How Google Rich Snippets Help to Sell Your Products and Services

If you’ve done a Google search lately, you’ve likely noticed that some results include more information than others. Search results can now include things like user reviews and star ratings, product descriptions, photos, pricing and availability.

This additional information helps to make the search results stand out from the crowd, with the expectation that they will entice more users to click through.

The good news is that you can display these details in your own search results by adding some Google “Rich Snippets” code to your web site.

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Live Answering Solutions for the Whole Team

The telephone is an essential communications tool for businesses: especially for small and growing businesses. It’s often the primary method your customers use for keeping in touch with you, so it’s important to ensure that you receive every call.

Many small businesses use a Live Answering Service to help with incoming calls. With Live Answering, an Australian-based operator answers calls when you’re not available, and immediately forwards messages to you via SMS, email and web-based portal. This ensures that your customers’ calls are always answered quickly in a professional and friendly manner, and that you never miss an important message.

A basic live answering service, where all messages are forwarded to a single email address and SMS number, is ideally suited to a sole trader. As your business grows, you’ll want to expand to a live answering service that is able to support multiple people and departments (who may be in different physical locations).

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It’s Official! You Get Great Customer Service from Alltel

We’re excited to announce that Alltel is a finalist in the Best Customer Service Results category in the 2012 Business Excellence Awards. These awards, which “honour the achievements and accomplishments in industries and categories from around the world,” will be presented in Queensland on February 17-18.

Many telecommunications providers have a reputation for poor customer service. At Alltel, we’re dedicated to changing this perception, and we feel that being named as a finalist for Best Customer Service Results is a great step forward!

Alltel welcomes ALL feedback, especially negative feedback because it gives us an opportunity to understand areas for improvement and demonstrates our ability to develop the business around the needs of our customers.

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Is Your Business Set for Success in 2012?

When starting a new business, it’s common to create a set of goals as part of your business strategy. These goals help to keep you focussed, direct your actions, give you something to aim for, and measure your business success.

It’s not enough just to write these goals down though—you need to review them regularly to keep things on track.

With the holidays over and things starting to pick up for the new year, this is the ideal time to review your goals and think about what steps need to be taken to ensure your business success in 2012.

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Is Your Business Ready to Benefit from the NBN?

The NBN (National Broadband Network) is coming!

Let’s ignore the politics and instead focus on what this is going to mean to your business:

• Our ageing copper phone line network is being replaced with high-speed fibre.
• All phone services will be moved over to the fibre (broadband) network as it is rolled out. Many business phone systems will need to be replaced or modified.
• The NBN network will provide strong, reliable VoIP call quality that will be as good as (or better than) our current copper (PSTN) phone network.
• Business VoIP (carried over today’s business-grade broadband, and soon the NBN’s fibre network) provides features and functionality that are currently out of reach for many small and medium businesses.
• Advancements in high-speed Internet and VoIP mean new opportunities for your business to reduce communication costs while improving the way you communicate with your market.

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1800 Numbers Benefit Businesses of All Types and Sizes

One thing that often sets successful businesses apart from their competitors is the ability to build and maintain good relationships with their customers. Customers who feel “connected” to a business are more likely to be repeat customers and to recommend the business to their friends and colleagues.

The things each business needs to do to build and maintain customer relationships will vary depending on their size and industry segment. There’s one thing that can help businesses of all types and sizes to communicate with their customers though, and that’s a 1800 number.

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1300 Numbers: Advanced Routing Options for National Businesses

One of the benefits of 1300 numbers (and 1800 numbers) is that you can use a single phone number for your business Australia-wide, which is great for branding and advertising.

Sophisticated routing options mean that the 1300/1800 network can determine where your callers are located, and automatically forward their calls to your nearest office (no matter how many offices you have).

These routing options provide a great level of flexibility, allowing you to specify a single number per state, right down to routing calls based on the caller’s local Telstra exchange.

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1300 Numbers: Alltel First to Offer UNLIMITED FREE Talk-Time!

Alltel Pty. Ltd. (www.alltel.com.au), a leading provider of telecommunications solutions to Australian businesses, became the first telco to introduce UNLIMITED FREE talk-time for local, landline-to-landline calls as part of their 1300 number plans.

Most 1300 number providers and carriers provide between zero and 20 free minutes per call for local, landline-to-landline calls (that is, a call from a local landline that the business answers on a landline). Alltel has become the industry leader by extending this to UNLIMITED free talk-time in their range of 1300 number plans to provide customers with more options to meet their needs.

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Merry Christmas from Alltel!

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our customers for their business over the past year, and to wish you all a safe and happy Christmas and prosperous New Year.

We’ve got some exciting things planned for the New Year including a major update to the Alltel web site, plus we’ll be introducing new products and services designed to help Australian businesses to be more productive and save money. That’s all I’ll say for now … you’ll have to stay tuned for the official announcements!

2012 promises to be an interesting year with changes occurring in a number of areas that are likely to have an impact on the way in which we all do business.

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1300 Numbers: How to Get Unlimited FREE Talk Time

Most 1300 number plans will provide you with free minutes for local landline-to-landline calls (that is, local calls made from a landline, which you answer on your landline).

The number of free minutes will vary, usually depending on the monthly cost of your plan: for example, plans that are $0 a month typically provide ZERO FREE MINUTES, and those that cost more can offer up to 20 minutes of free talk time for local landline-to-landline calls.

Alltel is pleased to be the FIRST telco to announce a 1300 number plan with UNLIMITED FREE talk time for local landline-to-landline calls.

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