Testimonial – A Fare With Nature @ Prom Rd Farm, Wilsons Promontory

Business with a view

Rhonda Bland went from being a computer novice to successfully blogging about her unique Wilsons Promontory B&B thanks largely to the Small Business Mentoring Service.

Rhonda worked as a Forests Commission secretary and bursar at Hastings High School before marrying and expanding a dairy farm enterprise over a 25 year period. Her four children now run a dairy farm each with their father. “Too young to retire”, Rhonda incorporated a B&B into a house she had built on a 162 hectare (400 acre) slice of the 514 hectare (1270 acre) dairy farm she now lives on.

A Fare With Nature @ Prom Road Farm opened in Easter 2012. The business is situated 1.6km from main road to take advantage of brilliant 300 degree views over Corner Inlet, Wilsons Promontory, Waratah Bay and the hills of South Gippsland.

While Rhonda loved the idea of entertaining guests while gardening and growing fresh fruit and vegetables for them, she had only a slight idea how to build a website. This led to mild panic about how she was to create the online presence crucial for any modern business.

Fare With Nature is uniquely placed in a delightfully private location. It has two levels of accommodation that can be self contained or B&B. Almost a hectare of gardens offer guests seasonal fresh vegetables, berries and fruit from a huge orchard in a farm-like setting.

Rhonda makes preserves for guests and fills their rooms with fresh flowers and seasonal fresh fruit. Visitors also have the opportunity to watch a dairy farm in action as the property is part of Rhonda’s eldest daughter’s farm.

The business had a lot going for it but Rhonda did not have the skills to promote it online. “I had a fair idea of what was involved with building websites, but was not confident in going it alone as I don’t understand the ‘lingo’ associated with IT work,” she says.

After deciding she needed help, Rhonda discovered SBMS at a Leongatha work shop run by
South Gippsland Shire and was matched with mentor Madalen Ross.

“Because of information gleaned from workshops attended, it seemed a good idea to go with
WordPress which my mentor was familiar with,” Rhonda said.

SBMS is a non-government non-profit organisation of volunteer expert mentors who give their time and experience to help small business. It is supported by Small Business Victoria, which refers clients to it.Madalen has run several businesses, Image Identity, Your Executive Secretarial Services and more recently Indulgence Afloat. She has extensive experience in small business, marketing and office administration.

Rhonda met Madalen six times over two months and they have maintained phone and email contact. Madalen also travelled to Rhonda and stayed overnight. “The hospitality was sensational,” she says. “We basically worked all Saturday afternoon and evening and then Sunday morning.”

Rhonda wanted to set up a website for her new business but had no idea what to do. “She knew very little about getting around the computer and no idea about what was involved with getting a website up and running,” Madalen says.

“I supported her with basic training in getting around the laptop and emails, set up her hosting, domain registration, setting up her website, and teaching her how to use WordPress.

“We also had sessions on how best to use social media for her business, online and offline marketing strategies, and On-Page/Off-Page Search Engine Optimisation”

Madalen also helped Rhonda work out how much she could take on as a sole operator and how to manage her work load.

As it is still early days, it is too soon to say if profitability has improved. But Madalen says Rhonda’s computer skills have greatly improved and positioned her well to make the most of the internet.

“There is most definitely an improved understanding of the internet, improved computer skills and a greater awareness of skills required to maintain a website, social media and SEO techniques to help her business grow the business in the future,” Madalen says.A Fare With Nature @ Prom Road Farm is now well placed to make the most of its position and special features.

The property’s ground floor is wheelchair accessible with a guest living room/kitchenette and two adjoining bedrooms, both with ensuites. The first floor also has a guest living room/kitchenette and three bedrooms.

“I am catering for the tourist trade, be they families, couples with pets, the disabled, or individuals,” Rhonda says. If rules limiting B&B guests to six are changed she may also explore the corporate market.

Rhonda says the new site has opened her business to local, interstate and overseas trade. “The website is designed for your PC, mobile phone and iPad, so again, business is accessible both locally and overseas,” she says.
Rhonda says Madalen “most definitely” helped to improve her management skills. She is also “much more conversant” with IT language and learning to understand WordPress and her website, “which has to be a bonus for the business”.

This has left Rhonda confident that she has the tools to succeed in a competitive market. “I am extremely satisfied with the advice my mentor … has given me,” she says.

Madalen says Rhonda has come a long way. “Whereas at first she was very stressed and knew very little about web development, I think she is more comfortable adding content to her blog when she’s not working in her fabulous gardens,” she says.

“When you consider her day starts at about 4.30am, I think she’s marvellous to fit in the time!” Without Madalen’s help, Rhonda says she would be “in big trouble and perhaps a little
overwrought at going it alone”.

“I would have gone elsewhere for advice, which probably would not have been as helpful and I really need to operate my own website and understand it,” she says. “It would probably have cost more money which I could ill afford.

The anti-spam “Penguin Update” will have more jolts in the coming months, as Google continues to adjust it.

Penguin takes care of the spam activities including unnatural link spam, too high keyword density i.e. keyword stuffing and other factors. However, this fight of Penguin against spam was a nightmare for most of SEO masters and for a lot of site owners; it flooded away their effort of years or months into gutter.

Beginning from April 24th, when the first Google Penguin Update was implemented (and a lot of business owners in the internet universe were thrown from the top) a huge amount of data was collected over 4 months from more than 7 000 website users to get a colution to compensate all negative effects of the Penguin update.

Here’s what you can do to make things right.  It may take a while but the results will put you at the right place to please Google:

1. Don’t keyword stuff –  If your ranking has deteriorated due to keyword stuffing (too many keywords), do your keyword density analysis; it should be below 2% as per rule of thumb.  Try LSI keywords than the ones you aimed for before.
2.  Diversify your anchor text – The anchor texts you use for link building should be 30% naked, i.e. without a text.  For example, www.yourseite.com, yoursite.com, www.yoursite.com, click here, etc.
3. Focus on quality links only – Do not use anything Google considers is spam.  After the Penguin Update, high PR links become extremely effective but only if you use them together with other type of quality links.  Your link building campaign should include at least a few high 3PR + links without fail.
4. Mix your links – Don’t rely on one type of link building.  To make your campaign safe and natural for Google, it’s mandatory to use several types of links.   But make sure that all types of links are quality and no spam included in your campaign.

After collection of data and after we tested dozens of new link building tactics for campaigns, we now have SEO link building strategies that can help you beat the Google Penguin Update or for those who just need to get on top of Google.  Please contact us for a free quote.

Google’s new Tag Manager makes it a lot easier than adding the individual code to each of the pages.

This is going to be a real time saver with not only Adwords and Analytics tags, but conversion and split testing tags from systems outside of Google as well. This should work on both regular websites and WordPress sites. You’ll only need to set this up once and you won’t even need a developer to add tags to it!

If you are using WordPress, you definitely want to make sure it is locked down from hackers. If you need this done for you, then please contact us – it’s worth the small investment to have peace of mind.

There are now approximately 250 million users in the Google Plus community since its launch in 2011.

Although similar to Facebook, it is different in several ways.   One of the major differences is organising friends and followers into separate ‘circles’ so you can post appropriate messages to the right people, instead of just one mass posting.

Although it can be a bit confusing at first, these are the top Google Plus tips to help you separate business and personal aspects and help drive your business too.

1. Profile –  Make sure you’re taking advantage of your profile area.   It’s important you establish your personal identity not only to connect with your personal profile, but also with your business.   It’s a good idea to use a profile picture of yourself instead of using a company logo for your avatar to establish you as an actual person in order to build the relationship needed for your online business.   Showcase what your business can do for people in the ‘About’ section, highlighting your business but keeping your personal identity evident as well.   
2. Hangouts – This feature separates Google Plus from other social networking sites including Facebook.   The Hangouts feature allows you to connect, by video, with up to ten people at a time.  This is great for meetings, training, demonstrations, webinars, e-classes, etc.   Think outside the square to allow your creativity flow to grow your business.
3. Categorize with Circles – Their ‘Circles’ feature allows you to categorize your followers, which in turn allows you to send the appropriate messages to the appropriate groups of people. No more mass posting and sending irrelevant messages to people. You can separate your followers into customers.
4. Sparks – This is another great feature of Google Plus. This handy tool lets you enter a keyword and an alert will be sent to you whenever any content on this subject is posted. This is a great way to search for, and find relevant and interesting content to share.  It can also be used as a tool to see what your competitiors are up to!
5. Shorten Your URL – Be sure to shorten your URL as you probably won’t want to use the default link Google assigns to you. To do this, you can go to gplus.to and choose the nickname for your URL. You can use your company name but some people prefer to use their actual name.
6. Invite People to Your Circles – In your account you will see a suggestion list, provided by Google, of people to invite to your circles. Make a habit of going through these suggestions and inviting different people to the appropriate circle. More people than not will accept your invitation and it helps in building an effective network.
7. Drag and Drop – Create memorable and unique posts by easily dragg and droppin photos, links, videos, etc. from your desktop to your Google Plus comment box.
8. Google Notifications Window – This timesaving feature is helpful because it allows you to comment right in the window. You do not have to click over to a website to share a comment. You can also scroll through to see older and/or newer notifications.
9. Check Your Google Plus Settings – There are many notification options available to you. You can opt to get notified when someone mentions you or adds you to their circle. There are several options available to you so be sure to check all the ones that apply.
10. Use Mashable – Mashable is a news source that will keep you abreast of all Google’s features, updates, and other digital social media news as well. This will allow you to make the most of your Google Plus and social media tactics. http://mashable.com/

    Facebook has over 800 million users, so Google Plus is not yet the powerhouse that Facebook is, however it has many outstanding features and uses that could make it a very effective component in your social networking agenda.