Without a doubt, a blog is a great adjunct to a business website for the SEO benefits. The more posts you have up there, the more likely you are to be found after all. But blogging can also be used in a very targeted fashion to market your products and services. Of course, any kind of  business can do this but it's particularly good if you're in B2B. Here's a way to do it on Facebook.


As we all know, a big chunk of the world's population are on FB. And there are also countless businesses on it. So, what you do is find lots of businesses in the niche that you're aiming to target. Like those pages as your page, and interact with them a bit. As well as commenting on and liking their posts, it's also worth sharing some of them to your followers. The page owners – many of whom are also the business owners – will definitely notice this and get to know you a bit. That's worthwhile in itself.

After a while you'll have a list of pages like this in a specific niche. Then write a blog post that is specifically related to it and useful. Say you have an employment agency for the hospitality industry. You could do a blog post about what makes a really good barista.

So, the post is useful, targeted, and interesting. It shows your expertise in your field. But it's not overtly promotional. Then you can post it on their page. You're not spamming. You're helping them. Given that the page owners already know you, you'll get a decent proportion of them clicking on your post. Some of them will look through the rest of your website too.

Occasionally they will share it to their own networks, which can result in a torrent of hits. But even if they don't you'll still get some views from the pages followers.

This is a bonus but the main benefit is to be seen by the page owner. Some of them may become clients. But even if they don't they still know you and respect your authority in your field. That's valuable for obvious reasons.

Linkedin is awesome for anyone who wants to lift their profile, build authority and make valuable connections with others like them. And a great way to do this is by using the groups on the platform.

Now, in the digital age, distance is not the barrier it used to be, but building a localized network of connections has many advantages. With this in mind, I've collated a list of some of the bigger, seemingly more active Perth-focused groups for you to check out.


I found these mainly through searching the keywords "Perth" and "Western Australia". And there were many other groups listed, often very specific in their professional focus.

A Networking Perth WA (Western Australia) Networking Perth Business & Perth Business Executives
Perth Entrepreneurs Club
Perth Small Business Networking Group
Perth Young Professionals (Perth YP)
Networking in Perth
Perth West Australian Achievers
Perth Finance Professionals, Perth Lawyers, Perth Accountants, Perth Professionals Western Australia
Perth Business Networking Group (Western Australia)
Perth Business Forum
Perth Business Network - Perth, Western Australia, Perth Executive Network
Business Networking Perth
Digital Media in Western Australia

Without a doubt, social media usage has become an integral part of many people's lives. And more and more local businesses are getting into it in a big way. You see this when logged into those social networks, of course. You also see it offline, with lots of them exhorting their customers and passers by to like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter, etc.

Promotional hashtags are becoming more visible offline as well. And every now and then you'l see one that isn't trying to sell something, which shows just how pervasive they're becoming. 

I saw an example of this recently in Fremantle. It was a play on the meaning of the #JeSuisCharlie hashtag that took off in the wake of those terrible murders in France. 

Not quite sure what the creator was trying to say with this artwork. It's certainly open to interpretation. But he or she was certainly being a bit subversive.

Hashtags are often "hijacked" and made to mean something different to their original meaning online. And as this example shows, it can happen offline too. 

If you want to check it out yourself it's on the western side of the Wool Store building in Fremantle, not far from the train station. 

If you are in Perth and have a small business then you might be interested in this upcoming event. I was contacted by Jim Barker at One Green Bean who gave me these details about it: 

Google will give tips and tricks to locals on how to grow their business online.

Subiaco has been selected as one of five locations nationally for the roadshow. As part of the tour, Google has joined forces with the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) to help support the growth of Australian small & medium businesses (SMBs).

The event is taking place Thursday 6 August, 8.00 am - 10.00 am, and will be hosted by John Ball, Head of Small Business at Google Australia. Federal Member for Stirling Michael Keenan MP will open the event.

You can sign up to the event using this link: https://goo.gl/J8rOCR

I'll try and get along myself. And I hope that any other local readers who stand to benefit click on that link and register. 

I'm sure it will be time well spent. As we all know Google is the master of the online world so you can be sure that all information and advice offered on the day will be sound and useful. 

It's interesting how revolutions in technology can be both hugely beneficial, and destructive, depending on your situation. Take photography. Not so long ago we were still using film. Then everything went digital, with catastrophic results for some companies, including Kodak.

While film is gone, digital photography is booming. Using my Facebook page to connect with other local pages, I've been amazed at just how many professional photographers there are in Perth. If you can take a nice shot, there are certainly plenty of ways to make money.

And with everyone using social media -- many of them for business and professional promotion -- a good headshot is more vital than ever.

If you run a photography business yourself then I'd imagine this would be a great niche market to focus on if you don't already. Of course social networks themselves would be an excellent way to find new clients.

But don't forget offline. You could also do local flyer drops in business and industrial areas, with promotional material focusing on the need for quality Linkedin profile shots etc. I suspect you'd have good results if you did this, since I doubt few others in this field would be promoting themselves in such a specific, targeted way.

It never ceases to amaze me how brilliant all this online technology is. Of course it can be a bit daunting at times. But ultimately it just frees you up in so many ways. (Sure, that's not exactly an original point. But it is worth remembering because we really do take so much for granted these days.)

If you want to market or promote something these days then you're crazy not to do most, or at least much of it, online. Even if your project is geographically targeted (eg, a bricks and mortar business) then a web presence is vital. That's because you can still get on the radar of a targeted audience even if you're not physically in that area. 

This advantage has become very clear to me recently. That's because I have decided to move to Sydney. I may return eventually, but I will certainly be there for several years.

After I'd made this decision part of me felt I'd wasted lot time building up the traffic to this site; that it would be wasted. But I quickly realized that wasn't the case at all. While I'm in Sydney I won't be able to do flyers for people here, of course! But there are other things I can keep offering online from there. While I won't be able to teach Perth people face to face any more, for instance, I can use Skype.

And just as I can still make money from this site when I'm in Sydney, I can also build a site like this but tailored to that city while I'm still here in Perth (I won't be going for several weeks). 

Soon after it's online it won't be getting much search engine traffic of course. That will take ages to build up. But I will be planting the seeds in that regard. It will be up and running when I get there. Though I might not hit the ground running I'll be walking, that's for sure. 

So, you can add these benefits to the already long list that online marketing affords. It doesn't matter what your project is or where you are situated. You can still be moving forward with it. 

One big trend in SEO lately has been the increasing sophistication and subtlety of search engines, especially Google. No longer just super-fast computers using a few technical signals to rank pages, they are now taking in and weighing up a huge range of factors. Many of these are real human signals such as reviews, user behaviour on the site, and social media activity.

So these days whenever you type a query into Google, you're not just getting a very good idea of what's there online. You can discern patterns and trends about the real world beyond it as well.

One example relates to the booming food scene here in Perth. Much has been written about this in recent years. This city is now so full of top quality restaurants and cafes that it rivals Melbourne as a foodie hub. And many of those foodies write blogs about their gastronomic adventures.

This is reflected in search engine results. Obviously, if you type in a related search query like "Perth cafe reviews" you'll get a lot of posts by local food bloggers appearing. But you'll also see an inordinate amount of food blogs popping up in results that aren't specifically related to that subject.

Try the search term "Perth blog" for example. That's a more general term. And you would expect to see results dominated more by blogs about lifestyle, events, politics, activities, news, destinations, etc. While some of those do appear the majority of results are from local food blogs.

Try the search yourself and scroll through several pages. The trend is really noticeable.

Clearly, there are more food bloggers in this city than any other kind. And they are extremely prolific as well as popular.

User intent is also a big factor now in SEO. With such an enormous amount of data at its disposal, Google can suss out what most searchers are looking for to a significant degree even if the keywords used are not very specific. So presumably many of those who type in "Perth blog" are looking for -- or at least open to -- blogs whose main interest is food even though they haven't included that word. This could be seen as more evidence supporting the notion that this city is now gastronomically obsessed!

This isn't breaking news. But having a mobile-optimized website these days is crucial. There has been an explosion in browsing using smart phones in recent years. So if your site doesn't load snugly into those small screens people won't hang around on it for long. So Google has decided to penalize non-mobile friendly sites in search results.

The attendant algorithm change took effect on April 21st. It was a very big shift that affected a lot of sites and has come to be known as "Mobilegeddon".

If you're not sure if your site has been affected then you can check your website for issues here. This test is not totally accurate, apparently. You can get a pass but still have some issues that cause ranking drops. But it's still worth using in my opinion.

All of my sites are with Weebly, Blogger and Yola, which have all been ahead of the curve with this. The templates I've been using are all mobile friendly so I was hardly affected at all. There was one site that had issues, though. I found out via the dreaded Google Webmaster Tools message. Lucky for me it was totally due to the tag cloud that I had on the site. Pretty much every page was cluttered with tags.

So what I did was just limited the tags to ten, and the mobile issues disappeared. Was interesting to see the graph in Webmaster Tools. After I made the adjustment the line just sloped down from hundred percent of pages with mobile issues to zero over several days. The search engine spider's visits were collating that data, but not all in one hit.

I was lucky. But a lot of people who've had their sites custom-made were hit hard. Don't envy them, that's for sure. 

As far as I'm concerned this has been yet more confirmation that going the DIY website route has advantages. Even if you don't master the art of website building from scratch, you certainly can't help but learn quite a bit. You can then end up solving some issues yourself. If you had no knowledge at all, and no sense of ownership over the process, you can end up forking out a lot of money to have such things fixed by others.  

By now it's pretty obvious that if you are in business and don't have an active social media presence then you're missing out on a lot of opportunities. While here in Australia we haven't embraced this whole new paradigm to the extent that they have in the US, for example, the uptake has still been huge.

What usually happens is that an established local or online business or organization creates Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and the like. Sooner or later they realize the immense benefits that these can bestow and so put more time and energy into their presence on these networks. Eventually they have teeming accounts that reach thousands of new prospects. They then become local social media standouts. Examples of this approach include Perth Zoo, Fremantle's Esplanade Hotel and Chalkys Espresso Bar.

But so powerful and pervasive is social media that you can actually do it the other way around as well. One example of this is the dominant city-centric Twitter account Tweet Perth, managed by Adam Barrell. This has long had a huge amount of influence. I know this from personal experience. A couple of years ago now he retweeted a blog post from my local blog about this city. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I'd received about hundred clicks in an hour as a result. No wonder so many local businesses hope for this kind of attention!

Barrell has used that powerful online presence as a springboard to create a whole new local content platform. I suspect there are other, bigger projects in the pipeline too.

Lost Perth is another case in point. This started out as a Facebook page that encouraged people to share their local reminiscences. It quickly took on a life of its own and became hugely active and popular. It even inspired a couple of TV documentaries. A website resulted that sells merchandise such as t-shirts and a book inspired by the page. Not sure how much money the whole project has made its creators, but I suspect it's a tidy amount by now. 

So, if you've got a social media presence that is solid and growing, there's no reason you can't make it into something profitable and full-time by branching out in bigger ways both online and off.

A few months ago I had the privilege of interviewing local photographer Bruno Kongawoin. His skill was obvious from the photos on his site and his passion for his craft came through loud and clear both in person and in his answers to my questions.

At that stage he'd already studied under some of Europe's leading photography teachers. And he's continued to hone hist craft still further under the tutelage of world renowned headshot photographer and teacher Peter Hurley. 

Hurley has given Bruno a significant endorsement by making him an official Associate of his site Headshot Crew. The New York based master clearly has an excellent reputation to uphold himself, so he's very careful about who he recommends.

So, if you're in Perth and need an impressive, professional photo that elegantly captures your personality you can't go wrong with Bruno!