I’m sure you know the phrase, the cobbler’s children go the worst shod. The cobbler is so busy fixing his customers’ shoes, that he doesn’t have time to sort out his own children’s footwear. It’s such a true saying. Most places I have worked, or clients I have worked with have suffered from the same thing. When I worked for an office equipment company, we had the worst photocopier; when I worked for a facilities services company, blown fluorescent tubes took weeks to be replaced.
For me, ever since I have been self-employed, it has been the same. It’s more a case of not having enough time, though, rather than not taking my own advice. For example, I’ve only just integrated social media and a blog into this website, yet have been advising clients about doing it for many years now.
And another example has been my www.clairekerr.com website. I’ve owned the domain since 1999, and it’s always been well-indexed by the search engines. Yet, when I started up in business myself in 2004, all I did was update it to point to this domain. Since then – so for the past 7 years – it hasn’t changed. What a missed opportunity! I have a great ranking website, that is indexed well for my name and my company name, but it does nothing else.
So, finally I have deliberately set aside the time and I have updated it. There was a nice looking CV template on Themeforest that I thought really suited me. I’ve customised it with all the information I want to impart to my target audience. But more importantly than that, it is now loaded with all my relevant keywords. The site was so far off my radar previously that I hadn’t even set up Google Analytics for it!
Here’s how it looked before:
Old website: I had at least updated the photo, but other than that, it just sat there doing nothing
And here’s what it looks like now:
New website: looking nicer, and now full of relevant, hard-working keywords
I’m pleased with the look of it, and delighted about what it can now do for me in terms of SEO.
How about you; do you suffer the cobbler’s kids’ shoes effect? Are you an accountant whose books are never up to date? Or do you run an office interiors company yet work from a dated office? I’d love to know if you struggle to provide your own products or services to your own company like I do.
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