I am classic car enthusiast and purely by accident I noticed a photograph in a recent classic car magazine (Practical Classics Feb. 2008), which showed the high street of my hometown (Stockton on Tees), back in 1965. The question of the photo was this, “spot the foreign car”. From about 100 shown on this photo, we were only able to find one vehicle made outside of the UK, and in this case it was a Volkswagen Beetle.
It is a perfect example of how business has changed in the UK over the last 40 years or so. Who would have though back then, that 40 years later the picture would be totally different and we would be looking for the car built in the UK, or even worse, find the vehicle that is owned by a UK company.
So What Has This To Do With It?
I find it astonishing to still find businesses that think the way they operate today will be the way they will operate in the future. I am not saying the Internet would have saved the UK motor industry, but I am saying that back in 1965, this industry was probably as complacent as many firms are today about what their customers would want from them in the future years.
Today you may not be interested in the Internet or being top of the search engines, but do you know whether this will be the deciding factor of your success in the future?
Here Are Some Questions To Ask
Is it possible that all the widgets you sell may be bought abroad from a competitor and not from you, because your customers were able to find another supplier online?
Is it possible that all the widgets you sell may be bought nationally from a competitor and not from you, because your customers were able to find your competition?
Is it possible that the your UK market size of your sector will be not be big enough in the future to sustain your targets; so would you need to sell abroad?
Is it possible that your customers will no longer need to buy locally and will shop around nationally or internationally to find the best deal for them?
Those who look to how they intend to take the their business forward rather than trying to keep what they have got are likely to be the long term winners.
Here Is The Bad News! A website By Itself Is No Longer Enough.
You can switch a website on, but you cannot switch good rankings on. There is a natural timeline to all sectors to get to the first page and some, even now can take months if not years to get there. If it was that easy, we would all be in Barbados now on the beach.
Good rankings takes a lot of hard work by someone or a company that knows what it is doing and is prepared to tell you the truth and not false promises.
So what will the future years bring to you?
Another Tip
After you have researched your keywords or search terms, make sure you name your pages names after them. For example if you sell purple elephants, then name your page “purple-elephants.htm” etc.
Most websites consist of a page that is named services or products. This is too generic and does nothing to help the search engine find out what you site is about, in order to rank it correctly.
That is it folks See you later
