Outside Of SEO, Why Is Your Content Gold?

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |SEO|Outside Of SEO, Why Is Your Content Gold?It’s impossible nowadays to launch your online presence without considering the importance of SEO – Search Engine Optimization – in your business growth. Indeed, mastering the art of boosting your SERP ranking — aka your ranking in the search engine result pages – can substantially influence web traffic. Search engines such as Google and Bing prefer content-rich sites that diversify their content and update it regularly to reflect on current trends.

Ideally, blogs are one of the most effective tools when it comes to creating keyword-targeted content.

Content, as a result, is the key to your SEO strategy and, by extension, your digital visibility. Creating new and informative content has become a major marketing strategy for any business trying to leverage their online presence. It’s not uncommon, as a result, to design a content plan that addresses major primary, secondary, and long-tail keywords to maintain your presence in a constantly changing market. However, you’d be wrong to assume that content only matters to support your SEO strategy. Content, as it happens, is a crucial factor of growth for your entire business. Here’s everything content can transform that isn’t SEO-related.

It establishes your reputation

While your products are your main offering, your content is the closest your audience can get to understand your brand. Therefore, ensuring you push your content online, not only on your website but also on social media platforms can help to build your brand reputation. Indeed, your audience uses online platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to interact with businesses – it’s the favorite channel when it comes to customer care inquiries and complaints. As a result, it’s fair to say that your social media posts are considered with great interest. Not only can you engage in direct interactions with your audience, but you can also launch a campaign to share your latest updates. Your choice of hashtags is detrimental to reaching out to a broad audience and establishing your reputation. Additionally, your attitude and behavior on social media are public, which means that the way you choose to share content online can affect your brand image too.

It generates passive income

If you’re an established blogger or digital influencer, you understand that content is money. Indeed, a youtube affiliate, for instance, use their content creation as part of their traffic strategy. Creating videos that appeal to a broad audience can maximize their channel subscriptions – aka the number of active and loyal followers – and views. It’s important to understand that users don’t need to follow a channel to watch its content. The affiliate network can share both the subscription volume and viewer number with businesses that are looking for advertising partners. The collaboration typically defines the affiliate earning by considering the total number of views each video receives. Therefore, building an informative and popular portal of content can indirectly create a stream of passive income through affiliate activities.

It showcases your expertise

Very few experts can claim they don’t worry about competition in their niche. Showcasing your expertise when you’re one of many other market players can be challenging. While success stories and portfolios can help to display your skills, they may not be enough. Ultimately, nothing seems more suspicious of potential leads than reading testimonials from your past clients. What evidence is there that those clients are real or that you’re as good as they say you are? None and as such, most digitally-savvy users tend to ignore testimonials – these are, after all, very easy to fake. However, you can publish your opinions, tips, and case studies online to attract your audience. Guest articles on a popular blog, for instance, are an ideal ice-breaker to reach out to a new audience. You can even consider creating tutorials or online courses to share your knowledge.

It gives your website depth

Sure, you might have a responsive web design, but what good does it do if you don’t have enough content? For a web visitor, reaching a site that feels content-light or that hasn’t been updated with new content leaves a poor impression. Most visitors judge your business by your site. If you don’t provide enough informative background – about the business and its expertise – people tend to be reluctant to purchase. Your content gives an additional dimension to your company, turning the online presence into a professional and trustworthy organization.

Content is at the heart of your business growth. It builds your online visibility through SEO ranking, but that’s not all it does. High-quality content can help to establish your brand and showcase your expertise. Additionally, you can use your content to support your affiliate marketing income. Finally, content brings trustworthiness to your online presence.

What Does a Server Do and Why Does Your Small Business Need One?

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |what does a server do|What Does a Server Do and Why Does Your Small Business Need One?What does a server do? You could be wondering about how to set up a server and how is it suitable for your small business needs.

Implementing the use of servers could be the ideal strategy for the growth of your business.

Read along to learn about servers and how to decide if this technology is right for you.

What Does a Server Do?

A server is a computer program that stores and retrieves data. It transmits computer files and data to multiple computers on a network.

In other words, a server serves information to computers that are connected to it. These computers are known as clients.

How can you establish a connection to a server? Generally, businesses use clients to connect to a server using a local area network or through the worldwide network of the Internet.

Why Do You Need One?

Instead of storing your files on a disk, you can use a server, which is right for the functionality and productivity of your business.

Before you choose a server, think about your business goals and the benefits you need. There are various server types such as application servers, mail servers, virtual servers, and more.

Introducing a server to your business may help to improve the way your employees perform their daily tasks.

Servers Protect Your Business

A common reason to use a server is that it is reliable and keeps your information secure. This is essential if you use various types of devices for your business.

You don’t have to worry about hackers stealing your information when you’re using powerful dedicated servers that protect your business data.

With the installation of firewall software, you can monitor your incoming and outgoing traffic. This is an effective way for you to stay track of malicious activity and to block hackers.

To protect your business from vulnerabilities, you need to perform regular updates for your firewall software.

It Prevents Data Loss

If you’re not in the habit of backing up your computer devices, you’re at high risk of losing your data.
Data loss can also slow down the progression of your business. That is why it is beneficial for you to prevent this problem by using a server.

In the event of a hard drive accident, your small business server can backup and restore your files, folders, and databases that are on your network.

Having a backup server reduces the time it takes for you to recover from a hard drive disaster.

File Sharing and Network Security

File access is a critical role for a file server. You have the option to store your business documents, share documents, and you can also authorize certain individuals to read documents.

A file server saves you time and effort. It makes the process easy for you to manage your file access from one system.

Use a Server to Operate Your Business with Ease

Nowadays, businesses are making use of the latest technologies to increase their operations.

With stiff competition in various business sectors, you can stand apart from your competition using servers.
If you enjoyed reading this article about what does a server do, visit our website to learn more strategies for your business.

How Is an LLC Taxed?

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |LLC|How Is an LLC Taxed?Easily one of the most daunting parts of being an entrepreneur, tax season can be complicated if you’ve never been exposed to doing business taxes before.

In this article, we’ll explore how LLC taxation works, so as an LLC owner, you neither overpay nor underpay the government.

Before We Discuss LLC Taxation

Before we get into the nitty-gritty details of LLC taxation, it’s important to first understand what an LLC is.
A Limited Liability Company is one of the simplest ways for a new employee to structure their business and have it recognized as a commercial entity in the government’s eyes. The requirements to form an LLC are low, making it the path of least resistance for budding entrepreneurship to achieve legal status.

Forming LLC (through an attorney or online service) enables owners to protect themselves with limitations of the risk their personal assets face, should something untoward happen with the company. In addition, starting fees are relatively small (less than $200 in most states).

The principal benefit of LLCs, however, lies in the discussion of LLC taxes. LLC’s are single taxation entities, meaning that unlike corporations, the income can only be taxed at one level (business or personal income).

How is an LLC Taxed?

The answer to this question technically depends on how the company is structured. If the company is structured as a collection of multiple partners, then the LLC’s income is taxed only at the personal income level.

That means that each of the shareholders in the LLC report income from the LLC as their personal income, and they file individual tax returns. No additional forms have to be completed for the LLC itself.

However, if the LLC is structured as a C corp or S corp, which it can elect to do after it’s created, then it will be required to submit additional documentation. The IRS Form 8832 is used for the LLC to elect to submit taxes as either a C corp or an S corp. The documentation submitted thereafter will determine what additional forms the LLC uses to be taxed (Form 2553 for an S corp and Form 1120 for a C corp).

Without corporation status, the LLC’s income is classified as “pass-through” which means that it just goes into each owner’s personal income return.

Do LLC’s Pay State Income Tax?

Some states require that LLC’s pay income tax at the state level. This is fairly common, and will often take the form of a franchise fee.

The franchise fee is an annual fee submitted whenever the LLC submits its annual report. The annual report contains information regarding total revenues, total operational expenditures, philanthropic expenditures, etc..

Most states will use the federal tax liability as a starting point for their own tax determination. Look up your individual state’s LLC tax law to figure out how much you’ll be liable for this April.

Don’t Mess Up Your Taxes!

Few things can kill a growing company’s momentum than falling on the wrong side of the IRS. Take the right steps to ensure that you’re completing your LLC taxation correctly — look up state laws, fill out the right forms, and consider calling a professional if you need help.

Once you’ve gotten through this tax season, make sure to come back and subscribe for more small business advice!

Building up Your Business the Right Way

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business | Entrepreneurship | Building up Your Business the Right WayMaking it past the first anniversary of your business is a huge achievement; all the hard work and long hours you put in will have paid off. However, the hard work shouldn’t stop there. As the owner of a business, you should constantly be striving to build, grow and improve your company because that is exactly what your competitors will be doing. In order to have the continued success of the previous year, you have to ensure that you are not just building your business up but that you are doing so the right way.

Become more visible online

Having a website and social media platforms might have got your name out there, but now is the time to start taking what you have and making it better. You can ensure the necessary growth your business wants by focusing on SEO strategies implemented by an experienced agency such as Pearl Digital Marketing. They will be able to conduct an audit of your website and make it optimized for search engines and large volumes of traffic. Increasing your visibility online will help you to outgrow your competition and appear on the first page of the SERPs which is a gold dust spot for many companies.

Work on goals for this year

All businesses need to have yearly goals. As you move into your second year of business, this is the perfect time to reassess the goals of last year. Did you meet them? Were they achievable? What have you learned from it? Without first assessing these, you cannot possibly move on to build up your business in the right way.

If the goal is to increase sales and make an even bigger profit, then you need to ensure that you have the means to do so. For example, if your product line is doubling in size, do you have the staff numbers to oversee this? Hiring more employees at this point will give you peace of mind that you will be able to cope.

Thank loyal customers

Focusing on the customers this year and how you can make their experience even better should take precedence above all else. After all, your customers are what have helped you survive over the last year, so be sure to thank them for their continued support. Send them an email offering a discount on your products or services as a way of thanking them for their loyal support. By thanking loyal customers, this way, you can be assured that through reviews and word-of-mouth, your business’ name will spread and all for the right reasons. This, in itself, brings about the prospect of new customers.

Make the most of networking

Networking is a fantastic way to build up your company without needing to spend as much money. But as your company grows, so should the number of contacts you have to hand. Building up a bigger network will bring about more opportunities that your business can benefit from such as making the most of new technologies and software or investing in discounted but high-quality equipment. There is no harm in having contacts with lots of businesses and professionals. They will appreciate it as much as you do. You can offer them something in return just as they can you.

Eight Tasks To Outsource When Running A Small Business

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All entrepreneurs should know how valuable time is. When you waste it, you put a strain on the entire business. Anyone starting a new venture understandably wants to be active in every aspect of the company. However, trying to do everything yourself, especially when you’re not qualified, is risky. Even if you avoid making mistakes, success will take longer and cost more to achieve. Because of this, every business should outsource. Not only is this cheaper, but it causes less hassle. With that in mind, here are eight tasks to outsource in small business.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Entrepreneurship | Eight Tasks To Outsource When Running A Small Business

1. Employee Training

Outsourcing in business doesn’t have to mean giving up employees entirely. Certain tasks are much better performed in-house. However, if you insist on having employees, you must provide the proper training. Having inexperienced workers in your business can cause many problems. Untrained staff members are dangerous, but wasteful too. Thankfully, you can outsource the training of your team to an expert, which avoids any problems and ensures the task is done well.

2. Market Research

Before making any changes in business, you must conduct market research. After all, you don’t want the changes that you make to put current or potential customers off. Marketing research is also essential in learning about competitors and customers. While market research seems relatively simple, many businesses make mistakes that lead to incorrect results. Outsourcing to an expert is recommended because third-party companies can provide entirely objective data.

3. Receptionist Duties

Most people start a business to make a difference. Unfortunately, that will be difficult to do when you’re chained to a phone all day. The good news is, you can outsource many receptionist duties, including answering phone calls. Many answering services, like the Ivy answering service, offer value for money by providing you with experienced and professional virtual receptionists. What’s more, you aren’t stuck in a contract, so you can change the service to suit your needs.

4. Website Design

A website is a powerful digital marketing tool for any small business. Even if you don’t intend to sell online, you should still have a company website to connect with customers and raise brand awareness. Unless you have web design experts in-house, you must bring in professional help. The only problem worse than having no website is having an unprofessional one. Rather than choosing the first design company you find, therefore, you must research to find the best one.

5. Content Creation

No website in today’s market is complete without a blog. Most company websites use blogs to educate customers and clients about what the business does. Blog content can also optimize websites for search engines and attract more customers. The trouble is, producing and publishing content that converts will take time. For this reason, many companies outsource the task to freelancers. Although this isn’t free, the rewards of doing so far outweigh any expenses.

6. Inventory Management

All businesses typically begin with a small and manageable inventory. With so few units to keep track of, you can manage your stock on a simple spreadsheet. However, with any luck, your marketing campaigns will pay off. When that happens, the orders will multiply, which will make inventory management much harder. Rather than risk losing stock, you must minimize shrinkage by outsourcing this task. Doing so will reduce operating and staffing expenses, among others.

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7. Customer Support

Unless you’re sure you have enough time to handle customer support, you shouldn’t be doing it. Customer service is perhaps the most important aspect of business. After all, without loyal customers, your company wouldn’t stay afloat. Outsourcing customer support will ensure that you have access to any resources necessary to provide excellent service. Unlike in-house customer service, you will also have the capacity to expand quickly and support efficient growth.

8. Tax Planning

Money keeps the business world alive. While there are many reasons why a business might fail, all those reasons typically boil down to lack of capital. Because of this, you must take care with accounting tasks, like tax planning. Even a small mistake can cause huge problems for your business. Entrepreneurs can save money and hours every week by using an outsourced bookkeeper. What’s more, you will have peace of mind that your finances are in trained hands.

When done the right way, outsourcing in business will save money, time, and plenty of hassle. Rather than taking on every area of business yourself, you should hand over certain tasks to the experts. Hopefully, with the advice above, you have an idea of which tasks to start with.