Use social networking tools to enhance search performance at no cost.

You have most likely heard of MySpace and Facebook. (if you have not, then we cant be friends anymore)  

LinkedIn.com offers professionals a place to manage an interactive resume and professional contact network.  Click here for an example profile page: Tom Ritter

To better understand the actual benefits of this free platform consider the keyword phrase “Tom Ritter”.  This particular keyword phrase has some stiff competition in the first page results of Google. (Click here to see Google results for ”Tom Ritter”)  I am competing with a nationally reknowned dentist, and a famous actor for visibility in the results. 

I do not have a website or blog to compete with these other results. I am on the first page of Google simply because I created a LinkedIn profile.  At the time of this post my LinkedIn profile ranked #6 on the first page of Google results. 

I will concede that there are only about 575,000 websites related to the search “Tom Ritter”.  If my name was “Brad Pitt” the competition would consist of about 25 million competitive results.  But still, I am beating out over half a million websites without having spent a dime to do so. 

For those of you with some real Search Engine Optimization savvy, my LinkedIn page boasts a Google PR of 3.  This means that any links I create on my LinkedIn page actually improve the search performance of the sites I link to. 

So set yourself up on LinkedIn, and get all your employees to do the same. Then, create website links to your company website from all of your respective profiles.  The Search Engine Optimization benefits will be measureable, and you cannot beat the price.

Make no mistake about it, my LinkedIn profile performs because I update it at least once a month and I have developed a decent network of 150 contacts and growing.  But even that is very little effort to maintain. 

And make no mistake about this……………….Mr. Furley was the man.

Situation:
Many small businesses are cutting back on marketing and lead generation or waiting for the economy to pick up before they invest in websites and Google advertising.

This blows me away!  Now is the time to stake a claim online.  Much like real estate, in this economy online advertising presents a buyers market.  There is no better time to assign a budget to developing a plan for growing your business online. 

There are 2 types of businesses that we are having success with right now:

#1
Small businesses that are thriving. Real estate agencies, title agencies, lawyers, mortgage brokers, and other organizations that in many instances are actually doing more volume than a year ago.  These clients are calling us to capitalize on this momentum and expand upon their ability to pull in and sell new prospects.

#2
Businesses that are hurting and need to make adjustments to accomodate a slowdown in their market.  Many small companies are concerned about a drop in activity.  A great percentage of these companies never had an online marketing/business development agenda to begin with. 

The slowdown has prompted such businesses to finally take a look at how the internet is the primary hub for sustainable and affordable business development.  Website development, and search engine marketing (Pay Per Click advertising) are the primary methods these businesses are using to stop the bleeding and develop an online initiative.

If you are kicking butt, it is a great time to figure out a way to capitalize and generate some tremendous growth potential for the coming upturn in the economy.
OR
If you are concerned about a big slowdown, it is a great time to make the adjustments you need to “recession proof” your business.

Good luck!

I encourage you to check out the Website Time Machine to examine the progress of your website and any other properties you might be interested in. 

Simply enter your website URL (unified resource locator), ie: “http://www.gstreetweb.com” and this particular time machine will show you the different stages of your websites lifecycle going back to 1996.  This is way cool for business owners and web designers alike.

The only thing I should point out is that very poorly implemented websites tend not to show up in the ”Time Machine Database”.  This is for many of the very same reasons that sites dont show up in search engines.  So if you cannot find your site in the time machine, you better give us a call.  You need help with online marketing. 

If you want to see some really bad looking websites just go back in time to about 1999. Enjoy.