When the recession hit a low point last year many small businesses shed their payroll and didn’t realize they would have to pay unemployment insurance tax.  The tax increases will impact thriving businesses as they expand their payroll because they will have to pay based on their growing wages.

State unemployment insurance taxes are paid throughout the year, as owners pay their other payroll taxes.  States typically have a base unemployment tax, which owners will pay according to the size of their payroll.  But as a company lays off employees, it develops a negative “experience rating” that can boost that tax.

According to a survey conducted by the National Association of State Workforce Agencies numerous states are running out of funds to pay for thier out-of-work populations.  With jobless claims swelling and coffers depleting, at least 35 or the 50 states are hiking unemployment tax rates this year.

“The business that has laid off folks gets hit proportionately higher because while they pay less in total wages, and therefore less in employment taxes, their experience rating will go up and it takes numerous quarters of no layorrs to get that experience rating back down.” says Henry Paula, a tax principal at Reznick Group PC.

Now that Congress has passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and is now waiting for President Obama to sign it into law, many small business owners are wondering, “How is this bill going to affect my bottom line?”

For starters, the bill does not require any business to purchase insurance for its employees, but does encourage small businesses to provide coverage.  For small businesses that do provide it’s employees with coverage, they will receive a tax credit worth 35% of a business’s hearth care costs through 2013, and half of those costs for the next two years, provided firms buy the insurance on the new insurance exchange that will begin operating in 2010.  Small Business Majority founder John Arensmeyer, predicts that the cost for insurance for small businesses would drop 20% to 30%.

BuyTradeBiz.com, internet’s best new entrant in the business for sale and franchise for sale online listing service, continued to increase in traffic to its site. The site broke through the 70,000 mark for US sites in Alexa within 8 months of launch of the site. In addition the number of unique and repeat visitors continues to grow rapidly.

The number of businesses listed on the site has reached 2,700 and continues to increase daily. The number of brokers that have listed with site has been increasing steadily. The number of franchise opportunities that are listed in the site has also increased in the site showing the effectiveness of the company’s very active marketing campaigns. In Nov 2009, we attended the IBBA show in Reno, Nevada for the first time and received a lot of recognition from the broker community.

In 2010, we started to roll out a new Marketing Campaign that helped increase our presence within Social Media and continually increase our search engine ranking. We have introduced a Winter Promotional Offer where Business Brokers can register and renew their membership for $199 which includes a full year’s Featured Broker Membership and all the benefits the featured membership offers.

“The sites increased marketing efforts are being noticed within the Broker community. We have noticed the increase in number of views and inquiries of our business opportunities we have posted on this site”, says a leading business broker. In addition, Franchisors appreciate the sites clean design and highly navigable interfaces. “With our organic search results increasing everyday, it is helping us drive more Buyer traffic to the site. We have also increased our marketing efforts to help generate additional traffic. Be sure to look for us at the Spring 2010 IBBA conference in Orlando, FL!” said Sweta Shah, Marketing Director for BuyTradeBiz.com.

BuyTradeBiz.com is internet’s newest businesses for sale and franchises for sale listing website. Designed using the latest Web 2.0 concepts buyers and sellers are increasingly adopting the site as their favorite platform to find a buy a business and sell a business. Privately held BuyTradeBiz.Com, was founded by veterans of the software industry, to create a new paradigm for the business marketplace.

Have you ever heard the cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words?  Online, that picture may be worth quite a bit more because of two interesting facts that most small businesses never consider when promoting their products or services online.

Google presents something called blended search results, which means they show images and videos alongside thext links for ANY search conducted through their site.  It is much easier to get an image to the first page of Google that it is to get any kind of text link or website.

If you consider both of these facts, along with the obvious fact that photos can tell a story about your business in a way that even the best written marketing language cannot, it should come as no surprise that having images as part of our web marketing of your business is quickly becoming imperative.

• Re-title your files: rename your image files to something meaningful like “business_for_sale.jpg.”  An image title that uses keywords is the first to optimize your images online.
• Add an image gallery:  The benefit of having these images directly on your website, is that they are linked to your main URL and this is beneficial from a search point of view.  The other positive is that you can link to share with anyone.  The other search tip for these images is that you should be sure to add “alt text” which is the text added in the code behind your image so that you describe it for those who cannon see it for any reason.  Search engines also read this text to understand what the image is of.
• Promote the images: you will want to try and share your images anyplace your business has an online profile.

Many small businesses have completely ignored online images area of marketing that could have a huge impact on their bottom line.

The nearby search option on Google allows users to filter their search results based on a geographic location that they can set instead of appending location names directly to their search.  For example, many users have grown accustomed to performing searches like [business for sale New York] or [California franchise] in order to receive local results.  Now they don’t have to.  Instead, searchers will be able to refine their search by their default location or a custom one by using the search options panel that appears on the left hand sidebar.  Be sure to ensure that Google knows where your business is located.  That means getting the proper local citations, making sure your local business listing is accurate and that you localize your web content by using a complete address.

The integrate real time search option puts live news, tweets, and blog posts directly into the search results and gave small business owners yet another reason to be proactive about monitoring their online reputation.  Well, last week Google added another prominent source to pull content from and display in its real-time search results; Facebook.  While Google won’t be pulling information from your individual profile it will publish official updates from Facebook Fan Pages, profiles generally created for celebrities, major brands and of course, local businesses.  If you haven’t created a Facebook Fan page for your business, now is the time to do it.  Google is pulling this information into the search results and using it when someone searches for you.  Use this to your advantage.  Make sure you’re sending out valuable information and that you’re also letting them find a profile that is well-build and user-friendly

BuyTradeBiz.com is offering all Business Brokers, One Year membership for $199.00!!!  With the featured broker membership, you can list up to 100 standard listings and 20 featured listings!

Click here to register today!