Yesterday a very dear, long-time friend called me to ask my advice about a website. “Sara” (not her real name) is just finishing a naturopathic degree and thought it would be a good idea to have a website to market her services.

Sara’s mainly a stay-at-home mom (most demanding job I know of) to her three incredible daughters -all under 8. She’s committed to being a wife to her husband Tom first, mom second and business owner third. So, unlike many of my own clients who need full-featured, client-focused websites to grow their business, Sara needs a small, simple, somewhat causal website with few, if any features beyond her content.

Sara and Tom are good friends to my wife and I. We all talk regularly by phone. During a casual conversation a few months ago was when Sara first asked me about what she needed for a website. We talked briefly about her business needs, her audience and writing content. We also talked about the basics, such as domain name registration and hosting. It’s this conversation that spawned her new interest in having a website.

Luckly, she found the Yahoo! Small Business website. “Perfect,” she thought when she saw that she could register her domain name for $1.99 when she signed up for hosting with Yahoo!. Cheap domain registration and easy hosting, right.

It’s true, companies such as Yahoo!, SiteBuilder, and Homestead offer some great, and easy-to-use services. If you use their templated designs, you can often have a website up very quickly. And for seemingly little cost.

Yet, as Sara and I soon discussed, there is a cost. And it’s a cost that usually goes without knowing.

Sara thought the design she was using was okay - “good enough for now.” And she felt ready to create the pages of her site using this template from Yahoo! just to get things moving.

Then she asked me a very important question…

“Dawud, if I want to stop using Yahoo!, what do I need to do to move my website,” she asked?

I said, “There’s the crux…you can’t do anything…it’s not your website?”

She said, “What do you mean it’s not my website, I’m paying for it?”

It’s true, she is paying for it. She’s paying for the hosting on Yahoo!’s servers and for the privilege to use their templates for her design. But she doesn’t own any part of the design itself. So once Sara stops using Yahoo! for hosting, she looses her website all together. The only thing she can retain is her content. But only if she gets it off “her” website before closing the account.

Most people who use these services don’t realize that if they decide to host elsewhere, be it for development, service, pricing, etc, they loose their site. So in essence, they’re either stuck with the service they initially chose or they have to start all over when they want to move.

This isn’t a bad situation for a personal or club website. Even for some small, brochure-style business sites it’s fine.

But for any business owner who wants their website to be a hub for growing their business it’s certainly less than ideal. Not only do you not own your website, it often difficult or impossible to alter the designs you can choose from to accommodate the needs of your growing business.

To be fair, there is one advantage to using templated services…start up costs. You can often get a website off the ground for a very small investment - usually under $50. This may work well for you if you have little cash flow as you’re starting your business.

If you choose that path, my advice is the same to you as to my dear friend Sara…Get a professionally designed website as soon as you have enough cash flow to do so. The investment will pay dividends even in the smallest business. Especially if your designer has the skills to help you develop and execute a web-based strategy for growing your business.

My advice, if you can, own your website. and go through the development process with a designer that can really help you craft your site into a marketing hub for your business. You really can’t measure the gains for your effort, time and cost.

As many of you already know my wife and I had our second child, a son a few months ago. His name is Ahmed Dawud Miracle. He’s now four months old and doing great adjusting to life, as my daughter says, “outside the womb.”

The birth of my son has led to great adjustments for me, my wife and daughter, and my business.

Both my kids have taught me so much about living. And they’ve also taught me about business.

Yeah, I know, sounds odd. How can a 2 1/2 year-old and a infant who freshly planted here have anything to teach me about my business?

Well, just the other day, I was working on a design. It was all but complete, except for a bug in Internet Explorer (no surprise) that was causing some of the text to disappear. It worked fine in all the other web browsers, just not in IE.

After three hours of trying to fix the bug, I had made little progress. My normally patient, calm self was disintegrating fast. And just at the point when I let out a loud UUUGGGHH!, my little girl knocked on my office door.

She was bringing me lunch - which she often does. Of course, she’s two, so she asked me what UUUGGGHH! was. I gave her some answer she could understand. Then she reminded me that I was using my outside voice inside. Which was true.

She then asked the question that can haunt adults to no end…”why?”

A’esha, my amazing little two year-old, wanted to know why I was using my outside voice inside. Now I usually do my best to answer every question she ever asks in a way that she can understand. And, I’m human and do get frustrated from time to time with the constant curiosity of the two year-old mind. Rarely, however, do I display my frustration with her on this.

This was one of those time I had to make a choice: either let her see my further frustration. Or take a brief moment, let the frustration go a bit, and give her a loving answer she could understand.

Luckily, I find her curiosity to be delightful, refreshing and often joyous.

In a single moment, I connected with those feels and started to laugh. I was laughing, of course, not at my little girl’s questions, but at myself. I knew I had been taking what I was working on too seriously and it was creating unnecessary stress.

So, I picked up my little girl, who was still holding the lunch my wife so lovingly made for me, and gave her a bit hug as I chuckled at my situation. I then answered ten “why” questions - which were enough to satisfy her for the moment. I got a big hug and kiss and my little girl informed me that she was going to close my door because I need to work during lunch today.

The love and caring from my daughter’s visit, and my wife’s lunch preparation, relaxed me from my growing frustration. I chose to take a lunch break with my family. Then went back to my office refreshed and ready to tackle this problem.

You can probably guess where this story ends. With renewed calm and refilled patience, I quickly found the solution to my problem.

In this case, my family was instrumental in helping me in my business. It could have gone another way if I didn’t stop to appreciate the love from my daughter and wife in supporting my business; my wife with preparing food and my daughter’s lovely curiosity.

Stop for a few moments and consider how your family helps you with your business.

I had some time over the holidays to think about the past year; the projects I’ve worked on, the people I’ve worked with and many of the conversations I’ve had. It’s been a great year and I thank you for that.

As I looked back over past conversations and one-on-one consultations, I’m struck with the overwhelming amount of misinformation about search engines. And unless you’re following current trends closely, you’d have no idea if what you’re being told is accurate or not.

Probably the biggest piece of misinformation “out there” right now is about keywords - how they’re used and what they can do for your website.

You’ve probably been told that all you need to do is get a big list of keywords (some times called search terms, or search phrases). This big list of keywords then goes in your copy. It also goes in what is called a META tag in your web code. And when you’ve got this done, you just sit back and watch the search engines build your business for you.

Well, it used to sort of be that way. But it’s nothing like that today.

You see, when popularity in the internet was growing early on, search engines did track big lists of keywords and use them in search results.

Ten years ago one of the most effective ways to get high rankings in the search engines was to add that big list of keywords to the META tag.

Remember, the internet did not begin with commerce, blogging or personal interest in mind. It began with scientist wanting to quickly share data from experiments. The first search engines were designed merely to make it easy for researchers to find data for papers and projects.

So, the people who wrote the parameters for internet coding (HTML, HTTP, etc) created META tags. These META tags housed metadata that was used to catalog and quickly search for research data.

META tags have attributes. One of those attributes is called “keywords.” The keywords attribute was established so that researchers could better cross-reference similar data. That way when a research chemist searched the then internet for “peptide reactions,” they would not only get specific experiments about peptide reactions, but also data that related in some way to it.

So back then the internet was nor more than a valuable research tool. Therefore, the accuracy of data and the ease of searching and sharing that data was of the only importance. And the keyword attribute was one of the most important ways to catalog that data.

Then came commerce.

The idea that people could make money with websites changed everything. Business were looking for an advantage - any and every advantage. It didn’t take long to discover how to bend the META keyword attribute for financial gain. After all, if I’m selling soap and your selling soap, it’s likely I’ll sell more soap if my website comes before yours in the search engines.

In a few short years, the keyword attribute became so inundated with false listings that search engines had to place less emphasis on it. Companies continued, however, to find other ways to abuse keyword lists. And soon the keyword attribute was barely looked at by search engines.

That’s where we are today. And not only are we at the point where the keyword attribute is all but dead, we’re also in a place that any attempts to fool the search engines can lead to a permanent banning of a website.

So search engines, unable to trust people’s list of keywords have had to get much more complex. They’ve had to create these complex mathematical algorithms to weed out pertinent information from junk. Remember, search engines are in the business of giving their users the most accurate results to their search. You can’t find what you’re searching for, it’s unlikely you’re going to use that search engine too often.

Of course keywords (or search terms) are still necessary today. But the META tag and large lists of keywords don’t get your anywhere - accept maybe banned from the search engine if they feel you’re trying to cheat.

The way to gain search engine rankings today is actually still quite simple. It just takes more time, patience and a bit more work. As I mentioned, search engines still want to have the best results for their users. So just be relevant to your specific topic and, in time, you’ll find yourself climbing in search engine rankings.

There are many things you can do to become more relevant in specific searches. The two most important are your content and relevant links.

You must have great content that includes search terms people would be using to find a service like yours. The more you can get those search terms in your content, the better. But make it real content and not just some list of words. Because when you’ve actually got someone to visit your site from the search engines, you want to do your best to convert them into a customer.

The second way is to get as many websites as you can to link back to your website. And the higher ranked and more relevant the site, the better the link is for you. I cover some strategies for this in my article Is Your Site Relevant. You can view it here…

Can you be found in your website? No, really, can your site visitors find you?

I’m sure they can find out about your services, you upcoming events, and how to contact you. And you likely have a bio of who you are and what you’ve done. But do these things express who you are - you know, as a living, breathing person?

It might seem odd to ask these questions. Of course you’re a living, breathing person. How else would you have your business if you weren’t alive. What a ridiculous question.

If you have a service-based business, asking these questions is not ridiculous at all. Actually the answers are very important.

The other day I was working with a client on a website. She had written some great copy. As I looked over her homepage, her services pages, and her pages describing her services and how they could help someone, they were really good. Her writing was clear and easy to understand.

My client had done a great job writing engaging, alive and caring copy. As the audience, I could see myself clearly in what she wrote. It wasn’t hard to figure out, right from the homepage, whether or not she could help me. I felt heard and seen in how she wrote. It made me want to find out more - more about her services, and more about her.

Just as I do with many of the clients I work with, I read her bio page almost last. I like to get a tone for how someone is writing to their audience and about their services before I read how they speak about themselves. Many times the style of writing changes when I get to the bio page.

My client, like most others, was no different. She wrote in the all-too-familiar style of reporting about herself in the third person. Gone was the feeling of personal relationship and aliveness I had felt with her other pages. And while her bio was technically well written, I felt like I couldn’t find her in it.

The “About Us” page is sometimes the most difficult to write. Most of us believe that we can’t actually write our own bios - even though most of us do. We think that our bio must seem like someone else wrote it because we certainly shouldn’t be tooting our own horn. This leads, most often, to dry, impersonal copy that misses who we are - as people.

My client had the same idea. Even though her compassion, caring and abilities were present in all her other copy, she didn’t write her bio that way. When we talked about her copy, she told me she never really considered writing her bio any other way. “Everyone writes in this ‘professional,’ report-like style.”, she said. And she’s right.

Few of us know we can write about ourselves in a warm, honest, conversational style. Yet the best bios are often the ones written as though you are telling your own story, complete with your ups and downs.

A good bio shows that you’re human - that you’ve made mistakes and learned lessons. It meets the audience where they are in language they can understand. Ultimately, your audience should identify with you in your bio. They should see themselves in some part of it.

Once my client understood this, she rewrote her bio with the same personal touch she had added to all her other copy. She also felt better about it. She really liked thinking about her bio page as her narrating her own story.

So as you write - or rewrite - your bio page, keep one thing in mind… your audience will become your clients when they feel they identify with you and can trust you. They’re hiring a person, regardless of your service, who they’ll be in relationship with. Hence, a bio describing you as a person, just like them, can go a long way to building that trust.

Enjoy writing…

Your website is done. Your content is really good. Your design is elegant and complements to your content beautifully. You’ve set up your enewsletter campaign with a great giveaway. Now, all you need is traffic. So how do you get it.

The answer is obvious, right? You need to get in the search engines.

Everyone you know has told you this. They even suggest search phrases (or keywords) that you should be using to get ranked high in search results. And, of course, you have your own ideas for search phrases as well. All you have to do is put those keywords in your web pages and sit back and wait for the flood of visitors.

If only it were that simple.

Search engine placement and optimization takes a lot of time and effort. More time, even, than effort. And today, with so many websites vying for those valuable positions at the top of the search results, it can be very difficult to make your website visible. Especially if you’ve just finished your first website or if you content has greatly changed. So while your efforts with the search engines will payoff in the long-run, don’t expect too much from them immeditately.

But don’t loose hope. In my last newsletter I covered seven strategies for building traffic without concerning yourself with the search engines. Today I want to expound a bit on, perhaps, the most useful and powerful of those strategies: Distributing Your Content.

There are many website owners who are constantly looking for good content. Guess what, you likely have good content. Not only that, you know how to write good content. And even if you don’t feel you content is good (who ever thinks that their writing is good, anyway?), it probably has more value than you think. So share what you have; share what you know.

Even better, write some new pieces that are targeted specifically to each of the websites you want to submit content to. Your articles don’t need to long and the writing doesn’t need to win you a Pulitzer. You just need informative and helpful articles that will add value to people’s lives.

But how do you find the websites to submit articles too? The answer is even more obvious than you think…use the search engines. Search for every topic and keyword phrase that relates to your business. Ask friends and collegues for suggestions of search terms. And be broad. If you’re a business coach, don’t just focus on business. Find avenues for men’s and women’s issues, general service-oriented articles, better lifestyle, spiritual success, making bigger profits, etc. Write on everything that is even remotely related to your business.

Now as you find websites that you’d like to submit articles, create one or more folders in your web browser’s bookmarks or favorites to save those links. And as you find more websites, add them to your bookmarks.

Now, don’t stop just websites about your area of business. Pick your favorite hobbies or areas of interest and write articles to submit to websites in those areas. You could write about tennis, photography, pottery, eBay strategies, home decorating, or anything else that’s an interest to you. Offer people your unique perspective on any topic and you’ll find an audience. And from that audience you’ll find clients.

Now, you may be asking why you’d want to write all this stuff for other websites. Well, here’s the most important thing you want from publishing on other websites - a link back to your own website.

Usually at the end of any article there’s room for a short bio. In your bio, be absolutely certain that you can include a live link back to your website. And ideally you’d list your full domain name to give your website even more visibility. Your bio might look something like this:

Dawud Miracle has been designing websites since 1998. He currently works with service-oriented professionals who love their work and who need a website to fully meet their business needs. You can find out more at www.healthywebdesign.com (domain name would be live link).

Your website address in your bio is a gateway to your website. Every single person who reads your articles, regardless of what they’re on, will have the chance to click-through to your website. And, if they’ve read to the bottom of your article, where your bio often is, you have a good chance that they will be interested enough to find out more about you and what you do.

Can you see why I’ve titled this, Distribute Your Content and They Will Come?

This method of marketing absolutely works. It’s not all too difficult to get published on other websites - remember most websites are looking for good content…especially the most popular ones. Occasionally you’ll run into websites that don’t want content. Don’t worry. Just move on to the next website and before you know it, you’ll have a number of articles on other websites that will all focus attention back to your website and your business.

You have a website and need to know how to “get in the search engines.” Or, you are just starting a website and need to know the same thing. The bottom line is, whether you have a website or just beginning, you need visitors.

Conventional wisdom says get listed for some search terms (often called keywords) and you’re all set.

This isn’t necessarily the case, however. Search engines have a business too. Their business is in giving their users the most relevant results for their search. That means the role of the search engine is not about marketing your website. It’s actually about meeting the needs of their customers - everyone who is looking for something on the internet.

I often tell my clients, don’t expect help from the search engines. And certainly not right away. You won’t begin to see much traffic from the search engines until your website (and your business) have a level of relevancy on the web for your products or services.

So how do you gain relevancy? By getting lots of visitors to your site.

I know, I can hear you saying, “Wait a minute! If I’m going to get no help from the search engines in getting visitors until my site has some relevancy, but most people use the search engines, how will I ever get rankings? And actually, I’m not even sure what ‘relevancy’ means.”

Well, being a relevant website first means that the content of your website is consistent with your business focus and that you’re using key terminology in your content to describe what your business. Secondly, it means that within your business niche you are mainstream enough to be important to potential clients while being unique enough to set yourself apart from the mainstream.

Robert Middleton and www.actionplan.com do this very well. Robert is a marketing consultant, for the most part and yet he sets himself apart by offering a very specific approach to marketing. His website uses ‘mainstream’ marketing terminology while at the same time using terms more unique to his niche. And, since Robert’s been doing this for a while, he’s built a large following of clients that have helped him gain high relevancy, and high rankings, with the search engines for his business.

And, you can do this too.

But know that it takes time. Just with actionplan.com, it takes time to ‘convince’ the search engines that your site is relevant to their user’s searches. So how do you ‘convince’ Google, Yahoo, MSN and the others. Here’s some beginning tips…

1. Content - Make sure your content is consistent across you entire website. Use similar terms throughout the site. Whether you have high search rankings or not, having great content is vital to your potential clients.
2. Freshen it up - Along with great content, update and refresh you content constantly. The more pertinent information on your website about your business and services, the more relevant your website will appear. Plus, it keeps visitors coming back.
3. Link it - Frequently check links to other websites to be sure they’re current. Broken links is one way that search engine will consider your site less relevant.
4. Link up - Get reciprocal links from other relevant websites. One great way to raise in relevancy is to have links from pages in your business field that already have high relevancy. This shows the search engines that you have an importance with other websites that they find relevant. And, the more sites link to you, the more likely you’ll draw traffic from those sites as well.
5. Write Away - Write articles for other websites. Everyone needs great content. Write and submit articles for other websites and newsletters. This is a great way to not only market but to network as well.
6. Blog it - Starting a blog is a great idea…but not the only way to gain relevancy. Get other popular blogs to link to your site. Or better yet, write posting with your links that point traffic back to your website. You can do this by submitting comments and also by writing blog entries.
7. Opt-in - Of course, a great strategy, if you’re not already doing this, is to offer an email newsletter from your website. Visitors sign up and regular installments of your newsletter. You then post your newsletter articles on your website, giving you more site content - which is great in making you relevant. Newsletters are great ways to keep your content fresh.

All of these options are available to you with little or no cost. You find other sites to link to by using the search engines and writing to the owners (free). Update content using content management system (free - if already setup). Newsletter list (free or little cost, if already setup). Subitting articles to other websites (free).

Of course, if you need to add features to your website, such as content management (giving you the ability to make your own content updates) or adding a newsletter sign-up form, there will be some initial cost - which usually pay for themselves very quickly.

While I’ve listed here a number of things you can do yourself to gain relevancy and draw more visitors to your website, you may want to discuss your specific situation. Or you may need a service added to your website. You can contact me at any time for a FREE 25-minute phone consultation to get a quote on site updates.

Good luck, and have fun.

Last week, a man named John contacted me to inquire about building him a website.

He used the FREE 30-Minute Initial Consultation form on my website to set up our initial appointment and to tell me a bit about his business needs.

John and I met by phone a few days later. At the end of our phone conversation I gave him a quote for the work he needed done. And on the spot, he hired me.

Now this isn’t unusual. More often than not, the clients I work with come through my website, either directly or by referral. They utilize my 30 minute free consult. I give them a quote. Shortly after, and sometime on the call itself, they decide if I’m a good fit for their needs or not.

What makes this situation more unique is that this wasn’t a referral of any kind. And John didn’t find me through a Google search. Nor through another website link or an article I had written.

The path that brought John, and his work, to my door was a bit more interesting - and often overlooked.

Much of the correspondence I do is through email. I do, of course, spend time on the phone and seeing people in person. But email is surely my most used way of communicating with people.

Whether I’m sharing photos of my family with friends, keeping up with family - including mom, setting up appointments with clients and prospects, exchanging design ideas with other web developers, or a whole slew of other ways I communicate with people, I use email.

And I used email a couple of weeks ago, when a good friend of mine was doing some research for a book she’s writing about identifying and making needed changes in our life. I forwarded her some web resources I know about. Once, called (Colorgenics) she liked so much that she forwarded the message to friends of hers.

One of the friends she forwarded my message was John. And John just happened to be looking for a web designer.

John, of course, looked at the Colorgenics site - which has some interesting testing using colors to identify our states of mind and emotion.

What he also did was look to see who the link had come from. He found my friend, of course, but he also saw my email address as being the one the original message had been sent by. And, of course, he saw that my email address has my website name in it - dawud@healthywebdesign.com

So he looked at my website, saw what I do, read about my (services ), saw I offer a FREE 30-minute consultation, and contacted me through the form at the bottom of that page.

A few days later, he became my client.

Now, I didn’t know John before this. And my friend who forwarded my message about Colorgenics didn’t know John was looking for a web designer. So what made the contact?

Simple…my email address.

Our email address is one of the most valuable (and inexpensive) ways of marketing our business. If you have a website, you really want to be using an email address from your website. That way, every time you send a message, you’re also sending your web address along with it.

Some of my clients have had the idea that they should use their website email for business and their Earthlink, Hotmail, Yahoo or AOL accounts for personal use.

I don’t agree. How would John have ever found my website if I had used my Comcast email address or one of the other email addresses I have that don’t connect to http://www.healthywebdesign.com?

Use your website email for everything. And if you want to have different email addresses for business and personal use, then create two email addresses from your website. I actually have seven (7) email addresses setup from healthywebdesign.com. Each serves a different purpose. And each can be checked from one program with the click of a single button.

Almost all website hosts will allow you to create more than one, and often hundreds, of email addresses at no extra cost.

So if you have a website, begin right now - today - using an email address that was created from your website. And if you’re using both an email address from your website and your Hotmail or Earthlink or whatever, stop. Very quickly begin to phase out your non-website email.

As a matter of fact, sending a message to everyone you know telling them about your new email address - and highlighting your website - may lead to some interest in your business.

John is not the only client in the past 9 years that has inquired about my work after seeing my email website in my email address. He’s just the most recent.