Mobility Web Solutions Blog

5 Tips to Brand Your Business Online

1. Protect Your Name. As an entrepreneur, your name is vital to your brand & the identity of your business. Be sure to secure a domain name in your name. For example, www.myname with .com, .net and/or .biz. It's usually a good idea to register multiple domains in case someone types the wrong extension, that way you can be found.

2. Create a Founder Profile Page. Brand yourself on your Web site. Create a profile about you to build trust with potential clients. Make it easy for visitors to find info about you. Clients and prospects want to know who you are in terms of industry, experience and personality. Personalize your Web site and share info to build a relationship with visitors to your site.

3. Prepare for the future. Millions of people use mobile devices to connect to their business, when they are out of the office. Make sure your Web site is accessible to these devices and will load quickly and easily. Even if your site is not yet formatted for .mobi, get the name. By registering a domain with a .mobi extension you secure the name for your company.

4. Protect Yourself from Spam. Search bots troll the Web looking for email addresses. This can lead to spam emails to your inbox. Protect your business email box. Use email addresses on your Web site like: contactus@domainname.com, media@mybusiness.com or moreinfo@mybusiness.com.

5. Considering joining LinkedIn or ZoomInfo. These popular, social networking sites give you a free way to post a biographical profile. Be aware: everything you post is public information. You give up some privacy when you post info. The sites can provide connections between people with similar interests. The sites add to search engine results for your name & your company name.

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Why You Need a Mobile Friendly Web site

The mobile Web is growing. Fast. The industry is expected to have a significant growth in the coming years, with more and more Web surfers accessing the internet through their mobile devices. The following lists 10 reasons why a person with an online site must need a separate mobile site.

1. Google owns a separate mobile site index:
Since the index is separately maintained and it is quite empty, the mobile directory lacks most of the information. For instance, the directory style information is missing.

2. Your regular site is not going to cut it:
A basic design difference exists between a regular and a mobile Web site. The screen space is very limited on a mobile. You must have identified the inconvenience of side scrolling. This inconvenience is further magnified on a mobile. Though there is the option of turning the device to lengthwise direction, the resolution is small even here. Mobile phone emulators can easily show how your regular Web site may look on a mobile. You can then experience the terrible experience of a mobile user.

3. Nearly 1/5 of Americans access mobile Web daily:
The rate is further increasing annually. It has thus turned to a competitive ground that it is now very essential to represent yourself on mobile Web before your competitor does.

4. Mobile Web is expected to surpass desktop Web in just five years:
Mobile Web is being used and adopted at a very rapid pace than the desktop. Hence it is certain that the expected growth will be reached much faster. It is obvious that a vast majority of your site visitors will be on a mobile in the near future.

5. In 2009, $1.6 billion was obtained from purchases in mobile devices:
This is the most motivating information regarding mobile Web . In case, millions of people are using mobile Web and not purchasing anything, most commercial sites need not worry about their mobile existence. But the current statistics prove purchases from mobile devices are already in billions. Though studies prove that consumers are less confident in making purchases from a mobile than from a desktop, spending levels are increasing owing to the increasing comfort levels.

6. 93% of Americans own their mobile phones:
Though not all the mobile phones have internet access capabilities, it is the current trend. Internet accessibility is available not only in smart phones but also in some standard phones. But in the future, it is probable that all phones have some online access.

7. 5% of the top 500 online retailers possess a mobile site/iPhone app:
It will be rather surprising to know that the number is so low. However, this is great news to those who are outside this 5% range. If your ranking is not as high as expected, this may mean that your competitor may be in a better position. And if you are currently reading this, it is obvious that you are a step ahead in your industry.

8. Budgets for mobile marketing is expected to cross $6.5 billion in 2012:
Spending on mobile advertising is a major indicator of the current industry status. If a marketer is ready to spend his hard-earned money by displaying products and services on mobile Web to capture audience, there must be a good reason behind it. Besides, if they are planning to increase the budgets, it is obvious that their previous investments have been successfully paid off.

9. Internet users are using it on an average of 13 hours a week, which was just 7 in 2002:
As internet usage improves irrespective of the device employed, accessibility is the next target factor that will be aimed on to increase the usage. Previously, only desktop or laptop was employed to access internet, but currently the internet-enabled mobile phones have made the accessibility very easy and mobile.

10.There are more than 2 billion mobile phones estimated worldwide:
Mobiles are being owned and passed onto the next owner. Recycling and refurbishing programs help in reusing cell phones as emergency dialers, reselling them, or donating them to charity.

With the growing popularity of smart phones and other mobile devices, having a Web site with mobile access is no longer just a novelty aimed at a few people lucky enough to have iPhones. In today's mobile age, a mobile site is a must.

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10 Ways a Facebook Fan Page Helps Your Business

Facebook is a social network, not a shopping network, so why should any business spend resources establishing and maintaining a Fan Page on Facebook? (A Fan Page, by the way, is a profile for a business or organization rather than for an individual.) Because even if members have no intention of buying anything on Facebook, the relationships you establish and community you build there can benefit your business in countless ways. Here, I reveal the top 10 ways a Facebook Fan Page can help your business.

1. Establishes another outpost for your business on the web
Creating a Fan Page provides your business and brands with another branding outpost on the Web where prospects, customers, future employees, vendors, and even the media can find information about your company and the products and services you offer. Unlike Facebook's personal Profiles, which are member-only accessible, Facebook Fan Pages are public-facing by default; that is, people need not be logged into Facebook to view a business's or brand's Fan Page, so even more people have access to the information you post.

2. Drives Traffic to Your Website
Fan Pages have no restrictions on driving Facebook traffic to websites. In fact, Facebook encourages you to link to your website from your business's Fan Page. Redirecting even a small portion of Facebook's huge amount of daily traffic to your website could significantly improve the amount of qualified traffic on your site.

3. Improves your SEO
Google, through its new Social Search feature, and other search and decision engines are now indexing content created on sites like Facebook, so your Fan Page content has the potential to generate favorable search engine results for your business and brand. By linking your Fan Page to your website, you can leverage Social Search to drive even more Facebook traffic back to your site.

4. Allows you to engage with your community easily and for free
A Facebook Fan Page provides an inexpensive (free) alternative to implementing customer engagement on your own site. In minutes, you can have a branded Fan Page where customers and other brand advocates can post to your Facebook Wall, share photos and video, ask and answer questions, and interact with you and one another. Creating and managing a Fan Page, complete with a Discussions tab, is easier than launching and monitoring discussion forums or message boards on your own domain.

5. Connects you and your staff directly to your customers and fans
A Facebook Fan Page gives you a direct pipeline to your Fans. You can send messages to Fans all at once or target individuals or groups by country, state, city, gender, and even age range. Using the Events App, you can even schedule special events or promotions and then send invitations to only those Fans who live in or near the town where the event is scheduled to take place. All of this and more is available free of charge to any business or brand using Facebook.

6. Strengthens customer relations
You can significantly deepen your relationships with customers by connecting with them in a social rather than a business setting and not selling. Facebook members may not shop on Facebook, but 90 percent of them expect the businesses and organizations they deal with to have a Facebook Fan Page.

7. Provides a breeding ground and platform for brand evangelists
Only 25 percent of Facebook members want to be sold to, but a much higher percentage are apt to sing the praises of a quality company, brand or product to their Facebook Friends. Establish strong relationships with a number of influential members who have plenty of connections, and you gain valuable brand evangelists who authentically market and sell on your behalf.

8. Listening and observing has the potential to improve your business
In a social setting like Facebook, customers and prospects are likely to let down their guard and share information with you and others about products and services they like, good and bad experiences they have had with your business or your competitors, and their unfulfilled needs. Each time a Fan interacts with your Page, you are presented with a wealth of information.

9. ROI-related metrics are readily available
Facebook's Page Insights tools and dashboard facilitate the analysis of marketing and communication by revealing data related to interactions (Comments, Wall posts, and "Likes"); discussed posts, reviews, and mentions; Fan demographics (gender, ages, geographic location/distribution); and so on. These tools improve your ability to identify and target specific demographics and gauge ROI.

10. Allows you to keep pace with the competition free of charge
Still not convinced a Fan Page is worth setting up? Then consider the competition. Even if only one of your competitors launches a successful Fan Page, that competitor can corner the market on Facebook and build a following long before you do. Stake your free claim early to establish your business as the industry leader before the competition has a chance.

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8 Things That Harm Search Engine Rankings

1. Overuse of keywords aka Keyword stuffing
Having your keywords appear too many times on the page is known as keyword stuffing and it will damage your ranking. The amount of times that a keyword appears is known as keyword density and it is expressed as a percentage. There are online tools for checking keyword density - you should be aiming for around 5% density, anything over 10% is running the risk of being classified as stuffing.

2. Lack of Focus / Dilution of keywords
If you are optimizing your site for a wide range of keywords or key phrases then you need to be careful that a) You group your keywords and phrases together on related themes and b) You do not try and cram too many keywords and phrases on the same page. As a rule of thumb you should have one primary keyword or phrase and two or three secondary keywords or phrases per page. Any more than this and you run the risk of dilution.

3. Using tiny images as links
Whilst it is perfectly acceptable to use images as links to or within the site these must be of a reasonable (visible to a human) size. Having a series of 1 pixel images with hyperlinks to pages is not a good way to boost a sites internal linking - it does not look natural and it will be detected, and penalized.

4. Cross-linking a group of sites
This is the practice of using a group of sites (normally owned / operated by the same person) to link to each other. So A links to B which links to C which links to D, B links back to A, C and D, etc ( these link groups are normally more complicated than this example and can involve hundreds of sites). It is recognized by the search engines and will be penalized as bad linking.

5. Outbound links to bad site or link farms
In a similar way that inbound links from bad sites / link farms can damage your search engine ranking so can outbound links. You need to check who you are linking to - pay particular attention if you offer visitors a chance to submit links etc on your site as you are not fully in control of the quality of these links.

6. Duplicate content
If you repeat the same content across your site you will be penalized. To a lesser extent this is also true of content hat is duplicated across sites - another rule of thumb is that the more unique your content is the more the search engines like it. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule - notably sites such as article directories can still do well even if all they have is duplicate content.

7. Search engine Specific Pages (Doorway pages)
Whilst it is acceptable to tailor the content and optimization techniques employed to a specific search engine it is not acceptable to produce pages that have no purpose other than to provide results that search engine spiders will like. These pages, known as doorway pages, often contain no user readable data (and often simply re-direct to a more user friendly page). Producing doorway pages that aim to trick the search engines will, in all likelihood, get you banned from the very search engines you are trying to get into.

8. Cloaking
Cloaking is a variation of doorway pages that use various techniques to determine if a page is being accessed by a spider or by a human visitor and present different results to each. The same principles apply as do to doorway page s- i.e. do not do it! (what is acceptable is to detect browser types etc and deliver content relevant to that browser e.g. a PC based browser may be different from a WAP browser)

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The Top 10 Most Common Internet Passwords

Are your passwords secure enough? Compare yours with the just-released list of the 10 most commonly used passwords on the Web to see whether yours are too easy to guess.

The 10 most commonly used passwords on the Web have been revealed as part of an analysis of tens of millions of Internet accounts.

Imperva, a data security firm, said it had analyzed around 32 million passwords that had been exposed in a recent hack of the RockYou Web site.

In December last year, a hacker breached the site's company database and gained access to the unencrypted usernames and passwords of all its 32 million users. After studying the security breach, Imperva has come up with a list of the most commonly used passwords.

"Everyone needs to understand what the combination of poor passwords means in today's world of automated cyber attacks: with only minimal effort, a hacker can gain access to one new account every second," said Amichai Shulman, Imperva's chief technical officer.

"Employees using the same passwords on Facebook that they use in the workplace bring the possibility of compromising enterprise systems."

The study found that the shortness and simplicity of passwords means many users select credentials that will make them susceptible to basic forms of cyber attacks known as "brute force attacks." Nearly 50 percent of users used names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords (consecutive digits, adjacent keyboard keys, and so on).

Making up strong passwords is not a difficult thing to do. You don't even have to come up with one by yourself (I don't!). There are several different types of password generators available – many of which are free. PC Tools happens to have an excellent (and reputable) password generator. You can also use the super-secure password generator on GRC. That one will create a 64-character random – and unique – password. You can use as many characters of it as you wish.

There’s also a service available to find out how secure your passwords are. The Password Meter will give you a score, based on a specific set of criteria. The Password Meter checks for minimum requirements of at least eight characters, and at least 3 out of the following 4: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.

Do yourself – and your identity – a favor. Never use the same password twice. Don’t use a password that is any combination of your birthdate, your child’s birthdate, or your pet’s name. Take the time to be sure your passwords are secure, and to change them periodically.

Now...Here are the top 10 most common passwords

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou *
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123

* Note: this list was sourced from the RockYou website.

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Top 5 Social Networking Tips You Need to Know

When it comes to building online communities and interacting with customers, social networks can be a big help — especially for small businesses that can’t afford to launch their own private online communities.

Before jumping on a social network to interact with your customers and clients, consider the following. These tips will help you build a better, smarter relationship in the socialsphere.

Tip #1: Go where your customers congregate.
Some businesses simply start a profile on a popular social networking site and hope customers will find them there. The smarter way to get started is to find out where your customers already are.

It is smarter to join people where they already congregate. These customers have already formed the social glue that holds online relationships together, so you don’t have to create a new space.

For example, if you are a travel agent, start communicating and participating in the social spaces where those interested in travel already gather online. Start out by being a good resource — offer advice and talk without a sales pitch.

Remember, there is no single best social networking tool that will fit all businesses and marketers. The goal is to start participating where your customers already gather and then build towards the larger goal of being the resource and forging relationships.

Tip #2: Stop broadcasting and start listening.
One mistake businesses that venture into the world of online social networking often make is that they forget to “listen” and concentrate on the “broadcast” aspect, which is sending out marketing messages.

Marketers and business owners usually just scratch the surface of communicating with clients. A business can learn a lot from continuously talking with people who join them on social networking sites.

Building online communities, using tools like chat rooms and discussion forums, requires the same skills as conversing over social networks. Those who are successful demonstrate their ability to listen to their communities.

If you only broadcast you will fail. You have to build a relationship with conversation and listen to your community and respond to them.

Tip #3: Ramp up your response time.
A successful community depends on you being in there every day to show people that you are listening.

While listening to what the people in your social networking space say is important, it is equally important to respond. Your response tells people that you listen and hear what they are saying.

To demonstrate that you are listening, you need to respond directly to questions — or ask your own questions to make the community members feel valuable.

Tip #4: Show the human face behind your business.
It is recommended that small business owners use a “human” online voice instead of a business presence. People in social networks and online communities create relationships with people, not businesses.

Friends don’t “pitch” friends on social networks — they converse. To get relationships started, you have to be a resource, not a sales pitch. Again, this goes back to being a good social listener and doing more in the community than just broadcasting business messages.

Use a picture, and not always a brand logo, to remind people that you are human. You should also stay on point in your conversations but be friendly in your conversations by dropping the corporate tone.

Everyone will make mistakes, but if you own up to the people in your social space when you do, they will be forgiving. You don’t have to be the expert right away. That’s a part of being a human in the community.

Tip #5: Give them a reason to show up.
Successful communities need “social glue” to hold them together. There has to be value for people in the interaction, and there needs to be a reason for people to be a part of the social network.

A dentist, for example, doesn’t use social networking to talk about customer appointments and his business. Instead, he might talk about dental hygiene for kids and offer education topics for discussion.

Use your social space to converse, to solve a problem or to educate people, versus using it to talk about your product. Make sure you provide ample opportunity for people to network and communicate with each other to grow your community.

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