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Customers and Family the Focus of Home Maid Services

For Home Maid Services, Inc. in Gaithersburg, Md., commitment to customer service and satisfaction are paramount. The evidence? The solid, family small business has served area residences more than 250,000 times, and they maintain a repeat customer base including many who have used Home Maid Services all 27-years the company has been in business. The result? Home Maid Services’ rates an A+ with the Metro Washington D.C. and Eastern Pennsylvania Better Business Bureau. In 1986, Cathy Iosue started cleaning homes on her own. When the business expanded to 40 homes a week, Cathy’s husband Joe took a leave of absence from his job as a copy machine technician to help out. Joe never went back to his job. He took over the businesses operations, which allowed Cathy to work from home as the company bookkeeper and raise their six children. The ability to focus on family with a full-time presence at home is what Joe and Cathy have loved most about running their own business. Maintaining their robust business, which today services 250 homes a week, keeps Cathy and Joe busy searching for ways to streamline operations yet provide unwavering customer satisfaction. And they, like most small business owners, are … Keep Reading...

Branding, General Marketing, Search Marketing

Digital Housecleaning: Tips to Speed Up Your Website

It’s that time of year again where we celebrate the passing of the winter by cleaning our homes top to bottom, inviting fresh air in through open windows and organizing our clutter. I often hear people marvel at the amount of “stuff” they collect over the course of a year — maybe a few small pieces of furniture that didn’t quite fit the décor.  Potentially, the stock of antique clothing gathered in our closet collecting dust is taking up needed space for the new clothes we’ve recently acquired. Businesses spring clean as well.  Moving files from the “current” cabinet to the “archived” space in the basement.  Replacing space heaters with fans.  And for some of us slow-pokes, finally taking down our winter holiday accoutrements. Imagine what would happen if we didn’t spring clean.  Think of the mess we’d have on our hands.  How much would it slow us down? If we think of this concept, but apply to our Websites, we can ask the questions:  “When was the last time we spring cleaned our site?” “How much “stuff” do we have on the website that’s slowing it down?” Believe it or not, your Website’s speed can affect the customer experience … Keep Reading...

Search Marketing

Online Directories: 4 Steps to Spring Clean Your Business Listings

If you’re like most up-to-date business owners, you know when your website ranks high on the first page of Google, it’s worth gold — but did you know local directory listings also increase both your visibility and chances to connect with new customers? For example, I did a quick search for BBQ restaurants in my hometown.  In addition to the four restaurants that ranked in the top map listing slots, one in particular showed up an additional six times on the first page, getting listed in the following directories: Yelp, TripAdvisor, Urbanspoon, Facebook, Food Network and Metromix. Most of these directories are free, with some offering more advanced listing services for a small fee.  If you haven’t done a wide-sweeping search for your business in a while, take the following four steps to see if and how your listing appears. Step 1 – visit getlisted.org to start your directory listing search by entering your business name and zip code Step 2 – confirm your business is listed AND claimed on the top three search engines: Google, Bing and Yahoo.  Expand out to other directories only when you’ve finished these first three. Step 3 – when claiming your listing, be sure to use … Keep Reading...

Search Marketing

LinkedIn and SEO go hand-in-hand

In particular, when owners optimize their LinkedIn pages with keywords and important phrases, many industry veterans believe search crawlers take more notice than on other platforms. Keep Reading...

Advanced, Search Marketing, Social Media

Take advantage of the new image search by Bing and Yahoo

You may not realize it, but there are a number of ways to drive search traffic – simply stuffing your small business website chock full of keywords is only one strategy. For example, one tactic that works particularly well for some industries is image search optimization. Keep Reading...

Intermediate, Search Marketing