The Cab Ride

I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes I walked to the door and knocked.. ‘Just a minute’, answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.

After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90′s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940′s movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets.

There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

‘Would you carry my bag out to the car?’ she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.

She kept thanking me for my kindness. ‘It’s nothing’, I told her.. ‘I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother to be treated.’

‘Oh, you’re such a good boy, she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked, ‘Could you drive through downtown?’

‘It’s not the shortest way,’ I answered quickly..

‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ she said.

‘I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice. ‘

I looked in the rear-view mirror.

Her eyes were glistening. ‘I don’t have any family left,’ she continued in a soft voice.. ‘The doctor says I don’t have very long.’ I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.

‘What route would you like me to take?’ I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.

We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, ‘I’m tired. Let’s go now’.

We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.

Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

‘How much do I owe you?’ She asked, reaching into her purse.

‘Nothing,’ I said

‘You have to make a living,’ she answered. ‘There are other passengers,’ I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug.

She held onto me tightly. ‘You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light.. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life..

I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life.

We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.

But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID ~BUT~THEY WILL  ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL

Only images from cached web pages can be included in Google’s image search, and pictures that are by themselves irrelevant to your site’s content (a scenic background, e.g.) will not bring the kind of traffic you want. But if a picture is worth a thousand words, then two pictures are worth two thousand words, and having several pictures of your products place high in an image search is worth money. Do not overlook this often overlooked opportunity to promote your product or service and bring tons of quality traffic to your site. The SEO team at Sun Sign Designs knows how to do this. Give us a call, and we’ll show you!

With that said, as you may start thinking about having a new website developed, it is important to build a transition plan to funnel traffic from your existing site to a new site. There are a few techniques for accomplishing such a task but we like to take a more artful approach. We suggest to handle/view each page on your website as a potential landing page. Since search engines take you to the part of the website that has the most relevant information based on a search term. The idea that the home page is the only entry point is thrown out the window. During a transition, each page on the old site should have a corresponding forward to a page on the new site. What this allows is for indexed traffic to flow to the new site while the search engines take their time to index your new site.

Following this very simple plan can take a bit of time to do on larger sites but the results you will find will be very much your effort.

As health plans in particular continue to consume a larger and larger piece of allotted employee benefit plan dollars, KBPI believes that regular professional review and proactive planning with employers is necessary to ensure that both your benefit and financial goals continue to be met. KBPI has developed relationships with all of the region’s not-for- profit and for-profit insurance carriers, so as a result of our consultations with our group clients, we can quickly and effectively present for their consideration, the program(s) which best address their goals. Best of all, when acting as our clients’ broker, KBPI does not charge our client for any of the services we provide. Any and all compensation is provided by the insurance carrier our clients choose and does not increase the rates charged for the program(s) chosen.

KBPI has also established relationships with an excellent core of competitive carriers offering the entire gamut of insurance plans – Life, Accidental Death & Dismemberment, Short Term & Long Term Disability, Group Dental, Vision & Eyewear plans, Long Term Care programs, Flexible Spending Accounts, New York State Statutory Disability coverage and much, much more…

This Thursday, March 31st, please join Hidy Ochiai, along with Richard Matushima, for”A Night for Japan”. Catered by Kampai Japanese Steakhouse. All donations and proceeds will directly benefit those affected by the tragic earthquake and tsunami that occurred on March 13, 2011.

Sun Sign Designs has donated a $5000.00 website that will be included in the raffle taking place during the evening.

This event is sure to be an event to remember. We look forward to sharing this charitable evening with everyone attending.

To download a flier for the event, click here.

Owner Joel Davis Wrote

“In an effort to further enhance the experience for all of our members, a great deal of time and effort have been invested into improving our site. And needless to say, we’re confident that these improvements will further encourage you to meet, greet, and network with other like-minded entrepreneurs within your region and from around the country!

So please login, continue to post questions, learn from previous posts and Q&A, create unique “Bulletin Board,” and contact other VIP Members listed on our Business Network.

See you at the Top!

Joel E. Davis”

Any links you get need to be from pages that are already indexed. Links from non-indexed pages will not help your PageRank. This is per search engine.

Links from highly ranked pages are worth more than links from poorly ranked pages. This is what it means to say that a link is a high “quality” link. High quality, high value links are good. Low quality links are not as good.

Links from sites related to yours are more valuable than links from non-related sites. This is not a personal opinion of Google’s. Search engines don’t have opinons, but there is a contextual relationship between related sites that Google would be silly to ignore.

Low quality links from unrelated sites are still links. That is, the number of links pointing to your site is every bit as important as the quality of those links. Of course, you will need quite a few low quality links to equal the punch and the PR of one good, high quality link, but I wouldn’t look a gift link in the mouth.

When creating link text remember to include keywords related to the target page. “Click here” doesn’t contribute to PageRank as much as “Keyword here” does because search engines (and people) will get a better idea of what is on the other side of that link if it contains descriptive text. You won’t always have complete control over what your links will say or what they will look like. You will be working with other webmasters who may have strict rules concerning outbound links. They may even be too lax in that regard, but do your best to control your links as best you can.

One way to control your links is to provide a “Link to Us” page on your site. Provide the complete html code for the link so any visitor to your site who would like to link to you can simply copy and paste the code directly into their site.

Also, be vigilant and keep track of who is linking to you. There are several tools available on the web which can show you who is linking to you. Use them. Don’t be afraid to ask for changes when you see a link that could be better, and don’t be afraid to ask for the removal of a link if you feel that it may be hazardous to your PR (this should only happen in the rare case that you find yourself linked to a site that is known to be infected with malware or spam).

NOTE: Beware of canonical issues [link to upcoming post here]. Canonical issues occur when a search engine has indexed both the non-www version of your site and the www version. Google considers example.com and www.example.com to be two separate sites with duplicate content. This essentially splits your PR between two sites and hurts your position in the SERPs. Channeling all your links to one or the other will instantly affect the PR of one or the other. So, choose which version you would like to use and then be consistent when backlinking. (This may or may not require a 301 redirect to let the search engines know which version they should be using.)

How to get links

As I said in a previous post about the importance of increasing your PageRank to stay on top of your competitors, there are several approaches to link building. Which ones you use and when is a measure of how aggressive your link-building campaign will be. Not every approach will work for you, but find what works and start there. The amount of time, money, and effort involved is entirely up to you, because these strategies run the full range from free and easy to not quite so free and easy.

Ask around…

This is probably the first and the easiest thing you can do. Ask everyone you know who has a website to consider adding your link to their site. Friends, family, even your cousin’s friends may have a place on their site for an extra link or two.

And not just personal acquaintances but business associates as well–employees, groups and associations you belong to, companies you do business with, clients, social networks, etc.

Ask your employees to mention your company in their travels around the web. Some employees might be using social networking software such as Facebook, et al and blogging. Maybe they will mention who they work for and mention your website.

Belong to any groups or clubs? Do they have a website? Are you selling someone else’s products on your site? Maybe the product manufacturer will link to you. Are you on someone else’s client list? On a website? That’s good. Ask to be a “featured client.”

Join search directories

This could be an important next step in your link building campaign. Beyond search engines such as Google and Yahoo! which index millions and billions of web pages, there are other engines which index sites by category or product type. These are smaller and more focused. Several of these “specialty” directories exist on the web. There are directories specifically for blogs, for restaurants, hotels, storage facilities, and more. Find one that suits you and submit your url.

Search “add url”

A simple method for finding sites to link to yours is to search any search engine for the phrase “add url”. Any sites which allow or encourage you to add your url to a list will most likely use the phrase “add your url here” or simply “add url”. You can also try “add a link”, “suggest url”, “suggest a link”, “suggest a site”, “add a site”, etc.

Of course, that phrase alone is too broad. You would prefer to find sites that are related to yours, so search for “add url” + “clothing” if you own a clothing site or “add your site” + “zoology” if your site is about zoology. Google will return any web page that contains the word “zoology” and the phrase “add your site”. That’s just what you want.

This method is simple and a good way to get links, but links you get in this manner probably won’t be of very high quality. Look out for link farms and scams (I wouldn’t pay for links like these), but remember that a link is a link is a link. I am of the opinion that “link farms” will not negatively affect your site’s ranking, they just won’t increase it very much (if at all). If “link farms” could hurt you, then anyone could easily destroy your site’s ranking by simply adding your url to a bunch of bad sites. That’s illogical. This is still a good way to get lots of links, and lots of links is good no matter where they come from. We all want high quality links from pages with huge PageRanks, and if you have the resources you should definitely concentrate on getting high quality links, but in the meantime I wouldn’t look a gift link in the mouth just because it was free and easy to get. Lots of lower quality links will add up eventually and every link helps. They may even bring traffic, if not PR. Google Maps and Yahoo! Local are perfect examples of this. Just get your site out there.

If this sounds tedious, you don’t have to do it by hand. Several programs will scour the web for appropriate sites and auto submit forms for you. A search for “free link building software” on Google will return several options for you to try. SEO Elite comes highly recommended. It’s well worth the money ($167) considering all it can do. You can get a free trial from their website.

Press releases, announcement sites, newletters

Depending on the nature of your service or product these might be good options for you. If you feel you’ve got something especially unique, a well written press release could be just the thing to create a buzz. How about an official “announcement”? Press release distribution services and announcement sites exist in all price ranges.

You may not have thought about writing a newsletter. Maybe you don’t consider the fact that you have a website “news”. So, create some news. Offer a new product or a special deal that’s only good for a limited time. Did you lower your prices? That’s news. Did you get a press release published somewhere? That’s news. Take the time to write a newsletter, solicit subscribers, and distribute it. It may start a conversation about your site, generate a buzz, bring traffic. If you don’t have a newsletter, try to get mentioned in someone else’s newsletter. That works, too.

Find competitor’s links

Several “link popularity” tools and techniques exist for finding out who is linking to your competitors and for analyzing those links. Chances are, if a site is willing to link to your competitor, they might be willing to link to you as well. For that matter, you should always be on the look out for sites that may be appropriate places for you to promote your site.

When you find an appropriate site, the next step is to ask the webmaster or site owner to link to you. Do this in an informal email. Sell yourself the way you would to any partner. Offer a reciprocal link. One way links are better, of course. That is, convincing someone to link to you simply because it would be in their interest or their custmomer’s interest would be great, but don’t be afraid to offer a reciprocal link when appropriate. You can even link to them first, then send them an email informing them that you have linked to their site, and ask for a link in return. Again, you don’t have to do any of this by hand. Several software programs are available which will automate the tasks of link building for you, from finding relevant sites, to analyzing backlinks, to filling out and sending forms and emails to site owners and webmasters. These are invaluable when it comes to keeping track of all your link building efforts (so you know where your links are, the age and the PageRank of said links, what they say, how they perform, who you’ve contacted, who’s contacted you, etc., etc.).

Social networking

Search engines love blogs. Start a blog, participate in blogs. Be a blogger. This is an ever popular way to get your url scattered about the web. Unfortunately, everyone knows it and so many blogs won’t let you leave a link, or they instruct the search engines not to consider any outgoing links in their ranking algorithms (yes, you can do that). If you own a blog, you may need to take steps to prevent people from participating simply for the chance to leave their link behind. Some less scrupulous site owners use “auto-bloggers” just for that purpose.

The social area of the web is growing all the time. MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, etc. No need for me to get into all of it here. Suffice it to say that Social Media Optimization (SMO) has become a branch of marketing all its own.

Buy links

It is possible to simply pay for links. Countless services exist on the web for this purpose, in all price ranges. You can buy links with a specific PR, in a specific category, one way or two way, with term limits or without.

Think of link building as simply another way to advertise. Use the same advertising dollars you would spend on banner ads and pay-per-click ads, and the like. And don’t neglect offline (multimedia and print) advertising as another way to advertise your site and generate interest. Print ads could very well lead to inbound links on the web.

Link building can be as big a project as you make it. The more aggressive you are in your link building campaign, the more links you will get. It’s that’s simple. High quality links are worth money because they will increase your PageRank. That’s a fact. Money spent on purchasing links with PR 4 or higher (for example) are worth the money and possibly all you need, depending on your goals and your competition. Any marketing service you use to promote your site should offer link building as way to optimize your site, place better in the search engines, promote your product, and raise your traffic and sales.

A typical SEO strategy begins with basic tags, titles, and descriptions. You optimize your tags and fill your pages with juicy content and then submit your site to the search engines. Before long you see they have indexed and cached all of your site’s pages. But then nothing much happens. Sure, your site is included in the search engines, and it shows up in the results pages for certain keywords, but there is plenty of room for improvement. You are not where you want to be. But you’ve chosen the perfect combination of keywords and content, so what else can you do? Answer: improve your PageRank (PR).

The most important factor in determining where your site will appear in the search engines in relation to your competitor’s site is PageRank. This is Google’s term for how many inbound links you have. Other engines use other terms, but they all mean the same thing.

Here’s a quote from Google:

The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.

Google wasn’t always called Google. The original name for the most important search engine ever built was BackRub, so named for its ability to crawl and analyze backlinks. It’s what they do. The PageRank algorithm, the formula Google uses to calculate PR, is based mostly on the number of inbound links:

PR(A) = (1 – d) + d (PR (t1) / C (t1) + … + PR (tn) / C (tn))

Where:

PR = PageRank

A = Web page A

d = A damping factor, usually set to 0.85

t1…tn = Pages linking to Web page A

C = The number of outbound links from page tn

This is not as complicated as it looks. You don’t have to be a math whiz to see that the more inbound links you have, the higher your PR. Also, your PR will decrease with every increase in C which is a valid argument against link farms and link schemes.

So, now that you know how important inbound links are to your PageRank, the next question is how important is PageRank to your overall success? I’ll you refer you back to the indented quote above and repeat the key points here: “The heart of our software is PageRank” and “PageRank continues to provide the basis for all our web search tools.” According to Google, PageRank is the heart and soul of everything they do.

Q: So, how do I get more inbound links so I can raise my PR?

A: There are several approaches, but that will be the subject of my next post.