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Organics Are So Much More Tasty
As many of you know, Amy and I are now living in the approximate center of nowhere, also known as the western Maine mountains. Nestled in the midst of our 85 acres you can find some of our efforts to grow our own food. We have a large scale garden going, a hoop house full of tomatoes and other “hot house” type stuff, and portable poultry pens in which we raise our own chickens and turkeys. We have a big old pressure canner and are starting to make regular use of it – this week was spaghetti sauce and strawberry jam.
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While we are both big believers in self sufficiency, the reality is that much of this work is new to us – sure, Amy has had plenty of veggie gardens before but never anything on this scale. So far we have been battling flea beetles, potato beetles, and, most recently, slugs. We have our own ideas about how to do things and that has lead to some interesting conversations at the farmers union type places.
“You can't raise chickens without antibiotics and vaccines, they'll all just die.”
“Well, sure, wood ash is an old time method for controlling those beetles but why not use this effective chemical”
“You want to what?”
But for us a decent bit of what we are doing is philosophical - and so we have plodded along with our old time organic methods, doing things by hand (including chicken plucking), and generally trying hard to pretend it is about 1850 or so.
It is amazing fun – and the food is delicious. While there is no doubt it would be cheaper and simpler to just buy what we need at the grocery store, the satisfaction is much of the reward...along with the reality that lots of the food we are eating now is just not something you can buy anywhere. Genuine organic meats have a serious labeling problem and the rules for what is “organic” have changed quite a bit in the last few years – feel free to hate big agriculture lobbyists for this little “gift”.
Anyway – by now you might be wondering what all of this has to do with web sites.
In recent years a revolution has taken place with search engines – you can just buy inclusions and specific positions now. This was such a big deal that many web marketers – myself included – have focused on it almost exclusively when talking with clients. It is so much simpler than all the complexities of word density, ranking, and content – it is an awful lot like just buying your food at the grocery store. When modern grocery stores came along, I'll bet that was pretty exciting as well.
The reality is that organic rankings – like organic food – are a bit of a pain to make happen. You need to understand how search engines read pages for content, develop a regular submission and analysis program, and have a plan for regularly creating new content. It isn't something you can hurry up and finish – an hour every week is much more effective than a full day once a quarter.
Organic rankings are ignored by many Internet marketers and SEO (Search Engine Optimization ) folks – one reason is that this is the area where most of the “black arts” folks (charge lots and accomplish little) focus. The reality is that organic ranking is an important part of any Internet Marketing campaign and it should be a part of your plans. Organics never run into “budget” problems and organic rankings are much more permanent.
The important thing for a business owner is the data – you should have an internal list of words/phrases for which you'd like to rank well. Determining your actual positions is the way to monitor progress (or losses) and that should be done on a regular basis.
For most folks the best bet remains to hire someone who knows what they are doing and lay out specific goals. Michael McGrath is the KISS expert on these issues, and he has had tremendous success with a number of his own personal sites as well as generating results for clients.
Want a good example? Michael Joly, Nauset Lantern Shop, has been a client of KISS for three years now. Last winter, he told us he wanted to improve his natural, organic rank on Google for his top selling lantern styles - - onions. When you have a moment, search on Google for “onion lantern” and see who holds not just the #1 position, but the #2 position as well - - -and, let's throw in position #18 for good measure. It cost him some new copy optimized for that keyword, some persistence in weekly search engine submission, and patience.
If you are the kind of person who refuses to hire a plumber – the industry standard tool for this work is Web Position Gold. This software performs all the basic functions of monitoring and helping you put your content together with search engines in mind.
In a world where at long last the “grocery store” search engine success is available and you can just buy it – you should. However, it is important that a properly balanced program also include organic rankings - just like food you grow yourself, those positions are so much more tasty. |
