Small Office, Home Office Information

Avoiding the carpetbaggers

These days search engine optimisation for business websites is booming. More and more small business owners are beginning to realise that just having a website isn’t enough, it has to rank well for the terms people are using to search for the products a business is selling.

For people like us that’s good news, we’re busier than ever getting good rankings for an ever-increasing number of clients but the demand for search engine optimisation has brought a lot of carpetbaggers into the industry who will take your money and basically run.

So it can be hard for a small business owner to avoid falling into the trap of paying for SEO that’s not worth a cent. However one expert in the field suggested that “If the SEO calls you first, chances are the service isn’t a good idea.”

I might also add to that - if they email you it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll waste your money if you decide to deal with them - and - if they promise to submit your site to all the major search engines then they’re definitely to be avoided - submission became irrelevant years ago.

It’s another beautiful and crisp winter’s morning here in Hervey Bay. The sun’s shining, the birds are singing and I’ve got some the Concerto for 2 Horns by Telemann playing while I wrestle with some HTML for a client.

At the moment it’s getting the better of me so I thought I would take a break and share this article with you. There’s a very important lesson for any small business tucked away in there. While many small business people seem to think that to succeed they need to be passionate about making money perhaps it’s more important to be passionate about the product they produce.

So what are you really passionate about?

I think I lost a potential client just a little while ago. He knows that his small business website has some major problems … it’s four years old and only has one page indexed in Google. I put together a 9 step programme that would cure all the sites ills but all he wanted was a quick fix.

I didn’t seem to be able to help him see beyond that quick fix and help him understand that it would only cure one of the problems and still wouldn’t guarantee that his site would hit the front page of Google for the terms he was aiming for.

I should have found a better way to explain the problems and the solutions. How good are you at helping your small business clients see beyond the quick fix?

Some competitors are close … round the corner … down the street … up the road … maybe even next door. They’re close geographically speaking … but they may be so far behind you that you’re not even close to them.

On the other hand some competitors are far away … in the next state … across the country … on the other side of the planet. Geographically speaking they’re a long way from you … but they could be right up there with you.

Whether they’re near or far they have things to teach you … to remind you of … to help you with and that’s what this competitor of ours did for us today. He might be a long way from us but he’s quite close in other ways and he reminded us today that “past performance is indicative of future behaviour”

Every small business has something to teach other small businesses whether they’re near or far. Thanks John for reminding us of something Toni and I knew but were on the verge of forgetting.

I guess that if you’ve read my ramblings here you could be mistaken and think that everything about our small business is sweetness and light … problems never arise … the wheels never fall off … and we simply go on from strength to strength. If that’s what you think then I’m about to disappoint you.

You see, our small business is no different to any other out there … we have problems just like everyone else and for a few days this week things really went downhill. Wheels were falling off all over the place … and wheels we didn’t even know we had fell off.

So what do you do when things go wrong in your small business? Do you panic? Do you run around in ever decreasing circles till you disappear up your very own you-know-what? Or do you calmly assess the situation and get on with the job of fixing it?

Let’s face it, very few of us can assess a situation calmly when you’re standing in the middle of potential loss that could cost you tens of thousands of dollars … so don’t feel bad if you’re like most of us and you indulge in a little panic.

Just don’t let the panic go on too long and while you’re panicking be careful about the decisions you make and the things you hear people telling you. All sorts of odd communication filters come into play when you’re panicking and what you hear may not be what someone is really telling you … and that can lead to even more problems.

So when things go wrong get over the panic stage quickly and only then can you really get down to the serious business of fixing those problems that have suddenly appeared.

So many people want to be able to work from home but don’t want to be in the position of having to go through all the hassles of starting their own business. For them it’s a shame that there aren’t more companies like Dotspots who have this to say about themsleves on their Jobs page.

We are a totally distributed company. This means that while we were thinking about how to change the world for good, we started by not making everyone drive to one central location, wasting time, money and energy to get to and maintain an office. Instead, we’re learning how to work in a completely distributed way. One immediate and wonderful byproduct is that everyone gets to work from home. And, because we don’t have office expenses, we even pay a part of every employee’s rent or mortgage! (yes, it’s smarter than Google’s free cafeteria idea… ;)) This will allow us to work with the best people, wherever their home may be in this world!

 

For someone who has spent a large part of his working life outdoors, on the road, dealing with people in crisis working online has and will continue to be a lot of fun. Helping people make money from their websites is even more satisfying than helping people survive bad financial times and usually everything flows along without a much drama at all.

But when the wheel falls off it usually happens late at night when you would much rather be in bed than sitting up rubbing your tired eyes and squinting at the computer screen. Last week the wheel fell off not once but twice.

On Thursday night we were about to head for bed when we discovered that one of our sites had been hacked. So we trudged through over 400 pages of content weeding out the garbage that had been inserted and then upgrading the security measures so the hacker couldn’t get in again.

Last night we found that another upgrade that we’d just done to one of the scripts on a server we run had messed with the individual scripts that we run on 10 different sites so we sat up again updating those scripts and fixing a couple of other glitches as well.

I guess that just goes to show you that running a small business is a 24 hour, 7 days a week kind of job.

While some of us build our small businesses from the ground up others prefer to buy in to an established business. There are definitely pros and cons for both options but when you’re buying into an established small business sometimes there are some hidden traps lurking behind those great … and perfectly legitimate … figures that you’re seeing when you look at the financials.

Here is a story of an internet business that certainly had a great cashflow but wasn’t as profitable as it seemed.

One aspect of our business specialises in the design, hosting and ongoing maintenance of websites for small businesses. While we certainly haven’t cornered the market in this town we certainly do have a lot of very happy customers because their sites always rank well for important search engine terms and so add value to our clients’ businesses.

Sadly not all web designers can make a claim like that and if you’re one of the thousands of unhappy website owners out there then here - in Small Business Website Marketing Frustrations - are a few tips from an expert in small business websites on what you should really be doing to turn your site into the sales and lead generation machine you hoped it would be.

Sadly some of the not-so-good advice the ‘victim’ in this story encountered is exactly what our competitors in this town tell people.

I’ve come to the realistation this morning that there’s one sad fact that relates to our small business that I just have to face.

The desk in my home office is a total mess and the parts that you can’t see are even worse than the parts that you can see. So it’s time to spend a few hours tidying it all up.

Of course I could hide behind the myth that I work better with a messy desk but that’s all it is, a myth.

You’re far more productive if your desk isn’t cluttered with old files, scraps of paper, business cards, an old mobile phone, a PDA you’d forgetten all about, still and video cameras, a magazine or two and an assortment of pens, pencils, cables and other hordable junk like mine is at the moment.

The day outside is going to be wet and windy so what better way to spend the time than cleaning up my desk.