Author: Billie Ibarra

This Thanksgiving Day, Turn Things Around by Learning How to Build Good Business Credit

Many business owners don’t realize that there is even a question of how to build good business credit?  They think that business credit works similar to personal credit. Since business personal credit builds passively by simply with handling credit wisely, they think business credit does the same.  That isn’t the case however. The answer to “How to build good business credit?”can be summed up in one word, intentionally. You must make it a point to build business credit. You have to make it happen. 

How to Build Good Business Credit: Fill Your Cornucopia with Business Accounts

In traditional Thanksgiving Day pictures, you see the ever overflowing horn of plenty known as the cornucopia.  There are breads, fruits, vegetables and nuts pouring out of the horn shaped basket. If you are a business owner, you need two cornucopias.  One is for your business credit, and one is for your personal credit. While you want them both overflowing with healthy accounts, what happens with many is that the business credit one is empty or non-existent.  They think it is there and full, while in reality all the accounts they think are hitting their business credit report are actually hitting their personal report. 

Why Do you Need Two Cornucopias? Does Business Credit Even Matter? 

If you’re wondering why it is important to know how to build good business credit, here is your answer.  The business credit cornucopia can hold more. Let me explain. If you try to run a business with only what is in your personal credit cornucopia, you will not have enough. You will need more than what it can hold. 

Check out our best webinar with its trustworthy list of seven vendors to help you build business credit.

Here is what that looks like in real life.  Your personal credit cards are going to have lower limits than what business credit cards have.  Business expenses are, by nature, a lot higher than personal expenses. Therefore, if you try to put business and personal expenses on the same credit cards, you are going to overrun your limits.  

Even if you make your payments on time, or even pay off your balances each month, you are likely going to keep hovering near your limits.  Not only does this reduce the funding you have available, but it can also have a negative impact on your personal credit score. Here’s how.  The closer your balances are to your limit, the higher your debt-to-credit ratio is. A high debt-to-credit ratio has a negative impact on your credit score. 

So, this means you need to ask how to build good business credit for two reasons.  First, you may not have enough credit availability to run your business successfully without it.  Second, if you do not build business credit, you could end up ruining your personal credit. Consequently, not only would your business success be in question, but you could lose the ability to do things like buy a house or a car. 

Where Does that Second Cornucopia Come From?

Here is what most business owners do not understand.  You have to intentionally go out and get that separate business cornucopia.  If you don’t, then any business accounts you open will just go straight to your personal credit cornucopia and wreak the havoc mentioned above. So, how do you do that?  How do you establish business credit in the first place so that business accounts report to that, and not to your personal credit? The key is to make your business appear to lenders as a fundable entity, separate from yourself as the owner. 

how to build good business credit Credit Suite

How to Build Good Business Credit: Establishing Fundability

The first thing you need to know is, it is easiest to do this as you are establishing your business.  If you are a new business owner just getting started, then set your business up this way on the front end so that you can begin building business credit now. If, however, you are already up and running, it isn’t too late.  You may have to do some backtracking, but it will be so worth it. Either way, this is what has to be done. This is the first part of the answer to the question of how to build business credit. 

Separate Name and Contact Information

This is an essential first step to weaving a separate business credit cornucopia.  Of course, most businesses do not have the exact same name as their owners. The key is, you have to list the business in the business directories under that business name.  In addition, it needs to be listed with its own address and phone number. 

A question often asked about this is, how do you get a separate business phone number and address if you run your business out of your home or online.  Actually, there are several options now for a business telephone number that do not even require you to have a second phone. You can just have your business number forwarded to your personal line. 

As for an address, there are a number of virtual office companies that offer a physical mailing address to businesses for just this purpose.  Typically, they also offer a number of other useful services such as meeting spaces and live receptionist services. 

Get and EIN

When you apply for credit, they always ask for you Social Security Number, or SSN.  If you are applying for credit in your business name, you shouldn’t use your SSN. If you do, that account will automatically relate to your personal credit.  The way around this is to get your business an EIN.  They are free on the IRS website.  You may still need to use your SSN for identification purposes when applying for credit under new fraud regulations, but that needs to be the only reason you use it. 

You Must Incorporate

This isn’t an option.  While it is much easier and cheaper to operate as a sole proprietorship or partnership, you cannot get the separation needed if you do not formally incorporate.  Whether you choose an S-corp, LLC, or corporations will depend on your other needs and budget. Any of them will work for establishing fundability. Still, you must choose one. 

Get a Business Bank Account

When building fundability, you need to have a separate business bank account.  This serves a number of purposes. First, separate from building fundability, this helps you keep your business and personal expenses separate.  That will be a tremendous help come tax time. 

Secondly, some business credit cards want to see a business bank account with a minimum average balance before they will approve credit.  Lastly, it helps lend credibility to the fact that your business is a fundable entity on its own, apart from the owner.

Professional Website and Dedicated Email 

In today’s business world, if you do not have an online presence you do not exist.  Having a poorly executed online presence is just as bad. You need a professionally built, working website.  Pay for design and hosting. The free services are not going to be good enough to help you out here. In addition, you need a dedicated business email address with the same URL as your website.  Free email platforms such as Yahoo and Gmail do not look professional.

Check out our best webinar with its trustworthy list of seven vendors to help you build business credit.

Get a D-U-N-S Number

There are several business credit reporting agencies, or CRAs.  The 3 most commonly used are Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax.  Of those three, Dun & Bradstreet is definitely the largest and most commonly used.  Before you can have a credit profile with them, you must have a D-U-N-S number.  This is how they identify your business.  

If you do not have a D-U-N-S number, you will not have a credit profile with Dun & Bradstreet, so you definitely need the number.  That’s all you need though. They will try to upsell you on other services, but stay strong and resist. You just need the number, and it’s free. 

How to Build Good Business Credit: Fill the Cornucopia

Once you have your separate business credit cornucopia, it’s time to fill it with lots of yummy accounts to build your business credit big and strong.  That, again, takes intentionality. You cannot just go out and start applying for credit in your business name. It won’t happen. Just as those that celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day had to actively work to provide the food for the feast, so you will have to actively build business credit. To do this, you have to work through the business credit tiers.  

Starting at the bottom tier, you build enough accounts and business credit to move up to the next tier, until you reach the top.  Here is a little more about each tier and what it takes to move on to the next. 

How to Build Good Business Credit Using The Vendor Credit Tier

This is the first tier on your journey to fill your business credit report with accounts.  It consists of starter vendors. These are vendors that will offer your business net terms on invoices without first checking your credit.  Then, when you pay, they will report those payments to the CRAs. This is the second part of the answer to how to build good business credit.  In this way, you can begin to build credit without having credit. 

They will look at other information however.  Some like to see a certain amount of time in business.  Some will want you to place an initial order, or more than one, before they will extend net terms.  Others will want to see a business bank account with a minimum balance. Another thing they sometimes look at is a listing in the business directories.  Starter vendors may require any combinations of these things. Find out more about some of the most common starter vendors here. 

How to Build Good Business Credit With The Retail Credit Tier

After you have 8 or 10 accounts from the vendor credit tier reporting positive payment information to the CRAs, you can apply for credit in the retail credit tier.  These are those cards that you can only use at the specific retail store that issues them. For example, Office Depot cards that you can only use at office depot are in this tier.. 

How to Build Good Business Credit: Continuing to The Fleet Credit Tier

After you have enough accounts reporting from the retail credit tier, you can apply for cards in the fleet credit tier.  These are cards that you can only use for fuel costs and automobile repair and maintenance. Fuelman and Shell are examples of companies that issue cards in this tier. 

How to Build Good Business Credit: Finishing with The Cash Credit Tier

This is the top credit tier.  It’s the goal. Once you have enough accounts reporting from the fleet credit tier you can apply for cards in this tier.  It consists of the standard Mastercard, Visa, Discover, and American Express cards that are not limited to a specific store or type of expense.  

How to Build Good Business Credit: Don’t Let Things Start Falling Out

Even though the overflowing cornucopia makes for a pretty Thanksgiving Day picture, you don’t really want the same effect with your business credit.  If you do not handle the credit you have properly, you’ll start losing control. Be sure to pay accounts on-time. Remember, don’t buy things you cannot afford just to build business credit.  You will end up with the opposite of what you want. Also, be sure you keep an eye on things. You wouldn’t want a bug eating up all that good food in your horn of plenty right? 

Monitor your business credit regularly to ensure there are no mistakes and that everything is up to date.  We can help you with that here.

Check out our best webinar with its trustworthy list of seven vendors to help you build business credit.

How to Build Good Business Credit: May Your Cornucopia Be Full

I think it’s clear at this point.  It takes more than just paying your bills on time to build business credit.  Unlike your personal credit score, your business credit score does not appear passively.  You have to work to intentionally build it. It isn’t a hard process, but it is a process. You have to trust the process and act responsibly.  Now that you know how to build good business credit, it’s time to get started.

 

The post This Thanksgiving Day, Turn Things Around by Learning How to Build Good Business Credit appeared first on Credit Suite.

How Google’s Bert Update Will Affect Content Marketing

Google announced that it has been rolling out a new update call Bert.

I know what you are thinking… does this update really matter? Should I even spend time learning about it?

Well, Bert will affect 1 in 10 search queries.

To give you an idea of how big of an update this is, it’s
the biggest update since Google released RankBrain.

In other words, there is a really good chance that this impacts your site. And if it doesn’t, as your traffic grows, it will eventually affect your site.

But before we go into how this update affects SEOs and what you need to adjust (I will go into that later in this post), let’s first get into what this update is all about.

So, what is Bert?

Bert stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from
Transformers.

You are probably wondering, what the heck does that mean, right?

Google, in essence, has adjusted its algorithm to better understand natural language processing.

Just think of it this way: you could put a flight number into Google and they typically show you the flight status. Or a calculator may come up when you type in a math equation. Or if you put a stock symbol in, you’ll get a stock chart.

Or even a simpler example is: you can start typing into Google and its autocomplete feature can figure out what you are searching for before you even finishing typing it in.

But Google has already had all of that figured out before
Bert. So let’s look at some examples of Bert in action.

Is Bert even useful?

Here are 4 examples
of Bert.

Let’s say you search for “2019 brazil traveler to usa need
visa”.

Before Bert, the top result would be how US citizens can travel to Brazil without a visa. But look at the search query carefully… it’s slight, but it is a big difference.

The search wasn’t about US people going to Brazil, it was
about people from Brazil traveling to the US.

The result after the Bert update is much more relevant.

Google is now taking into account prepositions like “for” or
“to” that can have a lot of meanings to the search query.

Here’s another example… “do estheticians stand a lot at work”…

Google used to previously match terms. For example, their
system used to think “stand” is the same as “stand-alone”.

Now they understand that the word “stand” has the context of physical demand. In other words, is the job exhausting… do you have to be on your feet a lot?

And one more, “can you get medicine for someone pharmacy” …

As you can see from the before and after picture, it’s clear
that the new result is more relevant.

Same with this one on “math practice books for adults” …

Is that the only change?

It isn’t. Google also made changes to featured snippets.

For example, if you searched for “parking on a hill with no
curb”, Google used to place too much emphasis on the word “curb” and not enough
emphasis on the word “no”.

That’s a big difference… and you can see that in the
results.

The new changes this algorithm update brings makes it much more relevant for searchers and it creates a better experience for you and me and everyone else who uses Google.

But how does it affect SEOs?

You need to change your SEO strategy

There are three types of queries people usually make when
performing a search:

  1. Informational
  2. Navigational
  3. Transactional

An informational query is like someone looking to lose
weight. They aren’t sure how so they may search for “how to lose weight”.

And once they perform the search, they may find a solution such as different diets. From there they may search for a solution, using a navigational query such as “Atkins diet”.

Once someone figures out the exact solution, they then may perform a transactional search query, such as “the Atkins diet cookbook”.

From what we are seeing on our end is that Bert is mainly impacting top-of-the-funnel keywords, which are informational related keywords.

Now if you want to not only maintain your rankings but gobble up some of the rankings of your competition, a simple solution is to get very specific with your content.

Typically, when you create content, which is the easiest way
to rank for informational related keywords, SEOs tell you to create super long
content.

Yes, you may see that a lot of longer-form content ranks well on Google, but their algorithm doesn’t focus on word count, it focuses on quality.

The context of the tweet from Danny Sullivan, who is Google’s search liaison, is that he wants SEOs to focus on creating content that is fundamentally great, unique, useful, and compelling.

So when you use tools like Ubersuggest to find new topics to go after, you need to make sure your content is super-specific.

For example, if you have a business about fitness and you blog about “how to lose weight without taking pills”, your content shouldn’t focus on diet shakes or supplements or anything too similar to diet pills. Instead, it should discuss all of the alternative methods.

I know what you are thinking, shakes and supplements may not be diet pills and they aren’t the same keyword but expect Bert to get more sophisticated in the next year in which it will better understand what people are really looking for.

Additionally, you should stop focusing on keyword density.

Yes, a lot of SEOs have moved away from this, but I still
get a handful of emails each day asking me about keyword density.

Keyword density will even be less important in the future as
Google better understands the context of the content you are writing.

So, where’s the opportunity?

As I mentioned, it’s related to creating highly specific content around a topic.

It’s not necessarily about creating a really long page that talks about 50 different things that’s 10,000 words long. It’s more about answering a searcher’s question as quick as possible and providing as much value compared to the competition.

Just like when you search for “what is it like to be in the
Olympics”, you’ll see a list of results that look something like this:

Although the first result has the title of “What it’s like
to go to the Olympics”, the article doesn’t break down what it is like to go as
an attendee, it breaks down what it is like to go as an athlete. Just like a
searcher would expect based on the query.

Bert was clearly able to figure this out even though the title could have gone either way. And the article itself isn’t that long. The article itself only has 311 words.

If you want to do well when it comes to ranking for informational keywords, go very specific and answer the question better than your competitors. From videos and images to audio, do whatever needs to be done to create a better experience.

Now to be clear, this doesn’t mean that long-form content doesn’t work. It’s just that every SEO already focuses on long-form content. They are going after generic head terms that can be interpreted in 100 different ways and that’s why the content may be long and thorough.

In other words, focus more on long-tail terms.

You may think that is obvious but let’s look at the data.

It all starts with Ubersuggest. If you haven’t used it yet, you can type in a keyword like “marketing” and it will show you the search volume as well as give you thousands (if not millions) of keyword variations.

In the last 30 days, 4,721,534 keyword queries were performed on Ubersuggest by 694,284 marketers. Those 4,721,534 searches returned 1,674,841,398 keyword recommendations.

And sure, SEOs could be typing in head terms to find more long-tail phrases, but when we look at what keywords people are selecting within Ubersuggest and exporting, 84% of marketers are focusing on 1 or 2-word search terms.

Only 1.7% of marketers are focusing on search terms that are
5 or words longer.

Following the strategy of creating content around very specific long-tail phrases is so effective that sites like Quora are generating 60,428,999 visitors a month just from Google alone in the United States.

And a lot of their content isn’t super detailed with 10,000-word
responses. They just focus on answering very specific questions that people
have.

Conclusion

Even if your search traffic drops a bit from the latest
update, it’s a good thing.

I know that sounds crazy, but think of it this way… if
someone searched for “how to lose weight without diet pills” and they landed on
your article about how diet pills are amazing, they are just going to hit the
back button and go back to Google.

In other words, it is unlikely that the traffic converted into a conversion.

Sure, you may lose some traffic from this update, but the
traffic was ruining your user metrics and increasing your bounce rate.

Plus, this is your opportunity to create content that is super-specific. If you lose traffic, look at the pages that dropped, the search queries that you aren’t ranking for anymore, and go and adjust your content or create new content that answers the questions people are looking for.

If you don’t know how to do this, just log into Search Console, click on
“search results”, and click on the date button.

Then click on compare and select the dates where your
traffic dropped and compare it to the previous periods. Then select “Queries”
and sort by the biggest difference.

You’ll have to dig for the longer-term search queries as those are the easiest to fix. And if you are unsure about what to fix, just search for the terms on Google that dropped and look at the top-ranking competitors. Compare their page with yours as it will provide some insights.

So, what do you think about the latest update?

The post How Google’s Bert Update Will Affect Content Marketing appeared first on Neil Patel.