Tis the season for giving, so why not give your customers something useful — that also keeps your company’s brand in sight year-round? Vistaprint is offering lots of freebies now through 12/31/2010, including their top 10 selling products — Holiday Gift Ideas for $0! WOW! .

You can easily brand and customize desk and wall calendars, postcards, business cards, photo holiday cards, mugs, sticky notes and t-shirts. Upload your logo, taglines, product images, and anything else that reflects your brand and take advantage of these low-costs gifts. Upload your logo and place into Vistaprint’s ready-made templates to make things simple and quick.

If you’d like something completely customized to your brand, let Canopy Web Design know so I can create something to suit.

Think outside the box too — just because it’s called a “business card” doesn’t mean you have to use it that way. Customize the text to create an elegant coupon to be sent out with your company’s holiday cards!

And it’s not too late to order your Photo Holiday Cards whether for your business or your family. Save on holiday cards with this limited time offer:
75% Off Photo Holiday Cards. Plus, FREE SHIPPING! 3 Day Shipping Available!

Vistaprint offers both flat and folded cards with 100s of designs to choose from. The designs are easy to customized with your own uploaded logos and photos.

Order now from Vistaprint and get 50% Off Photo Holiday Cards. Plus, FREE SHIPPING! 3 Day Shipping Available!

Save even more with this limited-time offer (last day for 3-day shipping is 12/20/10!):
75% Off Photo Holiday Cards. Plus, FREE SHIPPING! 3 Day Shipping Available!

Part 1 – Google Places

www.google.com/places

Is your business on Google Places yet? If not, sign up for a free business listing at www.google.com/places RIGHT NOW. If you’re not getting found on Google, not having one of these listings could very well be part of the problem. You’ve got nothing to lose — it’s 100% FREE.

While “bricks and mortar” businesses can really take full advantage of all of Google Places’ features, including its integration of your listing with Google Maps, home-based businesses can also benefit. When setting up your listing, you are able to specify how you do business — either from a location that customers must go to, or by traveling to customers’ locations in specified regions. This way you can either display your physical location, or you can display the areas that you service.

Having a Google Listing not only puts your business on the map, so-to-speak, but it also helps make you a bit more prominent on Google’s search radar. Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) often feature Google Places listings prominently at the top of search results, if the search was for something location-based. One of my clients here in Columbus, GA, Staffing Connections, a staffing and recruitment company, recently completed their Google Places listing, and this has boosted their visibility on Google.

Search Results for "temp jobs columbus ga"

The above image shows page 1 of Google’s search results for “temp jobs columbus ga”. Staffing Connections ranks 7th for this keyword phrase, and users must scroll down to see the result. However, Staffing Connections also shows up in the Google Places listings displayed at the top of the page, even before regular results are listed. Within Google Places results, Staffing Connections ranks 4th. This gives Staffing Connections excellent visibility on the search results page, as users do not even need to scroll down to find them.

Clicking on the map takes you to a Google Maps/Places hybrid page that displays all appropriate listings on the large map, with the actual business listings on the left. Again, Staffing Connections is displayed towards the top of results:

Google Maps/Places

When you are filling out your listing, make sure you’re as complete as possible with information about your business – description, services offered, hours, contact information, photos and website URL. A listing filled with helpful content will help your listing’s visibility. In addition, once your listing has been published, you can mention it to your customers, who can then submit reviews of your business - creating additional content.

Get on Google’s radar and give Google Places a try.

The newly re-designed site was built using WordPress as the CMS (Content Management System). This is a very powerful platform that allows site owners administrative control over their website’s content. Going forward, most Canopy-designed websites will be built with WordPress as the CMS. Return to this blog soon for tips and ideas on how to get the most out of a WordPress-powered website.