Every so often, I cross paths with a small business that is truly outstanding in their contributions to the local community.  Sprouts! is one of those businesses.  In this first edition of my Small Business Spotlight, Sprouts! takes top honors.

This article was written by the Sprouts! staff.

Eco-Conscious Company’s Plantable Seed Paper Products Grow Flowers When Planted

Sprouts!, Inc., an innovative West Palm Beach-based company that uses 100% recycled, handmade paper embedded with flower seeds to create a diverse array of environmentally friendly products, is playing an active role in this year’s ArtiGras Fine Arts Festival by printing beautiful note cards featuring the prize-winning artwork of local students.

“We are thrilled to be involved in this year’s Festival and especially proud of our work with the youth artists,” says Sharon Quercioli, Sprouts owner and founder.

The company’s note cards, featuring prize winning student artwork, will be available for sale in the Sprouts booth, located in the Youth Art Gallery. A portion of the proceeds from each box of cards will go to support the ArtiGras Art Education Fund.

“Sprouts is committed to supporting our youth and to educating the community about waste reduction and conservation through our products and environmental education efforts,” added Quercioli.

Sprouts products reflect the beauty and simplicity of a green message.

“Instead of ending up in the landfills, our products can be planted in the earth and produce flowers that create oxygen and provide food for small organisms, all the while beautifying the world,” Quercioli continued.

Founded six years ago by Sharon Quercioli, a lifelong entrepreneur with over twenty years in the recycle industry, Sprouts products include greeting cards, bookmarks, Blooming BoxesTM and a host of custom marketing pieces – all of which grow flowers when planted. Sprouts products can be purchased directly from the company’s Web site (www.sproutem.com) or custom printed to accommodate various volumes, sizes and print specifications. Next time you need to send a greeting card or your company plans to send out a mailing or distribute handouts, consider using one of Sprouts “Green Greetings” or “Blooming Boxes.” It’s a fun, easy and environmentally responsible way to help tackle a growing problem.

If you would like to support the ArtiGras Art Education Fund but can not attend the event, Sprouts is offering the ArtiGras Youth Art Collection 2010 & 2009 on its website: http://www.sproutem.com/category/ArtiGras-2010-Note-Cards

For additional information about ArtiGras Fine Arts Festival please visit: http://artigras.orgtest

Now that you’ve got your brand new website, how do people find you? Search engines.

To properly and reliably get your site listed, I’ve compiled the following list of tips to get you started:

1. Stay away from the tricks
   A lot of web design firms will promise grand things and instant results.  The problem?  They usually use some sneaky tricks to get you ranked higher.  And the problem with these tricks?  Search engines eventually catch on, and could even punish your site for using the tricks.  Keep it clean, and follow the clear-cut rules for optimization.
2. Keep your content fresh
   Search engines tend to favor new content.  For this reason, I have a blog on this site.  For the most part, the information I have here doesn’t change.  I may add additional services here and there, but it rarely changes.  The easy way to keep things fresh is with a blog.  Post articles related to your industry.  You get two benefits: Search engines will begin to rank you higher, and your customers will have more reasons to check your site more often.
3. Relevant linking
   Most search engines calculate part of your website’s rank on the number of incoming and outgoing links.  For example, if a highly ranked website, such as CNN.com, linked to an article on your website, your site gains not only instant traffic increases, but a better search ranking.  The same goes for the opposite direction.  Try your best to link to relevant and highly ranked websites from your own site.
4. Optimize your URLs
   Take a sample of five websites.  Half will probably half URLs in an optimized form, while the other half will not.  An optimized URL is one that tells a search engine what to expect at that address.  For example, http://www.example.com/?page=29 doesn’t really say much about what will be on “page 29.”  On the other hand, http://www.example.com/graphic-design-samples tells quite a bit about what’s on the page.  If you don’t maintain your own site, ask your web developer if your URLs are search engine optimized.

To quote Google’s own website, “Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.”

If you’re in the business of knowing your website visitors, I recommend Google Analytics.  Whenever I talk to a client who needs statistics on visitors, I tell them about the “marketer’s dream” that is Analytics.

Let’s say you have a 10-page website.  Visitors start at the leading page, then you lead them through a series of pages before an eventual call to action, where they are encouraged to buy your product.

What if 95% of your visitors stop at page two?  What if they don’t even get that far?  To arm yourself with this kind of information, check out Analytics.  You’ll be amazed at the type of picture you can create about your visitors: locations, trends, loyalty, time spent on the site, and many, many more metrics.

To see for yourself, follow the directions on Google’s website, and contact your web developer to install the necessary tracking code.