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I’m an optimist. I think to be an entrepreneur, you have to be. You just have to dig in during the tough times and work hard to make your business work, and you have to believe it will.

We all know we are finally starting to see the sun after some pretty dark years in the world economy. We were just starting to look toward what comes next, and now we are being told in all sectors that things are going to get bad again. Rising oil prices due to revolutions happening all over the Middle East, food shortages due to crazy weather this winter, and the value of the dollar dropping are all contributing to this feeling of impending doom that is leveled over the country by the media.

Now, I know all these things are happening, and yeah, it’s a little scary. But I have to look on the bright side. Maybe all this trouble over oil will finally force the administration and Congress to address the matter of drilling in our own country. We have massive, massive amounts of oil in the Dakotas, let’s take advantage of that, bring some jobs, create some capital.

As for the food shortage, I think when there is a possibility that people won’t have enough food available, maybe we shouldn’t be making fuel out of corn, and use that food for …food.

So, the bright side of things. That’s really not as tough as you might think after all that. Things are looking up, even with the higher gas prices and some talk of food shortages. According to a recent article on Fox News, business owners all over the globe are beginning to see an uptick in business. They are starting to hire.

A poll by the Young President’s Organization revealed that (direct quote): “61% of CEOs feel conditions are improving (up 46% from the last quarterly survey) and 67% of respondents believe conditions will continue to improve in the next six months.”
Read more: http://smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com/legal-hr/2011/02/10/optimisim-businesses-applicants/#ixzz1FlHxJkY7

This is a survey taken all over the globe, with all sizes of small business. I think if the guy in Sri Lanka thinks things are looking up, certainly the folks here in the US are going to be finding jobs and getting back to work in the near future.

One really interesting point made in this article is that many times, people don’t think to reach out to small businesses. They go to the big job sites and think that they can find everything there. Not all small businesses use those sites, and if you have listened to any news reports in the last couple of years, you know that 70% of all jobs in America are with small businesses – so check out the small business sector! We’re here, we’re successful, and we need people.

In the last week two major retailers have been penalized by Google for what many would term “grey hat” practices. They employed some different strategies that some might find questionable, and others might think that perhaps there were no direct Google policies against it, so why not go for it?

There are many, many ways to plan and implement SEO strategy, and some of them do fall into a grey area. A really good SEO won’t try most of them, and will stick to what is considered “white hat” or “ethical SEO”. Overstock.com, as of yesterday, their rankings dropped to the 5th or 6th pages for many phrases that they had been ranking well for in the past, according to the Wall Street Journal. Overstock approached colleges and universities, asking them to link to product pages for bunk beds and other items with a 10% off discount for college students and faculty. It’s a good idea, except that it doesn’t fall within Google guidelines. I don’t know that I would call it unethical. More stupid, since you really don’t want to be penalized by Google. Therefore, it falls into the “grey” category.
JC Penny has also has some trouble in recent weeks with Google. It seems that JC Penny did not do their homework before hiring an SEO, and ended up getting more than they bargained for. You’d think they would have questions for this SEO when they were suddenly ranking first for everything from area rugs to dresses. It was eventually brought to light that the SEO was employing some seriously stupid, and majorly black hat SEO techniques. I guess the guy paid a good bit to throw a couple thousand links back to JC Penny all over the web with anchor text like “dresses” and “samsonite luggage” and hundreds more on sites all over the web. Some had a vague relevancy, but most did not. So, JC Penny’s rankings are tanking. JC Penny is also firing back, unappreciative of the “exposé” by the New York Times, or Google’s response. Within hours JC Penny’s rankings all fell significantly.

So what is up Google’s sleeve after a month of big retailers using some grey hat and black hat strategies to gain rankings? They’ve come up with algorithm designed to weed out “cheaters” and low quality sites. What’s a low quality site? Any site that does not serve it’s own purpose: link and content farms, ones with no copy or little copy, just ads, or copied content. The new algo will help Google determine how people interact with the sites. It’s supposed to weed out low quality sites, but the specifics of how it works, of course, have not been released. Some data from Chrome, I am sure helps them determine what users consider low quality sites.

I think that no matter what search engine you use, you have to consider what has always been the case with search. This algo changes none of that – you still have to go with high quality content, fresh content. And a white hat SEO…

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380306,00.asp
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2011/02/25/did-googles-algorithm-update-go-far-enough-on-content-farms

This video is a couple of years old, but it holds some fascinating facts about the web. Pretty clear why Web Marketing is the ‘wave of the future’, as the video is titled.

Here’s a pretty good idea of what you probably shouldn’t do, no matter how tempting. Mashable’s Jolie O’Dell has a post today profiling one web designer’s decision to go public with an old account who had chosen not to pay the bill. In a big way – the designer, who had hosted the site for free, replaced the copy on the homepage with copy describing his troubles getting his client to pay for the work he had completed.
The designer’s actions were certainly childish (his words), though understandable, as no one likes to get stiffed, but really, really unprofessional. I think many web design firms have had trouble collecting on outstanding bills in the last several years because, when it comes right down to it, a website isn’t rent, or lights. Things you have to have – at the absolute bare minimum – to survive. Especially if you are a chiropractor or some other entity who does not rely on e-commerce as your main source of clientele. So many companies had to go on austerity programs that in the end, probably lost them business and ended up losing money – but it was survival mode. I think in the end, this web designer probably understood that, as he took the site down of his own accord. As the economy rebounds, and business is picking up for many folks, maybe he’ll get paid after all. Then again, after what he did, he’ll probably never hear from the guy, ever. He may have even scared off potential clients, now that they see the lengths he was willing to go to collect.

I think a marketing budget is one of the last things that should be cut, right along with the rent and the lights. Marketing is what keeps clients coming through the door. This chiropractor either didn’t know that, or was in such deep financial trouble, that there was nothing he could do about it. I hope, for his sake and that of the web designer, that this thing doesn’t sour people for both of them. Makes for interesting reading, however.

Unless you’ve been trapped under some kind of large land mass, you’ve heard about the protests in Egypt, the fact that the government has tried to shut down all access to the web, and the fact that it is now targeting reporters, including Fox Business Network’s Ashley Webster, and Fox News’ Greg Palkot and Olaf Wiig, who were attacked and detained in Cairo by pro-government supporters.

This is certainly a major concern, and I am not up on foreign affairs enough to weigh in on the whole mess. What I did want to comment on was Google’s attempts to keep information coming out of the country, amidst government shut downs of web access. They formulated a system where people can call a hot line and leave a voice mail message that would then be tweeted.

I’m not one to give lots of props to Google. I do think they come up with useful and innovative products, but this one time, I’d like to give them props for being able to go old school a little to give a country a voice when it is needed. We’re still getting pictures and news out, so the government hasn’t been able to completely shut down the media. The in country media has been almost entirely eliminated, so while we see what is happening in Egypt, many of it’s own people would not be able to if not for cell phones and this hot line set up by Google. Score 1 for Google. Perhaps in the coming days, more ideas such as this will be needed as many foreign journalists have been rounded up and ousted from the country. I think we all need to say a prayer for Egypt.