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Here’s the next post in the ‘Small Business Series’, on how a small business can better leverage its strengths. This week we are talking to none other than David Heinemeier Hansson, partner at 37 Signals, creator of Ruby on Rails and coauthor (with Jason Fried) of the bestselling book ‘Rework’. Signal Vs Noise is one of my favorite startup blogs and we are huge fans of 37 Signals. In this interview I do three quick questions with him:

Romy Misra (Pear Analytics):First David, thanks so much for taking out the time to do this. For a small business seeking to be extraordinary, what are some tactics you would recommend to an SMB that could enhance Internet searchability and SEO?

David Heinemeier Hansson (37 Signals): Our primary technique at 37 Signals is to be interesting. You can try all sorts of tricks or hacks to try to game the search engines, but the most basic is simply to be undeniably good and interesting. Share tips, tricks, and lessons that others want to read and they’ll link to you. Nothing will keep you high in the Google rankings over the long term than having tons of people link to you.

David Heinemeier Hansson (37 Signals):First, avoid interruptions. Nothing will blow up your working day faster than having meetings and phone calls sprinkled all over it. Second, cut out 90% of all planning. Planning is mostly guessing and worrying about what your business is going to look like 5 years from now is a useless exercise when you should be worrying about how to grow your business next week.

David Heinemeier Hansson (37 Signals):

Do less: We try to underdo the competition and I personally try to restate all our hard problems into easy problems.

Don’t grow: Managing people is hard, managing many people is much harder. We’ve tried to keep our headcount unnaturally low for a company of our revenues. It’s really paid off.

No Comments »Tags: SEO, small business series

This is our fifth post in the ‘Small Business Series’ which features where we feature industry leaders on how small businesses can better leverage their strengths. This week we are talking to Matt McGee, a contributor for Search Engine Land, specializing in local search. Search Engine Land is one of my favorite SEO websites, which I read to keep myself up to date with SEO news.. Matt’s interest in local was fueled just by the fact that all of his early clients were small, local businesses that wanted to connect with people in his hometown. In the following interview I have focused on businesses who have a local clientele and how they can maximize the value of local search.

Romy Misra (Pear Analytics): First Matt, thanks so much for taking out the time to do this.Let’s start with the most important question for anyone with a small business. Why is it important for small businesses to focus on local search?

Matt McGee: It’s not important for ALL small businesses — but it’s a must for those who offer products or services to local customers. The answer to ‘why’ is that search engines are becoming the default way consumers find local information. Stats show that yellow page usage is on the decline and search engines are on the rise for finding local information. This is particularly true for a site like Google Maps, which has grown to surpass Mapquest as the number one site in the Travel/Maps category that Hitwise tracks.

That said, there are plenty of small businesses that offer products or services nationally, or even globally — if they’re not interested in finding local customers, they don’t really need to focus much on local search.

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5 Comments »Tags: local search, SEO

This is our fourth post in the ‘Small Business Series‘ which features where we feature industry leaders on how small businesses can better leverage their strengths.  This week we are interviewing Hiten Shah, the founder of three successful startups (Survey.io, Crazy Egg and Kissmetrics) on understanding metrics that a small business should focus on. I have been using Crazy Egg for a while now and its a great tool to understand click patterns, and just yesterday tried out KissInsights (a new product as part of Kissmetrics).  KissInsights is one of the best feedback tools I have seen, I am not a fan of the pop-up technique of inviting people to participate in surveys and love the widget you have to install.

Romy Misra (Pear Analytics): First Hiten, thanks so much for taking out the time to do this. Why is it important to develop metrics for success for small businesses? How does one develop these metrics?

Hiten Shah: I believe that the metrics for success are important in any business, because they can be used to help the whole organization focus on a single goal. If you pick the right metrics for success, you will be able to significantly improve the focus of the whole team and thus improve your business. Developing these metrics should be done first by making hypothesis about your business and validating / invalidating these hypothesis. From there you will have a good base understanding that will allow you to determine what metrics to focus on and how to define success for your business.

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5 Comments »Tags: ROI, SEO, small business series, Web Analytics

Rand Fishkin is the CEO of SEOmoz, and is certainly one of the most respected and well-versed experts in the search engine optimization industry, and so we wanted to ask him a few questions as it relates to small businesses and what they can do to get a competitive edge without spending a fortune on consultants.  Special thanks to Rand for taking the time to talk with us while he tours the globe right now, and works on their new software package.

Romy Misra (Pear Analytics): Most SMB’s I talk to feel overwhelmed by the top positions in Google. Even when the product is remarkable, ranking well in Google can be very difficult when you don’t have the resources to focus on traditional SEO.In such a scenario, how important is it for them to use their time and money to learn and focus on SEO? Why?

Rand Fishkin: Business owners have a constant struggle to choose the activities that will earn the highest ROI for their business. I certainly wouldn’t claim that SEO will always be that activity, but it’s almost always worthwhile to learn a little about the topic. Even if you can just determine the relative volume of people searching for keywords related to your business/products/services and figure out how competitive it is to rank for those terms, you’ll be able to make an informed decision about whether to pursue that route.

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9 Comments »Tags: Expert Blogger Series, rand fishkin, SEOmoz, small business series

This is the second post in our “Small Business Series” where we are interviewing a few industry experts on how small businesses can better leverage their strengths. Today we are interviewing Ken Hilburn, from Juice Analytics, one of my personal favorite data visualization companies, on how to create awesome surveys. Surveys are traditionally one of the best ways to understand your customers, but at the same time getting your customers to participate and engage in surveys is a huge challenge. I thought of interviewing Ken when I took a survey Juice Analytics sent to me by email, and it was the most engaging survey I had taken in months.

Note: As a bonus, Ken has generously shared that survey with us.

Romy Misra (Pear Analytics) : First Ken, thanks so much for taking the time to do this. The importance of surveying your customers has been repeatedly talked about. Why do you think it is important to survey your online customers/visitors?

Ken Hilburn: I have to start off by saying that Juice Analytics has an awesome community and we love talking, listening and working with them. But even with such a strong group, it’s critical to talk less and listen more.
It used to be, for the most part, that customers were at the mercy of vendors when it came to communication – it was pretty much a one-way street. However, that’s changing now. With the pervasive use of social media sites, there has been a tremendous shift toward “power to the people.” It’s certainly in a company’s best interest at this point to make sure they’re in touch with their customers and how well their customer’s needs are being met. We get to choose: we can either do that proactively, or we can wait to see it on the twitter “Popular Topics” list and hope it’s positive.

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5 Comments »Tags: SEO, small business series, Web Analytics

We are kicking off a series about how small businesses can better leverage their strengths. We will be interviewing a series of industry leaders to share their valuable ideas with us. To kick of the series we have none other than marketing guru, successful blogger and bestselling author, Seth Godin.

First we would like to thank Seth for agreeing to do this quick interview on short notice, and congratulate him on Linchpin for being a huge success.

Romy Misra (Pear Analytics): Seth, a lot of small businesses we talk to are struggling to generate leads and prospects without using some form of interruption marketing. For a small business seeking to be extraordinary, what are some tactics you would recommend to an SMB that could enhance Internet searchability beyond traditional SEO tactics?

Seth Godin: The open secret of SEO is that the single best way to get traffic is to deserve traffic. In other words, the search engines are pretty good, and if you create something remarkable, something people want to talk about, you’ll get found. Sure, the tactics of SEO can help, but if you start with a product or service that is amazing (not just you mom says that, but users do), then everything gets easier.

So, don’t search for gimmicks. Search for value and art and doing work that matters. Ask your designers to go to the edge. Price your stuff to the edge. Create digital artifacts that will spread.

All of this is hard. That’s why it works.

Romy Misra (Pear Analytics): Linchpin talks about creating art and being artists at work. You say “Art is about intent and communication, not substance”. As the SMB begins to leverage their web assets to generate contact and communicate with their customers, what are some suggestions you would give a small business to engage prospects over time?

Seth Godin: Why should I interact with you? If you’re boring and you don’t care and I buy a commodity from you, why should we also have a relationship? I don’t need a relationship with my jujubee supplier, or with the guy who drops off the mail in my office. No time, no upside, hard to make it work.

So the challenge is to create a reason for people to miss you, a reason they would benefit from calling you. I’m sorry that I can’t say do this and do that and then do this, but it’s more important to decide that this is important than it is to have a Dummies manual!

The bonus: We are going to pick 10 users to randomly gift a copy of Seth’s latest bestselling book ‘Linchpin’ if you sign up for SiteJuice in the next week.

3 Comments »Tags: Expert Blogger Series, Seth Godin, small business marketing