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Search for the Keys Online!
by Mike Banks Valentine
My wife often waits until she is late for an appointment to
start looking for her car keys. They are never in her purse
or on the kitchen table by the back door where she drops
everything else she had in her hands when she came in from
the car the last time she drove it. For some reason the keys
always end up in the bathroom, under a towel on the sink-
top, or under the recliner in the living room, where she
collapsed after a long rough workday the evening before.
I often suggest we look for the keys after dinner, so that
she can avoid the frantic search the next morning. She'll
ask me to drop what I'm doing in the a.m., whether I'm brush-
ing my teeth or dressing, to help her look for them. This is
probably normal for a lot of people. But she panics before
actually searching for the keys and asks me if I know where
they are!
The thing that always irks me beyond belief is that after
rousting ME out of bed on my day off to help her look for them,
SHE finds them just as I stumble to the kitchen and start
to look near the coffee pot, (so that I can sneak a quick
morning "wake-cup".) This has some parallels with business on
the web and searching the internet for keys to your problems.
I'm often fascinated with the call from a frantic, harried
client asking me to quickly find them some information on
the latest software for their business online, or the writer
asking how to find translators on the web . . . or my friend
looking for the perfect graphics online for their Powerpoint
presentation tomorrow. The key is . . . just search for it!
I'm a big proponent of search engines and search engine
optimization of business web sites. I study the latest news
on ranking well in the various engines and directories. I
find it fascinating that some webmasters won't bother with
this important task when I'm doing a web search for say . . .
financial humor, as I was last night. That search yielded the
same top result repeatedly in several search engines because
the owner of ONE site made it important enough to insert a
few "key" words, description and title metatags in his HTML.
This week I had a client call to ask me to search for MFCC
license information (Marriage, Family and Child Counselor).
I told them, "Hang on, I'm online now, I'll take a look."
In about 30 seconds I was on a state government licensure
listing site, where we confirmed that a therapist was NOT
licensed in California. In less time than it took him to call
me, we had "keyed in" on an answer to his question.
Now what confuses me is . . . why didn't he just log on and
do that web search himself? We have abundant information at
our fingertips and fail to use the incredible tools at hand.
Search engines really do a great job of turning up the infor-
mation you want and people are reluctant to use them.
My advice for great search results is simple:
Find a search engine that works well for you (You didn't know there
were more than one?) Don't rely on your default search engine
built into your browser. MSN search comes as the default setting
on all Internet Explorer browsers. Go to http://Google.com or to
http://www.alltheweb.com and get out of the default mode to find
effective results.
Use ALL the important word relevant to your needs while dropping
common words like "the", "best" and "stuff" and use names, dates,
states and rates to get relevant results from your queries.
Instead of typing "Ford Trucks" into the search engine text box
when seeking prices, type "2001 Ford Lariat Longbed 4x4 prices"
PLEASE don't wake me up at 6am to help you look for WebSite101.com.
You've already got the keys and I haven't had my coffee yet!
CRACK! Call the web developer. POP! Research new resources.
WHOOSH! Sign up for more classes BOOM! Go clean up the mess!
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WebSite101 "Reading List" Weekly Netrepreneur Tip Sheet
Weekly Ezine emphasizing small business on the Internet
http://website101.com/arch/
e-tutorial online at: http://website101.com/shortcourse.html
By week's end you're ready expand your business to the web!
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