Author: Luciana Wessel

A Smart Business Women’s Guide to Small Business Loans: Stock Up on Tools to Help Find Loans for Women to Start Business

A Comprehensive Guide for How to Get Loans for Women to Start Business

Research shows that forty percent of brand-new business owners in the United States are ladies. Furthermore, the variety of businesses owned by women is growing at twice the rate of those possessed by males, according to Kauffman. You may assume this indicates that there are more loans for women to start business. That isn’t the situation however.

As a matter of fact, according to research done by Fundera, 3 out of 4 female local business owners do not even apply for company financing. Those that do are requesting much less than their male counterparts.

Are There Business Loans Just for Women?

Not really.  There are not a lot of specific business loans for women to start business.  There are, however, a ton of resources to help women find loans. Organizations exists that work toward helping women business owners access all their resources and find the funding they need. Also, some loans work better for women business owners than others, and these organizations can help you find the best ones for you.

According to a survey by the Reserve bank, women owned businesses have better chances of getting funding at smaller banks. As a matter of fact, 67% of loans for women to start business are authorized at smaller financial institutions. This compares to only 50% at large banks. Those that have loans with smaller banks are generally more satisfied with the service they receive.

What’s that mean?  It’s probably best for female local business owners to stick to smaller, community banks.  There are other options though.

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Pack Your Tool Bag

The key is to have a stock of tools you can use to help you find loans for women to start business.  These are sources and resources that every small company proprietor needs in their arsenal to enhance their chances of funding approval, especially women.  Some are even designed specifically to help women, though not all offer funding.  Those that do not, however, definitely know how to help you find and get the funding your need.

The Everyday Essential: Small Business Administration

While the SBA exists for all small company owners, their Office of Women’s Business Ownership exists to help women local business owner particularly. According to SBA.gov, The Office of Women’s Business Ownership’s is here to enable and empower business owners that are women via advocacy, outreach, and education as well as assistance.

They work with firms to make sure the best resources are available to women business owners at all stages. Whether starting a business, looking for a company financing, enhancing a currently developed business, or trying to find government agreements, their mission is to support the female company owner. If that’s you, go here first.

National Female’s Service Council

The NWBC is a federal advising council. It works as a resource of guidance to the government on women’s organization problems. The objective is to encourage campaigns, programs, and policies to sustain females in service at all phases, from startup to growth, and hopefully to expansion and sustainability.

Other Tools to Consider

Along with those firms listed above, these agencies provide support to women owned businesses.

The AWBC runs a network of business centers geared toward women.  These centers labor to help women succeed by offering training, business development, financing, and mentoring opportunities.

This organization, also known as NAFE, sponsors events, provides training, and offers other resources to help female business owners achieve success.

The NAWBO works across the country to offer training, events, and other resources to women owned businesses nationwide.

With more than 300 chapters and 10,000 volunteers, this is the country’s largest network of expert business mentors that volunteer their time.  They match female business owners with mentors, or they can participate in a workshop to help them learn what they need to know to be successful.

Hit the jackpot with our best webinar and its trustworthy list of seven vendors who can help you build business credit.

But What About the Loans for Women to Start Business?

Most females carry a bag of some sort, and women business owners need a bag of tricks and tools to help them get the funding they need.  It’s not all black and white, and if the statistics listed earlier are any indication, it isn’t always fair either.  At some point, all businesses need financing, and these tools are designed to help level the playing field with it comes to getting loans for women to start business.

Make use of these resources for assistance and education, and get prepared for what the lenders will want to see.

What Other Tricks Do You Need in Your Bag to Get a Business Loan?

Now, as for traditional business finance, the best thing to do is be prepared. A lot of loan providers need to see the following:

– Company financial statements or income tax return for the past 3 years.

– Personal Income tax return for the past 3 years.

– A professional business strategy.

– They will certainly run a credit history check, and though 680 is standard, minimal credit rating varies by lender.

– Various other info at the discretion of the lender.

– Constantly ask about the application process on the front end so you can have any type of extra documents prepared.

The more of this you have prepped to go, the faster and smoother the process should run. This info is typical of what a standard loan provider may ask for. There are non-traditional lenders that may call for more, or less, info. You would certainly be hard pushed to find a typical lender that does not need a personal credit history check, but there are other choices.

The Secret Weapon: Business Credit

Business credit is a vital secret weapon to have in your bag of tools. There are choices for funding that count on your business credit rating as opposed to your individual credit score. What is a business credit score? It is like your personal credit, except it is based only on the credit history of your company. It is not influenced by your individual credit report. Also, your personal history is not impacted by anything that is reporting on your business credit history.

This is beneficial for a few reasons. First, you can access funding for your business despite an inadequate credit rating. That one is obvious. What some do not recognize is, even if you pay on time, utilizing your personal credit history for company purchases can be detrimental.

That is because organization transactions are, naturally, big. Individual credit limits are typically much lower than company credit limits. Due to this, business transactions can max out individual credit scores rapidly. Consistently bringing the balances close to your credit limits negatively impacts your debt- to- credit ratio. That, in turn, lowers your credit score even if you are making consistent, on-time payments.

How to Get Business Credit: The Secret to the Weapon

Business credit opens doors to various other choices if the conventional route isn’t working out for some reason. If you have a good company credit report, your business is fundable.

The very first step in developing a business credit report is to ensure your company is recognizable as an entity separate from yourself. It needs to stand on its very own. You have to incorporate instead of operating as a sole proprietorship or partnership. You can organize as an s-corp, LLC, or corporation. They each have their own advantages and costs, but for the purposes of establishing business credit, they work similarly.

Next, you will need to take a few other actions to lay the structure for a business credit rating.

– Obtain a separate company address and also telephone number. Ensure the contact number is via a toll-free exchange, and list both in the directories under the business name.

– Get an EIN. This is a number that identifies your business so you do not need to connect it with your Social Security Number. Obtain one completely free at IRS.gov.

– Get a DUNS number from Dun & Bradstreet. It’s cost-free on their web site, but beware. They will attempt to offer you a bunch of things you do not require. Put on your blinders and power through. All you need is the free number.

– Open a specialized company checking account. Take care to run all organization transactions through this account.

– Set up a professional web site and also committed business e-mail address. The email address needs to have the same URL as the website, and it must not be from a cost-free e-mail service. Gmail and Yahoo will not work right here.

loans for women to start business Credit Suite2

Forging the Weapon

Once you have the foundation for a business credit report, you can begin forging your business credit score. This is performed in layers, or tiers. For example, the initial tier is the vendor credit tier. This is the beginning point because these vendors will extend net 30 terms without a credit score. Then, they will report your payments to the business credit reporting agencies. This is exactly how you start to construct a company credit score without involving your personal credit. By applying with your EIN as opposed to your social security number, you keep your personal name out of the formula entirely.

How do you find these starter vendors?  There are loads of vendors that will work with you in this tier. A few of the easiest to get started with are here. They each offer products that pretty much any business can use on a regular basis, so it’s simple to open an account and begin doing business with them.

After you have 5 or so accounts reporting from the vendor credit tier, you can apply for business credit cards from the retail credit tier. These are store cards from retailers such as Best Buy, Amazon, and Office Depot.

Get 10 or more of these reporting and you can apply to cards in the fleet credit tier. Cards from companies like Fuelman and Shell are in this tier. They can be used for automobile maintenance and gasoline purchases.

After that comes the cash credit tier. Once you have enough accounts reporting on time payments from these three tiers, you can apply for general business cards from companies like MasterCard, Visa, and American Express. At this point, your business credit is pretty well established, and it is not attached to your personal credit in any way.

Wielding the Weapon

So, say you have used every tool in your box and you still come up short.  What then?  That’s when you whip out this secret weapon you forged known as business credit.  If you have followed the steps properly and worked through all the tiers, you have business credit cards you can use to fund your business. You also now have other options.

You can use that business credit to help improve terms and interest rates on traditional loans.  They may still look at business credit, but stellar business credit can only help, not hurt, when it comes to loans for women to start business.

Hit the jackpot with our best webinar and its trustworthy list of seven vendors who can help you build business credit.

In addition, a strong business credit score can help you out when it comes to loans from non-traditional lenders.   They can help you with approval and improve your terms and rates.  Sometimes alternative lenders will even accept a business score in place of a personal credit score.

Wield Your Weapon Wisely

Even though loans for women to start business specifically are not really a thing, there are options to make the process easier women.  A lot of resources are available to help women business owners be successful and find the funding they need.  In addition, the challenges female business owners face can be mitigated by solid preparation and education.

Having a strong business credit score is important too. This will open up a world of funding options that would not be available otherwise. Business credit cards and products from non-traditional lenders are a valid option if you find yourself facing issues. Do not be afraid to jump into the fire and forge that business credit weapon.  Once you have it, do not be afraid to use it.  Not only can it tear down your funding foes, but it can also serve as a key to open the doors to the kingdom.

 

 

 

The post A Smart Business Women’s Guide to Small Business Loans: Stock Up on Tools to Help Find Loans for Women to Start Business appeared first on Credit Suite.

Google’s Advice for Surviving Algorithm Changes

In case you missed it, Google just published advice for SEOs on how to continually do well throughout their algorithm changes.

Now, what most people don’t know is Google doesn’t just push out a handful of algorithm changes per year.

They publish substantially more.

Just to give you an idea of how often Google changes, they had 3,200 algorithm changes in just 1 year.

You heard me right, 3,200 changes.

That’s a lot!

So instead of focusing on one algorithm update that you may read about, you need to focus on making your site compatible with Google’s core goal.

First I’ll go over the advice they are telling us all to follow… and then I’ll break down what it really means.

Google’s advice to SEOs

Just like most of their announcements, Google tends to be vague. But of course, they did mention that you should focus on content.

What’s interesting, though, is they did give a list of questions that you should ask yourself with your existing and new content.

But as I mentioned they are vague… so I decided to do something a bit unique. Next to each question that Google provides (in the color black), you’ll find my thoughts on what I think Google is trying to tell you (in the color orange).

Here goes:

Content and quality questions

  • Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis? – Although Google doesn’t penalize for duplicate content, they are looking for new, fresh content. With over a billion blogs on the Internet, there is a lot of regurgitated content out there these days.
  • Does the content provide a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic? – When a user performs a search, Google wants to give them what they are looking for with the least amount of work. They don’t want to have the user go to multiple sites to get their answer. Pages that are thorough and answer all parts of the user’s search query are more likely to rank. In other words, if you write thin content, it probably isn’t satisfactory for the searcher, which means you may not rank as high as you want.
  • Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious? – Does your content have more to offer than what your competition is producing? Go above and beyond by providing additional analysis or drawing your own conclusions using additional data that may be helpful to the reader.
  • If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources and instead provide substantial additional value and originality? – Don’t just copy and paste someone else’s content then link to them and provide a few lines of commentary. If you are going to reference someone else’s content, make sure you draw your own conclusions and the majority of the text on that page is unique and useful.
  • Does the headline and/or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content? – 8 out of 10 people read a headline and only 2 out of 10 people click through to read the rest. Your headlines not only need to be appealing, but they need to summarize the content. Don’t just focus on keywords or clickbait, focus on user experience with your headlines.
  • Does the headline and/or page title avoid being exaggerating or shocking in nature? – Google can tell if you are using clickbait as that typically causes a high bounce rate. If they see that people are going back to the SERP listing, it means that your content wasn’t up to par and you just used clickbait to trick searchers.
  • Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend? – As Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO of Google, once said, brands are the solution. Google prefers ranking brands, so don’t prioritize SEO. Focus first on your user. Make them love your content, your product, and your service.
  • Would you expect to see this content in or referenced by a printed magazine, encyclopedia, or book? – If you think your content is so great you are willing to print it out and hang it up on your wall, you have done a great job. If you are just creating content for the sake of it, people will be able to tell.

Expertise questions

  • Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author or the site that publishes it, such as through links to an author page or a site’s About page? – The best way to position yourself as an expert is to use data and cite your sources. In addition, if you are going to be an expert, make sure you have your name on the page and even link to your bio.
  • If you researched the site producing the content, would you come away with an impression that it is well-trusted or widely-recognized as an authority on its topic? – Compared to your competition how are you seen? If you are more respected and more popular, it shows that you are potentially an expert. You should work on your brand queries as it will help get you more visibility.
  • Is this content written by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well? – Are you faking it or are you clearly an expert on this topic? Sure, I can research the law and write content about the law, but I am not a lawyer and it would be obvious. Write about what you know, and if you don’t know it, go learn it really well first before writing about it.
  • Is the content free from easily-verified factual errors? – Creating fake news will hurt you. Don’t contribute false information to the web. If you write a few pieces with false information and Google catches on, it could potentially damage your whole site.
  • Would you feel comfortable trusting this content for issues relating to your money or your life? – If someone does a search on Google and lands on your site, what will happen if they read your content? If they continue on to another site and continually researches, it means that they don’t trust you enough yet. Not only is it important for you to create amazing content, but you need to show the reader why you are a credible source and why they should pay attention to you instead of someone else in the space.

Presentation and production questions

  • Is the content free from spelling or stylistic issues? – Check your content for grammar and spelling errors. Once you do that, make sure your content is easy to read. For example, having a neon font color on a white background is hard to read.
  • Was the content produced well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced? – Spend time making sure the content you put out on the web is polished. From custom graphics and videos to images and podcasts, make sure the overall experience is great. Write good content isn’t enough as everyone is doing that these days.
  • Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care? – Google wants individual pages to fully answer searchers questions. If someone is looking for an answer and you link out to a lot of other sites to explain your answer, then you aren’t creating the best experience. Focus on creating an amazing experience not only from a site level but from an individual page level too.
  • Does the content have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content? – Your website needs to load fast. Ads slow down a site and can ruin the user experience. Monetizing shouldn’t be the core focus of your site, instead, it should be to educate and help visitors.
  • Does content display well for mobile devices when viewed on them? – Roughly 60% of searches on Google happen on mobile devices. Your content needs to be mobile and tablet friendly.

Comparative questions

  • Does the content provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results? – If you are trying to rank for a keyword, look at the top 10 pages that currently take up page 1 and make sure your content is better and more thorough than what is already ranking. If you don’t create something that is superior in quality, there is no reason for Google to place your site above the competition.
  • Does the content seem to be serving the genuine interests of visitors to the site or does it seem to exist solely by someone attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines? – Don’t write content for search engines. Write for humans first as Google’s goal is to satisfy humans. Even in the short run if this means you won’t rank as high, that’s fine. Eventually, Google will figure it out and your content will rank higher over time as long as you are focusing on the end-user.

Conclusion

There were a few other things Google mentioned, such as their quality guidelines, but there was one really important thing that they mentioned.

It’s also important to understand that search engines like Google do not understand content the way human beings do. Instead, we look for signals we can gather about content and understand how those correlate with how humans assess relevance.

Google’s wants to please you, not the version of you that is a marketer or an entrepreneur, but the version of you that uses Google on a daily basis.

When you perform a Google search, are you happy with the results?

If you aren’t, you aren’t going to tell Google with your words as there isn’t an easy way to do that. That’s why they look at signals, such as click-through-rates or how many people hit the back button so they can go back to Google and click on the next listing.

Instead of focusing on SEO, the real trick to winning is to focus on the user.

Go above and beyond and do what is best for them even if you feel it will hurt your rankings in the short run. Because in the long run, Google will figure it out and you should rank better if you are genuinely putting the user first and doing a better job than your competition.

So, what do you think of Google’s advice to SEOs?

The post Google’s Advice for Surviving Algorithm Changes appeared first on Neil Patel.