The modern internet can be a strange place, and its inner workings have gotten pretty complicated. From a business perspective, the sun now rises and sets on search engines. As lead-seeking businesses have moved from the phone book to Google and friends, a new field has proven itself essential to effective online marketing: search engine optimization (SEO).

If you want your business to thrive in the SEO era, you should understand how these new technologies work, and how recent changes in search engine dynamics affect your visibility. At TalkLocal, buying “Snow-Removal” from Google Adwords actually jump-started our business in a matter of hours and won us our first slew of consumers and business clients during a 2011 snowstorm. In fact, the fact that you’re reading these words right now is all thanks to SEO magic. So, here’s a short primer to teach you the tricks of the trade.

The Page-Crawling Robot Herd

Yes, that’s a real thing. Search engines index the internet by sending autonomous programs (sometimes called “spiders,” “crawlers,” or just “bots”) across the web to collect information. These bots crawl from page to page through links, storing what they see in databases that will one day become search results. If your site has plenty of healthy links, the bots will notice it more and your rank among search results will go up.

It’s important to remember that bots can’t do everything that people can. They can’t understand rich content (images, videos, Flash, etc.) and don’t know how to fill out forms (even one as simple as a search bar). Thus, information hidden within any of these elements is hidden from a search engine.

Keywords

The bots play an important part in search engines, but so do the things that people actually search for. Using keywords taken from high-traffic queries (entertainingly, one of the highest is “ why my google not working ”) can boost your page ranking and land more search engine users on your website.

It’s also important to keep the keywords you use relevant to your content. Keyword stuffing, or nonsensically filling a page with random high-value keywords to attract traffic, can be detected by bots, and may result in a penalty to your search result ranking.

Penguin 3.0

In October of 2014, Google installed an update to its Penguin filter, an anti-spam measure. This update makes it more important for you or your webmaster to get rid of “bad links” leading back to your site, such as those from spam sources and other sites of questionable authority.

The update discounts the ranking credit earned from such links. Thus, if spammers have been linking to your site, even without your knowledge or consent, your search results rank may have taken a big hit – and that why your google not working.

All of this may sound like a lot to keep track of, but the key to SEO success as a small business is just good website maintenance. Make sure your site has a simple layout with quality content, beware of low-authority link sources, and don’t try to spam or cheat the search engine system. Follow these basic guidelines and you’ll be on your way to a high rank – and the high returns that come with it.

By Manpreet Singh

One of the hardest things to figure out as a small business owner is how to improve work performance in your office. Whether you have a 15 or 40 person office, it can be hard to get everyone to perform at maximum efficiency. At TalkLocal, we understand how serious this problem can be, especially for an up-and-coming business. Here are some tips that helped us improve work performance in our office.

Cut down on miscommunication

The lifeline of a productive office is communication. The problem is major breakdowns have a potential to occur between workers over issues such as roles, tasks, positions, and responsibilities. If someone doesn’t know what their job is or how to complete it, they’re not going to be productive. If you don’t want to have an office full of people blankly staring at a screen, you need to define roles and establish a chain of command. Make sure everyone knows who to report to, who they can go to if they have questions about a task, etc.

It’s a good idea for all employees to have an idea of what everyone’s job or department entails in the office so they can go to someone if they need help in that given area. If everyone is aware of what’s going on in the office as far as the location of resources, who their boss is, or what department handles what, you’ll find your employees will work at a much more productive pace than an office plagued with miscommunication. Without an idea of how important a given task is, the employee will have no idea how to balance his workload and will become less efficient in how quickly he can complete his tasks.

Delegate effectively

Another thing that can slow down productivity in the office is an ineffective delegation of tasks. The usual model of work delegation involves the manager or department head assigning tasks to those below them within their department. Problems can arise when you assign tasks to a person who lacks the skills to complete it, or whose skills would be better used at completing another task. Don’t give the marketing guy the task of creating the graphic for the holiday newsletter. Another problem which can occur in the delegation process is failing to communicate the priority level of the task.

Challenge your employees

Monotony can cause any employee to become bored with his job; this leads to large amounts of unproductivity. The tasks that used to get your employees full attention begin to get less and less of it because they become easy and almost second nature for them to complete. The solution to this is to constantly challenge your employees. If you see them finishing their tasks at a quicker pace or just sitting around idly, give them a new responsibility or assign them to complete a task you need done.

What keeps people focused on the job is the challenge it gives them; the success they will feel when they complete a new task; the satisfaction of completing a hard day’s work. If you keep challenging your employees they will stay focused, remain productive, and grow into more valuable assets to your business.

At TalkLocal, we know the importance of keeping our employees productive. We strive to have 5-star office communication, management that understands appropriate delegation of tasks, and employees who are constantly challenged with new responsibilities.