Here’s the next post in the ‘Small Business Series’, on how a small business can better leverage its strengths. This week we are talking to none other than David Heinemeier Hansson, partner at 37 Signals, creator of Ruby on Rails and coauthor (with Jason Fried) of the bestselling book ‘Rework’. Signal Vs Noise is one of my favorite startup blogs and we are huge fans of 37 Signals. In this interview I do three quick questions with him:
Romy Misra (Pear Analytics):First David, thanks so much for taking out the time to do this. For a small business seeking to be extraordinary, what are some 
tactics you would recommend to an SMB that could enhance Internet searchability and SEO?
David Heinemeier Hansson (37 Signals): Our primary technique at 37 Signals is to be interesting. You can try all sorts of tricks or hacks to try to game the search engines, but the most basic is simply to be undeniably good and interesting. Share tips, tricks, and lessons that others want to read and they’ll link to you. Nothing will keep you high in the Google rankings over the long term than having tons of people link to you.
David Heinemeier Hansson (37 Signals):First, avoid interruptions. Nothing will blow up your working day faster than having meetings and phone calls sprinkled all over it. Second, cut out 90% of all planning. Planning is mostly guessing and worrying about what your business is going to look like 5 years from now is a useless exercise when you should be worrying about how to grow your business next week.
David Heinemeier Hansson (37 Signals):
Do less: We try to underdo the competition and I personally try to restate all our hard problems into easy problems.
Don’t grow: Managing people is hard, managing many people is much harder. We’ve tried to keep our headcount unnaturally low for a company of our revenues. It’s really paid off.
