Back in my horse training days, it use to amuse me that you were lauded for the really easy winners, but not so much for the ones you worked your ass off on. Say you had a talented runner. You enter them in an easy spot. Then they win by 10 lengths. The horses owner would say what a great job you did. Truthfully, on those days anyone could have trained that horse and he would have won. Whether they trained him hard, went easy, or even walked him into the race. But then take another runner with physical problems. You nurse them along and miraculously, they make it to a race and win. This was a feat of horsemanship and sheer hard work. But they don’t win as impressively. But again the miracle was that you go them to the races at all. You never get as much credit for those as you did for really gifted horse.
So, what does this have to do with websites? Well, last Friday I had one of my most trying days in a long, long time. For my dedicated server, I use one of the biggest hosting companies in that space. They have a 99.9% up time rate which is great. They had a huge outage at their data center in Provo, Utah. It affected 5 of the biggest hosting companies in the world. So my site and many of my clients were down between 7-8 hours coming back up intermittently then going down again.
Talk about a day from he(double hockey sticks). I was really stuck all day. I could not work on sites on my server. And I could not get email. So my clients whose sites were down and didn’t have email, we’re trying to send me emails to tell me they had no service. I couldn’t receive their emails or respond. I did put a note on both my Twitter and Facebook pages, telling them to either call or text me. Fortunately, people did call and text me. So I could tell them what’s going on. But therein lies the rub. My hosting company really did not have an ETA as to when the problem would be resolved. They just said they’re working on the issue. Worse than that, sites didn’t come out and email for a bit here and there, but then go back down again. So after telling people their sites were back up, I had to tell them, now it’s down again.
While the problem was not my fault, or my doing. It is my responsibility as a web host. I informed clients the best I could, took all calls and texts, and communicated the best I could. Once things wee restored, I handled all maintenance requests, and everything was still completed within the same day.
Bottom Line: Although the day was a disaster, my clients received best in class support, and communication was excellent. I may not receive accolades for last Friday, but I certainly proved my worth on one of my worst days.
Business owners are swarmed with offers from SEO companies that can make them number 1 in Google. They also hear from companies that can build them the greatest site ever made for short money and really quick. But the truth of matter is: They can’t in either case.
The SEO companies that send out millions of spam emails promising the moon, are 99.9% bogus. They haven’t even reviewed your site, yet promise number one in days. Google uses an algorithm that no one can reverse engineer. Plus, Google is always updating their algorithm to get around the SEO tricks. Have you ever wondered (and you’ve heard me say this before) why emails from these SEO companies come from some nondescript GMail account? Simple, because if it came from their domain you would quickly do a search and find out they are not in the top 100 for SEO. If they can’t help themselves, they can’t help you. Look, we tell people all the time, we can improve your search rankings by old-fashioned work and quality content. Nothing beats quality content, period.
As for the companies who promised to build you the greatest website ever, and get it done really quickly and really cheaply. Well, you get what you pay for. You get a crappy template that they have used hundreds, and in some cases thousands of times. They plug in text, and your site is done. But it’s not original, doesn’t look good, and it’s not quality technology. Chances are you will be looking for new site within a year.
For example: I just had a client that we’ve done a lot of work for contact me. We have maintained a great relationship, but when time came to do over one of their sites, they chose a company promising speed, price and that the owner wouldn’t have to raise a finger. They sent me a link to look at the new site in development. I could not believe my eyes. They were using technology, that not only is outdated, the company that owns it is actually about to retire it and has been dead for years. I won’t mention the technology I’m talking about, I don’t want to embarrass the person, although you would get a good laugh out of it. This development firm has their own niche within a given industry. They do hundreds of these types of sites, very cookie cutter and nothing special from a UI standpoint. Unknowing site owners typically won’t look and see the technology, so it sounds good. Quick, cheap, and little effort. Again, within a year they will be looking for a new solution.
While it is an old expression, the title of this post holds true today. In fact, it is probably truer today then the day it was first uttered. Nothing beats hard work. Companies may make crazy promises, but use your common sense when entering into a new project. And be careful of any email from companies out of the blue, chances are they are spammers, or fly by night outfits.
If you need help with Web Development, or SEO, contact us today, we are glad to help.
