Website Promotion is not Voodoo

I’d like a little help here please. Like my friend, Portland OR Web Designer, David Mihm I needed a head shot for SMX Local Mobile where I’ll be on a panel with a fine bunch of fellows on ranking factors for local search.

I went to see one of our clients Jessica Johanningmeier a New Orleans Wedding Photographer to have her shoot a few.

In I got this link by email from one of our clients (for Botox, San Francisco folks can’t go wrong with Dr. Roy Kim - yes, it’s a blatant link-drop) and it got me going on a pet peeve of mine:

Small Business owners giving up control over their own online destiny.

This post is in response to a request for Business How Tos at Sparkplugging.com in response to the question “How can I increase the profitability of my business?”

A little background

Way back toward the end of my time punching someone else’s clock I had an idea for a service I was calling “Outsource My Brain”.

How apropriate that our first flickr photo is also a new baby.

Please help us launch the career of another search marketer Violet Marie Moran-Thompson.

Violet Marie is the latest addition to our team of influencers. She joined us on Tuesday April 22nd.

Tuesday April 22nd is both Earth Day, and the closing day of Small Business Marketing Unleashed.

Sadly, I can’t tell you exactly what was said (I’d have to kill you apparently according to the organizers) but Matt McGee of SmallBusinessSEM.com gave a fantastically detailed presentation on all facets of local search.

I strongly recommend this conference for small businesses interested in internet marketing and those who might help them (like us).

In this morning’s session at Small Business Marketing Unleashed Jennifer Laycock was talking about the value of ratings and reviews as a component of social media.

For those of you who don’t know, Search Engine Guide is putting on a show this week focused on small businesses: Small Business Marketing Unleashed.

At the risk of repeating myself, Miriam of Solas Web Design in her SEO Igloo blog has been engaged for a few weeks in an investigation of Local SEO culminating with a series of interviews. Miriam was nice to include me and most recently asked me to respond to some questions from the comments on one of her recent posts.

I live in New Orleans where people do occasionally rent a television for the big game.

It’s an event. No need to call consumer credit counseling.

If I’m renting my 17″ Sylvania that may be a problem.

Website promotion is the same. Rent or Own.

Ultimately you want to own.

There is a lot of chatter among search engine marketing professionals right now having to do with whether or not the basics of SEO, particularly on-page search engine optimization techniques, should be worthy of the attention it gets.

Just to recap: Jason Calcanis, formerly of AOL, has been quoted on more than one occasion as suggesting that SEO (search engine optimization) is B.S.

How do you plan to be found? If your business were on a deserted farm road in the middle of nowhere, how would you be found? Chances are, you wouldn’t be.

Your web site and the pages within are the same way. Just because you’ve published a web site doesn’t mean it will get found. And even if it has been, just because you have a page on your site doesn’t mean it will be too.