Posting original, intelligent material on the blog page of your website is perhaps the quickest way to rank up in search engines over your competition.

“Simple! I can do that!” Wait…what’s the catch? For most of us, finding the time to write a blog post or update our website is not as easy as it seems. The truth is that when we’re busy, we simply don’t want to set aside time to come up with something witty yet relevant to our business. Or maybe we don’t fancy ourselves as good writers and publishing a regular blog is a daunting task. I’ve had clients in the past “copy ‘n paste” an entire article and publish it. Sure, it gets content on your blog quickly. But it’s illegal. Oh yeah, and the search engines are smart enough to realize who published the article first. Tsk, tsk.

Perhaps the easiest way to update your blog is to write a short post like I’m currently demonstrating and link to a quality article that someone else spent a good deal of time writing. To illustrate my example, check out this informative article Social Fresh wrote on “How To Use Content From Other Blogs Without Violating Copyright”. You see, the link gives credit to the true author, but all this commentary above is original content. Website = updated.

My close friends and family got a good laugh knowing just how often I Google various keywords pertaining to my business. And while we’re all concerned with where we rank in Google’s realm, another often overlooked yet highly important search-related topic pertains to your reputation. Your business reputation, not your abundance of embarrassing Facebook photos (that you should probably go through and delete now that your a grown up, ok?).

Remember that old visage, “a happy customer will tell 3 people, a dissatisfied customer will tell 10?” Ha! With Facebook, Trip Advisor, Angie’s List, Twitter and more, that unhappy customer has an opportunity to broadcast their dissatisfaction to a such wide audience that it makes your new billboard seem like you’re advertising in a cave. But what can be done?

A recent article on MarketingProfs, not only tells of the importance of a positive online image, but also provides some effective tools to monitor your reputation easily.

We recommend that you give it a read, then go ahead: Google yourself.

Marketers, and many business owners, know we’re attached to our phones like Life Alert. We search for an item we want, navigate to a store, scan the barcode to be sure it’s the best price, reconfirm our choice by again searching for reviews and make the purchase. Or not. Sometimes our car breaks down mid-navigation and we need to quickly exit the program in order search for the nearest/cheapest/fastest tow truck.

Those in the know are certain that mobile marketing is important, effective and the next big thing for business. Need proof? According to the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA), a whopping 92% of Americans won’t ever leave their homes without their cellphones. Another 49% of mobile users make a purchase on their phone simply by seeing a relevant mobile ad. Want more? Here are two relevant articles worth a read.

Mobile Marketing Magic (Huffington Post) | The Mobile Playbook (Google)