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Well here we are, almost at the end of yet another interesting week.

Now I know that "interesting" can have several different connotations and of course we all hope that "interesting" means good things but sometimes "interesting" can mean "challenging".

For us it's been an interesting week where good things have happened. Steve spent a couple of days away doing something that all big kids dream of doing for one of our mainstream businesses and another company picked up the tab.

I stayed back here in the office and worked on a bunch of projects for clients and achieved quite a lot and I also managed to get quite a bit of research done too so that was interesting for me too.

So how has your week been? If you're facing a whole bunch of challenges including the type of challenges that you would rather not have to face don't feel down and certainly don't give in if it's tough going because it's those sort of challenges that really push us to ... and beyond ... our limits.

It's those challenges that help us grow if we're prepared to face them head on and not try and run away from them.

Yes, I know ... when you're up to your neck in the brown stuff you don't see the benefits and all you want is for those challenges to go away but if you don't face up to them then you don't grow and you lose. So don't give in ... face the challenges and improvise, adapt and overcome.

Bing ... it's not about the links
Now if you've been in online marketing for more than the last five minutes you will undoubtedly know that inbound links to your website are one of the major factors in achieving a good ranking. Well ... at least it was until just recently but now things might have changed

In an online interview that was posted this week Duane Forrester from Bing said that as far as Bing is concerned social factors are now more important than link factors in determining rankings. He made it quite plain that Bing considers that content is the most important ranking factor followed by social media with links running third.

Now you may think that it's easy to meet Bing's criteria ... all you have to do is post some stuff with links to your site on Facebook and Twitter and everything will be fine but ...

But while Bing obviously wants to see some linkage between your sites and social media there's more to it than just that linkage. Bing also wants to see some interaction on those social networking sites and the more interaction it sees the better the rankings that it's going to give to sites that meet Bing's standards.

In the same interview the guy from Bing also suggested that Bing is now relying on RSS fees more and more for finding new content on your sites.

Now of course you may think that you really don't have to worry too much about Bing because Google is the only game in town and if you do think that way then that's fine ... that leaves more traffic for those of us who understand that the traffic from Bing generally converts much better than the traffic from Google.

If you want to read the entire interview with Duane Forrester from Bing you will find it over at stonetemple.com.

Something to think about
Recently my mainstream business went through about four weeks where there was just no new work coming through the door and I began to panic. Then ... suddenly ... work started coming from everywhere and for the last few weeks I've been bogged down doing a whole bunch of things for these new clients.

In fact it's been eating up all of my time and that's been getting to me too. When Steve came back last night from his few days away he offered me a challenge because he understands something very important. I didn't start my mainstream business simply to buy jobs for Steve and me and be bogged down doing ordinary stuff.

I started my mainstream business because I wanted to grow something ... I wanted to grow the best damn web design business in this town and then grow it beyond that. But you can't grow anything when you spend all day working in your business as I've been doing lately.

Steve's challenge to me was to stop working in my business and to start working on my business. His challenge to me was to stop doing things that I can get others to do ... just as well as I can ... and to start doing things that will grow my business.

Steve suggested that my role in my business wasn't to design websites and be bogged down in HTML and CSS ... my role in my business was to go out and expand the business into new areas ... to look for new goals to aim for.

Sure, I can do some of those things from time to time ... I can spend some time working in my business ... but most of my time should be spent working on my business.

So here is what I want you to think about ... when you came into this industry were you just buying yourself a job or were your hopes and aspirations much higher than that? And are you working in your business or working on your business?