Touchstone Talks: Ep. 11 - M&A - Taking Control of Your ‘Online Assets’ Pre and Post Sale

They had

said that.

It actually

is not every. Day.

That I.

Meet. Him.

Maybe it.

Means we.

May be.

Okay.

And he is.

Back.

And we.

May be.

In the.

Me me me me me me me me me

me me me me me me me me

easy that is to get away from you.

In fact, just so our listeners know

the reason this resonated with me is
when we went to launch Touchstone Talks,

we went to use our touchstone
YouTube channel, which had been set up

by the owner prior to us,

and nobody knew how to get into it.

And so we have, an old YouTube

channel
that we cannot use, with content on it

that it's largely
no longer relevant to us.

And, and we so
we launched something new instead.

So we have touchstone talks.
So that's okay.

I've also often found that when there are,

whole domains, it's,

there is a very tricky thing to,

to prove ownership at some point,

if you do lose ownership

or get locked out of a,

domain, you can go through

several legal hurdles.

It takes a long time to do.

But, in the end, if, you know, if you
if if it's worth going through the,

the time and expense, then it's
certainly something that you can do.

There if it's.

And it all depends on, on the company.

I know that with GoDaddy
they have a process, a submittal process

where you would,
submit everything from business documents

to licensing and, and,

proof of business ownership where you are,

to, to take control of a, domain name

that was either abandoned
or no longer in, or that was,

went back into a registrar.

Registrar. Q

meaning that

its domain is
will be put up for sale of the domain.

Oh, gotcha. Abandoned.

But if it's taking control of a directory
and or,

entity or a third party entity like you

two or,

Any any Google product,

you you can go through a,

a submission,

a submission process where you submit

a documentation, business licensing,

you know, proof of corporate ownership
and so or, or

and so forth to prove,

that you are who you say you are, right?

Let's say,
you know, technology is so important.

These days on how we're communicating
about marketing material and advertising.

And there are so many different ways
to go about doing that.

I feel like
sometimes our owners can get confused on,

best practices and,
and how to kind of keep up with that.

And then when we get into a sales process,
we ask for all that documentation,

you know, turn over all your IP
and they're like, I don't have any.

I'm like, you have a website that's IP.

So talk to us a little bit about about

advice for practice, best practices.

Like, I loved the tidbit
that you just said about

keeping it relevant
and remember of all about the domain name.

What are some other guidance
that we can offer to our owners?

And I love your cat, by the way.

Where does he go, or is he in the back?

Is he? Yeah. It's.

He's set himself up
as your apprentice. Is.

Oh, my lord, that guy.

Here's a great tidbit. This this,

this all come this all comes about

whether you plan

to sell your whether someone is plans
to sell their business or not.

It would be a good idea
for them to create a do it in,

Microsoft
Excel sheets or Google spreadsheet.

But create something like an

online asset inventory sheet.

This is especially old.

This especially holds true
for remembering passwords.

I had a I was working with,
an attorney client yesterday, and he

he had a stack of papers like this,
and he's flipping through them, trying

to find his log in to Gmail

and to the website and to his,

personal 365 account for his law practice.

So it would be
you can create a password protected

either in Google Docs or Microsoft,

Excel
where you and create yourself tables.

You can have dates where you could have

your different assets, like your,

your hosting, your website

login, your hosting,

the login to your domain registrar,

because there's multiple

components to a domain name.

At the highest level,
your domain name is with the registrar.

It could be, for example, with Network
Solutions or GoDaddy or chuckles

located in Australia, or
or one half dozen or the other registrars.

So that is the

topmost level, for a domain name.

And then the domain name
DNS may be controlled

by a,

a another third party entity like,

Amazon AWS or Cloudflare or, or,
or the other hosting company.

So you want to make a sheet
that has all these different,

areas
where you're going to have passwords,

you're
going to we're going to want more to make.

Note does it require two factor
authentication?

Because, for example, if you're getting
ready to sell your business, you know,

if you're not able
to replace the two factor phone number

or SMS or,

some people use QR codes for that

or even or digital print,
you'll need to remove those.

So it's just a great idea
to just create a sheet

that as you remember things,

you know, throw it on the sheet
will ask you throw it on.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Well and the, the, the hard part of that
sometimes is like,

I'm not the one that sets up our website.

I worked with our team to design it, but,

you know, I have a director of operations
that does that.

So if that director of operations leaves
and the two factor

authentication is still going to her
phone,

that's problem. Yep.

So it's a, you know,

a dynamic sheet that you have access to

as as an owner is important,
even if it's not you doing

the setup or the interfacing
with with companies like yours.

Because another important point,

and I just thought about that

this morning, that if a company,

if you're going to acquire
another company's domain name

and you

plan on
making a change to the domain name,

you can still ride

the SEO or the intrinsic,

brand value with that domain name
by simply

was there just say the name of
the old company is x, y z.com.

But your company is going to be abc.com.

You're afraid
about losing all that traffic.

Well, you can still once you acquire
control of the XYZ domain name,

the old domain name, you can point that

to your new domain name.

So you can go ahead and start

giving out your business cards
and setting up the listings as ABC.com.

And then direct or redirect

without masking XYZ ecom to the abc.com.

And it also another important point
is, email.

So you have all the emails
that the old company

joe@xyz.com you want to make,

Joe may have his email with so many other,

people that he's done business
with all the time.

So you want to have the ability
to forward that email to your email,

or at least have access to that particular
inbox

now? Absolutely.

And very important.

We, I touched on we did an acquisition

of, business transition strategies and,

we did the same kind of process
because business

transition strategies had been operating
for years and years and years.

We didn't want to lose that kind of flow
of anybody that was used to going there.

We wanted to increase their SEO on it.

So let's
can we do a quick definition for those of,

you know, those of our owners
that may not be familiar

with what SEO is and,
and kind of the the changes,

even if you are familiar, that are,
you know, purportedly to happening

where, if you listen to Google,
it's only for sale these days.

For sure.

Sure.

SEO of course.

And it's been around for a long time.

See the All that for them for search

engine optimization.

That optimization would apply

to specifically a business owners website.

So for example, if you're a plumber

or electrician or a dentist,

of course
they serve more of a local clientele.

So they want to be want to be found
for dentists in their particular city

or plumber in their particular city
or the cities that they serve.

So it's all about having the,

correct information in their website,

to that outlines their services
and their products.

It's all about
getting all the information,

the things that you do, who you are,
what you do with

how you do it.

Entered or posted in your website
in such a way

that the search engines could easily crawl
and find that information.

But one of the.

Important things that

people forget when they're listing their,

their website
with various directories, for example.

Those are as directories would be

Google Business pages or Yelp

or, or MapQuest or,

Bloomberg or,
you know, half dozen of the others,

or there are external listings
that list your website profile.

You want to be sure that when you

post your website

in these outside directories, match
or that that information

matches exactly what you have in your
what for your website and is.

So the good rule of thumb
is to follow in AP,

which is name, address and phone

and that that information be.

Identical or consistent

across all in your website

and across your social profiles
and across those external platforms.

So if your website is city

com state spelled out,
then make sure it's that way.

All the other sites, if it's city comma

abbreviated state needs to be the same on
all these other sites.

Oh, that's an excellent tip. You know,

a lot of

people,
when they're posting their website,

on a third party platform,
they might forget to put H http s

if they have https s meeting the city,
but, secure.

Secure.

Yes. So a lot of people say,
oh, them that I need.

But because my website comes up
anyway, well, most browsers will flip Http

to https automatically,
but whether it be Bing

or Safari or Google,

but Google

and Bing and all the other

search engines out
there will not attribute

the same value to your listing.

So if you have your website
or your Facebook profile

but you forgot to put S for Https,

then it's not going to attribute it

as much value.

For your website in terms of SEO.

Got it, got it.

That's an important export thing.

Remember be consistent.

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.

We are dealing with technology
to screen it.

So they're looking for consistent
patterns.

So SEO is important
for how people find you.

There's there's

optionality that you can,
you know, pay per click

kind of optionality with Google,

that you can employ, there's optimization.

It's I could see a lot of owners
going, well,

why am I bothering with that?

What's your theory on that?

How much difference does it make
if I make a new website

and don't worry about any of that versus

taking the and doing the optimization?

That's a good question.

Literally, there are

each and every day there are new website,
and in these they may not be a,

you know, a what
you may think of a traditional website.

There are people creating

landing pages
and posting PDF documents and

and they're doing it's it's just growing
at the rate of thousands a day.

So there's literally,

the internet's

just becoming a very,
very super crowded over place.

And search engines like Google and Bing

and the even the AI search engines
like a comet, which is a,

a new browser search engine

and the perplexity, the AI,

are all getting into this race of people

they're looking for,
well, organize information.

What SEO does is helps, helps present your

pages to the search engines, whether they

whether it be AI or whether it be,

Google or or Bing.

It helps

present your information
in a well-organized, way and fashion.

And they even give you tools to help.

Google.

And they also provide tools to help
you feed your information

to the search engines.

So SEO is becoming very critical.

Okay, so what if I'm sitting here
and I'm a business owner

and I haven't touched
my website and 5 or 10 years,

what is my website?

Traffic likely to look like and how do
I even start the process of improving it?

Well, gosh, you had to ask that question.

I we see it all the time.

I see it all the time.

So it's a it's a valid question.

How important is it to, to their business

and how do they fix it by default,

some very old websites that were,

that were created ten, 16,

20 years ago with very, very elementary,

website tools,

like front page, right,
like old WordPress.

Right.

Like where you're saying goes.

But, you know, even WordPress was created
is a blog.

They, they what we call in the industry

are grandfathered
in for these search terms.

And when a website is
created very, very early on,

all these

directories, you have all these robots
and directories that they scrape.

So if they see this old website,
it gets picked up by

other directories because they're looking
you have

some people who will make a living
just by.

They'll create a listing or a directory
for Denny's website, directories for,

for hair dryers or whatever it might be.

And they scrape.

The internet is constantly
being scraped for,

for information
to populate these other directory sites.

So all these older sites or probably have

backlinks or listings

in these third party entities
that are probably number

200, 300, maybe 500,000

lakes linked out from here to Bulgaria.

And so those backlinks

cobbled together or add a

SEO intrinsic value to the website,
and the fact that the website is,

even if the web, the owner

doesn't touch the website, if,

if it's picked up by Google or Bing,

early on, it's, it's still going to be

seen as a,

a valid,

trusted source of information.

However.

Don't hold your breath

because overnight, overnight,

that could change it because Google

and other search engines
are constantly updating their algorithms.

So they may look at a website that's
been there for ten, 15, 20 years and say,

they're not getting a lot of traffic.

And then all of a sudden it's
going to drop from the

the top three positions on page
one to back to page 30.

So you never know.

Yeah.

I feel like,
something that I hear often is

I don't get any business from my website,
so why should I update it?

Google,

any business owner, including, our company

should always strive to add new content
and make it

and make that part of their
our business habit.

This much as a personal habit of

of brushing your teeth
or eating breakfast is to

post something to your website
and force yourself

to post something either

daily, weekly, or monthly.

No less than monthly.

If you don't know how to do it, then
harangue the person who built your website

or your webmaster,
or someone in your office to say, look,

we need to add some content
to our website.

Let's add some content.

Nothing looks worse than,

or even updating pictures
or removing old information.

A great SEO tactic.

The people a lot of people don't realize
is to take

existing content that's on your website
and just rewrite it.

Google loves fresh content

because when they see
that a website is either

adding new content to their website
or making changes to existing content,

Google will come

back and crawl
that website with more frequency.

Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense.

Now. Vision F offers a bunch of services
that would help with this.

If I'm an owner
that's coming to you and saying, I've

this is in my business plan
to do better for next year.

What does that process look like?

There's

typically other, typically businesses,
whether they are the existing

flight of vision events
or they're a new client.

Need help

either redesigning or freshening

their existing website.

Or they're having an existing website

that they absolutely love,
but they're not getting business.

So they will approach for SEO.

So every business
situation's a little unique.

So we have a, quick

phone call, a virtual meeting with them.

We take a look at the website,
we make recommendations, and then

I present those recommendations to try
to move, decide to move forward or not.

Excellent.

How often do you do you see this

involving other social pages.

Right.

Like a LinkedIn
or do you tie those together.

Does the website exist in isolation?

What's your advice on that?

That's that's a good question.

LinkedIn.

Well, depending on the business.

And now I will give you two examples.

Yeah.

One company
that's a very technology driven company.

So for them posting on Facebook
and LinkedIn is, is is good for Facebook

is because there are it,
you know, has a huge reach of,

I bet that being a little bit
more on the personal side

and then LinkedIn has a very great
or very good B2B reach.

So for a technology company, I would say,
yeah, let's let's get you posted on

and especially
it depends on the technology company.

If they if they're a creative technology
company, say, yeah,

let's get
you put posting regularly on LinkedIn,

Facebook, TikTok,
especially if there are some video,

motion video or something

creative or creative technology
that really,

you know, grabs someone's interest.

On the other side of the fence,

you may have a company
that sells or manufactures,

spars
and hot tubs and things of that nature.

Well, that's not really a b to B,

type of reach.

So their their ads or their,

I wouldn't say ads,
but they're postings or shares

would be more appropriate for Pinterest,

Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and the like.

Some more of a, you know, a it's a product
that's more of a, a personal connection.

So what I suggest to clients is that,

we help we can help them
as part of the web process,

set up their pages on Pinterest or,

or link to whatever, because, you know,
you want to have a nice banner image.

You don't want your logo
to be all cropped and gnarly looking.

So we hope their pages look really nice
and then they can choose the posts

themselves, or we we can do
as part of our SEO service.

Do daily or weekly
or monthly posting for them.

Excellent.

So you can get down as granular is helping
getting things into the right places.

Absolutely. Great, great.

I often our owners are very busy
and adding

in whole layers
of new marketing ads to somebody's job

so it sometimes make sense
to have things outsourced.

Absolutely.

At some of us
are not technologically intuitive.

So it becomes a problem

for those of us
that are not I personally struggle

I have my list with my passwords because
if I do not I will forget them all.

But remembering to do the post
and share the post and,

all the stuff
that you have to do to keep it relevant.

It's not it's not my strength.

Thank goodness for Leanne,
because she does it.

She does sets all that up for us.

But, well, thank you for joining us today.

And I would encourage
any of our owners that

They had

said that.

It actually

is not every. Day.

That I.

Meet. Him.

Maybe it.

Means we.