Virus Removal Business

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What’s the best way to launch a computer repair business? Part-time, unless you already know there’s plenty of demand in your area and you have plenty of cash to tough out the ramp-up period that follows the launch of any business. How about the best place?

Soring PC Repair of Ferndale, MI is launching its business this way. By starting part-time, Soring PC Repair will test out its offerings like virus removal and custom-built computers. Is there still a market for custom-built computers in that location? I’m not sure, but there’s no way to be more certain then giving the idea a try part-time.

In Southeast Michigan, it seems that about half of the computer repair businesses that existed two years ago have since moved out or closed down completely. Before launching full time, see if you can research how many businesses have recently failed in your target area. One trick: call up the computer repair businesses that show up in a Google or Yahoo Maps local search – are half of them closed? That might be a red flag.

Join our forums for discussion on running a computer repair business. Get help from a community interested in helping you improve your pc repair biz.

Every computer repair business owner could use more traffic from search engines. This article describes the free methods that increase your computer repair site’s rankings in search engines (Non-free tactics are covered here). Just be careful not to rely on this traffic for more than 50% of your customers.

I recently surveyed the top ranking computer repair sites across the United States, searching for correlations between links, reviews, and search rankings. In this un-scientific study, I wanted to see who is ranking the best for the holy grail of search queries for the computer repair business – “computer repair” – and what made them rank so well. It became apparent that the quantity of links and reviews really mattered. Then, I looked at the inbound-linking sites to see where they got all that link juice from.

Let’s start with link strategy. Where is your competition getting backlinks from?

Start with the low-hanging fruit, which can bring in traffic from the online yellow pages. You will likely even get customers directly from these listings.

Does your computer repair business have a job to offer? You might be able to get referenced by employment websites, and maybe important .edu sites of schools near you.

Participate on computer repair community sites (like VirusRemovalBusiness) by submitting your original articles to them for credit and links back to your site.

If you get a request for an interview, accept it and you could get a link. Here is an example.

Does your business use the software or services of other companies? And, are you pleased with what they provide? Write a testimonial and get linked to on their testimonials pages (or ask to be included on partners pages) from some of these high-profile sites. If you are a product vendor, the manufacurer is often happy to link to your website (example).

Is your computer repair business a member of the local Chamber of Commerce or BBB? Your local Chamber of Commerce likely has a directory of member businesses.

“Best of the Web”-type directories are harder to get admitted to, but if you can get admitted, they demonstrate trust to search engines. Here are some examples:

• If you can get listed in DMOZ, this sends a strong credibility signal to search engines. Choose your region here to get listed.
• If your site features an outstanding article, try submitting it to the Librarian’s Internet Index.

Computer repair directories convey to search engines that computer repair is definitely your business, and that you should rank well for user searches for “computer repair”.

Does your computer repair business have a contractor-subcontractor business model? If so, ask your independent members to link back to your main site.

Does your business create and/or host webpages? If so, you have a huge opportunity to include “Powered By: yoursite.com” links on the websites you manage.

Does your business support the community in some way? Look into local community press releases: help the community and get local coverage (and local links).

Did your business just open? Write up a press release. Is there something unique about your business? See if you can get that press release picked up by a local news agency.

Get interviews with entrepreneurial organizations like SCORE and startupnation.

If you are on LinkedIn, be sure to list your website and then tick off “list my websites” in your public profile options.

Join local Linux / Mac users groups (example).

Search for “buy local” sites in your region that promote local businesses (example).

Now that you’ve got all these links pointing to your web page, don’t forget to 301 the “non-www” version of your site to the “www” version (or vice-versa if most inbound links do not reference your site with a “www”) so as not to dilute the influence of back-links.

Next, get online reviews. Some computer repair sites have few inbound links, but plenty of reviews, and perform extremely well for local computer repair searches. Here is a list of the top 10 review sites to get listed in, according to the recent local search ranking factors report:

1. Yelp
2. InsiderPages
3. Yahoo
4. CitySearch
5. Google
6. Superpages
7. Niche Industry Sites (BBB, Vertical Directories)
8. TripAdvisor
9. Judysbook
10. Kudzu

The trick is getting reviewed. You might ask your customers to review your service by following up with an email, linking to your business profile page on each of these sites. Ask whether they have a Google or Yahoo account, and send a link to your business profile.

Finally, consider writing up a few unique, relevant articles for your site. Computer repair sites w/ multiple pages and lots of content performed noticeably better, although it is hard to say whether there was any causation here.

Good luck with improving your computer business’s rankings in the search engines!

Now that Wal-Mart is going to have its own version of the Geek Squad, we can expect more price competition for computer repair services. Better start building a reputation of quality service, not just low prices, to ensure that your business stays competitive.

Google controls well over half of the United States’ search market share. Your computer repair businesses may rely pretty heavily on it to bring in new customers. What happens if overnight your business is removed from Google’s search results? Unfortunately, there are ways that your competition could get you banned or significantly punished in the SERPs.

Google deals with billions of websites. Most of the sites it sees are spam or garbage. Google (and other SE’s) have automated systems to classify and penalize websites. If a smart competitor understands the classification system, then he can make you look like you are using Black Hat techniques to promote your site, getting you banned or penalized.

I won’t get into the details, but I will state that I have been the target of an obvious attack – I suspect by a competitor – and that my rankings suffered immediately. When I tried to reach Google, I received the usual corporate cut-and-paste reply that says “Google cares”, but means “Google doesn’t have time to deal with you”. This is your warning that a competitor could take you out. Bottom line: diversify your advertising, and try not to rely too heavily on Google. Find out ways to get new customers other than the web. Small businesses are at the greatest risk – Since Google has decided that they do not have the resources to speak with the little guy, you are out of luck if you run into trouble.

After a virus removal, your computer may BSOD on the next boot due to registry changes that the virus made. Windows is looking at a corrupt registry, and it may point to a virus-infected file that was removed. At this point, restoring to the earliest registry backup on the system can be a quick fix.

Update: Thanks, drew010 for suggesting the Ultimate Boot CD‘s Registry Restore Wizard: “It just looks for registry backups taken by system restore and in two clicks allows you to restore the registry to any available restore date. It has saved me many times.”

Is it time to begin recommending Microsoft Security Essentials over AVG and Avast? AVG is easy to use, but the free version is somewhat crippled (no rootkit detection). Avast includes rootkit detection, but does not seem to scan the registry and has a user-unfriendly UI.

MS Security Essentials won’t nag users to upgrade, has minimal required user interaction, and includes rootkit protection.

Some people won’t use your services unless they feel they are getting a deal or a “special.” If your area has local coupon mailers or online printable coupons, you might issue computer repair coupons locally to get business from those deal-seekers. For example, BienTek releases computer repair coupons on a local online printable coupons site.

Although your margins will decrease when a coupon is used, you can still increase your overall earnings by charging a bit more and offering a coupon at the same time. Those who care enough about getting a deal will find and use your coupon. Others start their search for a service with a coupon, and might never have found your business in the first place if you did not offer a coupon.

After adding a photo to my computer repair business’s website, conversions (view to call ratios) increased pretty dramatically and I started getting complements on my website. The photo license cost $1. The estimated gain was surely over $100. I chose an image that represents my target audience using the computer. Make sure your photo is relevant to your target audience (age, gender, etc).