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Growing Organic Websites
The principles behind growing a healthy website are basic and similar to growing an organic garden. Most things seem to be easily related back to the processes and cycles provided by Mother Nature and your web business is no different. We call our online marketing system "organic" because of this comparison. If you're looking for the next big get rich quick scheme - this is not for you. If you are looking to build a sustainable online presence please read on.
--The Organic Website Analogy at Work--
You absolutely must start with a healthy base (your soil/your site architecture), make sure that all the essential elements are present to allow for healthy growth of both the size and structure that can support it, and that will bloom and provide you with the fruits of your labor. Artificial additives (chemical fertilizers/paid submissions and placement) will either burn you or give you vigorous growth that will yield you a large, quick crop - which may or may not leave you properly nourished or with sales and repeat customers. With artificial additives you get results as long as you continue to purchase and apply this external force.
In the garden, the chemical fertilizers don't help to build your soil, in fact you lose soil nutrients as you kill or scare away the soil organisms that complete that ecosystem. The artificial nutrients have no way of suspending themselves in the soil and immediately wash out and continue to pollute the rest of your environment (but we won't even go into that!).
Your online presence is no different. As soon as you stop paying for link listings, paid placements and third party services to boost your ranking you are left with little or no placement, depending on the quality of your site. The web you have woven to catch visitors as it turns out was only held up by hired hands with no interest in your success. With no payment, they drop the net and run off to find the next person willing to pay them to hold their world wide web. Your resources have been invested into artificial growth and not into building a healthy, self sustaining website. In doing so you may have devalued your site in the eyes of the search engines and possible link partners, scaring them away until you can prove yourself to be an honest, quality site. Now rather than just starting from the ground up, you are buried under a pile of rubble.
Large chemical manufacturers have convinced many people that they need to purchase their chemicals to have big, green plants with big flowers and harvests. This is a great business model because you grow a customer base that is almost completely dependant on purchasing your product. The next season you apply the chemical fertilizers or perhaps you see an "organic garden" and not knowing full well what that means, you put some plants in the ground and try to go organic. You get no results because your soil is void of nutrients from previous seasons of artificially enhanced growth. At this point you can 1) run down to the garden center and pick up some fast acting chemical fertilizer and save this year's harvest and continue running to the garden center for chemicals as long as you choose to garden or 2) you can read and educate yourself
about the basic principles, talk to your neighbor who has a successful organic garden and then get to work, patiently building your soil in a way that encourages the cycle of life to continue on without your constant attention.
Search engine marketing companies have done the same thing. Ever heard "5000 links for only $9.99 per month!"? Please don't ever fall for this! For one, as soon as you stop paying, what happens to your links? They’re gone. Plus, even five million links at link farms that don't get human or search engine visits are absolutely worthless! That seems fairly obvious to be a scam, although I am sure many have fallen for it. Even worse are the mass "free" or "cheap" web design companies that will submit your website to search engines monthly for only $19.99 per month. I see this as worse because as a consumer you depend on the "professionals" in an industry to give you an honest service. A year later you still haven't gotten a return on that investment. Why? The search engines don't care that you pay some third party 20 bucks, when your site doesn't have meta-tags, has hidden text, uses query strings, is in frames, is at a sub domain with a million other people or are on a server with a bad reputation.
With organic growth you add a little loving attention occasionally but the system is self contained and continues to grow on its own. In the garden, the plants die back or drop fruit and flower to the earth which are returned to the soil. The soil microorganisms feed off the plants and in return aerate the soil and provide nutrients to the plants. The plants will continue to grow season after season and their seeds will sprout into new plants. This cycle will continue to provide a harvest with little or no effort. In the web world you start with a quality site architecture, you get to know your website, you build content that people want, and you sell a quality product. The search engines have extremely intelligent robots and spiders that can usually tell if you are a quality, honest site. Build it for your visitors and the search engines will follow. Rather than paying for links, build mutually beneficial link partnerships with other quality sites with similar interests. And last but not least, be patient! Anything fast and furious is usually unsustainable.
I'm not saying you shouldn't ever pay for anything to help the process along, in the garden or website world. Just be careful to educate yourself first. What are the basic principles behind the system? What encourages healthy, sustainable growth? Get your fertilizer from a compost pile or chicken farmer and get your online marketing concepts from a trusted web professional. Ask your neighbor how to grow your garden. Ask Original Web Solutions how to grow your web business!
About the Author
Delivering Certified Organic Websites to your home and office since 1999.
The author owns and manages Original Web Solutions www.originalwebsolutions.com, a full service web development company. Her company works to service nonprofits, artists, restaurants and small businesses of all types through low cost, search engine optimized, service based web sites. See www.servicewebsolution.com for more on these sites.
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