• FREE Domain Name Registration with any NEW website.
• Receive ONE FREE month of SEO after initial setup with any new one-year contract

It's tough enough starting a new business in the current economic climate. Now, throw in the element that it is a niche business and you begin to look at any avenue for help to survive. Southside British Cars is now in it's fifth year in Danville, Virginia where we service and restore British sport cars. Our initial business came from word of mouth and other referrals. It didn't take to long to realize that there are only so many opportunities to do work on these cars in the immediate Danville area. We had originally estimated our trading area would be a 100 mile radius. But how do you reach these customers? We tried the various print options with little or no success. We gradually realized that our ad dollars were being wasted for all intents and purposes.

In our first year of business we had a friend build a web-site for us but we committed the Cardinal sin and did not maintain the site and were ready to give up on it. It was at this time that Brad McDarmont contacted us. Originally he was working on projects associated with his degree program in college, and this is how we were introduced to Brad's skill set. Brad came in and looked at the existing site, spent time with me to understand the nature of our operation and redeveloped a web-site profile to better showcase our business. We started to hear good comments from existing customers and other visitors to the site right away. Still, Brad was relying on me to keep the content fresh and there always seemed to be too many irons in the fire, therefore site updates were still kind of hit and miss. We still lacked a firm discipline.

On or about the time Brad was graduating we discussed his plan to extend the part time web design to his primary business. We ultimately signed up with his new firm for a monthly support plan and started to discuss how to improve the web site appearance and our position on the internet. This is where the mutual benefits truly materialized and started to yield successes. Brad now sends me a charted Search Engine Optimization report along with a monthly service invoice. This does three things for both of us. First, I know it's time to sit down and refresh the sections that are monthly features. Second, we take a look at the SEO and are able to see who we are reaching by Search engine type by key words or phrases, and what linked sites are yielding hits. Third, we are helping each other support small business enterprises!

This has been a good, ongoing learning experience for us. As a bonus, we are seeing steady growth in our business. We reach a more diverse market and have expanded our trading area out as far as four to five hundred miles. With the increase in business our primary supplier recently made us an Authorized Distributor, which affords us a second tier of discounts from their dealer price list. This will translate to our being able to offer more competitive pricing to our customers along with improving our bottom line. As we look back the decision to pay more attention to the potential of the internet and the ability to mazimize it as a sales tool, we can't help but think we made the proper decision to employ Brad's services. We are were very glad we made this decisions together.