If your website saw a drop in position or page rank over the past few weeks, it may be because of your SEO tactics. (And if you did, you’re not alone. Read Danny Sullivan’s SearchEngineLand post on Penguin Two Weeks In.) If you didn’t see a drop, but you use the now penalized techniques, you may see one soon. Google is actively targeting link networks and blog networks, and by many accounts is now not only discounting the value of these paid links but also actually penalizing sites for having links on what it deems “webspam” sites. (Read recent posts on the topic here and here).

This is definitely a new concern for small businesses. In the past, you were penalized if your site contained low quality content, but not if a site linking to you was of low quality—particularly because anyone can post a link to your site. However, Google apparently deemed this action necessary because of the prevalence of link-building services that got paid to post and maintain links. These services often made hard-to-resist sales pitches about how a small investment could significantly increase rankings, and lots and lots of small businesses with limited advertising budgets bought. (Big companies did too, so this is definitely not just a small business problem.)

So, what can you do now? The first step is to figure out exactly which sites are linking to yours. A good place to start is Open Site Explorer. Simply enter your website url, and it will provide a free report on the sites linking to you. The free version provides enough information to get started identifying problematic links, and a free trial of the Pro version is available if you need more information.

Once you’ve identified offenders, you can take steps to remove the links. If you’ve purchased the links start by contacting the company that sold them, cancel your service, and ask that all the links you purchased be removed. If that doesn’t solve your problem, you’ll need to take the project into your own hands. For help, read the Search Engine Watch post How to Get Rid of Unwanted Backlinks. It provides links to tools you can use as well as techniques for identifying site owners and asking them to remove links.

So, what is the Penguin lesson? As Google has maintained from the beginning, there are no shortcuts to good content or good rankings. Building a quality site, creating an intuitive navigation scheme that makes good content easy to find, and having that content recognized and linked to by other quality sites will help you rank well in Google search. Shortcuts and “black hat” techniques will cause you problems. So if you get a pitch from some salesperson promising you amazing results for little money, little work, and in little time – beware. It may work in the short term, but it may also cause you considerable heartache in the long run.

Finovate, deemed to be the showcase of the future of financial and banking technology, handpicks companies to present, in 7 minutes or less (no slides allowed), what makes their technology a needle-mover. Our team gave an awesome presentation and showed to the financial world the technology we’re so excited about: Camp.

With Camp, large enterprises with small business customer bases can offer a custom-branded, turnkey receivables automation technology for their small business members with very little startup time and capital.

As shown in the presentation picture on the left, the software and service can be fully branded for the providing organization, creating a truly seamless experience for the small business merchant, and sticky revenue opportunity for the enterprise. Chase and Western Union have already deployed such programs.

The idea behind Camp lends its credence to Eric’s original company vision of putting life-simplifying technology in the hands of business owners (like himself). And, while we love working with business owners directly, we also know that they reach out to their already established vendors to find solutions — i.e. their banks, credit card issuers, or other service providers. Camp enables more small businesses, especially those in the non-retail service industry (where there is less of a market for solutions), to find this business-simplifying technology from the vendors they’re already working with. And, by doing so, they earn benefits by having their receivables solution bundled with their business credit card, bank account, or other service.

The reality is, to be candid, developing our technology is no quick task. Integrations with processing partners, establishing secure technology, and simply just making a product that is usable for the vast and differing sea of small businesses is, well, time-consuming. Rather than each enterprise going through that process only to come out with a marketable product several years later, these enterprises can see a product in market and businesses on-boarded within months. And, because they didn’t have to do the entire R&D themselves, it allows the product to be put in business owners’ hands at a fraction of the cost. It’s a win for all involved!

So that’s why we’re excited about Camp, and especially excited to see it showcased on a large stage at Finovate.

Kudos to Eric and Jenae for doing a great job with the 7-minute blitz!

Follow the #Finovate conversation on Twitter.

Location sharing mobile apps have tried to address this issue by enabling you to let others track you based on your cell phone GPS. But they have the downside of letting people track you constantly, so that they always know where you are. That’s a bit unsettling. After all, you might want Customer A to know where you are when you’re on your way to meet them, but you probably don’t want them to know when you’re sitting in Customer B’s office.

What you really want to do is share location temporarily and only when it is pertinent and to your advantage… give others a glimpse of your location, not total access. The free Glympse mobile app does just that.

Glympse lets you control when, how long, and with whom you want to share your location. You simply select a contact (or contacts), select duration, and then hit send. The recipient(s) can then access a Google Map that shows your location along with the speed you’re currently traveling, time until you reach your destination, and the duration of the access to your location. You can even set Glympse to terminate tracking when you reach a specified destination. Watch the tutorial videos here to see Glympse in action.

It’s great for letting clients know where you are when you’re on the way to a meeting—especially a large one, because you can send one message instead of calling multiple people. It’s also useful for letting your staff keep track of you when you’re on the road, or even letting your family know when to expect you home for dinner. You can also use it to post to a Facebook or Twitter page if you want to broadcast your location to a larger audience.

Glympse is a free app and is available for Android, iPhone, WinPhone7, and BlackBerry. You can access download links for all versions here. It is simple to use, but if you do run into problems you can access support materials and forums in the Help Center or enter a support request online.

So instead of letting your every move be tracked, try giving a pertinent Glympse instead.

Why all the fear and speculation, even with the exemption? With almost double the average interchange fee of a larger bank, credit unions feared that merchants and consumers would start preferring debit cards with lower fees—making credit unions unable to compete with large banks.

However, it seems that the bill has had little to no fallout, which is such a rarity that everyone seems almost stumped by its effectiveness. One Montana credit union said it has seen no effect at all, “except for the additional work associated with all the hype and planning in case it did affect us.” It makes one wonder about all the hype and fear surrounding the insurance reform act; but, that’s a debate to be continued on another day.

The Durbin Amendment, an extension of the Frank-Dodd Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, cut per transaction interchange revenue for large banks from 43 cents to 25 cents since 2009. That amounts to a drop from 1.13% to 0.78% as a percentage of the transaction amount. And, that money has stayed directly in the hands of businesses.

So, which businesses have benefited the most from the drop in debit card processing fees?

• Merchants with a medium-to-large average transaction amounts and with customers who carry big-bank debit cards are seeing the most benefit.
• Local businesses in smaller towns, whose customers largely bank with local credit unions are likely seeing little to no benefit.
• Merchants with very small transaction sizes (around $1) are actually paying higher rates now, or have had to institute a minimum charge requirement to use a debit card.

Keep in mind, this reform only applies to debit card processing swipe rates for retail merchants, where a PIN or signature is required for purchase. Businesses in the service sector (customers like ours) that accept credit and debit card payments via online, mail or telephone order are still paying rates that Visa/MasterCard/Discover largely set in collaboration with one another.

It is reassuring to see the government turn its ear toward the issue and make changes that seem to be having a real positive effect, however small to start. Hopefully, we’ll continue seeing fruitful reforms that will benefit small businesses using credit and debit card processing!

Walking past a ticket “broker,” I overheard him talking to man wearing a Cincinnati jersey (even though we were playing the Mets) discussing the option of accepting credit cards for his ticket sales.

“I’ve thought about getting one of those things,” he said. I can only assume he was referring to a mobile credit card reader. “But cash is so easy for me right now.”

I laughed as I witnessed the irony of what was happening outside our office–workplace to creators of payment processing technology. While a patron was asking if he could pay by credit card or other form, this businessman was explaining why he only accepts cash – because it’s so easy. I didn’t hover to see if the transaction was ever completed.

As I kept walking, though, I continued to think about what he said, and wondered if the man in the Cincinnati jersey would have felt comfortable paying him with a credit card right there on the street. Would I?

The reality is, this ticket seller could likely have signed up for a Square or a similar mobile payment app and accepted a credit card on the spot. But, according to a recent study, most of the public would not only feel uncomfortable paying him on the street, they would also be uncomfortable using a mobile payment method in a more standard business setting.

The Federal Reserve reported in March that only 1 in 5 consumers currently use mobile phones for banking. Another 1 in 5 said they would probably use it in the future, but the remainder declined usage, expressing concerns over security. Another study, conducted by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, found that the likelihood of adopting mobile payment processing technology was largely based on age, with the most enthusiastic patrons ranging from ages 35-44. However, no age group contained a majority that was likely to use mobile payment processing technology.

What does this data mean for us in the business of mobile payment technology? As was the case with online payment processing technology in years prior, consumers are and should be concerned about what’s happening with their credit card information. When new technologies come along that seem to “float” their data across new networks—it makes them (us) uncomfortable. It is our jobs to stress the security measures we implement, market the benefits, and of course, continue to improve our offering.

For the ticket seller (or any business out there), our recommendation is simple: Accept the forms of payment that your customers wish to pay you. Your customers – young or old – will let you know their payment preferences, whether that’s online, by phone, through the mail, over the phone, or on a phone. Only when you are fulfilling those needs are you ensuring your full revenue potential and ensuring your customers are happy making purchases with you.

There are many websites offering templates for everything from business letters to video themes, and the content is of varying quality so it can be hard to know where to go first. A good place to start is the Template Gallery for Google Docs. (Yes, it is Google’s way of getting you to use its Docs suite, but you don’t need to use Docs to use the templates, as after they open in Docs they can be downloaded in a form compatible with your desktop software.)

There are 15 template categories including Business, Presentations, Calculators and Legal. You can filter each by type of document – spreadsheet, document, presentation, form and drawing. You should also use the language filter to narrow the results for your language (i.e. US English). Within any set of category filters, you can also use a keyword search to get to the exact type of template you need (i.e. cash flow statement). The filtered results can be sorted by star rating, most used, and “hottest.”

The Template Gallery is a collaborative environment to which anyone with a Google Account can post—so the content is uneven, and may contain sales pitches or links from a company trying to sell you something. However if you can ignore the noise, and know the type of document you’re looking for, you’re likely to find a template that will meet your needs.

So the next time you’re tempted to start a spreadsheet, form or presentation from scratch, check out the Template Gallery on Google Docs first.

Does that thought worry you? Don’t have a cow! When you absolutely positively want that file gone, erased, turned to ashes, vaporized and vanished Moo0 FileShrededer can do the job—for free.

Using Moo0 FileShredder couldn’t be easier. Simply open the program and let it run on top of your other programs. Then, select from 4 algorithmic methods of shredding from the Method dropdown (Shred Once, Extra Carefully, Into Ashes, or Vaporize). Open Windows Explorer to find a file or folder you want to delete, and drag it into the Drop Box. Poof! It’s gone, never to be seen again, and unrecoverable. After testing with several files, there does not seem to be a big time difference amongst the 4 options, so you might as well just go with Vaporize. The program can handle very large folders (bigger than what can be deleted to the Recycle Bin), so you might notice differences if you try to delete major data.

You can download Moo0 FileShredder from the trusted CNet download site. It is available for Windows XP and later. (Don’t bother with the manufacturer’s site, as it is rather confusing and hard to navigate.) Be warned that the installation program asks you to agree to download another program in addition to FileShredder. Be sure to deselect that box before proceeding with the download.

Get Moo0 FileShredder today. Then, use the Delete button when you think you maybe want to get rid of a file; and use Moo0 when you’re sure you want to vanish it!