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Important information for all small businesses in NH and other areas: The Small Business Administration now has “disaster loan” opportunities for small businesses, including Economic Injury Disaster Loans and Payroll Protection Program loans. Both of these programs can in fact be grants (“forgivable loans”) if used for the intended purposes, and have low rates for any money you must pay back. Our accountant, Joe Orabono at Vector Tax & Accounting, sent us a note to tell us he’s recommending that ALL his small business clients apply for these programs, especially given the potential for grants from them. Here at hasOptimization, we are absolutely NOT financial professionals, so you should consult with your accountant for information specific to your needs. If you’re a small business owner and are looking for more information on these programs, some details are available on SBA.gov. While we can’t help with financial advice, we wanted to share this important information with those who might need it. We CAN help you with other aspects of managing your business during the coronavirus pandemic, however, including ecommerce setups, social media marketing, advertising, and advice on how to take your business online, even if it’s your first time. Stay home, stay healthy. We’re all in this together.

Getting stir crazy? Not sure how your business will fare during this time of uncertainty? Don’t forget about all things internet that can help you continue growing your business even when people can’t come through the door!

Hiring an SEO company or marketer can be a big step for your business. All you have to do is pay a bit of money, and then you can rake in the benefits of increased business, right? The too long, didn’t read is that it’s not that simple. Any SEO company’s job is incredibly complex, and though we understand the complexities of things like search engines, algorithms, and more so you don’t have to, there are a few things you should know before hiring an SEO company.

One helpful marketing tool we constantly try to get our clients to leverage is building marketing mailing lists. Building an email marketing list is a great way to get in direct contact with your customers — and potential customers — and can help you when you’re suffering from poor reach on social media platforms. It’s also a better way to make big announcements that go directly to people’s email. I’m sure you know the benefits of an email marketing list, but building one can be a challenge. Typically, clients import their current customers and stop there. There’s a big opportunity for clients to continue building their email marketing lists with lots of potential customers; adding a signup form to the end of a blog post is one way, assuming you are publishing posts people may want to see more of.

You may have heard of this phenomenon. It can happen anywhere, to anyone at all with a reviewable presence, whether it’s on Facebook, Yelp, Google, Bing, Steam, Amazon, or even somewhere else. A review bomb, or review bombing, is when the internet turns against you.

One very interesting thing about SEO is the science that happens behind it. Whether it’s psychologically crafting content in a way that makes people click (i.e. clickbait), or it’s understanding how people navigate a page, understanding usability and the flow of any web page is important to crafting your perfect optimization approach. We were excited to read about this study by Nielsen Norman Group which tracked user eye movement on the search engine results page (SERP). A few years back, it was common to have ten blue-link results in a list. That required customers to read and examine what they were clicking. Now, especially on Google, the SERP can have all kinds of more visually appealing bits of information, such as business listings to the right, rich snippets highlighted at the top — sometimes even with pictures, or even accordion answers to questions. How can we know where a user’s eye travels, and what listing is most important to optimize for? The Pinball Pattern NNG compares the way they found a user’s eye to move about the SERP to be similar to a pinball inside of a pinball machine. That means that they found users aren’t consuming information on the SERP in a linear fashion — instead the eye can be moving left, to right, to left again, causing a “pinball pattern” effect. What’s it look like? Let’s get into the nitty gritty about what a typical SERP looks like and what the pinball pattern suggests. You will see in…

If you communicate with a hasOptimization staff member regularly, you may have noticed that we recently added pronouns to all of our email signatures. You may be wondering why that is…and don’t worry, I’ll get there. First, though, I’d like to give you some background. What IS a pronoun, anyways? A pronoun is a word which stands in for a noun. It would be a little odd if you used someone’s name every single time you referred to them: “Jennifer has gone to Jennifer’s car to get Jennifer’s jacket because Jennifer is cold”. Strange, huh? “Jennifer has gone to her car to get her jacket because she is cold” seems much more natural to the average English speaker. “She” and “her” are pronouns, standing in for Jennifer in that second example sentence. They (a word which here is standing in for the noun “pronouns”!) make our language flow more smoothly and be less repetitious. Why are pronouns important and why are some people so upset about them? Here’s the deal. Calling someone by a pronoun that is not theirs is just as bad as calling them by a name that is not theirs. It’s careless, and repeated it becomes rude. It makes the person you’re speaking about feel not-known, not-seen. If that happens to someone constantly, every day, it wears them down. It’s tiring. It’s painful. Don’t do that to people! So why’d hasOptimization put pronouns in our email signatures? Well, half of the hasOptimization core team uses an uncommon…

hasOptimization is proud to announce the launch of a new website for drain cleaning and unclogging service provider Dash Drains. Dash Drains is located in NH and serves NH, though has a partner in MA who operates in MA. This business owner came to us looking for help building their very first website. They needed a basic website which says what they do and how to contact them. We were happy to help! After providing the business owner with a few solid themes to choose from, we then went into modifying the colors, putting the logo into place, and making the site itself unique to Dash Drains. We were able to create a responsive, modern web experience for browsers of all sizes while delivering the content that customers need to make an informed decision about hiring Dash Drains. We also built in a contact form for easy contact between business owner and customer, protected by Google’s reCAPTCHA. Along with a brand new website, Dash Drains also can enjoy the benefit of SEO so they can hit the ground running. We regularly help businesses revamp their old websites, or create brand new ones. If you need help with your business’ website, contact us today!

Did you know that a 5-star rating on Google My Business is not actually the best star rating for your business? It’s something we’ve been saying for a long time, but this time we’ve got a report to prove it! A study conducted by Uberall determined that businesses who had 5-star ratings on Google My Business suffered from less conversions than businesses with less than a 5-star average. For this study, Uberall compared data from 64,000 third-party managed business listings for the first half of 2018 with the first half of 2019. The Sweet Spot While we can understand why businesses would strive for a perfect 5-star review score, the sweet spot for Google My Business reviews seems to lie between 3.7 stars and 4.9 stars. Many businesses “freak out” when a bad review comes in, but as long as the business is not actively being review bombed, those business owners should take the lower rating in stride. One bad review, or some lower rated reviews, can actually be good for increasing business. What is this phenomenon? Why is the jump so signifcant? Perhaps consumers view anything below a 3.7-star rating as untrustworthy, which would position a 3.7-star rating as the moment where consumers decide that a brand may be worth the risk. Regardless of the reason, the fact remains that a 3.7 rating should be the minimum benchmark that all business locations strive for. Uberall There’s no telling exactly why this phenomenon occurs, but we can take an educated…

The short answer: YES! Ready for the long answer and the proof? While browsing a Facebook group the other day, I was surprised to hear that a poster commented saying something along the lines of “no one wants to read a blog”. This shocked me, but at its essence, it told me that this poster (and everyone agreeing with them) had convinced themselves that blogs have no value, and therefore give no value, which means that people shouldn’t spend time on them. This comment couldn’t be further from the truth.