-profits. They include web hosting, marketing, software, and web application solutions.

Some of these are even free for anyone, and can be of great value to businesses, small and large.  I include them because they can be especially valuable to non-profits.  By employing free open source software you can keep your IT budget to a minimum without sacrificing.

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Where does Google come up with all these ideas?

Google has grown from a web search engine into a massive provider of web services and applications.  You can use Google to keep track of your calender, search a gigantic archive of video (growing at the rate of 13 hours video per minute,) use email, work with spreadsheets, presentations, documents, and even get satellite photos of most of the planet all from one site.

I started using Google as my primary search engine early on.  It was still in the beta testing phase.  You’ll notice some Google features have a ‘beta’ indicator in the upper left by their logo.  This means they are not considered a final product, or release quality, yet.  Final testing is being carried out to work out the last of the bugs.  All quality software products, and web applications go through this process.

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