Last week, Illinois Governor, Pat Quinn, signed state legislation requiring large Internet retailers to collect that state’s 6.25 per cent sales tax on all Illinois Internet shoppers. While Illinois brick-and-mortar stores cheered wildly at the newly leveled sales tax playing field, Internet retail giant Amazon.com picked up its ball and went home. Calling the law “unconstitutional and counterproductive,” Amazon said it plans to end relations with its Illinois affiliates by April 15.

This bill is just the latest salvo in the ongoing battle waging between giant Internet retailers, state governments and brick-and-mortar retailers. It started in 1992, when the US Supreme Court ruled that only sellers with a “nexus” (i.e. a physical presence in a state in the form of retail outlets, warehouses, offices, transportation hubs, etc.) were required to collect that state’s sales taxes.

In 2008, the State of New York found a way around the 1992 ruling by claiming that in-state affiliates provide those out-of-state retailers with a physical presence. Affiliates are website owners and bloggers who post a retailer’s advertisement or links and receive a commission on any sales that result on the retailer’s site via clicks from the affiliate’s site. Dubbed the “Amazon Law”, it applies to retailers who receive a total of more than $10,000 in referrals within a 12-month period from New York affiliates.

Amazon immediately challenged the law in court, where it still remains today. As other states started enacting their own versions of “Amazon Law”, Amazon has responded similarly by closing warehouses and terminating affiliate relationships.

What does this all mean for small and mid-sized e-commerce sites? In many ways, not much. Most of the state laws being enacted or proposed are targeted at large retailers. Transaction thresholds used to decide who does and does not have a sales tax collection responsibility have been for the most part set high enough to exclude many small to mid-sized businesses.

The other businesses being impacted by these laws are the affiliates of retailers like Amazon and Overstock.com, many of whom are retailers themselves and may be selling their products on these sites. A small but very vocal group of Vermont bloggers and in-state retailers affiliated with Internet sellers are organizing a counter campaign to fight that state’s proposed Amazon law. Some of these small businesses would stand to lose substantial income generated by their affiliate programs with major retailers.

The biggest danger for small businesses is if the tax collection responsibility rolls down to smaller players. Though the technology needed to calculate and charge the appropriate sales tax amount at the time of the purchase is relatively easy to implement, the reporting and payment of those taxes to thousands of state, county and municipal tax departments would be disastrously onerous for many companies.

One path out of the sales tax quagmire may be the Federal government stepping in to establish a single remote Internet retailer sales tax. Unfortunately, the US Congress tabled the national Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement last year and shows no signs of passing it anytime in the near future.

Until that time, small and mid-sized businesses would do well to keep informed on the sales tax landscape and, use the services of an e-commerce savvy CPA or market-aware web professional.

What are your thoughts on the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement? Good idea or not?

85% of shoppers looking for your goods and services will do so through search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Optimizing your website pages will attract the search engine spiders and rank your site higher in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). The higher you rank the greater the traffic to your site and the possibility your targeted customers will make a purchase. That’s the purpose of SEO.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is involved, complex, evolving and at times confusing. There are many misconceptions about what exactly SEO does or does not do for your website. There are bad practices, illegal activity, content farms, link farms, spam and out of date information running rampant on the web, mostly from unscrupulous internet marketers promising misleading goals for cash. The misunderstanding of SEO for your small business can cause great harm to your sites’ ranking and bottom line. Here are five common misconceptions I often hear about SEO. Some are deceiving, some half truths and others just out dated practices. For the most part I am speaking about Google and it’s guidelines on SEO’s best practices, which is ever changing.

#1 Buying AdWords Will Help Ranking
PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising and SEO are two separate things. Google AdWords and Google’s free search results are entirely independent of one another. Spending money on AdWords won’t impact your ranking in Google’s free search results. Similarly, canceling your AdWords account won’t lead to your website being banned from Google’s search results. If buying advertisement manipulated organic search results the internet as we know it would be an entirely different animal soon to be extinct.

#2 Content Should be Written for Search Engines
To some extent this is true. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords – the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site. But if you are only concerned about keywords for search engine robots then your text will be a drab read indeed. Remember at the end of the day your customers are the ones that matter most. Write compelling content for human beings and edit for the search engines.

#3 Any Inbound Link Will Do
Inbound links are links that are placed on other sites and point to yours. Relevant, reputable links to your site are extremely beneficial to your SEO. But on the other hand irrelevant and link spamming (e.g. paid links, blog spammers, guestbook spammers, etc.) can be very harmful to your site. For instance if you manufacture light bulbs and GE links to your site as a reference or partner, that inbound link would be beneficial to your sites optimization. On the other hand, your uncle Tony owns a pizzeria and links back and because of the lack of relevance to your business that link would hold less sway. To another extreme, if you set up fake sites just for links or engage in link farming and are caught by the search engines you could be penalized or banned. Just recently JC Penny and Overstock.com were found by Google to be doing just that, and dealt with accordingly.

#4 Search Engines Can’t Read Images
This can be filed under partly true statements. Search Engine spiders don’t read pictures or images well (although the technology behind this is getting better) but they do read the image’s Alt tag or alternative text. ALT tags are the little labels you see when you put your mouse over an image which is written in the back end of your website. Optimized Alt tags can make a big difference in your website’s page rank especially if images are a good way to convey your offerings. It is recommended that you use Alt tags on as many images as you can.

#5 Meta Tags are Essential
Back in the late 90’s early 2000’s yes Meta Tags were essential to a websites ranking, and because of its high value many webmasters stuffed the code with keywords in order to “game” the system. They were so successful Google decided not crawl Keyword Meta Tags at all, “not in the least bit” says Matt Cutts Google’s Search Engine Guru. But others like Yahoo and Bing may still see some worth. Google does look at meta descriptions to an extent but this is only a minuscule part of SEO. The Title tag does have some relevance but this is not by any means the priorities of search engines like so many people still believe. It’s worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula but put this at the bottom of your SEO to do list.

Google uses over 200 indicators to qualify websites and their priorities are constantly in flux. This highly complicated mathematical computerized algorithm is not only a closely guarded secret but understood by very few people. We are always on the lookout for new information and are constantly sharing ideas about SEO with our clients and contemporaries. If you have any questions regarding SEO or would like to share your insights on this or any other matter please write in the comments section below or get in touch with us on our Facebook Page or through Twitter @Cazbah_net. We would love to hear your thoughts.

Videos are a great way to differentiate your business and YouTube is no longer regarded as just an entertainment site. It has grown into an invaluable business resource. With some time and creativity your videos can open new opportunities for your small business that would make a Fortune 500 company cringe with envy. Here are ten reasons why YouTube is a must for small businesses.

1.) It’s Free
Unlike television ads or radio spots YouTube and for the most part social media is free. To become a visible entity on the web it takes time and effort, not money and connections like in traditional media. This medium can be leveraged so a small start up has the same potential to go viral as a much more recognized brand and that can happen very quickly with videos. YouTube is the most watched website for videos and your YouTube channel is like having a second website without the cost of hosting and upkeep.

2.) Drive Sales
A video on YouTube is a great referral to your site. Your video can be seen by many people, optimized and shared through different social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. Because each video will have specific keywords or Tags associated with it. It will be found by the folks who are looking for you and your products via search engines like Google which owns YouTube and has about 70% of the search engine market. A powerful medium to showcase your products and build leads.

3.) SEO
As I mentioned, a YouTube Channel is like having a second site and lends room for you to describe your company and the products and services you provide. Along with the Channel you can describe each video individually with tags to help weed out the folks looking for cute kitty shenanigans. Tagging your video for SEO purposes will give you a great advantage of being found in general search. Each SERP page provides results for videos. For instance if you sell “baseball cards”, that key term in general search will have millions of results but, on video only thousands apply.  Because the SERP page prominently shows video results there is much less competition and therefore giving you a greater chance of being found on page uno. That will lead to much more exposure to your brand.

Customer testimonials are a great selling tool and have been used in marketing and selling circles for a very long time. Frankly, there’s no better way to communicate the value that you provide to your customers than through a testimonial from an existing satisfied customer. Your prospects are much more likely to take their word for it, than yours.

There are several types of customer testimonials and they include: The official customer endorsement letter, where your customer writes a brief albeit thorough letter on her company letterhead endorsing your product or service; The customer interview, where you interview your  customer and document her responses; The testimonial video, where you conduct an interview with your customer and capture it on video.

All of these forms are useful but, there’s no better way of communicating your unique value to your prospects than through a streaming customer video testimonial on your website. The power of video in this context cannot be overstated.

Gone are the days of Advertising Agencies, expensive video shoots, film crews and hired talent. All you really need is a reasonable and relatively inexpensive digital video camera (or video capture device i.e., a smart phone), the ability to transfer the video file to your computer, some editing software, the talent to use it and a willing customer or two.

There are 5 things that you need to keep in mind when creating customer video testimonials:

First, what is the goal of the video testimonial? Well, as with all of your marketing and selling activities, it should be to get more of the right customers to do business with you. Having customers is mandatory for any business. Having the ‘right’ customers is optional and is something that successful businesses learn to distinguish sooner or later. That being said, this should impact your choice of which customers you want to get a video testimonial from. Pick the ones that you would like to duplicate. Don’t choose the ones who cause you fits and sleepless nights. They probably won’t give you a good testimonial anyway.

Second, the idea is to have the people viewing the video testimonial to identify and associate with the person speaking on the video. Therefore, it’s important to consider where your prospects are in their lives and in their businesses at the time that they are viewing the video. Having the person on the video talk about what their situation was like when they were at that point is very important. Ask your existing customer to talk about the problem that you solved or the pain that you eliminated. Chances are the person viewing the video has a similar problem or pain.

“Our business has changed dynamically since we got going on the Internet. In the past, we had 88 sales reps on the street. Those 88 reps never produced 1/10 of what our Website currently produces. The way we go to market has changed completely. We no longer use sales reps and now we do all of our marketing and selling online.”

Tom Rich, Director at CH Ellis, Inc.

What Do I Write About in My Blog?

My products & services, RIGHT?  Better not.

Your company blog content is a great way to communicate with your potential and current customers.  It’s a way to give them the news they are interested in.  Reading about the best features of products A, B, and C can easily be done via your website and for a blog post, can be really boring if done too often.  The common question I hear from my clients is, “So what DO I write about?”

I recently came across a blog by Urban Outfitters – a retail clothing store.  They are making the UO Blog thee Go-To Place for current fashion trends.  They are writing about fashion from all over the world – not just their own store.  Their focus seems to be: what else do our customers want to know?  They are writing about things that their clientele care about, in this case, looking cool and wearing the latest trends.

UO’s blog content considers the consumer instead of focusing on specific products.  Their content is updated often, which makes people want to come back for more.  Don’t be taken aback by UO’s choices of clothing in the photos, videos, and set up.  It is uniquely designed to target a specific audience.  Great work UO.  They seem to know their customers well.

But you’re a small business that can’t spend the time or money investigating and traveling and researching.  What is your blog about, then?  If you go back to Urban Outfitters’ focus, it’s simple: what else do our customers want to know?  Do you get phone calls from customers asking questions about how to fix something, how to determine the correct size, what are the best ways to use a product?  Take the answers you provide over the phone and write about them.  Do a little research on Google to enhance your content, and wallah!  You have a great post with little effort.  Write about the latest updates in your industry, the trends; the big news.  Write about what is going on within your business location – remodeling? A party? A promotion? A new hire? The owner’s hobby?  The list goes on and on.

You are an expert already, just write it down.
Where do you get the inspiration for your blog? Write back we would love know.

Just about every fall for the past 10 years I’ve made a trip, with a close friend of mine, up to a very special place in the Great White North, otherwise known as Canada. That place is Algonquin Provincial Park. The Park is located between Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River in Central Ontario, at roughly the same latitude as Montreal.

It is the oldest and one of the largest provincial parks in Canada comprising almost 8,000 square kilometers of back country wilderness. For comparison purposes, it is about the size of the state of Delaware. There are over 2,400 lakes and 1,200 kilometers of streams and rivers throughout the park.

The natural unspoiled beauty of this part of the world cannot be fully appreciated in pictures or videos. In my humble opinion, it is best experienced in person. And that is precisely what we do every year. We appreciate the great outdoors while we canoe, portage and camp throughout the park for about a week in late September.

It’s a pretty rugged trip which takes preparation and months of (physical) training. We travel between 175 – 200 kilometers during our week in the park. 80% of the time we are on the water and 20% of the time we are (single) carrying our gear and canoes between waterways. We use solo canoes and we each carry about 120 lbs of gear and supplies, including the weight of the canoe, when we portage. Both my friend and I are former military and this is our annual opportunity to see if we’ve still got it. For lack of a better description, this is Extreme Canoeing.

It can’t be said enough … good original content is necessary for the success of a website. Without it, you will not be able to attract search engines or customers.

Long gone are the days when adding 30 key terms to the Meta tags was pretty much what you did to win page rank in Google. Search engines now look at the total sum of the written content on your site; the page titles, sub-titles, paragraphs, image names and captions that appear on the page, and they are looking for that content to be relevant to what you sell.

The challenge for many small businesses is that they do not have budgets that allow for hiring web copywriters, photographers or graphic designers to continually produce content for the website. Luckily for your customers, you already have that meaningful information. Start looking for the content in your own company.

1.) Listen to the Voices Inside
The people in your company who sell and support your products and services are an important source of your website content.  Capture insightful comments about your companys’ products and services from employee’s. Staff can supply founatins of content, ask them to get involved.

2.) Talk to Customers
Ask your prefered clients to write three … just three … sentences on each of your major offerings.  Encourage them to share thier thoughts on how, when and why they use your products and services.

We are warning our clients and small businesses to be aware of a search engine ranking flimflam. A confidence game played on the unsuspicious who pay for keyword ranking and traffic. This unscrupulous charade demands money upfront and promises that your website will move ahead of the pack. They also guarantee oodles of visitors that could take other websites months if not years to accumulate. Don’t be scammed, these third party search engines are illusionists. They use slick technology as their smoke and bots as their mirrors, all the while lining their pockets with your much needed marketing dollars.

The misconception of “the more traffic the better” is only part of the equation. Relevant traffic is what affects the bottom line. These “new” search engines that are charging upfront for web positioning and traffic are using bots and malware to make it appear their false promises are true. To separate the wheat from the chaff we rely on the data. Google Analytics provides us with the raw information that shows that these new search engines or catalog referral sites are not bringing relevant traffic. In fact, in many cases they are using bots to click on your site. The bots will show as a visit, but they aren’t real people who wish to do real business.

This scenario has reared its ugly head recently. A fairly new client bought into this suspicious and intricate ruse. They we’re charged $1,500 a month for website traffic. They did get plenty of visits but with a bounce rate of over 92%. The fraction of visits that did not immediately bounce out stayed on the site for an average of 11 seconds. Out of all this buzz and bother there was not one goal conversion. Not one of the so called visitors purchased anything nor requested more information.

Google Organic (unsolicited web traffic) for the same time frame was about 20% higher in visits, had a bounce rate of fewer than 43% and the visitors here spent an average of 3 minutes on the site. Affix that with 23 goal conversions (and another 24 from other reputeable referrals) and it is apparent to us that the “new” search engine is about as reprehensible as it gets.

There are no quick fixes to Search Engine Optimization and everyone should be very wary at the “throw money at it” solution process. Before you send one RED cent to these companies with unrealistic promises, do the research. A basic search will pull up many threads of conversation regarding deceitful web marketing practices.

Because this is an ongoing investigation and for legal reasons we cannot provide the exact name(s) of these internet advertising scammers here.  But we will offer free consultation regarding this post. You can leave questions in the comments section or email me directly at bgriffin@cazbah.net

If you are a victim of fraud of this type of criminal marketing scam or sales pitch activity you should file a complaint at the Internet Crime Complaint Center. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C). Victims need to report these incidents and start fighting back. Don’t let the Internet Search Engine Data Merging Keywords scammers do this to other victims.

Have any stories about internet advertising or instant traffic scams? What are your experiences with the “new third party” search engines? Write back on the comments section we would love to know your thoughts.

Lately I have been spending a considerable amount of time visiting with our customers located all over the U.S. The purpose in my recent “road warrior” lifestyle is twofold: First, I’ve made a commitment to personally meet with our customers in 2010, and second, I’m presenting many of them with our additional value added services.

The acceptance rate of our community management offering has been unprecedented. As I mentioned in a previous post, this service has to do with our customers’ adoption of social media. Cazbah provides them with the technology, work processes, and dedicated service and support to increase their inbound marketing opportunities. It also establishes them as the center-of-influence within their communities, hence the name.

On a recent visit with one of our clients while presenting a community management proposal, we got into a discussion about the viability of social media within their particular industry. Our client admitted he wasn’t too familiar with social media networks and expressed his concerns about how social media was going to help him sell his products (a very reasonable and accurate concern). While I did take the opportunity to highlight some of the benefits of social media for his business, it became clear to me that we need to  educate all of our clients regarding new media techniques that can improve their businesses.

With a wry smile, the client  asked, “I wonder what Warren Buffet is doing in social media?” He stopped me in my tracks. I thought, “what a great question.” Even though he was half joking, he struck on something profound. Clearly, if you are considering a change, you look to the leaders to gain insight into your decision making process. Who better than Warren Buffet, one of the savviest business men in the world.

Social media plays a vital role in viral marketing and enables further brand awareness. This is accomplished by establishing word-of-mouth communication between community members regarding relevant information which induces purchasing by driving traffic to a company’s Web site. Additionally, social media removes the barriers that may normally exist between a company and its customers, giving them the opportunity to communicate openly and virtually instantaneously.

Warren Buffet’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway now owns a diverse range of businesses including railroads, candy production, retail, home furnishings, encyclopedias, vacuum cleaners, jewelry sales, newspaper publishing, manufacture and distribution of uniforms, manufacture, import and distribution of footwear; as well as several regional electric and gas utilities.