A few months ago, I was repeatedly solicited by a relatively visible Internet Marketing firm that was trying to hook me up with some type of program. I declined the offer, but an acquaintance ending up hiring this firm to undertake an SEO campaign for him. Later, I got an inside look at one of the services this acquaintance had purchased and it turned out to be article distribution hinging on the practice known as spinning. Never heard of this?

Read my most recent Search Engine Guide article: The Shady Practice Of Spinning Articles To Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties.

It seems this is a growing post-Panda practice and suffice it to say that I really, really dislike it.

So, if you are about to hire a marketing firm that wants to put the dubious magic of the ‘spun’ article to work for you, do yourself a favor and read my piece on this first. It could save you time, money and a bothersome hassle.

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Do you remember these guys? The guys who ran your town’s computer store in 1980?

The above graphic is pulled from my original post on this topic: Best Buy Brings On Crashing Wave Of Nostalgia. In that piece, I compared my fondly-remembered formative experiences in the computer stores of three decades ago to the headache of shopping in the 21st century at the box store that came to replace all those neat small businesses.

Why am I writing about Best Buy again? Because Larry Downes has just published a really worthy article at Forbes entitled: Why Best Buy Is Going Out Of Business…Gradually. If you are a business owner on a scale from one-man-shop to corporate enterprise, please take a few minutes to read Downes’ piece. And please pay special attention to the author’s remarks regarding Best Buy’s most obvious failings:

Their “people” are not knowledgeable; they are annoying. The store “format” is entirely generic; perhaps a little confusing. The stores and Websites are not “preferred destinations”—they are destinations, at best, of inertia, or in the case of exclusives, destinations of the only resort. The “shopping environment” is the opposite of fun and informative. It’s depressing and humiliating, as in “I can’t believe I had to go to Best Buy to get this.”

Hear, hear, Mr. Downes! I salute your astute appraisal of the very qualities that have made shopping at Best Buy so unsatisfactory for so many people for so many years.

How you treat your customers is critical. Yet, the sad truth is that you can abuse your customers and succeed financially for a long time in America. After all, being wonderful to customers did not keep all of the little computer stores in business once the Best Buys and Circuit Cities came rolling along. But perhaps there is some type of long-range karma involved. Circuit City is gone, and if Larry Downes’ predictions come true, Best Buy will eventually disappear, leaving empty, hulking blue-and-purple hulls across the land where once a fortune was being made, for a little while.

We live in a service economy. Best Buy has never gotten this right. I’m not one to kick a man when he’s down, and I certainly sicken at the thought of further lost businesses and lost jobs in our present crazy economy. But moments like these should elicit introspection.

As the business owner – are you willing to put customer service first? As the consumer – have you learned a lesson yet? Do you miss the little shops yet, with their personal stake in good customer service and their personal accountability? Would you be more loyal, this time around, if – after the hypothetical closing of a store like Best Buy – the new only game in town was being run by a couple of old computer programmers with quirky manners and a world of real knowledge to share with you to make your interactions with electronics less problematic and more fulfilling? And when the next box store came to town, 5 years in the future, would you stay loyal to the superior experience or repeat the same mistake all over again?

Something to think about.

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Will 2012 be the year you take your business online or make important efforts to increase the visibility of your company on the web? Partner with Solas Web Design to get the job done right!

2011 has had more than its share of reporting on economic ills, but over the past year, our firm has witnessed first-hand smart, committed small-to-medium business owners profiting from the opportunities that the Internet provides when utilized well.

Whether you are starting from scratch with a brand new business that has something valuable to offer if it can be found by the public, or you need to improve the presentation of your existent company so that it convinces more people to do business with you, 2012 marks our 9th year helping important organizations like yours to achieve their worthy goals! Here’s what we can do for you in the new year:

Hourly Consultation
The ideas are bubbling around in your brain like fizz in a soda, and you need to talk to a professional to get input as to whether you are on the right track. What domain name should you choose? What is a really trustworthy hosting company? What is the most effective, optimized way to organize the text content of your website? What should you write about? Is a 10 page website going to cover it for you and your users, or do you need to have a plan to expand? What local business directories should you be listed in? What are the guidelines for inclusion? Have you taken the right steps or made a costly mistake along the way? How can you gain higher search engine rankings – or should you be more focused on conversions than mere ranking numbers? Need a referral to a specialist in some specific form of search marketing? Who should you trust?

We schedule hourly phone consultation appointments with business owners to discuss and resolve questions just like these. For a modest investment, you have the ears and mind of a pro locked onto your project. If we can’t be of meaningful help, we’ll tell you so, but chances are, our experience will give you the confidence you need that you are making the best possible choices about the presentation of your business on the web. We’d love to consult with you!

Website Audits
It doesn’t matter if you paid pennies or a bundle for your current website: if it’s failing to achieve your goals, something isn’t right. Every year, countless companies end up with poorly designed websites stemming from both cheap build-your-own deals to extravagantly priced marketing firms. Disappointed business owners have asked us to take a look at sites that are costing them $10/month to sites that they made an investment of 20K in for the design. When the designer built without human beings and search engines in mind, the site is slated for failure from the day it’s launched.

If you want to know what’s wrong with your website, we offer a detailed one-time written report that covers your website’s visual design, human usability, on-page SEO and/or local SEO and copywriting. This is not a pre-written report from which we’re cutting and pasting; every report is written from scratch, specifically for the unique client. You come away with an easy-to-understand list of problems and actionable items and suggestions for improvement. Every business owner who has ever requested a website audit performed by us has told as that it was an immense help to them in seeing their site with informed, new eyes. It would be our pleasure to to provide this valuable kind of insight to your company!

Website Design
Organization is everything! The most valuable skill we’ve acquired in nearly a decade of designing websites is the ability to understand and organize all of the relevant data about a client’s business. Everything from content about your goods and services to your contact information must be organized and presented in a way that is easy for people and search engine bots to use and understand.

Human visitors must be inspired with a feeling of trust in your organization and called to the actions that are most vital to your business – whether that means walking in your door, picking up a phone or filling out a form. Simultaneously, search engines must be treated to an organization and presentation of your data in a manner that is easiest for them to crawl and ‘understand’.

Every website designed by Solas Web Design is built on beautiful, logical architecture, includes on-page SEO, makes humans’ paths through the property as simple and engaging as possible and is all wrapped up in a professional, appealing visual design. Take advantage of our skill in this and and the investment you make in having Solas Web Design develop your website will probably be the best thing you ever did for your business. That’s what our clients tell us!

Local SEO
Need more neighbors to find and patronize your local-focused business? We can strengthen the local nature of your website or consult with you about how to do it yourself. We can also get you listed in the major local business indexes such as Google Places, Yahoo! Local, Bing Local and the other directories we believe to be most powerful. Let us explain the guidelines to you for participation in Local Search and help you avoid the traps and pitfalls that await any business owner who doesn’t have all of the information he or she needs about how to run a successful local search marketing campaign.

Over the past 5 years, helping clients with their Local SEO needs has become an increasingly important part of our work and we absolutely love it. Having a headache in Local or don’t know where to begin? Call us!

Copywriting and Editing
You tell us what points need to made on a given page and we write the polished, persuasive, optimized copy that will present your business to the world as a truly professional organization. If writing just isn’t your thing, developing a relationship with a professional copywriter is the answer.

Any company that launches a website has just gone into the publishing business. This means you’ve got to have some kind of content to publish! Let us tell the public why you are the best mechanic in town, the most artistic landscape planner, the greenest restaurant, the most trustworthy attorney.

Already have pages of copy written? A professional edit will tighten your meaning, correct errata, highlight your keywords and strengthen your overall message. We’ve edited everything from business proposals to on-page text to video descriptions. Let us put our gift with words in your hands!

We Can Do It All!
We can consult with you, create your text copy, design your site, optimize it and get it listed locally. This array of diverse services can be combined to create a very powerful presence for your business on the Internet. We couple these technical skills with a talent for listening well to you and understanding the core benefits and heart of your business. We believe in our clients! Believe in our ability to guide you well on the web.

Why Work With Solas Web Design
There’s an old saying that a man is known by the company he keeps. Our professional associations and citations include:

Q&A Forum Local SEO Associate, SEOmoz
Moderator, Cre8asite Forums
Contributing Author, Search Engine Guide
Contributor, David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors Annual Report
Recommended Local SEO Firm, GetListed.org
Cited Source, Search Engine Land
Cited Source, Blumenthals

These sources represent some of the most trusted, most cited and oldest in the industry and our active role in the areas of design, SEO, local SEO and copywriting is your assurance that we will be putting an extremely high level of skill at your service.

Let’s work together to make 2012 rewarding and profitable for your business!
Call us at (707) 981-7651 or contact us via our form.

Happy New Year!

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