Blog

4 Proven Online Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business


Building it is not enough - if you want business to arrive, you'll need some proven online marketing strategies to drive it. Here are four to start Read more

4 Simple Ways to Increase Leads On Your WordPress Website


If you want to increase leads on your WordPress website, there's some work involved, but it will repay you with increased rankings on Google, which means increased visits and revenues Read more

Shared Hosting and IP-Based Spam Lists


Shared hosting is inexpensive for small companies starting out on the web, but it has its risks and downsides. Getting blacklisted can be very bad for Read more

A Friday Story, and Blocking Spam


Have you heard the Friday Story? It's about what happens when you consistently give something for free - and every business owner needs to think about it. We talk about blocking spam Read more

Article Keyword Research - Going Where The Traffic Is


Do your Article Keyword Research before you start writing blog posts, and your website traffic will improve fast. It's fast, easy, and it pays Read more

WordPress - Disable Comments


If you find yourself frustrated by spam and searching for wordpress disable comments or turn off comments wordpress, we're happy to help. The Quick Answer To How To Disable Comments In WordPress Log in and go to Settings, Discussion. Uncheck "Allow people Read more

Marketing Lessons from Dusty Boxes

Posted on by Karilee in Small Business Marketing 3 Comments

Change Is Good

This week, I’m tangibly aware of change.

You see, I’m preparing to move, and that means finally sorting through dozens of boxes of business materials and software to extract the 5-10% worth keeping. Some of these boxes have been in storage for years, but I don’t feel I can just toss them, since there are a few bits I want to preserve. Read more


Facebook Deals for Retail Business

Posted on by Karilee in Small Business Marketing 1 Comment

Facebook Deals – New Marketing for Local Business

If you have a local, “bricks and mortar” retail business, you may occasionally curse the competition the web has brought – but Facebook Deals can actually help you bring in more traffic, more new clients to your shop, restaurant, or entertainment venue. And it’s free, for now.

How Facebook Deals Works

As Facebook Director of Local Products Emily White explains in the video, the concept is simple. You can check your iPhone or Android mobile phone, and see a list of nearby retailers, restaurants, or entertainment venues. If a retailer is offering a Deal, you’ll see a yellow square, and can check out that deal instantly. You might find out that your favorite coffee shop is offering a free muffin with the purchase of a coffee, or that an item you’ve been thinking of purchasing is discounted. Read more


What Your Website NEEDS

Posted on by Karilee in Website Creation 4 Comments

There’s a lot of confusion about websites, and every day I see the result of people spending absurd amounts of money on the wrong things. So what does your business website really need… and what doesn’t it need?

Your Website Has 9 Needs:

A Goal

We’ll assume for the rest of this article that your goal is to draw targeted traffic that can convert to a cause or sale, who will find the site useful, informative, helpful or entertaining.

Basic On-Site SEO

You MUST have proper keyword usage, Title Tags, Heading  Tags and Alt Tags for your site to rank well in search engines, and so be found. Read more


Screen Resolution and Your Clients

Posted on by Karilee in Website Creation 1 Comment

What Screen Resolution Does Your Client See?

Many business owners and bloggers, and even web designers, forget that their viewers may not be seeing their site in the way they expect. Keeping screen resolution in mind really matters, especially if you work on a large monitor as I do.

If your site is unattractive or difficult to navigate for your client or potential client, they’ll leave. Read more


Facebook Business Page How To’s

Posted on by Karilee in Social Media 6 Comments

Your Business Needs to Be on Facebook

If your business is not on Facebook, what are you waiting for? Facebook is one of the two most highly trafficked websites in the world. The average American spends over eight hours per week on Facebook. Let’s talk about the first steps of how to use Facebook for business and create your very own Facebook Business Page.

A Facebook Business Page can be inexpensive to set up, maintain, and there are no user fees. Links from your Facebook business page can rank high on Google and other search engines, and the interaction and links from Facebook can help make your website successful. Read more


How to Superscript in WordPress

Posted on by Karilee in WordPress Tips 16 Comments

Today’s post is short – but since I had to hunt a bit to find out how to superscript in WordPress, I thought I’d put it here for you. One of my clients needed a trademark symbol displayed frequently on their site. Simple enough, but the WordPress default user interface doesn’t offer that feature. So how would I, for example, display Outcome MarketingTM?

Superscript in WordPress

Simple enough – to display Superscript in WordPress, you just add a < sup > code before the text in your HTML editor, and a < /sup > code after it. I added extra spaces so those codes wouldn’t mess up my text display, so see this image if what I mean isn’t clear:

<sup> and </sup> codes to Superscript in WordPress

Read more


WordPress Search Engine Optimization – Two Tips

Posted on by Karilee in Search Engine Optimization 3 Comments

If you’re a regular reader here, you probably either have a WordPress website, or plan to build one. I’ve made no secret of my belief that at this time, WordPress is simply the best tool for building a website for almost every small business. One of the reasons for that is that WordPress is structured to be easy for search engine robots to navigate. Also, when you create posts and pages, WordPress makes it really easy for you to take the right steps for search engine optimization (SEO).

Search Engine Optimization in Pages

Let’s review some of those steps today, to make sure you’re taking advantage of what WordPress can easily do to help your search engine optimization.

When you create a page in WordPress, the title of the page becomes part of your site navigation – your main menu. This means that it becomes an “anchor text link”, which is a valuable search engine optimization resource. An anchor text link is a link where you click on text and are taken to a webpage. You’re not clicking on the address of the page itself, you’re clicking on text which contains the address. Google and other search engines really like anchor text links, because they help clarify what the page is about.

Marketing Coach <– Example of an anchor text link

http://outcomemarketing.com/marketing-coach <– example of a link with no anchor text Read more


A Successful Website? 10 Essentials

Posted on by Karilee in Website Creation 1 Comment

Defining the Successful Website

It’s always a good idea, before you start any project or activity that requires some effort, to take a few moments to visualize what success would look like. There’s no question that this is important before you start the process of creating a successful website. So what would the requirements of your successful website be? Here are the ten requirements I think are most important for your businesses’ successful website:

  • Gets found easily by search engines, especially Google
  • Brings in targeted traffic (your “right people”)
  • Is easy to navigate and search
  • Is “sticky”. Visitors hang around and look at several pages of information
  • Showcases your products/services and evokes interest in them
  • Captures leads, to help you convert visitors to clients
  • Looks professional (design, lack of typos, writing style, no broken links)
  • Has an emotional feel appropriate to your business and you as an entrepreneur
  • Is easily maintained by you, keeping your costs down
  • Generates INCOME for your business Read more

No New Years Resolutions!

Posted on by Karilee in Small Business Marketing 1 Comment

Outcomes, not Resolutions

Your business deserves some marketing attention in the coming year, and this is a great time to think about how you could do things a little differently from last year. If you’re not getting the outcomes you want to see, something needs to change. Doesn’t it?

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

– Albert Einstein

Part of the answer lies in planning your desired outcomes first.

This Isn’t About Goal Setting

Although it feels like it, we’re not talking about goal setting here. We’re certainly not talking about resolutions. In fact, this begins a little closer to a visualization exercise – but what it’s really about is taking back your power to choose. Read more


Testimonials are Powerful Tools

Posted on by Karilee in Small Business Marketing 11 Comments

Testimonials Are Necessary

Testimonials are not only powerful marketing tools, they’re necessary ones. Testimonials are reassuring social proof that your business and your services deliver on their promises.

Gather Ye Rosebuds

Every satisfied client is an opportunity for a new testimonial. Ideally, you want to get those on letterhead at least – letterhead is much more powerful than plain text. Video testimonials are also very powerful, and even short audio clips can help drive your business. A Flip camera (or even your smartphone!) is a great tool for grabbing fast video testimonials. Read more