I finally started the task of increasing my online ranking in my local area which happens to be Edison, New Jersey. Let me tell you, it took me a year and a half to realize that traffic was just not going to come. What I had to overcome was procrastination and pure laziness. I already had all the tools and knowledge to improve my ranking but to be honest it takes dedication and time. Sometimes I am truly lacking in these areas. Enough of my pity story.

Before I get into it, I went from having no rank on Yahoo, MSN and Google to a number 2 and 3 rank on Yahoo and Google as well as for MSN. My search phrase is Computer Services in Edison, NJ. My company IT servants currently offers computer support and Services in the Edison, NJ area so it works perfectly.

These are the steps that I took, first I did some research on my local competitors who were ranking in the 1 and 2 spots on the search engines. I saw what they were doing and tried to figure out what made them successful. Then I did my own keyword analysis. I checked out sites like WordTracker and the Google keyword tool as well as Google Trends. This gave me an idea of what my local target audience was putting into the search engines to find my services.

I then made an effort to optimize my site for local search engine rankings. I added geographic centric titles on my pages to reflect my location. I am in the process of adding my business location to all of my web pages. After this I added my site to a bunch of local directories and major search engines. I am in the process of following up to make sure that my submissions were accepted. In a later post I will add some of the sites that I went to. I also have on my agenda to find some local directories that are worth submitting my site to.

The moral of this short story is to just start. You have to start. The first step is always the hardest. Once you start and see the results in a matter of days NOT weeks, you will be a new player in the game.

More posts to come as I develop my Local SEO status.

Are you looking for innovative ways to increase your ROI, your bottom line and downright save a ton of money on your IT costs? Let me answer that for you! Of course you are, you would not be a savvy business owner if you did not seek out ways to stretch your money. Drum roll please, introducing Open Source technology a new way for small businesses to even the playing field with their enterprise and big boy competitors.

Why is this important? You now have access to the same or comparable solutions that normally costs hundreds if not thousands to implement and deploy. Case in point, the Open Source version of SugarCRM, which is a Customer Relationship Management tool can be had for free while one of its proprietary and commercial competitors Salesforce.com cost about $1,000 to start per year for a five user license. Another quick example has Ubuntu, which is a full-featured Linux based operating system against Microsoft XP. XP Professional edition costs $299.99, while Ubuntu costs nothing and comes freely loaded with Office utilities that rival Microsoft’s Office software suite. You do the math. Remember to include per user and or per pc price and upgrades. Yeah, I know, you have been suckered for a long time and we didn’t even mention the server operating system and licenses. Ask yourself, why am I paying for something when I can get it done for little or no cost?

Using Open Source is like using “guerrilla tactics” for your small business IT needs. Does free mean cheap? Let’s take a look. Open Source software affords the user to have software developed by hundreds of developers instead of just a few. Most of the Open Source solutions mentioned here are tried and tested solutions. Did you know that you already use Open Source? Yep, in fact if you use a web browser or use email your using opens source software. The Internet is built upon open standards and runs on Open Source software. Who currently uses Open Source software? IBM, HP, Oracle, whole governments, Google, Yahoo and Amazon just to name a few.

So you might be asking yourself, what exactly is Open Source? Open Source software in its simplest form is software that freely distributes the source code along with the object code (the actual program that you install and use), so that any programmer familiar with the language can tweak, improve, modify or customize it without needing to ask anyone for permission or wait for a vendor to do it for them. For a more verbose definition, please visit www.opensource.org. The bottom line is, this model of software distribution can give you a freedom and a savings that compels you to at least become a bit more knowledgeable to its uses.

These are some useful links to help get you started on the Open Source road.

www.opensourceweekly.com (for the latest is Open Source technology for small business owners)

www.sourceforge.net (the world’s largest Open Source software development web site)

www.freshmeat.org (Open Source software repository site)

www.theopencd.org (a collection of high quality Free and Open Source Software.)

www.ttcsweb.org/osswin-cd/ (a collection of over 100 free/Open Source software for home and business.)

www.itservants.com (Open Source Technology Consultants)

Top Open Source Applications for your small business needs.

www.openoffice.org (Great alternate to the Microsoft office suite.)

www.firefox.com (Open Source web browser, great alternative to Internet Explorer)

www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird (Thunderbird email application, similar to Outlook)

www.tightvnc.com (for remote connection to your computers)

www.mysql.com (The worlds most popular Open Source database)

www.phpmyadmin.com (database management tool)

http://filezilla.sourceforge.net (Filezilla- ftp application to upload and download your web content)

www.joomla.org (Website Content Management System or CMS)

www.mamboserver.com (Website Content Management System or CMS)

www.apache.org (Very popular Web server application)

www.oscommerce.com (online shop/ e-commerce solution)

www.sugarcrm.com (the CRM tool mentioned in this article)

www.dotproject.net (project management web application)

www.gimp.org (Image manipulation program)

www.nvu.com (complete Web Authoring System)

www.gnucash.org (personal and small-business financial-accounting software.)

www.subversion.tigris.org (Subversion- Document management and revision control system)

www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php (WebCalendar- Online calendar program for single or multiple users)

www.openvpn.net (full-featured SSL VPN solution)

Desktop Linux Distributions

www.ubuntu.com Ubuntu
www.redhat.com Redhat
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki Fedora
www.novell.com/linux Suse
http://en.opensuse.org OpenSuse
www.slackware.com Slackware

You can also get the server versions to take care of your business client/server needs such as Email, file, print, FTP, Web, Database, Domain, Authentication etc., There are many distributions of Linux available please check www.distrowatch.com for additional resources.

This list is not at all exhausting and not meant to be. This should serve as a starting place on your journey into the Open Source realm. For general questions feel free to comment on this post, if you have specific questions about any software listed here try posting to the respective forums. A good book to read is Open Source Solutions for Small Business Problems, written by John Locke. My definition of Open Source was found in this book.

What have we learned? Before you plunder hundreds of your hard earned or borrowed money into software seek out or find someone who is versed in this technology. Research and evaluate if an Open Source solution can fit your needs. Remember, Open Source Saves!