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Achieving the Tech Edge

Written by Purvish Bhatt

University of Maryland College Park

Bachelor of Computer Science

www.purvish.tk

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Somewhere on the internet or in some magazine, you came across the famous advice “In the internet frenzy world of today, a web-presence is crucial.” And, you followed it, hoping that finally your business would go somewhere.

Yet, the success didn’t meet your expectations. You aren’t alone my friend - according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, over 95% of small businesses fail within the first five years. But why did you become a part of this statistic? Because the advice you followed doesn’t stand true anymore. It needs to be changed with the times to something like “In the frenzied internet world of today, a sharp web-presence is crucial.” And how can you establish this sharp web-presence? With the TechEdge of course.

The TechEdge means simply taking full advantage of technology, of the internet. And in this case, it means having a successful website and a successful campaign. In other words, get a well-promoted, impressive website and you’ll make money. Here is what you need…

A successful website

Reliable cheese

You need to appear reliable. Get your own domain name like www.bestcheese.com, instead of something like www.geocities.com/members/bestcheeseguy. Also, sales@bestcheese.com sounds much better than buychesse26@aol.com.

Three words, “Professional Pretty Pictures”

Any two-year old will tell you that humans like pictures. It’s true. Have the right amount of relevant graphics, placed in the right places. Wouldn’t you rather be watching a Flash demo of this ‘essay’ instead of reading it? Don’t overdo it though; you’ll increase your site’s loading time. Try to use small size file formats like .gifs and .png.

Don’t forget words

Definitely don’t forget your company’s name, logo, what you have to offer, and your contact info.

The abandoned site

An abandoned site is no different than a haunted site. So keep your site updated. Clean out those dead links, organize that inventory database, put up some new news. And avoid switching web addresses or taking it offline.

A successful campaign

Know your META

<meta> tags can be used to become popular in search engines. They tell the Search Robots (Spiders) if your web page should show up in searches, what keywords should lead to it, etc. There are plenty of tutorials online about them.

Don’t miss the list

Make sure your business is listed in the Google(free), Superpages(free), and Yahoo(not free) online directories.

Be a bid-warrior

Fight (through bidding) for the top ad-spot on Google AdWords, Superpages PayPerClick, and Yahoo Sponsored Search.

Does that banner yet wave?

Other members display your banner and you display theirs when you join SmartClicks, or buy banner-directed-surfers at Microsoft bCentral.

So get out there, hire a good webmaster, get a great site and announce it to the world. Don’t forget though, you’ll need impressive products and/or services to back that up. You can’t have 3D models of cheeses on your site and then deliver rotten dairy. Follow these 500 words of advice and you’ll get the TechEdge you need. Good luck in your endeavors.