One of the great things about having my own servers is that I can control many of the things that a typical hosting company won’t let you do.  One of those is IP addresses.

A Really Dumbed-Down Explanation of How the Internet Works

When you’re sitting at home, and you decide to order pizza online, you pull up your browser on your computer.  Then you type in a URL, such as pizzahut.com.  Your computer then sends a message to your DNS, normally your local ISP (the company you pay for your Internet connection) asking for a translation of pizzahut.com to an IP address.  An IP address is simply a block of numbers (like a physical home address) that identifies where the pizzahut.com information exists on the web.

Your ISP then identifies that address online and requests the default HTML file related to that particular address (the pizza hut home page).  Once received, that file’s contents are sent back to your browser, and your browser translates that code into the web page you see before you.

All of that happens in a matter of seconds.  As soon as you type something else in, or click a link, the process starts over again.

Shared Hosting

Most small businesses are hosting their websites on a shared host.  That means that there’s a server with hundreds (maybe thousands) of websites, all housed on the same hard drive.  Every one of those websites share the same IP address.  Shared hosting is a terrific, cheap way to host your website.

But there’s a problem.  A few, actually.

1. You have no control over what else is housed on your server.
   If there’s a porn site (or hundreds) on the server, the server could be blocked or banned by companies like Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
2. Your load speed could be affected.
   If there are some popular sites on your server, its possible that the server can’t handle the load.  This means some websites could not be displayed, or the websites will take a long time to load.  Not good.
3. Spammers can screw up your day
   If someone on your server decides to send out an unsolicited email blast, your server and emails could be blocked by companies like Barracuda.  This means a ton of your clients may not receive the emails you’re sending out.
4. You’re just another website in the mix
   Being on a shared host could mean that you’re one of ten, fifty or hundreds of other similar businesses.  You aren’t set apart.  You’re just part of the mix.

Fixing the Problem

The easiest way to fix this problem is to get a dedicated server.  A dedicated server is just what it sounds like – a server that only houses your website.  Problem is, they’re darned expensive! Hundreds of dollars per month.  Since most businesses don’t need a complete server, there must be another way.

There is – a static IP address.

A static IP gives you your own ‘address’ on the Internet, not shared with anyone else.  Basically putting your website on an island, you’ll no longer share the same reputation as the many other websites probably hosted on your server.

Some hosting companies will let you purchase a static IP address, others will not.  The average price for a static IP is around $4/month.  It’s one of the best low-priced things you can do to set yourself apart, and the SEO benefits are worth $50 bucks a year.  Well worth it.

By the way, if your hosting company doesn’t do static IPs, you’re free to switch over to Lighthouse Technologies

No matter how we cross paths, the result is always the same. Nothing happens.

Who am I meeting? Business owners that – by outward appearance – seem to want to grow their business.  I find them all over.  Chamber meetings, conferences, classes, meetups, you name it.  They are there to learn about growing their business.

But they don’t take the steps to actually grow it.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying- There are three types of people: Those that watch things happen, those that make things happen and those that say “What happened?”.  I call them Wishers, Fishers and Dishers.

The Fishers

From time to time a meet a fisher – a small biz owner (usually a one-person biz) that would like their business to grow.  Usually they are timid, afraid, and only want their business to grow in very small increments, under the right circumstances, with only the right clients.

The fishers are after very specific fish.  They spend a lot of time fishing and not nearly enough time building.  Fishers may simply not have the energy to grow bigger, but I think it’s usually a lack of confidence in what they do.  Or a fear of growing.  Sometimes they hand out flyers, maybe spend a few bucks here and there on a random marketing campaign (an ad in a local paper, postcards or maybe sponsoring a small local event) but they never really take the steps to start the process of dominating their industry.  They have the fishing pole hooked, baited and ready to go but they never seem to cast the line and catch a big one.  Or any one.

The Wishers

Most often I meet wishers – people who wish their business would grow.  They attend chamber meetings, conferences and all that other stuff.   They take a lot of time to pull in small revenue and small clients, mostly by accident.  The Wishers spend a lot of time wondering why their competitors are doing well.  They see great ideas but never act on them.  They find niches just begging to be marketed to and they don’t do anything about it.

The Wishers are the worst.  There are wishers in your industry, just wishing their days away – and unfortunately they are your competition.  Even worse – if a customer meets them first, and gets a bad impression (which they most likely will), they’ve probably made your job a little harder.  They leave a bad stain on the industry, no matter what it is.

I’m not a fan of wishers, because they only have themselves in mind.  They’re there for themselves and that’s usually it.  They’re pretty easy to spot and I avoid them at all costs.

The Dishers

Meeting a business owner that is excited about what they’re doing is awesome.  They’re amped about what’s going on with their business, how they’re moving forward and how their revenue is growing.  It’s instantly recognizable.  They have a confidence about them – they don’t back off on their pricing, they don’t beg for your business, and they don’t spend a ton of time sweating the small stuff.  These people are fun to be around and are genuinely interested in listening to their customer feedback so they can grow and evolve their business with the times.

I like to call them Dishers because they are always dishing out, pushing forward, learning new things and testing the edges of their business savvy.

I rarely meet a disher, but when I do I lock on and learn.  Their energy is awesome and their passion always rubs off.

Dish it out, baby!

I’ll be honest with ya – if you’re a wisher or a fisher, maybe you’re in the wrong industry.  If you aren’t excited about what your business is doing and where it’s going, maybe you should quit.

Or maybe you should fire it up.  Quit going to meetings just because it’s the robotic thing to do.  Go to help others grow. Share your experiences, tips and give away free advice.  Be a Go-Giver.  Get off your duff and go make something happen today that’s actually going to change your bottom line, even if it’s six months from now.

Dish it out.

Joe Starts a Business

Once upon a time there was a man who lost his job.  Because of the economy and his go-getter attitude, Joe decided to start his own company. Joe was eager to get his new business going, and a big component of it would be online.  So Joe went to his favorite search engine and typed in something like ‘buy my .com‘ and minutes later he had registered his business name’s .com address.  During the checkout process, he was offered a few other things, including .net, .org and .info extensions for his business.  He figured the .com was the only one worth having, so he didn’t get the others.

Soon Joe was getting things in his new business together.  He hired a few staff members and starting turning a small profit.  He was signing up a few contractors and even a few decent paying gigs.

Problems Arise

Unfortunately Joe was a scammer.  His business was growing, but he knew in his mind that it had some problems.  Eventually Joe started to have problems with relationships he had started cultivating at the beginning of his new business venture. He started making people mad, promising things he couldn’t deliver and lying to his contractors about payments. One of those people was named Tom, a contractor whom Joe had hired and over the course of only six months had been bilked out of several thousand dollars.

But Tom knew the day would come when he’d cut ties with Joe.  He’d been lied to and cheated once already.  Unfortunately for Joe, Tom -  a business owner himself -  had a penchant for revenge.

Tom’s Idea

A few months passed by and Tom was still fuming from being ripped off.  He was doing work on the computer one day when he had an idea: one that really excited him.  So Tom hopped on his favorite domain registrar and discovered that Joe hadn’t registered his business’s .net domain.  So Tom grabbed it up.

Tom was an Internet guy.  Tom knew that he could easily copy Joe’s entire website in a matter of minutes using HTTrack, a free software package that lets you download entire websites in the blink of an eye.  Within minutes, Tom had an exact duplicate of Joe’s website up on the .net website. He then built a few links back to his website and within a week the search engines had indexed the site.

Since the websites and domains were nearly the same, the search engines started having a little difficulty establishing just who’s was the real site.  Both sites had business-name URLs and both started showing up in various business-related searches. Soon Joe took notice that this other website existed.  He was confused, but not too worried.  The website had everything his did, even the phone number, so he was glad to see the increased exposure.

The Link Strategy

Tom was a patient guy.  He waited until everything was indexed by the search engines before he started the next phase of his plan.  This step involved buying cheap links from some not-so-safe neighborhoods.  Soon his site had links coming in from (and going out to) various Viagra, poker and pharma sites.  Tom didn’t need to get many, just enough for the search engines to get a bit more confused about the two websites.

Tom did this for about six months.  A few links here, a few there.  His site was quickly becoming hated by the search engines for it’s spammy linking and duplicate content.

The Final Blow

Tom’s final step was a beautiful one.  After building up plenty of links, confusing the search engines, and creating a bad reputation, he simply did one thing: 301 redirected his .net site to Joe’s.

For those that don’t know what a 301 is, it is a total redirect of one site to another.  When the search engines come across this, they give any link weight, value and ‘reputation’ of the old site to the redirected site.  Something like this could send your rankings straight to the bottom in no time.

My Thoughts

There are a lot of legal issues here, which I’m not even about to tackle.  But I think the lesson is clear: spending the few dollars to buy your .net .org and .info domains is worth it.  Your business is probably your livelihood, and being online is becoming more and more of a must-have than a must-also-do.  Protecting your brand is paramount, especially for those just starting out.

Could Joe sue Tom? Probably. But what would be the cost vs just paying Tom what he was owed?  And what about the hassles? Can you afford to have this kind of negative exposure to your domain online?  Maybe, maybe not.  It depends on your brand, how much you value it, and how much it plays into the overall search volume for gaining future clients.  Obviously the easy lesson here is that you shouldn’t be a sheister business owner.  Pay those that you say you will.

Are there people that would do this? Absolutely.

What are the long term effects of this happening? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t want to find out, either.

Do you side with Joe or Tom, or neither?  Did Tom act outside of his rights?  What about the ethics involved? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this parable.

These sub-results take you to SERP pages for that particular search.  So a click on the Maytag link would take you to results for the term Maytag.

From an SEO standpoint, this is a terrific addition.  Companies who are having a bit of difficulty (or lack of finances) to rank for huge terms now have a ‘second shot’ at ranking for them through these sub-results.

And with personalized search, these sub-results can really help out the local vendor who was smart enough to add their business to Google Places.  They’re now “showing up on page two” for a major term.

Sure, it’s a roundabout way to get there, but I’m going to go ahead and say they’ll see more organic traffic from this change.  What do you think?

In short, the book goes over how businesses (or individuals that want to brand themselves) can use social media in ways that work to their advantage.  Things such as gaining trust with your followers, providing them with value, etc.  It’s an awesome read and one of the very few books I’m passionate about recommending to others.

There’s an etiquette (and strategy) in promoting your business on sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. You don’t want to come across as a spammer, pushing out sale after self-serving sale and think that your followers will hang around.  Everyone loves to buy, but no one likes to be sold to.

Today’s perfect example of this is a conversation I had with Ferraro’s Pizza, a Saint Louis joint that uses Twitter to promote themselves.  Before this week, their Twitter account was abandoned, unused and dormant since mid-October.  Then today, the account suddenly pipes back into action – promoting their great lunch sales over and over again.  In a matter of 9 minutes, Feraro’s sent out 5 tweets about their specials. That’s. Excessive.

Not only that, but previous tweets were also self serving.  There’s no value.  There’s no recipes or coupons or interesting pizza facts. Just me me me.

Anyway, after the fourth self-serving tweet in 7 minutes, I had to say something. It was getting annoying. So I thought I’d go the “are you paying attention to your followers” route.  Sure, it was vague, but I wasn’t actually expecting them to pay attention anyway.

Two minutes and one more promotional tweet later, I took the more direct approach.

A plea to stop the spamming.

Soon I get a direct message from Feraro (I’m assuming it’s the owner) asking me if I’d like him to stop tweeting.

(from TweetDeck – I couldn’t get twitter to display this DM, not sure why. Maybe he deleted it or something, I dunno.)

The link I sent him goes to Brogan’s book mentioned above.  At this point I’m still trying to be helpful in a somewhat non-asshole kind of way. Well, as best as I can.

So here’s where it gets really interesting.  A minute later, this is posted to Feraro’s main feed:

If I were a female of African American descent, I probably would have just exclaimed “Oh no he di’nt”.  Seriously, Mr. Feraro, you just missed out on a tremendous opportunity to grow your business.

A potential customer asks you to stop spamming, and you go the insult route? Is that how you think you’ll grow your following?

But it gets better.  A minute later, another pizza company in Saint Louis, Caitos, replys with an absolutely beautiful response:

Now there’s a company that understands social media. No pushy sale sale sale, just a polite word at the right time. Awesome.

It reminds me of Southwest Airlines, a very active online brand that monitors their competitors brands on Twitter and such.  If someone complains of their Delta flight being delayed, Southwest will reply with a simple “Next time try us, we’ll give you $xx off”. Smart. Non-intrusive. And the offer will probably be taken up.  They win.

Finally, to finish off this terrific example of how not to promote yourself online, Mr. Feraro adds one last thing to the conversation:

Remember when your sibling used to say “He started it!”?

Good (or should I say bad) job, Feraro’s Pizza. Perhaps you should go get Trust Agents now. And you might want to throw in an extra topping of Trackur too. You’re gonna need it.

UPDATE: Caito’s was nice enough to send me a “Twitter TECHLH Special”. I like to call it the Smackdown Special. Print out your coupon and so getcha some damn good pizza!

Then I’ve got other clients who are afraid to grow.  Their niche in the Saint Louis are is WIDE OPEN, and they see what Internet Marketing can do for their business, and they are afraid.  They aren’t afraid to spend the money, they’re afraid that their business will grow and they’ll have to “do more things” like hire people, etc.

And then I’ve got a few clients who own their niche.  They are excited about where their website is taking them.  They are attending industry conferences and shows, constantly prowling for the next vendor that shows signs of Internet awareness (so they can partner up and dominate even more). These clients are online day and night, learning about their industry, teaching themselves SEO basics (so they can spot opportunity) and they aren’t afraid to email me with questions and bounce ideas off of me.

Those are the clients we all love to have.  They aren’t here to joke around.  They are here to do business, make money, and dominate their niche.  They see the potential in their business online.  They see new niches that branch off and strengthen their core, and they dominate them too.

Check out what Gary Vaynerchuk has to say about using the Internet as your business platform and then let me know how I can help you get there.