Modernize Missouri Business Websites
A recent Forbes magazine article ranked Missouri the 22nd best state for business. With practical legislation and visionary leadership I believe Missouri can be our Nation's best state for business.
Our Nation is currently experiencing a regular economic down cycle but when this recession is over we will enjoy another booming economy. Smart business owners, entrepreneurs, and corporate CEO's realize a bright economic light is on the horizon. They also understand the best time for business research, development, and future expansion planning is during bad economic times. Thousands of business owners are using this down time to research a new state for business and every month over 18,000 business owners are searching Google for the best business state. I believe we can attract the majority of these businesses to Missouri by rebuilding our State's obsolete economic development websites.
The websites currently used by Missouri to develop business were designed with outdated technology, are invisible to modern search engines, and will never be found by anyone searching for the best state for business. We must immediately optimize Missouri's business websites to meet current search engine compliance so we can keep Missouri businesses in the Show Me State and motivate business owners fleeing high tax states to relocate to Missouri.
In the last few years I have intensely studied the art of search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the process of employing keyword strategies to allow a website to rank successfully on a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. I have used this technique successfully on my business website www.missouridealerseminars.com. If you go to Google, Yahoo, or Bing, and type in Missouri Dealers License, you will see that my company website consistently ranks at the very top of each search engine. In fact, my business website normally outranks the Missouri Department of Revenue's official dealer license information web page. Most of Missouri's State Agencies do not practice any type of search engine optimization.
Another State Agency that is not practicing search engine optimization is the Missouri Department of Economic Development. The Missouri Department of Economic Development is the state agency that is responsible for attracting new business to Missouri and assisting Missouri based businesses in expansion. Unfortunately, the Missouri Department of Economic Development's official website, www.ded.mo.gov is nowhere near today's search engine compliance standards. A quick review of the website's underlying HTML code shows the site lacks the very basic programming that is required to rank successfully on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. A subdivision of the Missouri Department of Economic Development that is responsible for business sales, research, and marketing is the Division of Business and Community Services. The Division of Business and Community Services has an official business development website, www.missouridevelopment.org which also needs a complete redesign in order to meet 2010's search engine requirements. If you type "Best Business State", or "Best State to Start a Business", in a search engine you will discover that Missouri's official economic development websites are nowhere to be found. They do not exist as far as a search engine is concerned and business owners that are searching for the best state for business will never find Missouri. I want to change that.
I mean no disrespect to the Missouri Department of Economic Development, or their hard working website design team. I just want to ensure Missouri's main business development websites are compliant with today's search engine standards and currently they are not. As your Missouri State Representative, I will introduce legislation that will allow private companies to take over the operation of these websites leading to their immediate modernization.
My proposal is very similar to the program enacted by the Missouri Department of Revenue in 2006 that allowed private companies to take over Missouri automobile dealer training. In the past, anyone that needed training to navigate Missouri's complicated automobile dealer regulations were required to drive to Jefferson City to attend a course given by employees of the Missouri Department of Revenue. The dealer training course provided by the Department of Revenue suffered a constant turnover of course instructors and, like many government run services, did not stay up to date with the latest technology. Many automobile dealers chose not to travel to Jefferson City for training and their lack of knowledge resulted in substantial State fines for non-compliance. In August of 2006 a new Missouri law went into effect that allowed private companies to take over this training and contracts have been awarded to three companies including my company, Missouri Dealer Seminars. The competition between the three training companies has resulted in exceptional, state of the art automobile dealer training programs held in every metropolitan area in Missouri. Now if you want to obtain a Missouri dealers license, you don't have to drive to Jefferson City for training, you can visit your closest city to attend an accredited dealer educational seminar. Please read my company client testimonials that confirm the benefits of allowing private enterprise to take over government services. Although the Department of Revenue allows private companies to handle training, they require each training provider to operate under very stringent guidelines. Any training provider that is not in complete compliance with Department of Revenue regulations is no longer allowed to provide the training.
The companies that are awarded the contracts to operate Missouri's business websites will also be required to operate under firm Missouri Department of Economic Development supervision. Any company that does not operate under exact predetermined Missouri Department of Economic Development guidelines will immediately lose their contract. The State of Missouri will still own all the content on the websites, we will only be allowing private companies to use the content, add to the content, and apply search engine optimization to the content. My legislation will also require any company that submits bids to have a proven track record in search engine optimization and must provide several examples of increasing their past client's search engine rankings. The companies that take over these websites will be able to profit from selling online advertising to realtors, insurance companies, attorneys, private business parks, Chambers of Commerce, banks, and any other entity that will benefit from growing Missouri businesses.
This legislation I introduce to allow private companies to take over Missouri's economic development websites will slash State labor costs, will create new jobs in the private sector, will increase sales tax revenues, and will drive Missouri's business websites to the top of the search engines.
I believe we can build Missouri into our Nation's best state for business, but before we build the best business state we must build state of the art business websites.
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