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Bob Parsons

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President, Small Business Websites, LLC

363 points

Owner of Small business Websites, LLC. We offer professional website designs and eCommerce for small businesses, store owners, and professionals. We also offer SEO, website upgrades and custom services.

May 24, 2012

Bob Parsons answered this question

What is the difference between link juice and PR juice?

Link juice is the SEO benefit you get from having other sites link to yours, as it is taken into account by Google's algorithm. PR juice in principle is link juice from high PR sites. However, page rank is a dying metric. more

Search Engine Optimization

May 24, 2012

Bob Parsons answered this question

What are some good practices to prevent spammers from filling out a form on my website?

First, arrange for a hidden field to be sent to you as a part of the email message that contains the IP address of the sender. In PHP you would use:
$ip=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
Then, add this IP address info to the body of the message you ... more

Information Technology

May 9, 2012

Bob Parsons and 1 other person answered this question

What SEO software would you recommend?

The basics of SEO are easily learned- try searching on Google for "SEO Tutorials". You are using 3D cart, and you can find out from them how to edit the page titles and meta descriptions for each page.
Presently, the page titles are a little ... more

Information Technology

May 1, 2012

Bob Parsons recommends this answer by Kendra Von Achen

What are some tips to making the most of my commute into work?

listen to audiobooks

April 29, 2012

Bob Parsons and 1 other person answered this question

Which blogging service is right for your business?

Your article is well written, but it leads people into believing that just by having a blog they can increase sales. This is not true for everybody. For example, if you have a mortuary business, would having a blog increase sales? What would people blog ... more

Blogging for Business

April 28, 2012

Bob Parsons and 1 other person answered this question

What is the best search engine optimization service?

The truth is that there are so many snake-oil salespeople in this business, you may be wasting your money. Some of them will actually sell you SEM instead of SEO. Most will not bother to optimize your website at all- they will tell you about ... more

Google Analytics

Search Engine Optimization

April 28, 2012

Bob Parsons and 2 other people answered this question

What are some simple ways to increase website traffic for free?

You are asking the wrong question. The question should be about increasing website conversions, not traffic. A conversion is getting a website visitor to perform the desired action when they land on your site. This might be buying a product, filling out a contact form, ... more

Website Traffic

April 26, 2012

Bob Parsons and 5 other people answered this question

Can you recommend a Voip solution for my small business?

Jeffrey- How small is your business? In my business, I am both the CEO and the janitor, so I only need a single business line. MagicJack fills the bill perfectly with flat-rate calling anywhere in the US, and very cheap calling rates internationally. If I ... more

Information Technology

April 25, 2012

Bob Parsons and 2 other people answered this question

What ideas or things do you do make Outlook more efficient?

I disable the ribbon bar, which is distracting, adds no value, and takes up a huge amount of vertical space on my screen. more

Information Technology

Personal Productivity

Time Management

April 25, 2012

Bob Parsons and 5 other people answered this question

How do you sell the value of adding internet service to a small business when they don't see a need?

You don't. Sometimes you have to realize that the prospect isn't going to do business with you no matter how effectively you present your case, and you move on. In sales, you go where the money is, not after the tough sells.
If you succeed ... more

Internet Service

April 25, 2012

Bob Parsons answered this question

If your biz has set up a Google+ page, how does it differ from your Facebook page and main website?

If I may, let me alter your question a little bit to group Google+ and FaceBook together, so as to make the question "How should social media sites differ from your main website?"
The answer has to do with conversions. A "conversion" is the concept ... more

Social Media Marketing

April 24, 2012

Bob Parsons answered this question

What is the difference between Link Bait & Link Farm?

Link bait is something on your website you hope the visitor will find irresistible, and then go back to their website and put a link to your irresistible content. Link bait does not violate Google Webmaster Guidelines:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-linkbait-and-linkbaiting/
However, Link Farms, which are entirely different, ... more

April 23, 2012

Bob Parsons and 1 other person answered this question

How can I share my link wheel on my social network sites?

Perhaps you are not aware that Google has been cracking down on link schemes such as link wheels, and that the use of them will result in a penalty being applied to the websites that use them.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Why-Link-Wheels-Are-Bad-42150.S.98220089?qid=d... more

April 11, 2012

Bob Parsons answered this question

What is your experience with black hat SEO techniques?

Let's define what Black Hat SEO actually means. It means engaging in practices that violate Google Webmaster Guidelines. Some of these practices include buying backlinks from link farms or content farms, invisible text, building link pyramids or collections of sites to provide backlinks, using doorway ... more

April 9, 2012

Bob Parsons and 1 other person answered this question

What are some strategies to reduce web development time?

In general, I would say that the fastest web design is achieved by developing a template containing the general style of the website. Show this to the client and gain approval. Then, use the template to generate the additional pages. An infinite variety of pages ... more

Information Technology

Project Management

April 7, 2012

Bob Parsons and 10 other people answered this question

Should sales people use texting as a means to engage their buyers?

They are not your friends, they are prospects. Texting is an intrusive and possibly alienating way of communicating with people unless you know them well. Your messages may be regarded as uninvited spam, and you loose the sale never knowing why. Pretty much the same ... more

April 6, 2012

Brian Phelps selected a best answer for

What do you think of Microsoft's commercial for IE9?

IE 9 launched almost a year ago. So why is Microsoft spending money to air this commercial? Is the IE brand in trouble? Are they losing market share?
You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/user/internetexplorer?v=7u2KN_Q0sy8> more

Information Technology

April 3, 2012

Bob Parsons and 6 other people answered this question

What are some of the basic SEO techniques that any company can use in house for their websites?

Educate yourself using reputable sources of information which you can find on-line. Let me suggest http://searchengineland.com/ which has a wealth of information on SEO. And never make SEO mistakes like hiring any company that promises to put you on page 1 of Google, or participate ... more

Search Engine Optimization

April 2, 2012

Bob Parsons answered this question

What are the costs associated with building an online store or site?

In general, the costs include the following:
Domain Name Registration, Web Hosting, an SSL Certificate for your domain, a Shopping Cart, a Gateway Fee (such as authorize.net), a Bank Merchant account. There are some e-commerce providers that bundle this all into a single fee and ... more

Social Business

Web Development

April 1, 2012

Bob Parsons and 28 other people answered this question

Can an SEO specialist ever 'guarantee' page 1 rank on Google?

@Rob- Great answer. Nobody should try and "guarantee" anything they are not in control of. A carpenter can "guarantee" his or her work, because they are fully in control of it. But SEO hucksters are not in a position to guarantee anything because they are ... more

March 28, 2012

Bob Parsons and 9 other people answered this question

Can SEO lower my conversion rate?

This is an old question, but I thought I would post something to consider. Websites can be OVER-optimized for SEO, to the point that body text is so saturated with keywords and keyword phrases that it becomes silly to read. Likewise for heading level tags. ... more

Conversion Rate

Search Engine Optimization

Search Marketing

March 28, 2012

Bob Parsons and 1 other person answered this question

Which financial accounting system do you like the most?

In large part the answer to your question depends on the scale of the business. As a small business owner, I am very satisfied with Intuit QuickBooks. Others may like PeachTree. Large businesses often develop their own systems. more

Information Technology

Accounting Software

Accounting System

March 28, 2012

Bob Parsons answered this question

What is the benefit of having an administrator on a website?

A better term to use would be "Webmaster", who is a person with a deep (not superficial) knowledge of web technologies such as HTML, PHP, JavaScript, databases and much more.
A webmaster is a person who can transform your company's ineffective, amateurish-looking website into one ... more

Information Technology

March 22, 2012

Bob Parsons answered this question

What are the benefits of digitizing your important records?

Ease of access- an astonishing amount of information can fit on a 2.5T hard drive. Searchability- once digitized, records can be searched very quickly. Durability- digitial records are not subject to deterioration due to weather, humidity, mildew, etc.
That said- some types of digital media ... more

Information Technology

March 22, 2012

Bob Parsons and 4 other people answered this question

Why is Windows often perceived to be more vulnerable than Linux of Mac OS?

One reason is that Windows is a bigger target than the other operating systems. So more malware authors target it and research its weaknesses because it is more profitable to them. Another reason is that Microsoft tends to write "sunny day" code- it works fine ... more

Information Technology

March 20, 2012

Bob Parsons and 1 other person answered this question

Is requiring a customer to create an account on your website a significant drawback to sales?

Absolutely! It's like putting a brick wall up to block a sale. Give the customer a choice and explain the possible benefits of creating an account. If they do not want an account, don't force them into creating one.
When I do on-line shopping, I ... more

Information Technology

Conversion Rate

Following 8 Topics

Conversion Rate

Information Technology

Search Engine Optimization

Search Marketing

Following 0 People

Followed by 21 People

Knowledgeable in 68 Topics

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#79 of 2263

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#6 of 144

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Digital Marketing

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General Management

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Social Media Stategy

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