Dreamscape Solutions News Blog

Anyone who's been around the web design industry for a while has seen many trends in linking come and go. First there were link farms, then link exchanges, forum spam, blog comment spam, links bought and sold based on PageRank, mass production of online press releases and linkbait articles, and now leveraging of social networking.

SEO professionals spend large parts of their work life arguing about whether links have to be topical to bring benefit, whether bought links will be found and filtered by search engines or if linking out is going to lose a site its PageRank and hence its place in the search results. This all misses the point of linking in the first place - to tell users about other sites on the internet they should visit. The end result of this is a lot of bad advice floating around on the internet for small business owners about what they should or should not do when they first set up a web site, or discover the art of search engine optimisation.

Search engines originally trusted links as a means for determining the quality of a site because people tended to recommend other sites they liked. On this very simple basis the idea works incredibly well. You wouldn't send a friend or a customer to a site they wouldn't like, would you? Because a link from one good site to another good site is, inherently, a reliable recommendation, should you ever turn down that link simply because the referring site happens to sell products in a different industry? If you have a new site, and you need people to know about it, and you have a friend or a business partner with a website, why wouldn't you ask them to link to you. Even if this link is ignored by search engines, it could still bring traffic to your website.

Labels: link building, website promotion

WIB currently has 250 women members from a range of business sectors and we are funded by InvestNI due to major role we play in encouraging female entrepreneurship in the Northern Ireland.

As part of a strategic plan for WIB to be self sufficient, WIB must grow to 600 members over the next three years. To do this WIB must be able to demonstrate to both its members and sponsors our position as a dynamic women’s network which is both forward thinking and efficient.

The organisations main constraint to this growth was its inability to raise additional funds for additional personnel. Therefore the growth had to be achieved using productivity gains within the existing business infrastructure. This has lead to a need for a business process re-engineering project led by the introduction of the website.

The main channel to market for WIB to interact with its members and potential members is via IT based communications. This is the “face” of WIB and critical to the success of the organisation. The website had to promote WIB as a forward thinking, dynamic and approachable business and to portray a strong and clean brand.

Innovative Features of the site.
The site has a number of innovative features which none of the local Belfast based Networking organisations offer.

• Secure payments and transaction
• Customised automated advertising system
• Seamless software integration
• Pod casts
• Business process re-engineering
• Search engine optimisation
• Secure members area

Benefits of the WIB eCommerce site.
The site has brought a large number of significant improvements to the organisation. It has enabled WIB to carry out a business process re-engineering project to change its business model to address the challenges associated with the business growth targets.
Specifically it has facilitated the following:

• Greater exposure and increase of company status:
• Amplification of brand strength
• Increase in sales and sales enquires
• Sponsorship revenue
• Created awareness of the high caliber of Business Women in NI.

Labels: business networking, e-commerce, european investment, ireland, IT Solutions, Networking Events, northern ireland, search engine optimisation, Web Design, women in business