Small Business Seo | Business Marketing SEO

Surefire Tips for Selecting a Gas Station and Convenience Store Combination.

August 3rd, 2009 by Bruce

: Image by cobalt123 via Flickr

Several decades ago, a gas station was a gas station, and a convenience store was a convenience store. If someone had predicted back then that these two very different businesses would join in holy matrimony and become a fixture on America’s highways and byways, I wouldn’t have believed them.

But when you stop to think about it, it’s a marriage that makes a lot of sense. When people pull in for fuel, why not provide them with the opportunity to spend even more cash on the items that they may also want – coffee, soft drinks, snacks, and other low cost items? Maybe even a pair of sunglasses to cut the glare of the road?

So, why not jump at purchasing a convenience store when you purchase a gas station?

Well, perhaps… But before you choose what you’re going to do, you should answer these two fundamental questions:

• Question #1. If a convenience store is already part of the gas station business, is it profitable? If it’s not currently profitable, can you make it financially worth your while?

• Question #2. If a convenience store isn’t already part of the business you’re considering, does it make sense for you to add one? Bear in mind that you need not hurry to add one, if none is present. You can add one later, when it makes financial sense.

Estimating Potential Costs and Profits.

Whether or not a convenience store is currently part of the business you’re thinking about buying, here is a checklist of expenses that can assist you with evaluating the additional costs. Compare these expenses to the profits (or potential profits) and you will be able to roughly estimate a convenience store’s possible profit potential. Never accept the Seller’s figures regarding these expenses. You’ll have to look everywhere you can to produce cost estimates that you can personally verify.

Insurance – If there is already a convenience store, how much does insurance cost? Keep in mind, the level of insurance that’s already in place may not be sufficient. Speak with an insurance broker to determine what kind of coverage you really need along with the overall cost. You’ll rapidly realize that if a convenience store is part of the deal, you’re going to need quite a bit of extra coverage for liability, workers compensation for employees, and more…

Payroll – You’ll have to hire and pay employees to staff your convenience store. You may also have to pay out for benefits. Ask the Seller of the business about who staffs the store. If he or she is using underpaid relatives to staff it, it can be difficult to arrive at an accurate picture of what your payroll will be once you are the owner.

Utilities – Convenience stores need to be well lit. They also need to be heated in winter and cooled in summer. Those costs can really add up.

Retail Payment Systems – These include accounts to process credit cards, cash registers and more. If up-to-date systems aren’t in place, you will need to upgrade all of them.

Lottery Terminals – Many shoppers buy lottery tickets when they buy gasoline. Adding a lottery terminal might seem like a great way to generate income, but before you start counting on this extra income, check with your local state lottery authority to learn about the costs involved with owning a terminal.

Signage – To maximize profits, you’ll need high-visibility signage to show customers that a top quality convenience store is part of your business. If signs aren’t there, you’ll need to purchase them and put them up yourself.

Paving, Snow Removal, Landscaping and Other Associated Costs – Customers need to be able to park in convenient locations and walk safely to your store. Those points make it quite a bit more expensive to run a gas station and convenience store combination than it otherwise would be to run a gas station by itself.

Questions to Ask the Seller If a Convenience Store Is Already Part of the Business You’re Buying:

• What is your current inventory and what is it worth? (Remember not to count perishable items such as dairy products or returnable products such as magazines.)

• How much profit have you been generating from convenience store sales?

• Please provide an approximate breakdown of your revenues between gas sales and retail, and a further breakdown of the retail sales.

• Is your convenience store a franchise that is separate from your fuel operations?

• Do you operate the convenience store as well as the gasoline station part of your operation – or is the business split? If the operations are divided, how is that structured?

• Do you have automated inventory tracking and control systems in place?

• What products are you selling in your convenience store, and how much volume/profit is tied to each of them?

• Who are your suppliers for tobacco, beverages, coffee and all of the other retail offerings?

• Do you sell lottery tickets? What are the costs and profits?

• What hours are you open? Which hours of operation are the most – and least, profitable?

So, should a convenience store be part of the deal when you decide to purchase a gas station? Should you think about adding one, if none is already there? To find out what’s best for you, you should get a good pen and go through the checklist above. You should ensure you’re buying a station that’s profitable not only at the moment, but for many years to come.

Richard Parker is the President and founder of the Diomo Corporation – The Business Buyer Resource Center. His inspiring materials, seminars and consulting have assisted thousands of business buyers with achieving their life long dream of buying a business.

Buying A Business, Convenience Store Business, Filling Station Business, Gas Station Marketing, Local SEO, marketing locally, Selling A Business, seo for small business, Small Business Seo

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Affordable Small Business SEO – DIY Search Engine Optimization

July 25th, 2009 by admin

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Strategies for Affordable Small Business SEO – The SEO DIY Checklist

When it comes to affordable as SEO, it doesn’t get any cheaper than if you’re willing to do it yourself, or for free. There is a definite benefit in hiring a professional, most people are experts in one field, they are very proficient in their professions and don’t have the time or are willing to learn a completely new business as complex as on line advertising and search engine optimization. If you do have the time, and are willing to retain quite a bit of information and have the ability to use it to the best of your advantage that may be doing your own SEO is in your best interest.

Some characteristic traits that are congruent with being a successful optimizer is the willingness to change and roll with the punches, SEO is always changing and the trends change daily so being equally creative as well as being detail oriented is going to be a huge benefit for you. Math is another huge part of on line advertising and search engine optimization, due to the fact that a lot of on line advertising is completely measurable, and you’re able to drill down what each visitor is worth to you.

In this article we are going to cover some of the basics of search engine authorization, that way you can take advantage of both an affordable small business SEO strategy. A DIY SEO, so to speak, this article will provide you with the tool belt optimize any website, this is what marketers call on-site optimization, which is about 50% of the game, another article will focus on our site authorization, but this article is going to have a strong emphasis on how to make your site easy to crawl for the search engine spiders.

Site Layout Optimization

In general shouldn’t use tables, frames or also very hard on a search engine spider. Your website layout should be simple, not complicated, and the actual content should be enclosed in the

tag, that way the search engines know where to call the actual content of your website.

As a rule of some tables and frames should not be used, this confuses the search engine spiders and will hurt your overall search engine rankings. Tables are not very flexible they are also very hard to navigate around if you’re a search engine spider or Google bot.

Everything starts with the title the title should be descriptive, and for the most part should not contain over 40% of the key terms at your current target. There should be some filler there, did you geographically specific but some cities there that you want to target for the most part you don’t want more than 25-45 words on your title. The second most important tag on your website is the H1 tag this is one of the most important tags on your content this is basically a header, similar to the beginning of a chapter title, it is very important that you have your key term should be somewhere on the H1 as well, it is common knowledge that this is the third or fourth heaviest weighing factor in on-site optimization. They don’t want to be too spamming if you’re targeting one key term you want the H1 tag to be on every other,use common sense. Search engine optimization specialists know that SEO is a mix of art and science, any common sense really doesn’t hurt either.

Your content, first and foremost, should be useful, content should not be spam-my content it’s important not to focus too much on your key terms but focus on what you think is going to get you natural links. Content is king, and with great content commerce traffic, so as they say if you build it they will come.

Meta Tags

As of late, there has been a lot of talk about the lack of importance of good meta-tag authorization. I know for a fact that meta-tags are still very important and a used part of search engine optimization, if you’re looking for truly affordable search engine optimization focus on your meta-tags. Meta-key terms, meta-descriptions and other meta data is very important for the most part a good rule of him is if you’re targeting a key term that is going to be very profitable and you know has high search volume make that the first word of your meta-keyword, and meta-description. Make sure that everything between the HTML tag and the body tag has adequate information to properly describe your business. You don’t know, the meta-description, is the text that shows up below the link on the search engine result page. So after the key term you want to focus on, maybe put your phone number on there as well, or describe your business, a short little blurb your elevator pitch for the search engines.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is very important in the future of your visibility on line. Let’s say you have a website, that is already ranking. You’ve noticed that on certain key terms some of your internal pages are ranking, and some of them are not. Some webmasters like to use the footer links, to spread the “link juice” around. That is a practice that is debatable, I’ve seen some websites that use footer links for internal linking and have not yielded good results, I think that if you’re going to link internally, tried to make it look naturally through the body of your text.

For example if your Realtor in Chicago and you have a page that ranks for Evanston real estate make sure that you add to your current rankings by linking Chicago real estate across your website to the Evanston real estate page that ranks. Sound confusing? Yeah, it kind of is, that’s why my position as a SEO consultant exists, internal linking is a complex and higher-level search engine optimization strategy. But if you’re a small business, and you’re looking for a workable search engine optimization, you should do a little diligence, a little research and find out how internal linking is going to help your rankings and your overall visibility on the web.

Site Map Creation

There has been a lot of emphasis on the XML site map submission to Google. This was important but its importance has been thrown water at as of late. Especially if your site is not completely ready to be submitted to Google you should submit the site, but it is a good general webmaster practice to have a site map available on your website. This is good for navigation, and it’s going to make it easier for your users to navigate through your website, your top-level menu only allows five or six links to your main pages, but there could be some internal pages that are accessible through your top-level menu unless you have a drop down box.

To create a site map is a very simple, to create a XML site map is even more simpler dual research you’ll find out that it’s not hard at all and it may be worth your time if you have fully developed website ready to be launched also possible that she submit your XML site map to Google. Google spider will thank you, and it’s going to make your website easier to find and could possibly get it ranked faster.

Free is the new affordable SEO

Anyone admits that there’s nothing better than free, free offers free massages, etc. etc. you can’t beat it so if you can get away with it, it is too hard for the your website breakthrough in your industry and market, then why not, DIY SEO may be the way to go. It gets a little too rough out there and you’re finding that your website isn’t ranking, give your local affordable small business SEO consultant a phone call as soon as possible.

Do your research on these SEO consultants a lot of them are snake oil salesmen don’t know what they’re doing, they’re going get the agreement from you and pass it off to some guy in India who could care less if your campaign is profitable or not, make sure you’re comfortable with your consult. For the most part there is more SEO consultants then there are experts so make sure you siphon out the bad guys and find the true talent.

Ben Joven is an affordable small business SEO consultant out of San Diego, CA. Give him a buzz w/ any questions @ 619 446 7883.

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