SUMMER 2014 SPECIAL SECTION

Once all of your business listings are in place, the
Reviews number and frequency of reviews play a role in
how well you rank. Here’s where those low paying
customers can prove quite valuable. Invite them by
email or through Facebook to leave you a review.
Please don’t ask people who are not your customers to leave you reviews.
Yelp has language filters in place to detect fake reviews. These websites are
designed to be savvy enough to detect that the most likely people to review
your service are in close proximity to your business location.
One way you can encourage reviews is by offering a discount off the
customer’s next cake order. If you don’t ask your satisfied customers to leave
a review, the only reviews you may end up with are those from disgruntled
customers. When people have a bone to pick, they are more likely to look for
a way to get the word out.
Links from Relevant & Local Websites
Theresa Happe is an Internet
Marketing Specialist and author of
two websites dedicated to cake
decorating, CakesWeBake.com and
Cake-Decorating-Corner.com
This is where most people get confused, make huge mistakes and can actually harm their websites. There is so much
to cover on this topic that I implore you to do some reading before you embark on link building on your own. One of
the more daunting outcomes of link building improperly is the fact that Google will now penalize your website for links
it considers spammy or unnatural. You can end up tossing your website right out of the search results if you build too
many links in a short period of time, too many links using keywords or attain links from low quality websites.
Related websites: Your safest bet is to find popular cake and baking websites, provide quality content to them (perhaps
a tutorial or tips) and let the website owners link however they choose to.
Local websites: Perhaps your customer owns a business nearby and links to you. The geographical proximity of her
business makes it a good local link. If you belong to the local chamber of commerce or an industrial association, those
are good sources for links.
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen repeatedly by
owners of all different types of websites is copying the
competition. Yes, you can learn from observing what
your competition is doing, but keep one thing in mind:
when you copy your competition, you copy what your
competitor is doing right, but you also copy what your
competitor is doing wrong. Your competitor may be doing
well today doing those wrong things and then get hurt
down the line when Google catches on or updates its
algorithm. I highly recommend you familiarize yourself
with Google’s Webmaster Tools guidelines to be aware of
what types of behavior can get you into trouble before you
do the damage.
A few of the many things to avoid that I commonly see:
• Submitting content that is already on your website or
submitting the same content to multiple websites. Doing
so creates duplicate content which is bad both for your
website and the website that hosts it.
• Creating tons of blog comments using keywords to link
to your website.
Caution
• Keywords in signature links from forums.
• “Do follow” links from paid ads. (“Do follow” links are links
that pass page rank).
There’s a very long list of things you should avoid doing.
When in doubt, consult with an expert.
If the process seems overwhelming or you feel you just
don’t have the time, you can implement the above steps
a little at a time or hire someone to help you get found
in local search. The lesson I hope you take away from
this article is that you don’t need to feel helpless about
the condition of your customer base. And once you do
something about it, there just may be someone living a
mile away from you who will be very excited to find you in
the search results the next time she needs a cake.
84 www.EdibleArtistsNetwork.com