Raise your profile (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – July 31, 2009)

Are your customers able to find you? Do they know who you are? How easy – or hard – do you make if for them to find out? We here at thinks have long believed you can’t afford to be invisible. Now it looks like the big players have moved in that direction, too. Don’t wait. Here are a few ways for you to raise your profile:

• HubSpot shows how one company transitioned from an invisible king to a sought leader. Good advice for businesses of all sizes.
• Search engines are a huge part of getting customers. Check out Search Engine Land’s great look at how to research, create and distribute highly linkable content to get your share.
• Of course, being visible does nothing for you if you run out of money along the way. Guy Kawasaki suggests you ask these questions of potential employers. I think they’re also useful for small businesses to ask of themselves.
• And, finally, I couldn’t let this week pass without talking about the highest-profile deal in years: Yahoo & Bing’s search deal. How does it affect your business? Well, first off, you must test Bing’s value for yourself. And second, it’s clear the market didn’t like it. No matter how much short-term revenue the company gains from this deal, I agree with Calacanis: this is the beginning of the end for Yahoo! We ought to be asking: How much longer until Yahoo! becomes invisible?

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