Published on February 12th, 2019.
by Nick Jolin
One night, sitting around a campfire, I had a long conversation with a local small business owner.
At first, the conversation revolved around the normal stuff, like where are you from, how many kids do you have, and what nice weather we have been having.
I then asked him the standard "What do you do for work?"
He answered with excitement and went on telling me all about the business that he ran.
I could tell that he loved what he did.
As he continued though, his excitement slowly faded as he went on telling me about some of the struggles that he was having.
At one point he said, "That's enough about me, what is it that you do?"
That's when I answered him:
"I own a different type of webhosting company that actually helps people grow their business through their website"
That's when the conversation got interesting.
He perked up and started asking lots of questions.
"How can I get Google to notice my website more? It seems that Google likes my competitor more than me - even though I offer better service, my products are higher quality, and I charge less!"
"I've seen so many marketing services advertised on Facebook, but I could never get them working right in my site? Am I doing something wrong??"
I could sense the frustration in his voice as we talked.
He went on to tell me how his business takes up the majority of his time and he's been spending nights and weekends trying to figure out how to get his web presence to bear some fruit.
It seemed so simple. He watched his competitors. He thought he was doing the same thing they were.
But he wasn't. Everything he was trying didn't work.
He was missing crucial parts and he didn't know what to do next.
It didn't suprise me. I've heard it all too often.
That's when I started to tell him WHY it wasn't working the way he thought it should.
He was shocked to hear that part of the problem wasn't even what he was doing.
It was totally out of his control, well at least partially out of control.
The one thing he had to change never even registered in his mind.
When we were done talking he told me, "you should really tell people about this".
I laughed and told him that I do all the time.
But I've never really spread the word out as much as I should have, which is why I want to tell you what I told him that day.
You see, if you're struggling to get your web presence to grow your business, you are not alone.
It may not even be your fault at all.
Five years ago, a huge shift happened on the web and most business owners didn't notice it.
It forever changed how your website works for your business - or in most cases, how it stopped working for your business.
It also explains why your competition may be getting all of YOUR website visitors from Google.
What's worse is that a huge conglomerate, billion dollar business is behind it all.
They are telling you the exact opposite of what is true, and they are doing a great job of it.
That's why we didn't notice the change, and why you don't know what to do to fix it.
Before I start - I need to ask you couple questions - and if you can answer Yes to these, then you'll know:
If you’ve answered YES to those, then what I'm about to tell you will make perfect sense, and you'll see how this perfect storm is leaving money 'on the internet tables'.
So, let's dive in.
The first thing we'll tackle doesn't have anything to do with what's on your website. We're going to talk about the place your website 'lives'.
Where you have your website hosted makes a huge difference. The industry is dying, and we don't want your site to go down with it!
There has been a steady decline in the quality of hosting for most websites, and at the same time, industry GIANTS like Google are saying one thing, and the hosting industry is doing exactly the opposite.
Most people don’t know this, because that billion dollar company is paying lots of money to keep this ‘under wraps’.
This decline is so bad, and so widespread - it’s very possible that the host you are using now is part of a billion dollar conglomorate that is lying to you and giving you exactly the opposite of what Google says is recommended.
And it's killing your website.
Let me explain.
The hosting industry started after the dot com bubble of the early 2000’s.
During the bubble, every business realized a website was essential. Owning a business and not having a website was 'not cool'.
As a result, new hosting companies sprung up offering a 'non techie' way for people to build a website themselves.
That's when the DIY website owner and operator was born.
In the later part of 2000’s, an open source software called Wordpress came on the scene and allowed people to build a nice website all by themselves, without the need for expensive developers and designers.
Those were the good old days.
Back then, you could count on your hosting company to provide a great 'home' for your website and competent support so you could DIY your website and create something great.
The hosting companies had direct competition, meaning they had to make sure they were providing good servers, security and great support.
You saved thousands upon thousands of dollars by doing it yourself.
Unfortunately now, you may be losing thousands upon thousands of dollars.
Right around 2012, a huge, billion dollar company came into the hosting space and decided to buy up as many hosting companies as it could. Left and right, companies were sold while you and I didn't really hear much about it.
In fact, most people STILL don't know that one company essentially owns ALL the big players in the hosting industry RIGHT NOW.
But in 2013, the bottom actually dropped out.
After this billion dollar giant bought up all those hosting companies, they started the process of slicing and dicing.
They had a plan, which was to pare down as much as they could, so they could make tons of money and essentially control the industry as a whole.
What did this look like? Well for most people, they saw this as MASSIVE downtime for their sites.
All of a sudden, sites would go offline one by one, sometimes for hours, some for days, and some for even weeks on end.
Eventually, the sites would come back online, but what was lost for good would be devastating.
-- specifically for businesses like yours.