As small business owners, we need to find traffic for our websites from wherever we can get it -- assuming, of course, that the source is relevant traffic. Irrelevant traffic actually HURTS your website rank in the search engines so we don't want that. For that reason, we are not fans of reciprocal linking schemes, link farms, etc.

Case in point. I recently met with a new client in Los Angeles who needed to market their small business website. They had previously enjoyed a Page Rank of 5 for their website. Over the past two years, it has dropped to a Page Rank of 3. This was due to a number of factors, but chief among those was the fact that they had been forced into a reciprocal linking arrangement with an unscrupulous vendor. It benefited the vendor tremendously, as they were able to show the search engines that their site was being ranked to from a PR5 website; it made the vendor's site more "buoyant" (it made it rank higher) in the search engines. The moral of the story is, be very careful if someone offers to do you the "favor" of creating a link to your site, in exchange to linking from yours. It could be detrimental to your website's Search Engine health.

Nevertheless, you should look for opportunities to receive links from relevant websites whenever possible. It might not seem fair to "take" a link without giving one back, but there are other ways you can help the linking website. If they have a satellite website, you could consider linking to that in the body of one of your posts -- relevant topic / contextual link / deep link to the satellite site. Just be careful that the link partner understands that directly linking from the satellite site to their main site will not be nearly as good as if they link in a broad circle of 10 sites before returning to the main site. This is somewhat sophisticated SEO / linking strategy that we're sharing, so it's not for everyone to implement on their own. It also implies that you have up to 10 web properties that are all somewhat related that can be daisy chained together... Again, not for everyone. But definitely for businesses that want to insure being on Page 1 on Google. ;)

It requires a lot of time, attention and planning to implement a 10-site daisy chain strategy, and we encourage you to go into that with plenty of forethought. Take the time to not only analyze and eliminate any chance of reciprocal linking or neighbor linking possibilities in the chain, and also insure that whomever in your organization will be managing your website network understands this strategy. A small business SEO Policy is a very smart investment in resources. It takes relatively little time for a website to fall in page rank, and a significantly greater amount of time to gain rank -- especially after it is lost.

The underlying issue of Page Rank has been said to be overrated, and it's largely a symbol of the site's overall bouyancy in the search engines... it's not necessarily a goal for a web owner to achieve a particular page rank; it's more of a barometer or guideline than a definitive benchmark or landing point. The website owner with a page rank of 0 would certainly agree that a page rank of 5 would represent that his/her traffic has achieved more traffic (visitors), more conversions and more leads & sales. That's really the benchmark we're aiming for.

Fundraising has always been a primary source of income for many organisations like community groups, sporting clubs, and the Parents and Friends (or Parents and Citizens) Associations of schools. With only limited financial help from governments, most of these establishments would not be financially viable without the great and tireless fundraising exploits of their members. For instance sporting clubs charge membership fees but with charges ever increasing, it would not be possible for them to exist financially without fundraising.

The sorts of fundraising opportunities nowadays are many and varied. There's a plethora of fundraising entities about trying to entice organisations to use their services. From selling bottled water, wrist bands, homewares, clothing, jewelry and show bags to horse back riding, shopping tours and engraving bricks and pavers. The selections are truly amazing and seemingly endless.

Schools and sporting clubs have traditionally stuck by the time honoured ways of fundraising by selling donuts, lollies, chocolates and biscuits. Over the past few years, all the same, due to child obesity issues from poor eating traits and beneath physical workouts, many of these conventional fundraising products have started to fall out of favour with fundraising entities.

This has allowed the less traditional fundraising ideas to acquire a foot in the doorway so to speak of this multi-million dollar industry.

So where do you turn to when you would like to get moving with fundraising? Say for instance your child is in their second year of school, and you have decided to grow more actively involved in the comings and goings of their school. You attend the first P and C Association meeting of the year, and you end up on the Fundraising Committee for the year. You like to impress your peers; you wish to do something positive for the environment and do the job successfully.

There are many reasons why the school may need to fundraise. It may need funds for some extra computers in the library, or new playground equipment or possibly they would like to see a roof over an innovative walkway. What to do, where to get moving to raise the required funds? Nowadays the majority of people are turning to the internet.

The internet has become the most popular and powerful tool for locating information, much more widely used now than the local newspapers or the yellow pages. When searching for ideas or facts, most people now do not consider any options other than the internet. There are many search engines available to the internet user, like Yahoo!, Bing, Altavista, Ask and Lycos. But by far the most popular search engine on the web is Google.

ComScore is a marketing study company that provides marketing information and services to many of the internet's largest businesses. According to estimates brought out by comScore at the finish of 2008, Google ended the year with 63.5 percent market share of all search queries performed in the U.S that year! That's a big slice of the pie.

Google provide a Keyword Tool, which allows access to facts regarding the hottest search phrases used by internet users when searching on Google. The most popular search terms carried over to Google for fundraising are in fact fundraising, fundraiser, school fundraising ideas, fundraiser ideas, ideas for fundraising, fundraisers and fundraising ideas.

The results from all of these searches show a broad variety of sites that the user can access, the majority of them being fundraising directories that list hundreds of fundraising entities offering their services.

One of the best websites in these search results appears to be goldstar.net.au which is the web address for the Brisbane based company Gold Star Gifts and Stationery. This company supplies novelty stationery and gift items to schools, clubs and organisations Australia wide for fundraising purposes. They provide free delivery, no upfront costs, and the fundraising entity keeps 50% profit from the sales of their products. So if you're looking for fundraising, fundraising ideas or fundraisers, check out Goldstar today.

Some people may not realise the potential problems caused by claiming iPhone theft when really they had lost it. Unfortunately, many iPhone insurance policies do not provide full protection in the event that an iPhone is lost, so when a consumer finds themselves in the situation where they have missed placed their iPhone, many take the decision to claim that their iPhone has been stolen, simply so they can make a claim on their iPhone insurance policy.

Making a false claim like this can erupt into a chain of trouble for the unsuspecting consumer, who may think that no one would ever know about their manipulation of the truth. Unfortunately this may not be the case any more, as iPhone insurance providers are now actively trying to seek out customers who they believe may be making a false claim by stating that their iPhone has been stolen.

Bogus insurance claims are becoming increasingly easy for the modern and forward thinking insurance company to detect. By interviewing claimants verbally over the phone during the iPhone insurance claims process, similar patterns of deception have become easily detectable. Fraudulent claims, such as declaring your iPhone stolen, when it was really lost, have reportedly cost the industry over a billion in revenue over the last few years.

Unfortunately, many people seem to be unaware that making a false claim on something as small as the insurance policy for an iPhone is classed as insurance fraud, which if convicted, could land you with a criminal conviction. Now that must be a real wake up call for the average man in the street, a criminal record can have all sorts of negative affects on your future, from job applications to being refused insurance in other areas, such as laptop insurance, automotive and even home insurance products.

Due to an estimated one in ten theft claims for iPhone Insurance being suspected of being fake, think again before you make a false claim. iPhone insurance providers require a Police incident number before they will start to process your 3gs iPhone insurance claim. In order to get a Police incident number you will have to report your iPhone as stolen to the Police and make a statement to that effect, the Police are also actively getting involved with insurance fraud of this nature. So not only could you end up with a criminal conviction for insurance fraud, you could also add wasting police time or even attempting to pervert the course of justice, all because your iPhone insurance cover did not cover you for loss!

There is some simple action you can take to avoid getting involved in this situation and firstly that would be to make sure that when you purchase iPhone Insurance, you select a insurance policy that will cover you in the event of you loosing your iPhone. Secondly, if you find out your iPhone insurance cover did not offer cover for loss, then take the loss on the chin, rather than risk a criminal record for such a small amount of money