Federal, State and Local Government Can Unlock Internet Wealth For Small Business And Individuals

Federal, State and Local Government Can Unlock Internet Wealth For Small Business And Individuals

In The 21st Century, Internet-Based Government Stimulus Packages (Costing Almost Nothing) Can Be More Powerful And Longer Lasting Than Just Throwing Money At A Problem On Wall Street or Main Street

The first decade of the new millennium is almost over. Much has happened since email and static web sites became available Internet became available, normal, and en vogue.

Starting in the 1990s and into mid 2001, I worked for contractors for the Federal Government. This experience in 7 different Federal agencies gave some insight into both how the government works, and how efficient, or inefficient the Government is. Since then, much has changed. The boom and bust of Savings & Loans, Y2K issues, 9/11/2001, came and went, yet leaving huge government changes in it’s wake. The Internet bubble came and went, the banking crisis is now here, and again the government is having to figure out ways to start, then restart the economy. My experience inside the walls of government buildings proved to me that Uncle Same moves in one speed. Slowly. Using mostly contracted help, the Federal Government has done a relatively good job of making services available via Internet-based websites. State and local governments have had differing levels of success too.

The hullabaloo over where the first $350 Billion of the Economic Stimulus Package have gone and what good they are doing for “Joe the Plumber” and millions of other Americans in desperate need of a stimulus package proves again that the efficiency with which the Government works is dismal at best. Stimulating the economy using the “tax and spend” methods of the past. In fact, it would have been best to have left “tax and spend” mentality in the last century. There is new, powerful way that Government – Federal, State and Local can help small businesses and individuals become much more competitive and much more profitable. Government should use the power and clout of the Internet to empower the people!

The Power Of An Inbound Link From Another Website

Leveraging this Internet based power and clout for all levels of the government combined -Federal – State & Local – would likely not cost more than 0.25 – 0.5% of the $350 Billion already spent for the stimulus package last year. These Low budget actions which Government on all levels can offer America and Americans both at home and abroad could leverage double digit growth for small business! Let me explain!

The power and clout that Government has in Search Engines is huge. Hierarchically, a domain name that ends in dot gov (or “.gov”) is the highest and most valuable domain name available on the Internet. Next comes “.edu”. In order to obtain a .edu domain name, an institution has to be an accredited college or university. After .gov and .com, comes the rest of the world like .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us and more. These are all on the third and lowest level of the hierarchy. I’ll paint a word picture so that readers can better understand! Let’s just say that we have two websites. Strong-Website.com and Weak-Website.com.

At the beginning, both websites will be identical in competition on all keyword phrases in search engines. In order to illustrate, if Weak-Website.com gets an incoming link from a college or university with a link from my-University.edu, then, all else remaining the same, Weak-Website.com would actually rank above Strong-Website.com because of the incoming link from my-University.edu. Remember, we didn’t change any code or content of the websites for these search engine ranking changes to take place! Upping the ante, Strong-Website.com now gets an incoming link from Goverment-Agency.gov. With absolutely no changes in content or code to either Strong-Website.com or Weak-Website.com, suddenly, Strong-Website.com would rank above Weak-Website.com! It’s also possible to influence search engine rankings by getting strong incoming links from reputable websites ending in .com, .net, and the like.

Getting Noticed By Search Engines

Competition is good. It is part of free trade and much of what the United States Of America stands for. Government also supports free trade and open markets. The Internet levels the playing field for everyone. The amount of money invested in a web site doesn’t correlate with their position in the search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)is a serious industry within the disciplines of Internet-based technologies. Small companies working on very small budgets can, and often do outrank larger companies in the search engines because of SEO specialists. This is because ranking depends on three primary things:

1. programming the website
2. content on specific web pages
3. who is pointing at a website, and what they are saying.

Every time someone types in a search in a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or MSN, the search engine returns what are called Search Engine Results Pages or SERPs. The search engines have chosen to look at about 200 factors when deciding how to rank pages hierarchically in the SERPs. This means that there are “on-page factors” – things on your website, things on your specific page (in the example above Strong-Website.com), and “off-page factors” on pages with links pointing at your page (my-University.edu and Government-Agency.gov) that are evaluated by the search engines before the pages show up in the SERPs.

Although there’s a lot of technical information in Diagram 1 below, there’s only one point that is important in this conversation. Every piece of the pie that begins with “IBL”, indicates an off-page factor. My point is that, for this keyword phrase “Real Estate Tucson Arizona”, it’s more important

Diagram 1

who is pointing at your page, rather than what is on your page, or how good your programmer is. The technical term for an inbound link is Inbound Back Link, or “IBL”.

Without powerful “IBL Authority websites” like Government-Agency.gov or my-University.edu pointing at this specific page, it will just become another statistic along with the 2,040,000 other pages competing for this keyword phrase “Real Estate Tucson Arizona” This 2 million number is not just random. On the date this article was written, this is an actual Google estimate on the number of competing pages for this specific keyword phrase.

Social Media – The New Wave Of Action On The Internet

FaceBook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, are examples of websites that have been pushing the envelope of what is now possible on the Internet. User published and controlled information, whether text, sound, or video are attracting millions to the Internet. In fact, a recent statistic released by FaceBook indicates that about 750,000 new accounts are started on FaceBook every day. People are coming to the Internet in droves because they want to participate, contribute, and communicate. THIS is the new face of the Internet.

PDA devices have only increased the popularity of social media. Take the example of our President – he too carries a PDA! Regardless of who we are, we all expect our mobile devices to work wherever we are. The content is becoming more, and more important. Beside all of the ringing, beeping and buzzing of these mobile devices, social media like phenomena tweets and diggs are here to stay.

Large corporations like IBM and Intel are encouraging their employees to become involved in social media, although they don’t yet understand how to leverage it to their advantage, focusing Social Media on their profit and loss statement. The time has finally come to have both government and educational institutions help both individuals and corporate America restart the economy using the hierarchical clout and power of their websites using Social Media.

First the universities! In my article “Monetizing A College Education – Alma Mater Power Can Unlock Intrinsic Internet Based Wealth” I make the argument that colleges and universities should offer students a leg up by allowing them to have FaceBook like pages on the university website in the alumni area. This would allow students to build and point their profiles and pages at current employer(s) and organizations which they value. The example above shows the powerful effect this could have for an employer. Governments can do much more!

Government – By the People, For The People

The face, influence and power of Federal, State and Local Government online would change in a major way if government chose to allow “FaceBook” type architecture on their websites. As in the example of Universities and Students “shining their Internet clout” on employers and other organizations from the school’s website, the government could do this for both businesses and individuals.

Taking the FaceBook example above, the SBA and other Government agencies could allow government contractors and Subcontractors to have equal footing and equal access to current profiles and pages on government sites outlining their current roles as contractors, pointing at their business web sites.

The Veterans, Students, Disabled, Expatriates and many others could choose to have similar profiles and pages on government websites. The advantage of emulating the FaceBook model is that the users would control their content. The users would update it, and the users would be empowered to, for instance change their profiles as they move from one employer to another – from one engagement to another, etc.

Government could easily monitor this content for appropriateness electronically. Additional jobs could be created to build and maintain the infrastructure and police content. The price tag for this kind of project would be minuscule, compared to the leverage it would give both individuals and businesses, being offset many times over in tax revenues.

State And Local Government Can Hone In Locally

The Corporation Commission and Local State Department Of Commerce have very special opportunities and can make huge differences on a local and regional level. With vested interests in growing the local tax base, State and Local Government can better focus resources by promoting and coordinating government, school, business and individual interests. On this level, it’s not just about GDP, it’s about real businesses and real people.

Conclusion

More web pages from government and educational institutions pointing at American small business websites would make American content bubble to the top of the search engines. Competition would be increased, and small business would be empowered to compete. Diplomas from accredited colleges would be come more valuable, and competition for high quality employees would increase wages. All hail free market principles! The sooner business owners realize that government – Federal, State, and Local, and educational institutions can make a huge difference in American business, the louder the demand for this kind of “service” will be appreciated.

As evidenced by the economic developments of the last 12 months, the role of Government is pretty much upside down! Washington doesn’t need more “tax and spend”, but rather more build and nurture. We don’t need more programs, we need more results. Fault for the economic woes America is currently experiencing is to be placed squarely on our shoulders.