As a current or future small business owner, making your mark on the web is imperative to your business's success and longevity...but where do you begin?I recently had the opportunity to present to the University of Georgia's Small Business Development Center on this very topic, "how and where to begin making your mark on the web as a small business owner". The presentation slideshow is available, and I've included key talking points below. Protect Your Brand Regardless of the size of your business, defining who you are as a brand sets the stage for everything you do including your web presence....

Not so long ago, you could look at your Google Analytics account and easily see the search phrases being used to find your site. Don't confuse these with keywords, which everyone says are dead...even Google (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html). Metadata keywords in and of themselves are not really of much value, but using them in your content...well, that is the real "Google juice". Google calls these search phrases "queries", but about two years ago, the most critical ones vanished from Analytics, showing "unavailable". If you were using AdWords, you could see them, so it looked like a heavy-handed approach to marketing Google AdWords. It was really more like a repositioning to Google Webmasters Tools.