Chance To See Another Hero
January 19, 2005
This morning I attended The Marketing Institute's breakfast seminar. Why did I drag myself out of bed on a mizzling dark morning? To hear one Gerry McGovern speak, that's why. And it was well worth it.
Gerry McGovern is a hugely successful internet consultant. He's Irish, and is up there with the greats of the internet world with the likes of Seth Godin. I first came across Gerry McGovern's writing a few years ago. The kind of thing I'd read, and be nodding and agreeing with wholeheartedly.
Gerry spoke about the commonalities that successful websites share in terms of their content this morning. A lot of the ideas he put forward were ones that I'm already familiar with, but he just has different names on them: "good links ask for the sale", I call it - intelligent hyperlinking. He mentioned how many US sites are now split testing the content to see what works best. Good idea. I have a site in mind that might benefit from that.
Slightly more excited and enthusiastic about the whole thing than others in the audience, I couldn't help myself and asked not 1, but 2 questions. There was one question I didn't ask however:
He said he'd choose ugly and profitable sites any day over beautiful and bust. I thought - why not go for a Brightspark site that's beautiful and profitable! Like Freedom Unlimited for example. Most of that Dublin life coach's business has come from the site and its high ranking on Google and Yahoo! Because it's an Irish business and 97% of Irish people use those 2 search engines, it is important to have a high ranking on them. Admittedly a lot more business is coming to Freedom Unlimited from referrals, that's down to Jackie's skill as a life coach and her pleasant and effective way of assisting people to get results. But Freedom Unlimited is definitely a site that is beautiful and profitable.