Using Google Apps and Cloud Technology to Increase Business Effectiveness | Indianapolis Computer System Works

I would like to introduce to you what will be the first in a series of articles aimed at helping you increase your visibility online.

Each of these articles will be focused on helping the layperson and require no special tools besides a web browser and an internet connection.  I will at times point out additional programs to help you in managing your online presence in a time-effective way.  These will be suggestions and in no-way a requirement.

I’m writing this to help us all out with some free marketing.  To do this we will be leveraging the social aspects of the internet also known as social media, web 2.0, and the new tubes.  I will walk you through creating your accounts, getting your businesses listed and making your first “post” where applicable.

First things first:

This should only take about 1 hour (and is very much worth it).
If you aren’t interested:

Goals of this series are to:

• Enhance your visibility on the web.
• Establish a reputation level or to entice people to add more responses to it.
• Promote feedback and communication with clients, peers, and prospects.
• Hopefully generate some buzz regarding your business and services.
• Make sure you’re listed in common directories / services online.

Sections will designate individual articles.

Section 1 – What you will need and Search Engines

As the first article in the series lets start by collecting all the information we’ll need to get you enlisted as it will help in this and all subsequent articles.

• Name
• Address
• Phone & Phone number (have the phone handy)
• Other Contact Info
• Hours of operation (optional)
• Logo (web ready – this means small and clear.  Let’s not use any of that grainy stuff!)
• Services
• Tag Line
• Short company bio (200 characters or less)
• Payment options
• Marketing email address (sales@, contact@, etc)
• A good photo, or two, that represents your business. (optional)
• Coupon idea (optional)
• Google Account – get one here:  https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount
• A website (needed for most of the steps)
• Access to where your website is stored (ftp, file manager, the guy who made it, Me!)

Lets start with Google.

I will make it a point to provide you direct links to tools but I want to share with you the wide variety of tools available to you but are outside of the scope of this article.

We start here: http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/index.html

Google Search
Your website for google search.

Go into the Web section and choose the first item available “Add Your URL to Google’s Index”
Direct Link: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

Now lets fill in the blanks:

URL: your website address

Comments: A brief description of what you you do, try to use a lot of words you feel someone would use when looking for you or your services but not overly so.  Google will be looking at it, and if it seems artificially inflated with synonyms and such it could potentially work against you.

Captcha: yep thats the real name for those hard to use word text puzzles (read more: http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html)

Click Add URL

If your feeling adventurous continue with the next series of steps. Otherwise Skip down to Google Local.

Lets make your submission more thorough with the inclusion of a sitemap, or enrollment in Google Webmaster Tools

Go back to: http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/tools.html#web

This time we’ll choose Webmaster Tools (directly below Add Your URL)

Direct Link: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dashboard

Lets enter your URL and choose Add Site
At this point you should have a Next Step appear with a lightbulb.

Click Verify your site.
At this point the steps will vary for different hosts and website solutions.

If you have access to the file directory where your website is hosted – FTP, File manager, or located on Network

Choose Upload an HTML File

In order to create the HTML file simply right click on your desktop and choose new text file.
Right click on newly created text file and choose rename.
Enter the name provided by Google.
Place this document in root directory of your website (where your website starts).

If you do not have access to place files directly into your website:

Choose Add a Meta Tag

Modify the home page of your website to contain the the meta data

Once this has been completed we can now upload a site map,
Look for the top search engine queries leading to your site,
or look for errors in our page design that prevent it from being ranked as highly as possible.