Trying to build a website yourself

In the small business world, trying to build a website yourself can be comprehended in these ways:

• Son is building my site
• Your wife is building your site
• A friend is building my site
• "I have someone that will be handling that for me"
• "We are working on our website"
• "My sister builds websites for a living and she is going to help us"
• "I am building my site, I got it covered"
• "My daughters boyfriends mom is building the site for our business"

I have heard and came across so many other ways in which people build their site.  I met with a customer today who built her own site herself in 2001.  What an awful site it is too.  There are no useful links into her site, she has no beneficial text within her site and it is virtually impossible to have her site indexed by any search engines.  The site itself isn't even named with any useful indexable descriptions...it's just blank.  She virtually has a website that is blind to search engines.

It is worth your time to have someone that is good at search engine optimization, at least look at and consult with you regarding your website code.  Don't be to cheap to get a good website built.  Your competition is paying a lot of money so that your business isn't called.  Consumers are looking for that number they can call first and you need to have the opportunity to be one of the businesses that is being contacted.  Invest in the best site possible.  Just because a company will offer you a $150 website doesn't mean it will be able to help your business survive within the small business world.  In my opinion, it takes at least a 30 page site to even get anything that would begin to be competitive in this current market.

-iLocal Staff    

Now is not the time to advertise.

I don't agree with this tighness regarding peoples economic perception.  We basically are at the peak of advertisers who have declined their presence in Print Media and Yellow Page advertising.  The saddest part about our economy is how important a sales force has been for both sides of the isle.  Just imagine how deep this economy would have dropped had the numerous media's salesman not been out on the street prying belief and usage of print media.  There are a lot of businesses that wanted to cancel everything and were advised not to and they are very happy that they didn't make a long term decision based on worries about their short term circumstances.   

Please see the article below and a link to the entire article.
In a recession, the first dollars that a company usually cuts come from the advertising budget. Advertising in a recession is actually a smart business move to grow your business now and for the future.
McGraw-Hill Research conducted a study of U.S. recessions from 1980-1985. Out of the 600 business-to-business companies analyzed, the ones who continued to advertise during the 1981-1982 recession hit a 256-percent growth by 1985 over their competitors that eliminated or decreased spending.
American Business Press analyzed 143 companies during the economic downturn back in 1974 and 1975. Companies that advertised in those years saw the highest growth in sales and net income during the recession and the two years that followed.

http://advertising.about.com/od/smallbusinesscampaigns/a/recessionadvert.htm

Go For it!

People are motivated by two things.
1. Gain Benefit
2.  Prevent loss

People will work 10 times harder to prevent loss than to gain a benefit. 

Achieve your goals by extracting your energy in the right direction.

-iLocal Staff

Jumping Over the Google Sandbox

It's never easy for newcomers to enter a market and there are barriers of different kinds. For newcomers to the world of search engines, the barrier is called a sandbox – your site stays there until it gets mature enough to be allowed to the Top Positions club. Although there is no direct confirmation of the existence of a sandbox, Google employees have implied it and SEO experts have seen in practice that new sites, no matter how well optimized, don't rank high on Google, while on MSN and Yahoo they catch quickly. For Google, the jailing in the sandbox for new sites with new domains is on average 6 months, although it can vary from less than a month to over 8 months.

Read Rest of article if interested at:
http://www.webconfs.com/google-sandbox-article-11.php

iLocal Staff

Seattle Radio Station Rankings:

Who's on top now
Arbitron has a new way of measuring radio-station audiences. Instead of relying on diaries kept by listeners, it issues Portable People Meters (PPMs) that automatically detect radio signals.

TOP 5 PPM: THE NEW RATINGS REPORTING SYSTEM

PPM (vs. Diary) Station Format

1. (was 5) KPLZ-FM 101.5 Adult contemporary

2. (was 8) KJAQ-FM 96.5 Adult contemporary
3. (was 10) KRWM-FM 106.9 Soft rock
4. (was 5, tie) KJR-FM 95.7 Classic rock
5. (was 5, tie) KCMS-FM 105.3 Christian

TOP 5 DIARY: THE OLD RATINGS REPORTING SYSTEM
Diary (vs. PPM) Station Format
1. (now 7) KZOK-FM 102.5 Classic rock
2. (now 6) KISW-FM 99.9 Rock
3. (now 17) KIRO-AM* 710, KIRO-FM 97.3 News / talk
4. (now 8) KMPS-FM 94.1 Country
5. (now 5) KCMS-FM 105.3 Christian
5. (now 1) KPLZ-FM, 101.5 Adult contemporary
5. (now 4) KJR-FM 95.7 Classic rock
* AM station changed to ESPN sports April 6.

*Other notable changes
KTTH-AM 770, conservative talk, dropped from 9 in old system to 21 in PPM.
KIRO-FM 97.3, news/talk, former 710-AM programming, is now 19 using PPM.

www.iLocalOnline.com Consultants research www.WebConfs.com

Spiders don't read images but they do read their textual descriptions in the tag, so if you have images on your page, fill in the tag with some keywords about them.

Also:

Links - internal, inbound, outbound

Anchor text of inbound links
As discussed in the Keywords section, this is one of the most important factors for good rankings. It is best if you have a keyword in the anchor text but even if you don't, it is still OK

Origin of inbound links
Besides the anchor text, it is important if the site that links to you is a reputable one or not. Generally sites with greater Google PR are considered reputable.

Links from similar sites
Having links from similar sites is very, very useful. It indicates that the competition is voting for you and you are popular within your topical community.

Links from .edu and .gov sites
These links are precious because .edu and .gov sites are more reputable than .com. .biz, .info, etc. domains. Additionally, such links are hard to obtain.

Number of backlinks
Generally the more, the better. But the reputation of the sites that link to you is more important than their number. Also important is their anchor text, is there a keyword in it, how old are they, etc.

iLocal Marketing adds Blogger.com Feature

Marketing is essential to any businesses survival and growth. We here at iLocal are big fans of the blogger.com features and have used it in our own personal lives. We have added this feature to our own www.iLocalOnline.com site because of the constant marketing and site refreshes blogger delivers to any search engine that spiders and crawls nightly. This process will help facilitate or index www.iLocalonline.com content to each search engines data base on a regular basis. It also will add another internal link to our site which will essentially put our site one step further towards the goal of complete optimization. Feel free to email or call with any questions.

-iLocal Marketing