Out of the Fog Marketing

A great way to drive traffic and backlinks to your website is article submission. Write short articles covering your areas of expertise with keywords in the title. Here's a great list of the top 50 article submission sites.

Labels: article directories, article submission sites, top article sites

A few weeks ago we created a Squidoo lens on outsource marketing departments. So was it worth the time and effort? You bet. The lens shows up as page rank of #4 on Yahoo! and #8 on Google. Not bad for an hour of work.

Labels: improve search engine rankings, link building for SEO, squidoo

I had a really interesting call from a prospect this week. He found our firm on Google by using a search term that never crossed our minds to put on our keywords list. We did not search engine optimize our site for this term. After I scheduled our first meeting with him, I quickly typed the search term into Google and found we had the #1 ranking for it.
So if we didn't search engine optimize for it, how did it get to be #1? Well we do have a good number of back links to our site and all the code is in the right places. But more importantly in my mind - we wrote copy on our site that really describes our business service offerings well.
If you write great, simple, and straight-to-the-point headings and copy those leads will come your way.

Labels: backlinks, keywords analysis, search engine optimization

Check out Fight the Service Tax to join the fight against the Michigan services tax. As the bill is written now, marketing agencies would tax some of their services, but not others leading to unbelievable paperwork and tracking headaches in addition to the tax burden.

Labels: michigan services tax, service tax

We recently used Printplace for brochure printing and had excellent results. They offer guaranteed 2-day turnaround with reasonable printing and shipping costs.

Labels: cheap printers, online printers, printers

As a business you have even more reason to make sure you pay attention to Google. Google's free 411 service pull entries off their local business center rankings. Make sure your business has a listing on Google Maps because now it's not just the internet, Google is going after telephony.

Labels: google 411, Google local business center

Post your environmental topic on October 15, 2007.

Labels: blog action day, environmental issues

In a move extremely unfavorable to small businesses in Michigan, Lansing lawmakers passed a 6% services tax on many services including "consulting". How can this state say they want more small businesses and then spring this tax on us?
Here's a response to an email our firm sent to Rep. Pam Byrnes' office:

Extending the sales tax to services was part of negotiations between the Democratic controlled House and Republican led Senate. The Senate would not agree to a raising the income tax from 3.9% to 4.6%. They would only agree to raise the rate to 4.35%, which left a shortfall to be filled by extending the sales tax on services.

Extending the sales tax to discretionary services was agreed to by both sides of the aisle as the best alternative to the higher income tax rate. As we move from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy, economic experts have recommended that we join the growing ranks of states who tax services as they tax goods.

While unfortunate, increasing state revenues to fill our projected $1.75 billion deficit was necessary, justifiable and responsible. This increase was accompanied by reforms that will help the state realize millions of dollars in savings. An example of the cuts and reforms we have enacted include a reduction in pay and the elimination of lifetime health benefits for lawmakers and ending double dipping for retired state employees who come back to work for the state.

The deal reached by the legislature will allow state government to fulfill its responsibilities while investing in Michigan and its people.

Well Rep. Byrnes, you may be investing in Michigan's people but you are certainly not investing in its economy. Since we moved our business from Seattle to Ann Arbor a year ago, we have been floored by the amount of taxes and paperwork we have to file compared to Washington State where there was a simple 1.5% business tax, NO state income tax, and no unemployment insurance required for a firm's officers.

Justifying a 6% tax on services to out-of-state clients who are not familiar at all with state services taxes is going to be a tough sell.

Labels: consulting tax, michigan services tax, new michigan tax