Google in Iowa – Helping Businesses Get Online
Filed under: Google, Local Online Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Ranking, seo, Web Hosting, Web Sites
This content has been re-posted from WirthMarketing.com. If you work with local businesses you may be interested to know that Google has been rolling out this service on a per-state basis rather quickly. They currently have multiple domain names registered for the separate states. The information here holds true for most programs.
You may have heard today on the news that Governor Branstad says the state of Iowa will partner with Google to help companies develop an online presence. Google has recently begun to roll out this service to various businesses across multiple states including most recently in Texas.
The program is called Google’s “America Get Your Business Online” program and it is rolling out on a per-state basis right now. For example, we’ve recently seen “Texas Get Your Business Online” and we can assume that the name of this new program will be “Iowa Get Your Business Online”.
This program is meant to help local business owners get a website presence, get them listed in Google Places and get them advertising with Google’s AdWords program and Google is partnering with Intuit in the process.
Currently, Google is rolling out informational meetings in Des Moines, Council Bluffs, Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Pella and doesn’t have all of the information yet listed online for the Iowa segment of this service, but we can be relatively certain that the same pieces of information will be given to Iowans that has been given to other states who have already been a part of this Google product.
The reason Google is offering this and partnering with Intuit is because according to their statistics, 59% of Iowa businesses do not have an online presence; in other words, a website for their customers to visit while 97% of consumers look online for local products and services.
That being said, here’s what Iowan’s can expect from the “Iowa Get Your Business Online” program.
- A free, easy-to-build professional website.
- Free customized domain name and hosting for one year.
- A free local business listing on Google Places.
- Free tools, resources, and local events.
All right, so now you know what Google is offering, let’s look at the details:
About Websites and Hosting with the “Iowa Get Your Business Online” Program
With this program, Google is partnering with Intuit and as such, there are some rules that we can assume Iowa will need to abide by (if this program follows the same protocol as other states) in order to participate. Based on the Terms and Conditions for the program, here is what we know:
- This service is only available to businesses not individuals or consumers.
- You understand that this is only for small businesses and you get one domain name and one website.
- It’s only available to new customers to this particular service.
- You agree that the information you share with Google will also be shared with Intuit.
- That said, Intuit’s terms run a couple of pages long which you can view here but I have pointed an interesting piece of information from these terms that you can read a little further down the page.
Now this can get just a little confusing because within previous frequently asked questions for other states it says:
“I have several small businesses. Can I get a website for each of my businesses?” Yes, eligible small business owners can get a free website, domain name, and hosting for one year for each of their small businesses.
But the terms and conditions for the program state:
You understand and agree that this offer of the Services is only available on the basis of one website and one domain per small business.
Based on this information, we can only assume that this will be based on a review of the businesses and Google and Intuit will determine how to divvy these domains and websites out.
What if you have a domain name already? If you already have a domain name then you can move it to Intuit if you wish. However, if you already have a website up and running you cannot move the contents of that site to Intuit and use this free hosting. You have to start from scratch which may or may not be a good thing for your website depending upon how long you’ve had your current site and how well it’s doing in the search engines.
If you’d like a shopping cart on your site, they offer this as well but you’ll need to upgrade and pay the additional fee for this service.
Probably one of the biggest catches is that the website you receive is only 3 pages. If you want more pages than that you can upgrade to the Business Lite Intuit account for $7.99 / month and if you want the shopping cart as well, that starts at $19.99 / month.
Keep in mind that these are the prices listed at the time this was written and they may have changed in the meantime.
With this Google program, you do get the first year of the three page website, hosting and a domain name for free and after that time you can then choose to keep it for a cost of $4.99 / month for the hosting and $2.00 / month for the domain name.
That being said, domain names usually cost about $11-$15 / YEAR depending upon where you get your domain name from. Intuit is charging you $2.00 a month or $24.00 a year.
As far as web hosting goes, there are also other places online like HostGator which give you web hosting for around $9.00 / month (far, far less if you pay for a year in advance) and which doesn’t limit you on the number of web pages you can have. However, this also means that you’d need to design your own site or have someone do it for you (at HostGator you can choose from a wide variety of templates or even install a WordPress blog on your site for free with a few clicks of your mouse).
By the way, if you decide to get hosting at Hostgator, use the coupon code of kristinewirth at checkout and you’ll get 25% off!
In addition to Hostgator, there are places like Webs.com or Weebly.com which, like Intuit, also offer a way for you to build your website from a template, and all of which are also very affordably priced.
It really comes down to whether or not you want to save yourself $83.88 (which is the first free year using this program) and you’re happy to have a 3-page website.
About Google Places
With this program, Google is offering you a free listing in Google Places. Now, this is something that you can do for yourself today for free already so it is uncertain as to whether or not they’ll create the Google Place page for you. In other states’ documentation of this same program, the information contained on Google Places as far as what they’re offering to do is a little vague.
About Google AdWords
Google AdWords is a program that let’s companies advertise on Google websites. You may have seen many of these advertisements yourself when doing a search in Google. They are the ads that run alongside the right of the page and sometimes at the top of the page. With this program, Google is offering local businesses a $75 advertising credit to market their business online.
Now, the way it works with other coupons is that you cannot use an advertising credit if you’ve already opened up a Google AdWords account in the past. It is uncertain if they’re waiving this fee for this program but it’s definitely something to keep in mind.
Intuit Terms and Conditions
While the terms and conditions for Intuit run a couple of pages long, there was at least one thing that stuck out to me. Namely:
Item #4. Trial Period. If you registered for a trial use of the Services (“Trial Period”), you must decide to purchase the Services within the Trial Period in order to retain any Content (defined in Section 6) that you have posted or uploaded during the Trial Period. If you do not purchase the Services by the end of the Trial Period, your Content will no longer be available to you. To be very clear, after using the Services during the trial period, if you decide not to purchase the full version of the Services, you will not be able to access or retrieve any of the data you added/created during the trial.
Essentially I read this as in the event you don’t follow through and eventually purchase the services, you lose everything that you have created over the past year; including content that you’ve written.
It is my suggestion to take a look at all of your options first before deciding to jump in on this deal.
Kristine Wirth of WirthMarketing.com and KristineWirth.com in Altoona, IA has been working with online marketing and search engine optimization for over 11 years. She provides consulting services and courses that help small business owners find a presence online quickly and easily.
Click here to contact Kristine.
Yahoo’s Site Explorer Going Away … Soon
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Local Online Marketing, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Ranking, seo
Back in July of 2011, Yahoo! announced that they’re going to be shutting down their popular Site Explorer tool used in the past by many website owners to help determine the link popularity of their competitors.
This is largely due to transitioning to the Microsoft search platform.
Once the transition is complete for all markets (it currently is complete for the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Mexico), they’ll shut down the Site Explorer Tool.
The Site Explorer API has fed many websites data for years so it will be interesting to see how it pans out for many of them. That said however, there are multiple “independent” sites out there (independent meaning not search-engine related), that will get this same kind of information for you and Majestic SEO is one of those companies.
Majestic SEO has their own “Majestic Site Explorer” something that they’ve worked on for years and now that Site Explorer is heading into the technology graveyard, you can bet that many people will be transitioning themselves to the Majestic tool.
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What in the World is a QR Code and How Do I Use It?
Filed under: Google, Marketing, Marketing Strategies
Companies everywhere are starting to use QR codes which gained in popularity through Google’s Place Pages for local businesses. They’ve now moved into the mainstream and although not all companies are currently using them, a lot of them are starting to but you might not be exactly sure as to what their purpose is or even how to use them.
You might have seen them (I recently was at a car race where a company had a very large banner out in front of their store with their QR Code printed on it and boy did I get some strange looks when I walked up and scanned it.) Probably because there’s not a whole lot of companies currently using them or people unsure of what it is in the first place; but it is my belief that QR Codes will only continue to grow with time.
So what is a QR Code anyway? Well, one way you can think of of it is like a bar code you’d see on some product packaging but for a website instead. Now, that said, some companies refer to these as barcodes so it can get a little confusing. Let’s try and sort this all out.
First off, a QR Code looks like this: 
And using some special software (see below), you take a picture of the code and the code will do one of a variety of things such as:
- Taking you to a website
- Displaying some text
- SMS (text messaging)
- Email messaging
- Taking you to a Google maps location
- Taking you to a PayPal Buy Now Link
- Taking you to a Facebook page…
- …or even taking you to a YouTube Video.
The thing about these is that you need a special QR Code reader for your smart phone or essentially any kind of phone that has a camera, internet access and a way to decode the code 
. So if you have an iPhone, an Android, or a Blackberry, it’s relatively easy and all you’ll need to do is download a special kind of application to read these codes.
If you have one of these phones, here are some places that have QR Code Readers you can download and install:
- OptiScan for the iPhone
- BarCode Scanner for the Android
- i-Nigma – for most smart phones
- Google Zxing – for most smart phones
- Blackberry Messenger – usually standard with most Blackberry’s
So what if you don’t have a smart phone? Well, there’s actually a way to do this using the built-in camera from your computer and again, using a special application. Here are some places where you can download applications to read these codes from your computer:
- Bar Capture
- Mobile Bar Coder – this is a Firefox plugin that you can use to read these codes.
- QR Code Tag – and Google has one as well for their Chrome browser.
So once you have these applications installed either on your smart phone or on your computer, how do you use them?
Well, the process is pretty much the same. You first have to take a picture of the QR Code itself using whichever software you chose and from there, the code will take you to it’s designated place.
The actual steps you take will vary depending upon the software that you are using and where you are using it from. But all in all, it’s pretty easy to do.
