Well here we are in September. And sooner – or later – we’ll get the infamous inversions. When the wind blows from the East, and not from the West. When it can be hot and muggy, and the fire danger can reach extreme. Down South, in Los Angeles, they call these winds the Santa Ana‘s. Up here, in Northern California, we have no name for this phenomenon, but it does happen. I remember in 1991, when they had the devastating Oakland hills fire, I was at the beach, with my sister and her girlfriend at the time. They lived in Noe Valley, but I was still working on my Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, and as we turned the corner on the freeway coming home… there it was: a huge black cloud, hanging over Oakland. Residents should make sure they get the low-down on fire assessment for their property, especially if they live in these areas where extreme fires can occur. Sometimes it can spread across to homes and this is where a fire safety plan and fire alarms are very important to get everyone evacuated in time. This one particular fire I will never forget and I hope people are prepared for any fires in the future.
Yikes! After dropping them off in San Francisco, I scurried across the Bay Bridge to the hellfire that was Oakland at the time. I had friends, and professors, who lived in the Berkeley / Oakland hills, and it was really scary.
All because a) it was dry, and b) the winds reversed, and c) someone accidentally started a fire (it had been thought ‘put out’ but reignited).
A Reversal of Fortune: San Francisco Search Engine Optimization
How does this related to San Francisco SEO and the themes of this blog: marketing, internet marketing, AdWords, and social media?
Well…
- No Internet really exited at the time. So no Twitter, no Facebook, even (gasp!) no real email.
- The winds reversed, the land was dry, and a fire ignited.
It’s point #2. The latter. Sometimes things are ready for an ignition. The tinder is there, dry dry dry, just waiting for a spark. Perhaps it’s your reputation management. Perhaps your online image is vulnerable to attack from a disgruntled customers, or unhappy camper with an ax to grind. Perhaps it’s your website, which looks great to you “on the desktop” but looks terrible to them “on the phone.”
Reverse the winds. Look at it all from your customer’s perspective. Critically analyze what tinder is capable of going up in smoke. Perhaps it’s a nasty link footprint, vulnerable to Penguin. Or terrible content vulnerable to Panda. Or a lackadaisical attitude towards online reputation management. As we sit here in September, 2015, and we wait for those strange, Western winds, it’s a good time to take stock. To thank God we don’t have a huge fire, to pray for rain, and to turn upside down in looking at your website, your AdWords, your social media strategy.
What could ignite?
