Re: Awards and award attitude :(

>> The client that triggered my search for this info is one of those that
can't
>> understand why it takes more than a couple of days to get listed in the
>> major search engines/directories.  (I sure seem to get winners lately!)
>
>With me, it was a client who could not understand why one of their
>direct competitors always came up higher in the search engine war.
>
>The competition did something real simple. They talked and chatted about
>their site, their services and products and described what the various
>areas of the site were about.

I have come to the conclusion that if a company really wants web presence,
advertise the site by other means.  I turn away so many potential customers
that have the theory that if they rent web space on joe's server company, we
will all go there and buy their service or product.

The sad thing is there are a lot of people actually doing this.  Registering
multiple domain names to insure no one in the world will have a similar
domain name.  Putting up a fancy (expensive) web site with web store.
Paying out the "ying-yang" for credit card authorization and then finding
less than $200/month in web generated sales.

I don't think that too many of us on this list have a product or service
that is unique enough to warrant the expense of marketing consultants, or
the time to do a real job ourselves.

Case in point.  A local company spent over 50K developing their web site
(too bad I didn't get the account).  Then spent an equal amount in web based
marketing to promote their site.  Then, for the local advertising,
billboards, newspaper, local radio, local TV, never mentioned the web
address.  Their web address isn't even in the Phone Company's "Internet
Directory".

Another person I did some preliminary work for insisted on a "hit counter".
I tried to discourage the use of a "hit counter" with the argument, "Do you
really want people to know how _few_ people visit your page?"  Of course he
seeded this counter, and every couple of days, re-seeds it.  Knowing the
server his site resides on, and the amount of bandwidth available to his
server, his site/server must be at a standstill to handle the hits!  Don't
you know, another web developer in town told him that if you have an active
(hit-wise) counter, you will get placed higher on the search engine lists.

I love this business!

Paul

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