Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I think your site is really nice.  Congratulations! Lisa

-------------------------

LISA

I just looked at it again, and I agree with Colin that there should be something about Pennsylvania up there at the top. Hadn`t noticed before, but it`s actually only when I clicked on a featured business that I saw the PA. Not a huge thing, but when you get a minute. :-) Maybe after your daily workout sessions...? LOL!

But we already know we`re in Pennsylvania.

Yah, but people who are planning a vacation in your area and wonder what sort of shopping might be around.....don`t. :-)

Craig — I see your point, but here`s whwere I`m coming from. If  you go on vacation to Italy and happen upon a street with a big sign that says THIS IS ITALY there`s a good bet you`re not going to find an authentic Italian experience on that street. The authentic Italian experience won`t advertise itself as such, because it is what it is, namely, it`s local.

Or for an example closer to (my) home... I can Google up Lancaster County Amish stuff all day long, but the fact that it`s online means it at least a couple degrees removed from the real Lancaster County Amish. You`re not seeing the real deal there, what you`re seeing is some "english" person trying to make a buck off Amish insider mystique. The real Amish don`t advertise themselves and it`s a well-known secret that they are among the most savvy business folks anywhere.

Part of what I am trying to do is magnify the nascent "insider mystique" vibe that exists here surrounding local foods, local artisans, local merchants, etc., as a way of helping them compete as a bloc in our local market. I think it`s fair to say that the majority of advertisers we have signed on to my unknown, unproven, no-track-record effort — in some cases, for substantial amounts of money — is because they grokked this right off the bat and they believe it will work. If my site looks like it is advertising to "outsiders," or looks like I`m some national outfit trying to horn in on what we have going on here, it will lose its effectiveness before I`ve even established any and I will let my advertisers down.

On a side-note, a few of our advertisers are real-deal Amish. Get this — they had to have a meeting with the elders to decide whether it would be okay to buy web + print package, or just go with print. In the end they decided it would be okay to try the web. This is a tremendous risk for them, and I consider it a great vote of confidence that they believe I`m offering ROI worthy of that level of risk.

So, because of all this, I`m convinced I`m onto something and I`m not prepared to gamble with it.

Or, you could just look at it this way....  I don`t want the huge, ugly word "pennsylvania" on my site, so it will probably not show up there.

Okay deadline tomorrow, I gotta work....

—paula

Okay...so you`re keeping it a secret. I get that...along the lines of the restaurant in a cellar, down in NYC. If everyone knew it was there, it`d "spoil it." Fair enough.

yes, exactly, only you said it much more concisely than I ever have up to this point. I`m going to remember that analogy.

—paula

You guys have to stop working so late...

The point is, how you will be bringing audience to the site to satisfy the advertisers. From our discussion its been two kinds of people: Locals, and non-locals. The next step is to understand what would be the most efficient way to get `locals`, as you express your preference for them, to the site.

From my experience with local marketing, it is less expensive to do physical (real world) marketing (fliers, radio, etc) than to do full out SEO and internet marketing for keywords the locals might search for (this depends greatly on the local demographic). I think this is do to the fact that the internet penetration in our society has a long way to go until people use it as their primary source of all information. It also has to do with physical distance between sources; you`re not really going to search for a resturant in your medium sized city, you will instead hear about it because of the proximity of its clients/physical marketing.

However, this does not mean in the next couple of years (exponential advancements) people won`t be searching for local `anything` online. It is always better to dominate your keyphrases before they are heavily used. The reason for including a state attribute to your site is to help search engines easily distinguish between your county name and the same one in another state. Right now there are not any other counties with your same name, but that doesn`t mean there wont be in the future; but then your adding town names into the equation too, and it just increases the probability of conflict down the road. To comprimize, I would put either `PA` or `Pennsylvania` on the homepage, just once, somewhere. When google knows for sure the site is for PA, and they know for sure (sometimes down to the county level) the searcher is from PA, they will more likely personalize the result and put you higher. I don`t know if they take enough assumptions to correlate county names, to state locations, and then cross reference with the state location of IP. Instead I`m suggesting to put the State to be acknowledged, and then it is more likely Google will correlate the GeoIP to your page. IP geolocation is getting better but there is still lots of room for error.

You might want to consider putting your directory as an external source at your county`s wikipedia page. This would also push google or another smart engine into believing it is for PA, Centre County. I would just like to end on, no traffic is bad traffic (as long as you didn`t pay for it from spammers). Whatever you can get to your site, be it out-of-stater`s, or people right in your county, it will improve your credibility all around which can then make things better for locals in the long run.


-------------------------

Colin Winter
Small Business Website Management and Marketing

Colin — I started this thread to share my progress and milestone achievement with other community members, many of whom have been very supportive of me along the way. This is why it is in the "pep rally" forum and not the "website critique" forum. Frankly, your ongoing insistence that I have constructed my website wrong only convinces me that beating the local competition will be easier than I thought.

If you`re looking for a way to establish your expertise among StartupNation folk, you could try submitting articles for publication. You`re a good writer, I think it would be effective.

—paula

Sorry if I went too in depth for your own comfort with critiquing your website. I was just following up on some left open concerns of the thread, that I thought would only benefit you and others if I covered them. "Knowledge is Power".

I actually do have an article on the way, so I`ll spend more time editing that one, than jumping into new ones. Thanks and good luck. I look forward to hearing about your business down the road.



-------------------------

Colin Winter
Small Business Website Management and Marketing