If you're like many of my clients, you struggle with what you have to do to generate a phone call. Let's assume you're getting 500 visits to your site in a month. Do you know how many clients that is actually generating. No matter what your answer, it can always be more!

Sometimes you have neither the money nor the time to create prefessional looking web graphics. And for myself, I can't draw a stick figure. I can get by in Photoshop (Elements...) but no matter how much I try, the results still appear somewhat amateur-ish. Here's a great tip for anyone using Microsoft Office...thank you Hubspot.

Remember MySpace...the darling of social media? It was free but in my opinion, the complexity killed it. When something came along that did what MySpace did but was far simpler to use, MySpace was history. In my opinion, Facebook took off because of its simple form driven motif that everyone could grasp.

We know Google’s algorithm changes daily. Some insist that the reason is so no-one becomes complacent with their rankings. A well run business demands a predictable environment. However, an excellent business in today’s market must also know how to deal with change. Google is part of that changing landscape. By maintaining a modest pay-per-click account, any business can hedge their bets against the less than predictable changes in the Google landscape. But let’s give Google the benefit of the doubt and assume that their changes are evolving to a more quality driven search.

If you ever completed a Google search and had a MAP of listings appear on the page, then you know the value of local MAPS listings ranks to businesses. These listings are analagous to standard Yellow Pages categories. Google understands, for example, that if you're looking for a dentist and live in Chicago that you probably don't care about Dentists in New York. There are things that you can do to improve your MAPS ranks.

All your life you may have been told, "don't act up", "don't brag", "don't be the center of attention". Unless your the guy at the party with the lamp shade on his head, most of us shy away from that kind of popularity. But that is not the person Google is looking for anyway. So it might not seem intuitive to want to be "that guy" when it comes to your website. On the web, THAT GUY is the center of attention (or appears to be). He seems to know a lot. He seems to have good authority and a lot of people seem to be listening. THAT is exactly who you want to be. Google is looking for THAT GUY! You can be THAT GUY!

The web: It's the savior and the bane of small business. If you think the web can save your small business because now you have a website and all you need to do is sit back and wait for the phone to ring, you're not ready for the web. Your business needs to connect with people - NOT GOOGLE, NOT FACEBOOK, NOT PINTEREST. Those sites are there to connect people with people, people with businesses, people with ideas and yes SOMETIMES people with products. Perhaps it's time to reconnect with your customers. One of my customers showed me this: a message I very much appreciated.

I never click those! Ok, so maybe you don't. But someone does. In fact a lot of people do. How do I know? Well, for one, it's all trackable. Beyond that, what makes someone click one of the Google Adword ads as opposed to going straight to the organic? Well, there is some science involved and yes even a little slyness on Google's part. Haven't you noticed?

Pretty soon, computer dating will be two computers having coffee togother - minus the people. Who needs people? We've all fallen for this and pretty soon the machine will leave us all behind. Except: you need people to buy stuff.

As reported by the Associated Press: When Google changed the rankings of its search results this month, items from its Google+ social network -- such as photos, videos, comments and links -- got a boost at the expense of other social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Twitter wasn't happy about the changes, which Google called Search Plus Your World, and made its dissatisfaction known. Privacy groups called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the changes.