Rick Hendershot's (rickhendershot) Blog

A couple of months ago I was listening to a radio phone in show about landscaping and gardening. Many callers wanted to know how to deal with dandelions, weeds and grubs in their lawns now that many municipalities in our region have banned chemical pesticides and herbicides. The guru suggested tu...

We're in the business of providing local business people - especially real estate agents - with web-based promotional tools. So a few months ago when the importance (and difficulty) of gathering feedback was brought to my attention we decided to develop an online program that would make gathering...

One of the most commonly used techniques in web marketing is the use of a giveaway to entice people to subscribe to your email contact list. If you are considering doing this, here is some advice on creating a "list building system". A "list building system" consists of several components: Compon...

If you start investigating local web search and Google Local Business Center (GLBC), you'll find that "citations" are important to your ability to rank in Google local search. If you're not familiar with Google Local Search, see my previous post called Getting Found in Google Local Search. In fac...

Coming up with interesting stuff to write about is one of the ongoing challenges for bloggers. A blog is only useful if it is regularly updated, and is targeted to the group of readers you're most interested in. I'm not just talking about those of us obsessed with our own little realm of interest...

If you are lucky, just getting yourself listed in Google's Local Business Center will help you "get on the map" as far as local searches are concerned. As I mentioned in my previous post about Google local search, if you are not listed in Local Business Center chances are pretty good you will not...

I hve recently been researching the changes Google (and the other search engines) are making to local search. The SEs have been hammering away at local search for a few years now. Their objective is to essentially put the old paper-based Yellow Pages out of business - to become the default "go to...

When we look back on the development of blogging over the last 5 or 10 years we can see that blogs were an important step in the “socializing” of the web. Unlike traditional static websites that were more or less just online brochures, blogs were built as personal publishing platforms with a majo...

One of the biggest problems that beginning bloggers have is knowing what to blog about. Either they think they can’t write very well, or they just don’t have very many ideas. Well if you’re in that boat, here’s a tip you may find helpful. Try writing about what other people are saying about your ...