La Bene Vita

Web presence...

I'm working on it. We do pretty good business just based on our signage; people see our sign, they Google the name, they find us. But it excludes people who haven't seen the sign. We have some print ads out, but I'd like to build our web presence so we're more visible to Googlers not specifically seeking "Michelle Tuesday Music School  ". I've managed to get our MarketingGrader.com and Klout scores up a smidge, and though I've improved my blogging and social networking, it's still just numbers. MarketingGrader thinks I have a mobile-friendly website, but I don't; not yet. I just have the building blocks in place.

The next trick is inbound links.

I hate talking about SEO. If you have a good website, with good information, that answers the right questions (where can I find "music schools in gahanna ohio" or "guitar lessons in columbus"), that should be all it takes. Google has worked hard to be smart at figuring out if you're the right answer to the question. Meanwhile, people have worked even harder to be sure they are the right answer to the question by outsmarting Google. I just don't think that's the right way to go about it.

But facts are facts, and I can clearly see the statistics that prove my site gets more traffic than many of my competitors, most of whom don't know the slightest thing about SEO, web design, or even marketing at all. And I've gotten there in part by following SEO advice. And all the advice I've researched points to more inbound links.

Some of those can be purchased, and I don't mean buying or trading junk links. I mean buying advertising on legitimate, highly-ranked sites like the local chamber of commerce, school districts, high school sports calendar sites, and the like. You would be surprised at how expensive those are, and I can only afford a few key links. Therefore, I need to supplement that with some cheaper inbound links.

I discovered in my Google analysis that I have an inbound link from this page defined by HubSpot as "authoritative" (which counts more, from a link referral perspective, than a non-authoritative page): http://www.sarah-holroyd.com/blog/welcome/  . Now, I didn't comment on this blog post to get an inbound link. I commented because Seisa-sleepingcatbooks.com is my friend, and I want to see her business succeed. Little did I know that Google would appreciate my support, too.

It got me thinking. An easy way to get inbound links is to read blogs and comment on them. Isn't that what HubSpot has been saying all along, in so many words? It's all about blogs. Social networking, yes, content, yes, but also blogs. Write one, read others, comment comment comment.

I do read blogs, and I read them all the freaking time. They suck me in. I find hours lost because I spent the morning clicking from one interesting article to the next. Do I ever comment? Nope. Not unless it's a friend. Why? Too busy? I read the article, didn't I? I have no opinion? Yeah, RIGHT. I have lots of opinions.

So I'm considering adding "read and comment on blogs" to my daily agenda. I do it anyway. Why not add another item to my to-do list that I get to check?

I may never see sunshine again with all this SEO crap.