Tuesday, August 11, 2009

You Can Find Me in Google--and that's a good thing!.....the internet explained (part two)

Don’t ya just hate how complicated things have gotten? I don’t understand politics, world trade, Paris Hilton, or Windows Vista. How did this all happen? I find myself hearing the words of my parents telling me how simple life was when they were young. Geez, does that mean I am getting older---nah, I just know that things are moving a lot faster than ever before in history. When a refrigerator lasts over 20 years but a computer becomes decrepit in two….!

Recently I spent time consulting with an up and coming portrait photographer (I am a retired Master Photographer myself) and it became apparent to me that although the packaging of a service or product may be different and more complicated today, the foundation of its marketing is absolutely the same. The “old” techniques I once used in my business actually were not outdated at all. Selling is selling, the process is always “find a need and fill it” or a variation that is “create a need/desire and provide a solution”.

I can remember how profound that phrase was when I encountered it in a book long ago. It made me understand the process that makes the world go round. Anyone can do it and we all do—we take jobs because we have, as well as the employer, a need that has to be filled. The better we are at presenting our value, and the better we are trained to attain that value, the better chance both sides needs are fulfilled.

When I began to get involved with online “ecommerce”, as it is called, I had already spent years selling services and products to the public. Mine was a very personal business (family and children portrait photography) and I relied on the ease of human contact and personality to sustain my business. But on the internet, there was no such interaction. I felt like I was “behind the curtain” or selling with my eyes closed. It was a little sobering to think that all that I had learned in my former business would be of little value in marketing online. Quite the contrary, even online customers still do business with people they like! My biggest concerns were: how do I get my business seen online and then how do I get my visitors to like me?

Before I get too far into these goals, let me say that I will be speaking here from the standpoint of one who has already found a market, a product (or two), built a website and has begun the process toward having a real business online. In future posts, I will talk more about the first steps and those that follow in that process. For now, it is important to better understand how things work before opening up shop.


How does one get to be “Big Man On Campus”? Simply have a lot of friends with your name on their tongue. Even those who aren’t so popular would want to be in your circle. Some friends are genuine, some are acquaintances looking for recognition, some owe you a favor, some are wannabees who talk a little large to appear as if they have an affiliation to you, some talk because they admire you and therefore spread your notoriety. Some attention you create yourself with several methods of self promotion. This is the analogy of getting your website noticed. It is called “link building”.

A site receives a higher level position in the search engines, in large part, to the amount of links it has to itself. A link can be another site that has agreed to put your web address on their site that is “hyper linked” (that blue underline you click on) back to your site. You get credit for having a lot of links from other sites to yours because it shows that your site is popular, has credibility, and it probably means your site has a value to offer since so many others “recommend” you by linking to you.
Link building is an ongoing process and takes time. There are also good ways and bad ways to do it. If the BMOC had a lot of cheerleaders and football players and deans and professors as his friends, his popularity has more weight than if most of his friends were freshman and bartenders. The quality of the sites that you get links from are part of the equation, too. The search engines can rate your site and its position in the search results by the company you keep. Quantity is a good thing but quality can get you further.

You want your site to be recommended, right? But what is in it for the other website owner? Well, they need links, too, so at first you will do fine with “reciprocal linking”. In essence, you trade links—you give me one on your site and I will give you one on mine. That is a good start but you also should try to get links that only point to your site—one way links—as they are more desirable to satisfy the search engines. Think of it as your mom recommending you versus your last employer’s recommendation. A one way link shows a more true recommendation. Same with a link from a blog post that points back to your site, or a news story about a product you sell, or an article you wrote or had written that was posted on another site.

The search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) have to decide who gets top billing as well as the proceeding positions. This is where information that is relevant rises to the top like cream from milk. The relevancy of search results is their ultimate goal and focus. Links are just one of many criteria judged for those positions.

So accumulate links of quality and quantity and as the search engines begin to notice your site, it will be listed in areas that people are searching. Those areas will depend on the “keywords” your site has been “optimized” for---which is where we will start in my next post on understanding the basics of search engines, the internet, and your online business.



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