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Be alerted with Google Alerts for your small business competition

June 8, 2007 2:15 pmTerence Chang
June 8, 2007 By 2 Comments

Few days ago, I post an article about “10 Google programs to operate your small business for FREE“. I would like to cover more about how I use Google Alerts to move my competitions out of my way.

It’s difficult to do online business without knowing what your competitors are doing. Especially, if you have an online store selling products, you need to know who is selling the same items as you do on the internet. You need to find out a lot of information about your competitors. Basically, you need to know the followings.

  1. Your competitor just update their web site
  2. Any news about your competitors
  3. Any blog entries talking about you or your competitors
  4. Any complaints about you or your competitors
  5. Any press release your competitors recently published
  6. Any product review about what you and your competitors are both selling

Google Alerts do all those for you. First, you will need to have a Gmail account that can receive alerts sent by Google. I use Thunderbird to receive Google Alerts email. Once you sign in to Google Alert, you have option to create as many alerts as you wish. I simply enter my competitors domain name or company name as keywords and choose “Comprehensive” as type and choose “as-it-happens” as how often. Save the alert. Now all you have to is wait and check your email box.

In less than an hour, I received an email with about 20 links related to my competitors. The links includes my competitor’s newly updated web site, few blog links about their products and services. Their myspace page update and most importantly the complaints on complaints.com and rating on bizrate.com. WOW. Now I know how many customers were complaining their services. I would read through those post and make sure I don’t do the same to my customers.

To be able to act professionally before my competitors knowing what I am up to is important. So I also create a new alerts that is searching for my own company name and web site domain. I can definitely see that I have less alerts. Is it a good thing? Well. It depends. I find there is no complaints so far, while I am smaller than my competitors. That is good things. However, I find what I am lacking of. I now know what I have to improve to competitor with them and find my target customers.

Although Google Alerts gives you many information about news, blog, and updated web pages, it doesn’t give you more information you might want to know. For example, it doesn’t give you any information about eBay, where your competitors are also selling stuff on. It doesn’t give you update on the products list on Google’s Product search (Froogle.com).

So what should I do? I go to eBay and setup a watch list against my competitor’s eBay ID. I bookmark the link and check everyday and see what they are up to. I go to Google Product database and subscribe my competitor’s products list.

I believe marketing your business is important, but knowing how your competitors market themselves is also important. I am hoping to find a better way to aggregate all this information to a mass RSS feed, so I can do everything in one place.

Filed Under: Business, Marketing, Technology

Increase page ranking with DIY marketing strategies

June 1, 2007 10:22 pmTerence Chang
June 1, 2007 By 11 Comments

[Updated on 2007-06-11] Since I post this blog entry about my DIY marketing strategies on June 1st, 2007, I have received over 1000 unique visitors to the page. What a suprise! As the side effect, I believe that many of you (my visitors) have pushed my traffic ranking on Alexa much faster than I ever expect. My traffic ranking has been up 5 millions points in 10 days, while my other sites are still struggling. Yes. You read it right. 5 million points (See how?). Read more about my thoughts on “Alexa traffic ranking won’t do any good to my web site.“

There are many marketing strategies for improving your page ranking on Google search engines result pages and Alexa page ranking database. My blog was PR4 way back to 2004, but I have not update my blog for years. Now my page rank is down to the PR1. So here comes my strategies to get my page rank back as much as possible. I am really technical in web programming, but not really into the Internet marketing. I have done many research on the Internet and found good resources about increase your page ranking without spend a dollar. Here is my DIY marketing strategies list.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Alexa, Business, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Technology

Who from the West is doing well in China?

May 31, 2007 8:08 pmTerence Chang
May 31, 2007 By 10 Comments

There is a news on News.com about western companies in China.
“Who from the West is doing well in China?”

It mentioned many of the top 100 IT companies such as Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Dell and Google, but none of them are doing as good as they expect. As a native Chinese, I have to say that the leaders in those companies don’t fully understand Chinese culture and the shopping habits. It’s a totally different worlds. Most western companies are thinking China as big pie and a big market. They have not thought trough what’s on Chinese’s mind and how they think about Western world and culture? Forget about the government. Doesn’t matter how government control their internet and information, the government is always the last one to know the new tips and tricks to get the good stuff.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Business, Marketing

Small Business starts small – Does domain name matter?

May 23, 2007 3:08 pmTerence Chang
May 23, 2007 By 2 Comments

I have been receiving emails or private messages on many small business forums about where and how to start a small business or home based business. They often asked me how to find their business name and register a domain name for their small business. Does domain name matter to their business? What a domain name can do to help them gain more business or drive their business forward?

The answer is simple. Domain name does matter. A good domain name will attract visitor and help the web site to be indexed and searched easier that just some weird domain name. I registered all my domains at www.GoDaddy.com. They are the largest domain and web hosting company in the world.

Now, what domain name should a small business owner get? Here is some guide lines.

  1. Frist of all, don’t try to get a domain with a big brand name in it. For example, digggoogle.com or googleme.com, which has google in the domain name. You might get sue by those big shop when your site is getting quiet traffic.
  2. Try to find a name close to your own business name.
  3. Get dot com (.com), if you can. Most of search engine will look for your domain + .com to find if there is such a domain existing. The search engine will list it in the order or .com, .net etc. And most of people who only remember the domain name will type something like smallbizdir with .com after that while he/she means to type (smallbizdir.net). Not many people remember to type .net, .org, .info or anything else. So get .com domain as you can.
  4. Find a good domain registration company to stick with. I personally recommend www.GoDaddy.com, because of their credibilities. I don’t host my site with then. Their shared hosting is not as good as what I am getting from ANHosting.com. I would choose GoDaddy.com for higher end dedicated hosting.
  5. If you can’t find a good domain name close to your business name, think about something sharp and easy to remember. Yahoo and Google are both very easy to remember.
  6. Don’t make your domain more than 12 characters long. Most of people will not remember long domain or just forget the .com, .net part of the domain. A long domain will also make your email address hard to remember. A long domain name might not fit your newly design business card of advertisement flyer. Can you remember this email address? terencechang@lookatmywebdeisgnlayout.com. You got the point.

Does domain matter to your business? Domain is just like your company name, it’s part of your business plan and success. Without a good domain name, you won’t represent your business in a good and wealthy way.

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Filed Under: Business, Marketing