It never ceases to amaze me how often local businesses have either no website, or at best a poor one. With this fact in mind I have written a series of blog posts directed to the three basic types of businesspersons who should care about the internet. As I will explain in the following posts, I believe that these three types are exhaustive of all businesspersons. And yes, that means that the internet is important for all businesspersons!
From my experience there three types of business owners out there (or at least this is the case in Halifax). I have meet some people who understand the value of proper web page design as well as an internet marketing campaign. These individuals seem to be the least common of the three and I will refer to them as ‘progressive internet businessperson’ (PIB). Then there are those individuals, or companies, who see the value in proper web page design but have no clue when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) or internet marketing. Almost every business owner I have spoken to in the last five years falls into this category. I call these people ‘latent internet businessperson’ (LIB). The last businessperson type that I have come across are those who fail to understand, or believe, that proper web page design as well as an internet marketing campaign can help their business. I will refer to this class of businessperson as ‘naive internet businessperson’ (NIB).
Above I mentioned that many Halifax businesses have poor websites, I want to go on record, to avoid becoming unpopular with other web designers, and say that most of these look and run fine. But I have seen countless websites that have hired a great web designer but still fail due to a lack of understanding internet marketing. These sites tend to belong to LIBs who fail to realize that for a site to be a useful marketing tool, customers need to be able to google it!
You don’t have to dig very deep to unearth arguments for developing good copywriting skills, or a good copy writer for that matter. But most of these arguments are based on converting people who are already on your site as opposed to developing your page rank. However search engine spiders are getting better and better at indexing sites based on semantic analysis as well as syntax. And so, to rank highly you will need more than just words, you will need to have meaningful content.
Traditionally search engines indexed terms based on syntactic elements: such as pluralization and possession. Thus, a search for ‘dog’ would also yield pages with the keywords ‘dogs’, ‘dog’s’ and ‘dogs’’. We can see that this is a sensible way to organize search results, but with the development of more advanced search algorithms the precision of keyword indices is beginning to encompass the semantics of natural languages. And thus, your search for ‘dog’ will now yield pages with key words such as ‘dog breeds’, ‘dog health’ and many others.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) greatly increase the relevance of search results which is good for those performing the searches as well as those optimizing websites for the searches. The former claim is obviously true, as the searcher wants the most relevant information possible. Therefore it is the latter claim which is more interesting. LSI assists those performing search engine optimization (SEO) by increasing the toolbox they have to optimize a site, as well as by limiting the impact made by content poor, but keyword rich, competition.
Like most I got a job at 16, I went to work for someone else and as long as I completed the tasks set out for me, I earned a pay cheque to do with what I wanted.
Unlike most I had actually started work 10 years earlier for my father answering phones on the weekends, charging people for product, making change and writing receipts. I learned how a small home based business works and grew up in that. I saw that as an employee you make a wage, but as an entrepreneur you make a living. Your earnings pay employees (unless you have a son, then it’s free), pay for inventory, supplies, offices, vehicles and that is just to keep making money. You also need to make profits so that you can pay for yourself to live.
The point I’m trying to make here is that as an Entrepreneur you have to do a good job. If you only do just the tasks set out before you and to anything but a high level of quality, you are going to go out of business. There are never days where you should take a 2 hour lunch, not return a client’s call, or push a job date back simply out of human laze. In retail you can sometimes lose or simply not learn these skills. If you don’t approach a customer another will simply walk through the door, if they don’t it isn’t important to you as you are going to make minimum wage anyway. If you don’t call a customer back when self employed, you may have lost a customer. You still have good days and bad but even on the bad, you still have to pay for all the things needed to even have that business day.
At the end of the day you have to realize. If you don’t go out, if you don’t do your job, you lose a lot more than minimum wage.
It’s your dollar, it’s your company, and it’s your ass.
So go out and make it.
