You can have a terrible web site, with no relevant information and still dominate a particular term in the search engines. To prove my point, search in Google the term ‘click here’. You will find the Adobe Reader download page to dominate position number one for this keyword phrase. The funny thing is that the term does not show up on the page referenced anywhere!

Why is that. Well, by fluke or fault, the Adobe Reader download page has been absolutely dominated by the phrase ‘click here’ to get the Adobe Reader software. You see, Google for sure uses a type of voting system at its core to determine the absolute rankings of web sites for a searched term.

Think of it as a way for a site to cast a vote to another web site for a particular phrase. For example, if you found a new soap to do absolute wonders with your stains in clothes, you will become an evanglist for that particular brand. In other words, you will mention the name of that soap to many other people.

This gives these other people a feeling of confidence that the soap will actually perform as advertised. What is better then unbiased recommendations?

Unfortunately this same voting system that the search engines like Google uses can also be manipulated by smart search engine optimization experts. By creating artificial counts of votes of confidence to a web site, they can raise a web site to the tops of the search engines.

The search engines truly do depend on the fact that this is a slow process and many would be web site advertisers would soon bore with the whole idea of creating link after link. This is why you’ll hear the term link acceleration.

If a web site is naturally gaining votes or links back to it, then the site should naturally show a pattern of growth or link acceleration that if fairly consistent. The search engines will also take this into consideration when counting votes.

So, there really is a lot to even this single aspect of search engine optimization. If you are looking for an expert who knows the search engines and how to advertise a web site to the benefit of clients, then you need to take to someone with substantial experience in SEO work.

With over three years of full time experience and well over 300 web sites that have been researched and ranked in the search engines, you can feel confident of the services that my company and I can offer to you.

Leave the heavy lifting of Internet advertising to us and let us show you how you can successfully use the Internet to increase your business revenues.

The trouble is, business has gotten just a touch scarce. I’ve heard several times from my customers that things have really slowed down.

What I’ve been doing for my customers is trying to find ways to save the precious dollars that they have to spend by helping them analysis and shave costs in the technology areas within their businesses.

You would be surprised at what costs can be reduced or completely eliminated to help your business stretch your dollars in these lean times. Here’s some areas that can be looked at in your business:

1. Computers – First and foremost, sometimes getting rid of old clunky computers will save you a bundle. If you have a staff member who is using a computer that wastes only 5 minutes of every day with them waiting for it to boot, or to complete a task. That five minutes per day, over the course of 240 working days per year will add up to 1,200 minutes or 20 hours per year. If that employee costs you $50 per hour, then that old computer that is wasting 5 minutes per day is costing you $1,000 per year! With that $1,000, you can purchase a reasonably good PC for that employee and see those savings come back very quickly!
2. Computers – Once again, improperly managed computers can cost you a bundle. How many times do your employees run into computer troubles? How many virus’s do they seem to encounter? How often does something just fail and vital data is lost? Once again, with proper computer management, these losses can be drastically minimized. Some of my customers have seen incredible long term savings by allowing my business to manage their computer assets. Repairs are fewer and costs are much lower.
3. Communications- Let us take a look at your overall communications costs. You may be surprised at the amount that can be saved by embracing newer technologies like voice over ip. A standard business line can cost you and your business $50 per month. Multiply this by the number of employees you have and a 10 person office can easily spend $500 per month, excluding long distance fees. Did you know that moving to a voice over IP system can cut your phone costs in half? And you will enjoy many more features you previously never had.
4. Printers and Faxes – Here’s one area where you can save a bundle. Did you know putting in a high speed multi-use fax/printer can really reduce your ongoing printing consumables? The average toner cartridge for a laser printer will cost you between 5¢ to 15¢ per page. Whereas a full maintenance agreement on an all in one business grade printer/photocopier/fax can cost between 1¢ to 5¢ per page? Again, based upon a savings of about 5¢ per page, printing roughly 50 pages per day, can save your business $600 per year. And you get the added benefit of a fast and multi-function device in your office.
5. Data management- One thing that keeps some business owners up at night is the rising costs of just managing their electronic documents. When you run a two or three person establishment, this isn’t a really big problem but put ten people into the mix and you will have a big problem! You need a professional in place to help you migrate your document handling from simpler programs like Word© and Excel© to more robust and scalable solutions like customized database applications. You would be surprised at how affordable this type of solution can be over the long term.

If you are interested in having me take a look at your business, you can give us a ring at your convenience. Initial consultations are absolutely without cost and obligation on your part. Only when you are sure that I can offer you value, do we move to the next step.

Call us today, 403-775-9041 and ask for Frank.

But how do I show this to a prospective client who is firmly grounded in the flesh and blood world?

Recently I had the privilege to help someone reduce their money telephone bills for their business and I noticed that they are being charged more than $400 per month for advertising with them. This had to be their yellow pages listings. Wow, almost $5000 per year to be in the yellow pages.

Funny thing is, the yellow pages is starting to go the way of other extinct animals. As it gets easier and easier to find what we want online, the extra work to find what we need in the yellow pages begins to pale.

If you are trying to grow your business, you know first hand how important it is to get your name in front of prospective customers and how expensive that can be. Let me offer you a bit of free advice.

Get into the head of your customer for just one moment. What would they type into a search engine to find you? If you are a plumber, maybe it will be ‘good plumber your town name‘. Or if you are a computer professional, like myself, maybe they will type in ‘computer repair your city name‘.

Now the funny thing is, you will notice very quickly that very few businesses will try to create a site that is oriented on that search term.

I was recently talking to a used book store and they were very frustrated over the fact that a previous web developer had created a web site for them and they were not getting any traffic or even being ranked for ‘used bookstore Okotoks’. (Okotoks is the town that I live in.)

I took a really fast look at the site and did a quick search of her site for that search term. The results? Didn’t show up once on her site! I told her that the fastest way to get ranked for this would be to create a web page on that search term. Something like, ‘What to Look for in a Used Bookstore in Okotoks’.

The competition on the phrase was pretty much non-existent, so she could be ranked very quickly for that phrase.

But back to the question in mind, ‘But why the Internet’?

People today are searching on the Internet more and more for your business, but if you aren’t there and your competitor is, then they will get the business.

It doesn’t matter how much better your services are. It doesn’t matter if you are cheaper. It doesn’t even matter that you’ve spent $$$$ on yellow pages ads. What matters is that they found your competitor and not you when searching on Google.

So, what are you going to do today to help your business get noticed on the world wide web?

I’m not going to go into why’s to this statement, but today I’m going to show you how powerful this statement can actually be.

A little while back, I posted a new article entitled “Today’s Business Skills and the Internet“. Knowing the skills required to rank this article quickly, I decided to put this to the test.

Many will tell you that it can take hours, days or even weeks to seek your content ranked by the search engine’s like “Google”.

If things are done ‘right’, then it should only take minutes. Yes, you heard me right, minutes.

Now this isn’t always so, but the important factor is getting Google to take notice of your site the minute news breaks. If there isn’t too much competition in the terms you’ve choosen, then your dillegent work can be rewarded very quickly.

Remember the article that I made mention of earlier? Here’s a screen shot from Google just minutes after posting the article:

Click on image to see a full sized version

As you can see from the screen capture, that this article was ranked in the #1 position for it’s title within 18 minutes and this particular phrase has more then 35 million competiting pages!

I’ve provided this time and time again. If you know how to target your services, you will be richly rewarded. I didn’t perform any trickery to get this ranking so fast, but I did execute a fine plan over the long term to get my rewards.

Your business too can experience this type of success. If you are interested, please feel free get in contact with us by clicking here.

But how can the Internet be harnessed to help your business? Let’s take a few moments to investigate this for you.

Find Your Perfect Customer and Find Their Wants

Beyond traditional ways of thinking, customers purchase on their wants and not their needs. Needs only come into play to justify their wants.

You need to eat nutritional food each and every day. But many of us want to eat fast food. So, what do we eat? In many cases it’s fast food. It’s much the same in all aspects of our lives.

You can use the Internet to discover exactly who are customer is and discovered their wants. Better then an annoying survey, the Internet can pin point the exact things that are going through our customers’ minds when they are looking for an answer for the problem.

Using the demographics provided by several sources on the Internet, Google being one of them, we can discover what makes our customers tick.

Next we can start to discover how we can address their wants and turn it into solutions.

A Match Made in Heaven

It’s great to know what your customer wants and also how you can satisfy their wants, but you need to find a way to let your customer know about you!

With more and more advertisements flooding your propective customers each day, it’s hard for them to pull your ad out of the crowd.

This requires you to become a bit different from the crowd. In other words, you need to learn to stand out from the crowd.

Once again, you have the Internet at your disposal! Find out where your prospective clients hang out and you need to hang out there too! Answer some simple questions without sounding like a billboard and you’ll soon begin to find yourself growing your client base.

But this is only one method. Learn how to be ranked at the top of the search engines for some of the burning questions your client asks. This is a great method to present yourself to the client.

The mindset is totally different. You are no longer knocking on their door. When they come to you, they are knocking on your door! That’s the great power of the search engines at work.

Presentation of Your Solution

This is the final key to using the Internet to build your business. If you present yourself professionally on the Internet, you will find that you will gain many prospective clients.

Now, it doesn’t matter whether you work in your pajamas or from the 24th floor of a downtown high rise building.

What does matter is that your site is clean and neat. And it does get ranked and provides your prospective customer with the right information to allow them to make an informed and confident business transaction.

Learn how to find your customers wants, needs and how to satisfy them today.

I can honestly say that there will come a day when the Internet will overtake other forms of media, such as conventional radio and television. Television programs will be produced and distributed through the Internet where interested individuals will be able to watch their choice programs when and where they wish too.

I’m actually surprised that some TV producers haven’t jumped the trend and decided to offer next week’s up and coming episode on the Internet for paid subscribers! This had to be only around the corner.

Imagine that old and tired saying “There’s nothing on TV” to become history. As it is, there are some individuals taking things into their hands already.

Take a look at the likes of Youtube or Viddler. These video sites are being populated by the 1,000′s with many videos by amateur and professional producers.

Also, let’s consider the the social aspect of the Internet. From bookmarking sites to places for like minded individuals to hang out. Smart business owners are finding ways to fit in and provided their services to these niche demographics.

Finally, consider the power of the search engine. This is one form of connecting with customers that few businesses really have considered. Let me offer you an example.

I have a friend who solely gathers new clients to their real estate business through the use of Google Ads. They spend roughly $2,000 per month on these ads, but these ads have paid back their cost many times over.

My friend told me that it was not unusual to pick up 10 new clients per month using this method of reaching prospects. Considering the fact that a sale could easily be worth $10,000 gross profit, you can see how spending $2,000 starts to make sense.

But many business owners shy away from the power of the Internet from sheer ignorance. They have yet to discover how to harness this power or possibly don’t even know that it exists. This is something that could potential be fatal.

Consider two businesses. They both decide to sell the same products or services. Let’s call them ‘Business A’ and ‘Business B’. One final point, they both are across the street from one another.

Business A

Business A has been in this particular community for some time. They’ve been able to establish themselves and have little concerns to the day to day business.

Some months are very good and some months are a bit lean. But on average they are able to survive. They do not venture out into the advertising arena much more then to display their presence on the street front that they occupy.

Business B

Business B has entered this community after Business A had. But they have a plan. Before opening their doors, they decide to present themselves in local advertising efforts to the community. They are trying to tie the products and services they offer to them within the customer’s mind.

They found limited success, so they decided that they needed to seek a larger community. They turned to the Internet. With partnering with a company skilled at using the Internet as a tool to be harnessed for business, they start by analysing what the customer really is looking for.

It’s one thing to think what your customers’ want and it’s another to know what your customers truly want. With analysis in the larger global market, Business B starts to find the hot buttons that the customers see. They find innovative ways to become problem solvers for these particular problems.

They may be offering the same products or services, but now Business B is focusing on the sizzle and not the steak of the problem. They are focusing in on being the problem solver and not the solution provider. Big difference in the customer’s mind!

Before long, Business B is able to service a much larger community and thus suppliment their lower local profits with a larger global community profits.

Before long, they are started to be perceived as experts in their field of service or products. Soon, their focused talents start to affect their local business. They are also perceived in the minds of their local community as global experts.

Soon you will find that the local community will start to shift it’s focus from Business A to Business B. This is because they find that Business B just knows the problem better. They also are seen as national or global experts.

You may think that this is more fiction then fact. But would you trust a local vendor over a national chain store? That may be a loaded question, but the general public would trust the chain store. Why? All the reasons mentioned above.

So, where do you sit? How can your business benefit from what the Internet provides? Even if you are a person who doesn’t require the Internet at all for business, you would be surprised at what the Internet can do for you!

If you’d like to have a consulation with The Thomas Project team, please click here to send us a confidential message.

Why?

Several reasons that come to mind include:

• Level of sophistication that client’s expect before considering the offer. Let’s face it, we will always judge a gift by the bow on the present. Business is no different. When you enter a business meeting where you are selling your services, it’s always easier to sell from a position of authority then a position of defense. Would you want your sales people to be visiting a client in dirty jeans and a ripped t-shirt or a clean looking business suit?
• Profit margins are not as wide as they once were. Because of the globalization of our market, you are now competing with the whole wide world and not just your local competition. This forces prices down and requires more jobs to profit at the same levels.
• Level of expectation of the client has also risen. There was once a time where simple gifts to entice a sale would perform well, but those times are long gone. These simple gifts are expected now. You have to move to the next step of ‘giving’ to capture new clients.

With these odds, one can see how many countries (noticed I didn’t say communities), are now in financial troubles. If businesses were working hard to keep a bit a head of the curve, instead of depending on yesterday’s strategies, they would do much better in today’s economy.

How to Turn a Disadvantage Into an Advantage

All is not lost though. If you can discover where your business is struggling, then you can pretty much guess that other businesses in your industry are performing much the same way.

If you can then discover how to turn is disadvantage of your business into a strong advantage in your prospective client’s mind, then you will win at the end of the day.

Let’s take a quick example. Within my business, I use the open source web platform called WordPress pretty extensively. This turned out to be a bit of a disadvantage in the beginning, as it held my business’ progress back a bit.

But in the long term, I was able to push through and become the expert in the WordPress platform. So much so, that I’ve been able to take my WordPress skills to the global level and gain a worldwide clientele base that is looking for the best to handle their WordPress issues and are willing to pay for those highly specialized services.

But this required me to move beyond the crowd, in the customer’s mind. This is an important difference. I had to be better then the other’s in my prospective customer’s mind.

This requires me to anticipate my customer’s needs before they arise. This also requires me to truly know my stuff in my area of expertise. Finally, this needs to be conveyed to my prospective clients’ minds.

So, how are you going to move beyond the crowd and stand out to the global community? You may be surprised at what you will uncover in your business that can turn disadvantage into advantage.