Google Has Advice For SEO Success…And Other Small Business Tech News This Week

Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?

(This column originally appeared in Forbes)

1 — Google says the secret to SEO success is making sure your most important page is not terrible.

According to Google, if the most important page on your website is not top-notch quality, then it’s unlikely the site as a whole will rank well. Pages with low-quality content can pull down the performance of the entire domain, although experts at Google did not specify an exact percentage or figure. (Source: Digital Information World)

Why this is important for your business:

“Here’s an example: if a site’s most important page (say homepage) is “terrible” (in the sense of any algorithm), that’s a pretty big deal. If the same site has a random archived page that’s “terrible,” no big deal,” John Mueller, a senior search analyst at Google wrote on Mastodon. “There’s no absolute “page-percentage” number for this, I’d see it more as “what would the avg user think when they went through / saw your site.” By the way, if you’d like 57 other great pieces of advice from Mueller on improving your site’s search results, check out this summary here.

2 — “Buy Now Pay Later” has taken over holiday shopping.

This holiday shopping season, ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ (BNPL) is increasing in popularity. According to Cardify’s recent study, BNPL is the third most popular option to purchase gifts, with more than 45 percent of consumers selecting it as their main method of payment this holiday shopping season. The top choice went to debit cards with 65.7 percent of users choosing that method, 54 percent saying they’d use credit cards, and 31.1 percent selecting cash as their method of payment. (Source: Consumer Affairs)

Why this is important for your business:

The good news is that BNPL provides another financing option for customers to use to buy your products. The bad news is that BNPL is often misunderstood by some consumers, particularly younger buyers. It’s a short term credit with big penalties if the debt isn’t paid off. So do yourself and your customers a favor and make sure they’re fully aware of the pros/cons before making their purchase.

3 — Amazon has a new drone for 30-minute urban deliveries.

Amazon will have a new, small, quiet drone ready to go in 2024, with the potential to make consistent deliveries in big cities by 2030. The hexagon-shaped drone weighs 80 pounds and measures approximately 5.5 feet in diameter. According to reports, the drone is agile enough to fly in cities with dense populations such as Seattle, Atlanta, and Boston. (Source: Axios)

Why this is important for your business:

Here’s yet another way that Amazon will compete for your business — by cutting costs and improving delivery times with drones. My prediction is that, like its other technologies, Amazon will license this technology to other businesses who want to take advantage, for a fee of course.

4 — What is the AI chatbot phenomenon ChatGPT and could it replace humans?

Dialog-based AI chatbot prototype ChatGPT has the ability to comprehend natural spoken language and create accurate written text similar to that of a human. The system is trained by machine learning and AI, can answer questions, and supplies information through its “conversational interface.” The newest AI chatbot comes from OpenAI, an independent research foundation founded by Elon Musk. (Source: The Guardian)

Why this is important for your business:

As AI-powered chatbots improve, businesses will be using these applications to create written content that will be as good as if an actual human wrote it. Compared to my stuff, probably better.

5- NRS launches a B2B ecommerce platform for independent retailers.

National Retail Solutions (NRS) recently rolled out a B2B ecommerce platform. The new platform is geared specifically toward independent retailers joining suppliers, wholesale distributors, and owner-operated tobacco stores, liquor stores, bodegas, and convenience stores that use the point-of-sale (POS) system from NRS. (Source: Pymnts)

Why this is important for your business:

The new solution will enable distributors and suppliers to access independent retailers that were previously unable to meet minimum requirements for orders or dealt with logistical issues.

Originally published at https://www.forbes.com.