As small business owners, we need to find traffic for our websites from wherever we can get it — assuming, of course, that the source is relevant traffic. Irrelevant traffic actually HURTS your website rank in the search engines so we don’t want that. For that reason, we are not fans of reciprocal linking schemes, link farms, etc.

Case in point. I recently met with a new client in Los Angeles who needed to market their small business website. They had previously enjoyed a Page Rank of 5 for their website. Over the past two years, it has dropped to a Page Rank of 3. This was due to a number of factors, but chief among those was the fact that they had been forced into a reciprocal linking arrangement with an unscrupulous vendor. It benefited the vendor tremendously, as they were able to show the search engines that their site was being ranked to from a PR5 website; it made the vendor’s site more “buoyant” (it made it rank higher) in the search engines. The moral of the story is, be very careful if someone offers to do you the “favor” of creating a link to your site, in exchange to linking from yours. It could be detrimental to your website’s Search Engine health.

Nevertheless, you should look for opportunities to receive links from relevant websites whenever possible. It might not seem fair to “take” a link without giving one back, but there are other ways you can help the linking website. If they have a satellite website, you could consider linking to that in the body of one of your posts — relevant topic / contextual link / deep link to the satellite site. Just be careful that the link partner understands that directly linking from the satellite site to their main site will not be nearly as good as if they link in a broad circle of 10 sites before returning to the main site. This is somewhat sophisticated SEO / linking strategy that we’re sharing, so it’s not for everyone to implement on their own. It also implies that you have up to 10 web properties that are all somewhat related that can be daisy chained together… Again, not for everyone. But definitely for businesses that want to insure being on Page 1 on Google.

It requires a lot of time, attention and planning to implement a 10-site daisy chain strategy, and we encourage you to go into that with plenty of forethought. Take the time to not only analyze and eliminate any chance of reciprocal linking or neighbor linking possibilities in the chain, and also insure that whomever in your organization will be managing your website network understands this strategy. A small business SEO Policy is a very smart investment in resources. It takes relatively little time for a website to fall in page rank, and a significantly greater amount of time to gain rank — especially after it is lost.

The underlying issue of Page Rank has been said to be overrated, and it’s largely a symbol of the site’s overall bouyancy in the search engines… it’s not necessarily a goal for a web owner to achieve a particular page rank; it’s more of a barometer or guideline than a definitive benchmark or landing point. The website owner with a page rank of 0 would certainly agree that a page rank of 5 would represent that his/her traffic has achieved more traffic (visitors), more conversions and more leads & sales. That’s really the benchmark we’re aiming for.

Dog whispering is something that many people are interested in these days. It was brought into the limelight by Cesar Milan, who has the TV series “The Dog Whisperer.” People see how he immediately gets the dogs to adhere to his wishes, and it seems quite incredible!

While Cesar seems to have a special talent, others can learn to be dog whisperers too — even you! It is all about understanding the dog’s body language and communicating with your own body language. Dogs are able to sense what should happen when you get a grasp on doing this.

Dogs are social creatures by nature, and are used to living in a pack in the wild. They follow one another’s body language frequently, so it comes as no surprise that dog whispering is such a successful training technique.

The first thing you need to realize if you want to try dog whispering is that you are the leader. Dogs can feel like they are the Alpha, and that they are in command. This is wrong, and can lead to problems with aggression and disobedience. If you establish yourself as a leader, your dog will adore you and will adhere to your wishes.

It is best for you to educate yourself on the body language of dogs. For instance, how they turn their head, walk, and make other movements can give you clues about what your dog is thinking and going through. Also, learning what to do with your own body can be extremely helpful in day-to-day life. Even if you are going to be incorporating a different form of training, it is well worth your time to learn about dog whispering so the two methods can work together.

To see if this is right for you, you might choose to watch Cesar Milan’s TV program. It is quite incredible the first time you see it, and you might pick up some helpful tips as well. There are also some books and courses on the market that can help you become a dog whisperer. While to many it might seem “silly”, it can be quite effective in helping you train your dog. It is all about creating a bond and understanding one another. All anyone wants in life is to be understood. This includes your dog!

Dog whispering is becoming quite popular, very quickly. The reasons are clear — that’s because it works. It’s time for you to learn how to do this as well.