We had a client email us the other day and ask a very serious question. He has invested a lot of time and money in his Internet business with the building of his web site, advertising and web promotion and he wondered if we (his Internet company) was ”ok.” He worried about what would happen if we went out of business. He said he’d seen a lot happen over the years and it was on his mind. I was surprised at first and immediately started thinking about how I would address his concern. The more I thought about it the more I realized that the answer was more complicated then my first reaction and it was actually a very good question.  After all, there are a lot of businesses failing that are much larger than we are and have been around a lot longer. Not to mention that our web company is located in Michigan, which is one of the hardest hit areas.

I could probably write a novel on this, discussing the depth of our experience in business as well as technology and the Internet. Then get into our longevity and stability detailing 25 years of owning our own businesses, half of them involving the Internet. Then I might assure him that I have never left anyone hanging or left a business owing someone.  The problem is that it doesn’t answer his question and today it doesn’t seem to matter.  I know that it DOES MATTER and it will make a difference to our customers, but to keep it simple I left it at ”we’re ok.” I said that we have a large enough client base that someone would want it and that we wouldn’t just “let it go.” I also assured him that we use systems that are widely used and portable.

We have a good business, in the right industry with the skill and experience to deal with changes. Especially now we are seeing business owners make the choice; either they are going to fold or invest in getting more business.  Nearly all our clients and are listening when we call to talk to them about web promotion and building their business through their web sites.  It makes me think of my favorite line from the Shawshank Redemption; “Get busy living, or Get busy dying.” We may not be “raking it in,” but we are growing some and moving ahead on some long term plans.  I guess you can say that “We’re Ok.”

Our client ended his email by saying: “And on a happier note I would like to talk  with you on proceeding with my SEO program.” — Get busy living.

What is in your budget?

Thousands of businesses (some of them our own clients) pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars each month on pay per click adwords. Google, Yahoo, MSN all offer them. Billions of dollars per year are now spent on online advertisement and promotion, and for good reason. Search engines provide the unique opportunity for small and medium sized businesses to advertise and promote their businesses.  It gives them the ability to compete with larger businesses (competitors), while spending far less.  What are you spending?

 If your all or most of your online marketing expenditures go to adwords, consider allocating some of that cost to organic search engine results. You well spend a lot less over time.  If you don’t use adwords and want to compete with competitors that do, then you should work on your organic search engine positions.  Spending time on increasing web site traffic and producing more leads can be done effectively by increasing your “relevant” search result placements.  It’s a fact. When done right, web promotion that naturally increases your web site recognition will produce more and keep growing.  It doesn’t get “turned off” like an adwords campaign.

Any company with over a decade in experience should know they have to keep up on all the trends and changes. The methods do change, and what worked before doesn’t necessarily work now.  The main objective however remains pretty much the same; increase you website’s visibility on search engines.  Make this an intregal part of your marketing strategy and set a budget. You may want to start with a push and then work on it on a monthly or quarterly basis.  Any strategy that is presented to you (at least in the current climate), should incorporate several different elements. Our basic strategy uses at least 5.

xnztpfddqur for Search

This page is an example of how using a totally obscure search term can help you to achieve top placement for your website. We have done seaches on all of the major search engines using the term xnztpfddqur and as a result found no competition Based on these findings, we feel that unless someone else were to create a page that makes use of the search term xnztpfddqur we virtually have the market cornered for this search term.

We don’t believe that there is anyone else that will designe a webpage using the term xnztpfddqur as a keyword phrase. We also don’t believe that anyone would actually search for the term xnztpfddqur. We have used the term xnztpfddqur on this page to illustrate a point.

Our hope is that by using the search term xnztpfddqur that this page does actually get picked up and that someone will visit this page as a result of having searched for xnztpfddqur, but, we realize that this is highly unlikely.

Would you search for the term xnztpfddqur? If you did then you would find this page in search results and you would see that we are number 1 for the term xnztpfddqur.