The more I learn about how search engines work and the direction the whole industry is heading, the more I realize something very important is almost always forgotten by those involved in website promotion. And that is whether a business website actually deserves the rankings its owners crave. 

Remember that Google and the other search engines are striving to return the most relevant results. So, when someone types in, say, "best Italian restaurant Perth" they want to find the best Italian restaurant in Perth, not the best (ie, most highly optimized so as to manipulate the rankings) website for an Italian restaurant in Perth.

That's not to say that any local restaurateurs aiming for the above mentioned traffic should forget about SEO considerations entirely and just get back to the kitchen to improve their meals! But they should be mindful that the website is not merely a sign that you hold up in front of Google, hoping to get chosen first.

A website is a conduit for your business. When it comes to on-page factors you should be trying to pour into it lots of clear evidence that you really know you're stuff; that you're good at what you do; that your products and/or services are top notch. This is why it's great if you have a blog, or if you include other forms of content such as videos and podcasts that get added regularly. With all this relevant, original, quality content under your domain Google can tell that you are a good business that deserves to be noticed. This quality content also functions as linkbait, and while backlinks are not as important as they used to be, they are still very helpful -- particularly if they come voluntarily from relevant blogs and sites that Google already knows and respects.

Just as you can show Google directly how good your products and services are, indirect or off-page signals are powerful too. That's why it's so useful to engage regularly, helpfully and thoughtfully on social media sites if you can find the time. These all build authority. And that's what Google is becoming increasingly fine tuned to detect and reward.

So, if you keep remembering to build this authority -- not merely advertise -- in different areas of the web, Google will factor this into its calculation of the quality and relevance of your site when someone types in a search phrase you're aiming to rank for. And while you may not be top dog straight away, odds are you'll be a good few positions higher than before you started repeatedly sending those powerful signals.

Over the years I've spoken to numerous people in business who have websites. And there seems to be a cycle that many of them go through.

Firstly, they want to make sure that their website looks exactly as they wish. They often end up forking out quite a bit of money to achieve this goal. It can often take a lot of time, too. Some of the more in demand web designers have busy schedules, after all.

Then they let it sit for a while. Quite a few of them seem to get package deals in which the site is designed, built and "optimized for search engines" by the same company.

They believe they've done pretty much all they need to do. They assume that if it's in Google, potential customers will be finding it via various searches. 

But as the weeks and months pass they get very few calls from people finding them exclusively online, or none at all. So they then they start to wonder just how many people are arriving via search engines. If they haven't got visit tracking tools already, they get them installed so they can find out these numbers. They are almost invariably disappointed when they discover what they are. 

It's at this point that they resolve to do something about getting found online. Many of them employ an SEO company. Sometimes they make a good choice, but because they have so little knowledge they often get ripped off by some slick promotional material that promises the world and delivers very little. If the latter situation eventuates, after several months they stop forking out for the service in frustration and commence looking into doing it themselves. This point often comes at least a year after they had the website made. 

My advice: Invert this whole process. Don't worry so much about the aesthetic aspects of your site. While it's desirable to have a visually appealing site, in the end this will have little to do with how Google and the other search engines rank it for various keywords and phrases. 

You should start learning about SEO as soon as you can, and get into the habit of applying this knowledge yourself.

Perhaps the most powerful thing you can do -- and it's very simple, requiring next to no technical nous -- is to get your domain in front of as many influential bloggers and webmasters in your niche as possible. Two of the best ways to do this are by writing quality comments on related blogs, and getting active on social media. 

The wheels of Google move slowly. So the sooner you can sending it good meaningful signals about the quality and content of your site the better.

Having this website and using it to generating my own income has been a challenging but very worthwhile experience. I've noticed is that if you go from being an employee for most of your life to having your own business, you will almost certainly change your attitude to the way workplaces are run. You tend to have a lot more sympathy for employers than beforehand. 

For example, up until a few months ago, I had a part time job in an office, as a back up more than anything else. As is the case in pretty much every workplace, this one had some shocking time wasters who would spend half their time chatting loudly to each other and giggling stupidly.

These people had always annoyed me. But since starting my own little business their behaviour got to me even more. I'm not an aggressive person by any means, but I even reached the point of snarking curtly at them a couple of times.

Maybe I've been going overboard with this feeling, but I've even noticed it in other contexts. For example, I was in a cafe recently. One of the waitresses spent ages talking to some customers she knew personally, even sitting down with them for a few minutes at a time. I was in there for at least an hour (actually working on one of my blogs). And she must have been loudly yammering away for half of that time at least. Sure, the venue wasn't super busy. But there was certainly work to be done.

I didn't say anything, of course. But I was annoyed by the fact that the other cafe staff were working hard, yet getting paid no more than this talkative waitress. It's not fair on them, I thought. It was also not fair on the employer. He was wasting money on this employee, and others like her. He would have been working hard, coping with a lot of stress to keep the whole show on the road.

I've really noticed this change because even though I've always frowned on people who were lazy, I've never found myself sympathizing with eeevil capitalists before. Like so many people I tended to fall back on the old "workers are always the victims" line. Not anymore. 

Obviously there are many cases in which the boss is the greedy bad guy. But most business people are not like that at all, I think. Just as they want to make a profit, they take pride in creating work and income for their employees and treating them well.

Still, I can understand why they are generally so misunderstood. Few people make the leap of starting their own business. Most are lifelong employees as opposed to employers. They have no investment -- economic or emotional -- in the companies they work for. They just show up to put in the hours and then go home. Sure, that's calming in one way because they can just shut off emotionally after leaving. But it can make for a boring life, in my opinion. 

I think it's much better to be committed to something and creating your own work. If you do, you wake up in the morning knowing that it's up to you to deliver a service. That's invigorating. It's daunting in one way because you can easily wind up working too hard. If you become over committed you can become a kind of slave. But in the end you do call the shots. And you can cut back on the work if you like. It's a much better position to be in.

While their are huge potential pitfalls, I think that having your own business just better for you all round emotionally. You feel much more a master of your own destiny. It gives you a greater sense of purpose; a stronger sense of who you are. Also, you keep coming up against your own inner barriers. If you just work for someone else for ages that tends not to happen. You don't actually develop as much. For this reason I wish I'd discovered this way of earning a living much earlier in life.  

In this computer dominated society, our reliance on technology inevitably presents a huge range of business opportunities. Helping others with their technical troubles is one of the most obvious ones, and many people already make a good living offering such services in this city. As well as the many sole operators and small outfits there are several mid-sized companies that offer call out technical assistance. 

But there's one sub-section of this market that I think is not well catered to (if not largely untapped). And this is to offer one on one tuition to people struggling with their devices, or to those who have bought brand new ones but simply don't know where to start. 

There is definitely a substantial and constant demand for this kind of help. I am sure of this because I know someone who used to offer such services. He said he never had trouble getting leads -- quite often just a few pull-tab ads on shopping centre noticeboards would do the trick. Also, he got much of his business from referrals.

Then there's my own experience: I distribute flyers for the services included on this site. Even though they are specifically for lessons in social media and SEO, a surprising number of people call asking for hardware and software help, or just wanting to know how to perform basic computer skills. These people tend to be in the older age bracket.

Clearly there are a lot of desperate people out there. And they want expert helpers to come to see them in their homes a lot of the time. Yes, there are workshops that seniors and others can go to at libraries and businesses (I think Officeworks offers such classes from time to time). But some older people have mobility issues. And others just don't like that group class structure. They much prefer one on one assistance. 

This phenomenon is clearly related to our ageing population. While youngsters have never known what life was like without the internet, smart phones, and Facebook, there are still millions of people for whom all this stuff is still comparatively new, and therefore somewhat intimidating. 

And helping such people with their tech issues is not as straightforward as it might seem. That's because there's often a lot of emotion involved. As we all know, computers can be exasperating. And for an older person who's quite emotionally delicate, such frustration can be deeply stressful.

Being a guide for these people is not a job that just anyone can do well. After all, there are many people who can fix a PC. But teaching a stressed out senior how to use their computer -- or smart phone, for that matter -- requires patience and understanding. You have to be a bit like a social worker. 

This is something I would focus on myself if I were more of a tech-head. But while I certainly know my way around most desktops, laptops, social networks and some blogging and website building platforms I am definitely not a "geek". And quite frankly I find a lot of that stuff really boring. I much prefer teaching people the tactical skills of producing good content, and promoting it on social media. 

But if you are super confident with hardware, software, and technical issues, as well as having a good "bedside manner" then there's certainly an endless amount of work out there for you. You should really go for it, in my opinion. 

Needless to say, many of the people you'll be helping won't be rich, so charging top dollar would be a bad tactic. But once you solve their problems for them you're sure to get a lot of repeat and referral business as a result. So, after you've been at it a while, I doubt you'll have to spend an awful lot on advertising to keep going. That's certainly not the case with a lot of other business models. 

As I mentioned before business people are often reluctant to get into social media because they believe it takes too much time. And it is true that if you joined several networks at once, and resolved to build large followings quickly on all of them simultaneously then it would be a time drain.

But it certainly doesn't have to be like this. When starting out the best approach is to take small steps. Join just one site -- preferably Twitter. Just keep chipping away at it. Tweet, engage, reply, retweet and follow a few people a day and before you know it you'll have several hundred quality followers. If you log in daily for ten minutes or so you really can absorb this into your daily ritual without noticing.

After several weeks of this you'll really start to understand why it can be so beneficial. You will have connected with many good people in your niche, and had some interesting, albeit brief, conversations with them. You will certainly have drawn a few new visitors to your site, too. 

I know that social media is not for everyone, but odds are that you will have caught the social media bug by now. You can then start to build followings on the other big sites. You won't be a beginner anymore so the process will be much quicker. 

Repeated use of such sites also really speeds up your ability to process information. It's quite amazing how much you can get through in a few minutes. Before you know it you'll be engaging thoroughly on several networks in the time it took you to do this on just one of them before. 

While regular participation on several big social networks isn't crucial, it is highly beneficial -- not least because you can engage in cross promotion and therefore build followings on each network a bit quicker.

If you need to streamline the process even more, there are some excellent social media management tools available such as Hoot Suite that enable you to update several accounts from the one dashboard, among other things. 

Businesses are now finally getting into social media in a very big way. Still, there are quite a few who are resisting it. They have various reasons for reacting this way. But one of the most oft-cited is that they don't have the time for it. Also, they don't believe that it will be time well-spent. 

Well, I think they're wrong on both counts. And to explain why I suggest this analogy:

Say you own a clothing store specializing in fashion labels. And between the hours of five and seven every evening a hundred people gather outside your business location. They are all interested in what you have to sell, and love chatting socially about your business niche. Regulars include fashion designers, writers, models, and just lovers of stylish clothes who buy a lot of them. Their ages vary, but most are young. And this regular event always has a good atmosphere. No one is hard selling. They're just chatting.

Would you make time for it? Of course you would, and regularly.

You'd know that all you'd have to do would be to walk out your door and mingle. It would not only be enjoyable. It would be great for your business. There would be influential people there who could give you free publicity. There would be many prospective buyers. The time would fly.

And how would you approach this interaction? Well, you could be pushy and try to drag people back to your store. But obviously that would be the wrong approach. It would annoy many people and ultimately be counterproductive. Rather than welcoming you, the group would become wary of your presence. 

Clearly, a much more subtle approach would be better. You could wear a hat or shirt with your logo on it. And every now and then, where appropriate during conversations, you could mention that you do sell clothes and point to your store nearby. 

Without a doubt, this more organic approach would pay dividends. Some of the people you spoke to would show up to buy from you. And others would come at the recommendation of others you had spoken to. The benefits would be mostly indirect, yet still powerful and ongoing. 

Well, that's pretty much what's happening on social media. Except it's not just between five and seven every night. It's occurring all the time. And there aren't just hundreds of local people in your niche. There are many thousands of them. And you can connect with them pretty much instantly. You just have to log in.

Just as I have been amazed at how many cafes, restaurants and bars are on Twitter, I'm stunned at how many gourmands and cafe afficionados are on there as well. Then there are all the food bloggers in this city!

Maybe every city is like this and I just never noticed. But I don't think so. There just seem to be squillions of them. I get the impression that Perth really punches above its weight in this regard.

Not sure why it would be this way ... Perhaps it's got something to do with the outgoing, optimistic and highly social culture of the place combined with the booming economy. Unlike other major Australian cities there are many people earning very good money here who can afford to dine out regularly in pricey local restaurants and cafes. Clearly, anyone servicing this market who is not on using social media is missing out big time.

And just as today's online technology is facilitating the growth of traditional hospitality businesses, it's giving rise to new ones such as aggregate review sites. This well established model includes Bean Hunter and Urban Spoon. But online entrepreneurs can be much more individualistic and localized than that.

For example, you could build a site totally focused on Perth cafes. You could include photos and videos of your favourite ones and publish interviews with local baristas, etc. You could have a blog that included comprehensive cafe reviews along with related news updates and even gossip. Such specific content would be ideal for sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. With a decent following you could monetize it with related affiliate programs as well as paid advertisements.

If you kept at it there's no reason you couldn't become the go-to guy for advice on Perth cafes. You could then leverage this new found authority to score gigs writing for mainstream media. 

Another approach would be to build a site selling coffee beans and related products such as espresso machines to local cafes. Knowing how many of them are already tweeting and pinning up a storm you could use social networking sites to attract potential customers in a very short space of time. 

And how about a temp agency for cafes? Every day in this city there must be numerous cafe owners pulling their hair out because of staff no-shows and cancellations due to hangovers, etc. Social media would be a fast and effective way to get on the radar of such business people -- not to mention organize prompt staff replacements for them. 

Just a quick post for anyone who wants cheap photocopying: There's a place in East Vic park called Teksoft Print that has some good deals. For example if you have an A4 on plain white paper you get them done for 8 cents a page. If you do over 500 copies, though, you get them for 5 cents a page. This is the cheapest offer I know of locally.

They have pretty quick turnaround, too. Most days I've gone in there I've left the job with them and they've had it done within half an hour. 

Officeworks have competitive prices also. They start of at 8 cents an A4 copy. But you have to get several thousand done before they come down to 5 cents. 

The advantage with Officeworks is just how many stores there are around the city, plus the fact that you can do the copies yourself. However many stores have had issues with the self serve set-up in recent months. It's something to do with the sleek new copying systems they have had installed. Many times I've gone in there and the machine you use to add value to your card has been out of action.

But they seem to be solving that problem now -- though some locations still have issues. The ones I've found most reliable are Fremantle, Subiaco and East Perth.