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Greater Knoxville SCORE
Suite 450
412. N. Cedar Bluff Road
Knoxville TN 37923
PH: 865-692-0717
FAX: 865-692-0718
www.scoreknox.org
OTHER CONTACTS
Blount County Chamber of Commerce
201 S. Washington Street
Maryville
TN
37804
PH: 865-983-2241
www.blountchamber.com
Claiborne County Chamber of Commerce
Suite #1
3222 Highway 25E
Tazewell
TN
37879
PH: 423-626-4149
www.claibornecounty.com
Farragut/West Knox
Chamber of Commerce
Suite
110
11826 Kingston Pike
Knoxville
TN
37933
PH: 865-675-7057
www.farragutchamber.com
Loudon County Chamber of Commerce
318 Angel Row
Loudon
TN
37774
PH: 865-458-2067
www.loudoncountychamber.com
Monroe County Chamber of Commerce
Suite A
520 Cook Street
Madisonville TN 37354
www.monroecountychamber.com
Roane
County Alliance
1209 Kentucky Street
Kingston
TN
37763
PH: 865-376-5572
www.roanealliance.org
Roane
State Community
College
Crossville Campus
Crossville TN
PH: 931-456-4910
UPCOMING EVENTS
The Greater Knoxville SCORE Chapter will be presenting
a series of our popular "Pre-Business Planning"
workshops beginning in September.
Hosted by the Knox County Library System, this
one-hour workshop will be conducted in several of the
branch locations throughout Knox County.
Designed for individuals
who are considering beginning their own business, the
workshop highlights areas such as attributes desirable
for a business owner, the benefits and components of a
business plan, legal requirements of starting a business,
and an introduction to the various legal business structures.
Be sure to tell
those your friends, relatives, and acquaintances who considering
beginning a business about this workshop, and check our
website for scheduled times and locations!
Privacy Policy
You provided your email
address to us either on the application you completed
when requesting assistance from SCORE, or a request to
receive SCOREBOARD. This information will
not be provided or sold to any outside agency and will
remain confidential.
To unsubscribe from this
newsletter please click here and
in the subject line type the word "unsubscribe."
We encourage you to forward this newsletter to
associates and other businesses!
To contact us to schedule
a counseling session, please click here.
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Welcome to the Summer 2008 issue of SCOREBOARD, a free business resource from the Greater Knoxville
Chapter of SCORE, Counselors to America's Small Business.
SCOREBOARD is intended to provide business owners and managers
with helpful tips, ideas, and features that will
help you business grow and become more successful. Please continue to send us your input
with emails to newsideas@scoreknox.org.
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Many small
businesses develop a website to showcase their products
or services, then sit back and wait
for clients or prospects to view it and make an
inquiry or purchase.
However, the reality is that you must promote
the site; otherwise, it's like the old question
"What if they started a war and nobody came?" But how do you promote your site?
There are two
basic ways. First,
make sure to put your site's URL (the domain name
and web address, like www.scoreknox.org) on every piece of literature, including business
cards, brochures, letterheads, coupons, and as the
signature on all email correspondence.
The second way is actually in how you build your site.
You must provide a way for search engines
(programs that search or "crawl through"
the web for sites that include the terms entered
into the search window) to know what's in your site.
This is known by the acronym SEO or Search
Engine
Optimization. Whether you develop your site yourself,
use a template from a service provider, or contract
with a web developer, you must first ask yourself
what words or phrases might potential viewers use
to search for my products? Learn how to utilize and implement this
process by reading Driving Site Traffic With Search Engine Optimization and
Paid Advertising by Richard Morochove, a writer for PC World.
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Getting your site recognized by the search
engines is fine, but it's not enough. Your site needs to appear as close to
the top of the results page(s) as possible. Why?
Because people are impatient - they assume
the sites shown toward the top of the results are
the ones that most closely match what they're looking
for, and they generally won't look past the first
two or three pages of results.
Alex Horowitz, a writer for the Small Business
section of the Wall Street Journal, tells how
to achieve this in How To Get To The Top of Search Engine Results.
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Okay, now you've determined the key words and phrases
you believe will entice viewers, placed them in
the appropriate locations in your site, and repeated
them sufficiently to make the search engines take
notice. You've
also negotiated reciprocal links to similar business
so that you can draw additional prospects.
How long will it take for all this work to
result in increased visits and sales?
Don't expect instant results.
But there are ways to test whether the search
engines are recognizing your key words and phrases,
and whether they're positioned in the appropriate
locations on your site.
The Arkansas Small
Business
Development
Center,
in conjunction with the University
of Arkansas at Little Rock, has a website with a tool
called Internet Marketing / Search Engine Optimization Tool. It can analyze
your site to see if what you and your web developer
have created can be recognized by search engines. To see how your site might perform,
all you need to do is enter your web address (URL)
and the key words or phrases you've incorporated
into your site. This can serve as a test of your work
before you actually launch your new or modified
site.
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Most business
owners create their web site as a means to generate
traffic from a local or regional area.
A recent trend to help make this happen is
local search services started by search engine firms
to attract people who use their PC instead of the
yellow pages to find local services.
You can improve your chances of getting listed
with the major local search engines by making sure
your business and/or your web site is listed in
the top /Internet/Yellow Pages (IYP). Walt Williams, a Knoxville SCORE Counselor,
provides tips and information about how to register
for these FREE listings in Local Internet Marketing. This article
also offers information on how to list your site
with local networks. Note: You can get your business listed (including
address and phone number) even if you don't have
a web site.
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MORE ON EXPENSE RATIOS
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In our spring issue we included an article on using
ratios instead of numbers to determine how your
business is doing. The article offered a link to www.bizstats.com, a free service that shows
percentages of various expenses and profit for many
types of business.
More readers opened this link than any other
link, which indicates it's a subject that many businesses
want to know more about.
Be sure to read the follow-up article Business Expenses: 2002 for financial ratios
that provides more in-depth data, for a larger variety
of businesses. You
may be very surprised to find out where you can
get this free information!
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ISSUES
SEE ARCHIVES by clicking HERE
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