Amidst big brands such as Amazon, Walmart, and the list goes on, small businesses account for quite a bit of market share.

Google estimates that there are approximately 115 million small businesses in the world while the United States of Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy estimates that there are 28.8 million businesses in the US alone.

Of course, there’s much discussion to be had pertaining to what specific attributes must be realized to qualify as a small business. But I’m not writing to debate those finer points.

With both numbers on the rise annually, one has to wonder how small businesses are able to affordably differentiate themselves, especially when considering small businesses with a strict local or hyper-local presence.

How many oil change, dog grooming, nail salon and other local-centric business services do you pass daily going to and fro?

If you’re like me, then you’re likely surrounded by a growing number of small businesses, varying in name, peddling similar services in hopes that a potential customer remembers their business when the need arises.

Hoping that customers remember your business in a sea of competitive small businesses offerings is not a sound plan for existing or growing local market share.

But here’s something to ponder. Would you be interested in uniquely differentiating your business from the competition using an emoji domain?

Over the last few years, negative SEO attacks have caught more than a few companies off guard, and that number is growing daily based on the nearly 15 million search results for negative SEO (and growing).

Even a famous digital marketing agency was caught off guard and experienced a first hand negative SEO attack on their website and brand.

If you’re not familiar with negative SEO, then you might want to read up on it and establish a plan to manage against it.

In short, negative SEO attacks can get a company penalized and booted from Google rankings, and in some cases entirely de-indexed and banned.

So, how do negative SEO attacks occur?

Over the weekend I had an opportunity to catch up a few articles as it pertains to SEO.

One of the articles really isn’t an article as much as it is a tutorial video. I’m not certain it’s a tutorial video either as much as it is a knowledge share.

Nevertheless, the knowledge share is by Rand Fishkin. If you’re not familiar with Rand, his background and expertise as owner and founder of Moz.com, then you’re missing out on value-add content that’s applicable to growing your business.

Each Friday, Rand randomly chooses a topic to share and expound upon for the search marketing and business world to gain greater insight about. He shares by way of video called Whiteboard Friday.

If you don’t subscribe, then you ought to going forward. You’re missing out on a lot by not subscribing.

In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, Rand talks about one of the most imperative a decision a business makes about it’s digital presence: selecting a domain name.

Whether good, bad, or plain jane ugly results, you’ll live with the consequences of the selected domain name for your business.

Grab a drink and a snack. You have quite a bit of reading to do today… 😀

If you’ve been around this blog long enough, then you know that I have an affinity with geo-related and geo service domains.

Most people within the domain industry tend qualify geo service domains as exact match domains.

Personally, I too often define geo service domains to not be only exact match, but also partial match domains.

Dear KC Readers,

Today is the last day of March. This month marks the 3rd anniversary in the journey of KickstartCommerce.com.

The last 3 years have been amazing, to say the least. There have been ups and downs, big losses but even bigger wins.

My confidence as a writer has been boosted while my writing has grown leaps and bounds. I’m not perfect and there is still room for improvement.

This has been and will continue to be journey. I made some changes over the last 3 months that have drastically put the blog on a different course than when I first started.

I want to share with you and others in hopes that this story inspires each of you to maximize your potential towards achieving excellence and greatness in what you’re called to do in life.

We’re kicking of this year with a bang, releasing a MUST-READ ebook topic: Local SEO Marketing.

Yes, there’s an abyss of local SEO marketing content covering a vast number of options for small businesses to locally market services and products.

The list is long, including marketing and advertising options such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Yellow Pages, Yodle, CitySearch, MerchantCircle, Door-to-Door hangers, and many more…

But I’m not covering those topics in this book. I’m sharing and showing you another less traveled road that only a few are dare to travel.

That’s right, I’ve worked quite hard over the last year researching and experimenting with a variety of techniques and strategies to command local market share for a range of businesses.

And I wrote an ebook to share with you and the world about what I learned in my quest to understand local SEO marketing for myself and others.

In short, getting more revenue and customers in a local market can be quite the challenge for the every day small business and it’s owner (that’s you and me too!).

After all, I’ve been there with my own businesses, and executing local SEO marketing is not an easy nut to crack.  Why, you ask?

What exactly is Hummingbird?  I don’t know, go Google it.  Okay, I’ll stop or not.  Okay, one more.  Go ask Siri, I’m sure she has a good answer awaiting your questioning.

In SEO terms, Hummingbird is Google’s ranking algorithm that consists of the following but not limited too: