I had a great opportunity to speak on a distinguished panel last week for a Business and Economic Summit put on by the New Landings Job Club here in Kansas City (and before you ask, I don’t know why I was on the distinguished panel either…). 

This wasn’t just any panel discussion, not only were there 10 9+1 sharp panelists – there were 400+ in attendance and focused for 2+ hours!

The purpose of the discussion was to talk about what’s going on in Kansas city with jobs, the economy and what job seekers should be doing and looking for as they work to get into their next opportunity.

There was a lot of great discussion (it was primarily a Q&A format) and I believe the job seekers got a lot of great ideas and good advice…what was interesting to me was how much of that great information and advice also applied to business owners.

We talked about the importance of stalking (done the right way), relationships, professionalism…lots of great points – here are the highlights that I took away:

(photo by Jesse757)

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  photo by marnox1 

Search Engine Optimization has become a mystical term, invoking the idea of wizards laboring in their lofty towers to get websites onto the first page of Google.

The reality is that SEO for really competitive online sites is an arcane art and if your business is going up against the big boys then you need to seek out professional help. 

However if you are a typical small business and you are in a well defined, narrow niche or you’re in a contained geographic area then there are a couple of basic SEO principles that will make a world of difference to you and won’t cost an arm and a leg to implement.

The challenge I’ve had is how to explain these basics to business owners that don’t know HTML, don’t want to know HTML and really don’t want to get bogged down in the details.  Here’s my attempt – let me know what you think.

Think of Google as a Giant Library…in fact it’s the largest library in the world!

Instead of physical books, this library is made up of virtual ‘pages’, each of them like a book on the shelf of the library.

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Photo by Adam Pniak

These days more than ever it’s critical that your business stands out from the crowd (for the right reasons).

Recent studies show that an ever growing majority of people are turning to the internet first to solve their problems and buy solutions, services and products.  Specifically they’re using search engines like Google.

They’re looking for you, but if they can’t find you…if you’re not standing out, then they’ll go with who ever they can find and you’ll be out a customer opportunity (and an easy one at that since they were ready to buy when they started looking).

The good news is that most small businesses aren’t doing a very good job at building an online presence.  For most businesses owners the bar is pretty low – if you do just a couple of things on purpose you could find yourself on the first page of Search Engine results when those customers come a searching.  A little creativity and some focus could be all it takes to really ramp up your lead generation.

Below are 8 examples of different ways to stand out online – real businesses, real examples that you can steal borrow from.  What could you start doing with your business to stand out?

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