Keeping a tight schedule is generally considered to be a good thing. We associate people who schedule their lives well in advance with being in control and organized. It’s certainly the case that having a full and well-planned schedule can help to make sure that you stay on task and not miss out on important meetings. But it’s also true that being too scheduled can have a negative impact on your ability to get things done.

Generally speaking, if you have schedule a meeting for a set length of time, it will go that length of time even if it doesn’t need to take that long. People want to feel like they blocked out a set amount of time for a reason and they will find ways to use the time — even if the use of time isn’t productive. This can lead to endless meetings where you are accomplishing a lot less than you should be with your time.

One way to solve this is to keep your meetings short — perhaps a half-hour in length. This gives enough time to discuss what needs to be discussed without inviting meetings to run on incessantly. If something needs more than 30 minutes, plan ahead and schedule multiple meetings. This will force you to address the problems in bite-sized chunks, which can be helpful in tackling complex issues.

You should also schedule time for yourself in between meetings to do something like take a walk outside of go get a coffee down the street. You might say to yourself that you are going to “find time” between meetings to take a break but it’s easy to let that time slip away. If you put breaks on your calendar, you are more likely to take them.

Scheduling phone calls the same way that you schedule meetings is a great way to avoid losing time to idle chit-chat. Unless it’s something urgent that needs to be dealt with immediately, you will almost always be able to schedule a call for later in the day. This gives you time to research the issue and be informed before having a conversation and it also sets parameters for how long the call should go.

There’s no such thing as a “one size fits all” SEO campaign. In much the same way that your business offers something different from your competitors, your search engine optimization efforts should also be individualized according to your unique needs. Delivering targeted SEO efforts for our clients is one of the things that set eVisible apart from our competitors and it’s something you should consider in everything you do with your website.

Much the same is true when it comes to developing the code and design elements on your website. You need to apply analytical thinking when it comes to how you create and deploy your website. Even experienced web developers can make mistakes that can impact the ability of their website to perform its best. Here are a few things that you should consider:

Start Small: Instead of launching your website with a huge set of features, start small with a clean, basic layout and design. You can always build it out as your business grows by choosing individual elements to add that have been carefully developed and beta tested.

Keep Your Code Flexible: While your platform doesn’t need to be completely scalable from the start, you also don’t want it to be so inflexible that making additions or changes in the future is impossible.

Make Your Code Easy to Deploy: Instead of trying to create a site based on the limitations of your code, work from the opposite direction and plan your features and try to come up with easily-implementable code that will get these features to happen.

Launch Your Website at the Right Time: Don’t rush your website to go live if the elements aren’t all in place. If customers come to your site and have problems with it, chances are they won’t be repeat customers.

Focus on the Customer: Think about how you can create a website that meets your customers’ needs. This should be more important than implementing any one piece of code.

Along with these code-based tips, there are other elements to remember as you start your business. eVisible – Internet Marketing Firm – can help you with this along with all other aspects of getting your company off the ground. A few things to consider include:

Focus on Big Picture Problems: Instead of developing a product or service that fills a niche need, try to make sure you have a model in place that will attract the largest amount of people possible.

Stay Involved…But Not Too Involved: No matter what your role is in the company, you need to know about every aspect of how the business is operating. At the same time, you need to let the experts that you hire or contract with take the lead in their areas of expertise.

The list of things you need to do when you move your business to a new location is seemingly endless. But don’t forget about updating your online profile to include your new address! The last thing you need is a customer trying to reach you for a sale but finding an abandoned building. Before you finalize your move, make sure you do these things:

1. Try to Retain Your Current Phone Number. This will help with maintaining consistency with customers. If you have moved towns, try to keep your old number and have it forwarded to your new number.

2. Update the Address on Your Online Listings. This includes online directories like Google Places, Yelp, Angie’s List, Yahoo Local along with local Chamber of Commerce sites and specializes sites for your industry. And don’t forget to update your address on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

3. Update Your Marketing Materials. This includes your website, email signature, business cards, press releases and more.

4. Tell Neighbors You’ve Moved. Make sure that people you have worked near know that your business has moved in case customers are curious.

5. Let the Government Know. Along with updating your mailing address with the post office, you’ll need to update your business license with the city (or get a new one if moving into a new city), your tax information and any other licensing agencies you work with.

6. Refresh Your Paid Search Campaigns. If you are focusing on a local market or area in a paid search marketing campaign, you’ll need to readjust your targets and also your address so people aren’t sent to the wrong place.

7. Update Citations. Not all website listings with your address will be online directories. Do a search for your old address and see which results come up on the first page. Reach out to these sites and ask them to update their listing.

8. Change Over Automatic Payments. This might seem basic but many people forget to change the address on their business credit card or with their bank and wind up missing payments.

Why has local business marketing become such a driving force in search engine optimization? One of the big reasons is the rise of smartphones and tablets. People no longer have to print out information about a business or look things up in a phone book. Addresses, phone numbers, website and customer reviews are all available in a convenient, handheld format. When you include the rise of Twitter and Facebook and the resulting wave of social media marketing, it’s easy to see why local SEO is so critical to a site’s success.

If you have a local business and are looking to increase your visibility, local search engine marketing is one great way to do it. Several companies offer local search engine marketing and can handle every aspect, from getting your business listed with the appropriate local online directories to building your website. However, you can also do many the steps yourself. Here are a few things you should definitely consider doing immediately if you are doing your own local search engine marketing:

Perform basic SEO: Simply put, you can’t have local SEO unless you have your traditional SEO house in order. This means having a well-constructed, informative website with plenty of useful content and intelligently linked keywords. You’ll want to strengthen this with other SEO practices such as purchasing in-bound links.

Create and update your business listings: As a small business, you need to make sure that your company is listed with all of the standard business listing sites. One of the first steps in this is to make sure that you have a Dun & Bradstreet number. Another step is to update your contact information with InfoUSA. Once you have done this, the information will gradually start feeding to places like the Yellow Pages and other online business directories.

Claim your online presence: This means going out to sites like Google+, Bing, Yahoo and Yelp and taking control of your company’s pages. You’ll want to make sure that the name, address and phone number are consistent and match what is on your website. Add photos and descriptions and encourage your customers to add positive reviews.

President Obama has declared June 16-22 as “Small Business Week” in America. It’s a way to recognize the small businesses that drive the American economy. This isn’t the first Small Business Week – it goes back to 1963 – but this one is particularly important because of the impact the recent economic downturn has had on small businesses. In the current economy, small businesses need to use every tool necessary to stay ahead of larger competitors.

If you are a small business owner, one of the ways you can do this is to leverage the Internet. Small business Internet marketing can help your small business reach customers throughout the world. However, if you are in a competitive market, you’ll need help to make sure that people can find your website. eVisible specializes in helping small businesses gain visibility online by using a variety of proven of tactics including:

SEO: Getting your website to rank highly for specific keywords is about more than just luck. You need to research which keywords will be the most effective to target and have a dedicated game plan for how to increase your page rankings. By doing search engine optimization correctly, your site can rank higher than larger competitors and get more clicks from curious customers.

Social Media: Establishing a strong social media presence is a highly effective online marketing tool for small businesses. By leveraging outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, you can make a personal connection with potential customers that makes you stand out from larger competitors. A strong social media campaign lets happy customers spread the word about your company to their friends, one of the most powerful forms of marketing.

Directory Submissions: Local directory submissions help to ensure that potential customers have all the information they need to choose your business for their needs. Customers want to know as much as they can about any small business, including positive reviews, pictures and contact information.

eVisible wants to help take your small business to the next level. Find out more about our small business services <https://www.evisible.co/small-business-solutions/> and contact us today for a free consultation.