When should I have an Alpaca Website?
I'm always amazed at how some businesses don't recognize or understand the power and the importance of the internet in a total marketing package. I was lucky enough to be "in business" when the internet started to come onto the scene. I could pick and choose a website name. There was virtually no competition. Ahh, those were the days.Google did not yet exist. Yahoo was in it's infancy. Microsoft was just beginning to promote MSN. There was no hotmail, yahoo mail, gmail. There was hardly any email. We had to talk to people on the phone or send a fax to communicate quickly. We were concerned about the amount of "junk faxes" that we were receiving. Ahh, those were the days.
Today, the competition is fierce. Web site names are being snapped up by speculators and funded by Google advertisements. If you want to be found on the web, you had better start before you need to be seen.
So, in the internet world of today, The Website Comes First, the Business comes next!
I started my personal Alpaca Ranch Website. www.HeartOfTexasAlpacas.com the day I decided to become an Alpaca Owner. It is absolutely imperative that any business that wants to remain in business have a website, but there are many options, and many of them are free.So, let's do a test. You are a perspective Alpaca buyer. You type in Alpaca in Google. Give it a try. What do you see? As of July 2008 there were 7,180,000 entries for Alpaca. That's millions of competitors ahead of you! And the first entry is a definition of an Alpaca. OK, let's try Alpacas instead. Well, that's a bit better, if you are looking for more than one Alpaca, you only have 1,900,000 entries. Not quite millions, but almost.
So, as someone interested in Alpacas, what is your next step. Mine was go search for Alpacas in my state, so I typed in Texas Alpacas. Give that a try. Cool, there's only 129,000 competitive results from Texas. One thing that may not be obvious is this. Three of the Top Ten entries are AlpacaTrack websites, and five of the top ten websites are AlpacaTrack clients (including the top two)! Five of the top ten websites on the second page are also AlpacaTrack clients (or websites created by AlpacaTrack)! I'm sorry that we moved 50% of the top 20 websites down a notch or two.
My personal website is HeartOfTexsasAlpacas.com. This site generally is in the second position on a Google search for Texas Alpacas. It's important to note that it took time to get HeartofTexasAlpacas in the top 10 in Texas. Heart of Texas Alpacas is presently in the top 600 for Alpaca and Alpacas Searches and is moving up each month. So, if you are in a business, and don't have a website, you have a lot of catching up to do. Free websites such as www.AlpacaTrack.com can give you a leg up, but you should consider your own website as soon as possible. The combination of a directory such as AlpacaTrack and your personal website can greatly increase your chances of moving up in the search engines. Ideally, your website would seamlessly link to a dynamic, data driven website allowing you a single point to enter your Alpacas and display in multiple locations. Consider www.HeartOfTexasAlpacas.com . From a single point of entry, data is shown on www.HeartofTexasAlpacas.com, www.CentralTexasAlpacas.com, www.AlpacaTrack.com/HeartOfTexasAlpacas.aspx, and www.TexasAlpacaRanchers.org on various pages.
If you don't have a website, at least sign up for a free listing on AlpacaTrack (or one of our competitors). You will immediately have a website name that can be included on any correspondence that you send out or organizations that you belong to. Don't let your website get stale. Update your listing periodically. Participate in blogs that reference your website. And then, when you are ready to actually start selling your products, you will already have an internet presence that you can expand upon and you won't have to start from scratch!
Till next time!
Mike at AlpacaTrack
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