Being Charitable

George Hood is one of my website clients. He is currently in the middle of a Guinness World Record attempt for longest ride on a stationary bike. He plans to ride 300 consecutive hours.  That is 12.5 days! George, in conjunction with the Fox Valley United Way is doing it to raise money for Injured Marines Semper Fi Fund.

I reached out to some of my other clients and to members of my business networking group, BNI Achievers for donations. Without hesitation many contributed. So, thank you to Village Animal Clinic, Financial Advisor Lori Miller, Realtor Ginger Barrie, Basement Spaces, Superior Enterprise Solutions and Jeanne Prombo of Mary Kay.  Your thoughtful contribution is greatly appreciated.

SEO…It’s Kind of Like Networking

You just opened the world’s greatest specialty shop. However, if that shop is tucked behind a warehouse off a dirt road in a rural part of town, you probably won’t get much business. It’s the same with your business website.  No matter how slick it looks, how much it offers, or how much time you spent developing it, if they can’t find it, you wasted your efforts.

 SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of setting up websites to make them more search engine-friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results and ultimately more traffic to your site.  This is achieved through the editing of content and html code, links coming into your site and through your overall presence and reputation on the internet. Essentially, SEO is kind of like networking.

Effective networking is about building trust that forms the basis for lasting and beneficial relationships. Your business reputation will grow if you form many and strong relationships, but also if you offer your expertise and are genuinely interested in helping others regardless of what you receive in return. If your intention is to flood the area with your business cards and aggressively sell, sell, sell regardless of what others may need, you will turn off potential customers and harm your business’s reputation.

Many SEO techniques follow the same principles. Have a strong presence on the internet. Absolutely, write articles for article directories or related business sites, start a blog, contribute to forums, join internet and social networking groups, start a newsletter, etc. But also, make sure that “strong presence” is useful and trusted.  Nobody wants to follow a link, read a comment or blog, or be emailed a newsletter that is merely an advertisement in disguise.  Disgruntled viewers can cause your rankings direct harm. Search Engines don’t like this either.  In fact, such behavior can be interpreted as spam and thus hurt your rankings.

Search Engines and your potential customers alike want your expertise.  They want to sense that you are genuinely interested in helping them.  This sensible approach will indeed improve your SEO.

Where is your Web Developer?

Recently, I spoke with a potentially new client.  She has a great business and had a professional looking website for the past year. She was happy with her web developer, however, even after the site was completed and uploaded, the developer failed to send her the File Transfer Protocol information (FTP-access). Therefore, the client had no way of changing her site or accessing her files unless she went through the web developer. 

Well, that was fine for a while, but then the hosting company went bankrupt and went away. Now, the files can no longer be accessed.  Additionally, the web developer never kept back up files. So, now what?  Is the site gone? Well, for the most part, yes.  It looks like she will have to build a new site from scratch.

My point?  If you have someone build your website for you, remember, it is YOUR website.  Make sure you get all the information available for your domain name, hosting company, FTP information, and if possible, a zipped version of the site before it is uploaded.  That way, you have a backup plan if the worst should happen. You can go with another developer, another hosting company, change your site, whatever.  It is in your control, where it should be.

 Thank you.  Mary Crockett http://www.marvindog.com

More SEO Techniques

Hello,

One of the most important ways to increase your SEO (search engine optimization) is to get other websites to link to your site. 

One way to do this is to simply ask your friends or preferably, your business partners if they would add your link to their site. For example, I am a member of a popular business networking group.  There are over 20 business owners in my particular group. I have a link to every one of their business websites on a designated page on my site.  In return, I ask them if they could include my site on their site. If we all did this, we would all have over 20 legitimate links coming to all of our sites. This alone should increase your ratings.

To view this example, please visit:  http://www.marvindog.com/links.html