Phil Dailey was unemployed and thought he would try out a new video service to better explain his skills to prospective employers. He figured he would simply show up at the studio and talk about himself for a while. He was surprised to find that the company he used, ProVideoJobSeeker, worked with him to write a compelling script and coached him in his on-camera presentation skills.

Doing business in heavily unemployed Michigan, ProVideoJobSeeker.com certainly has many nearby potential customers. And this Detroit-area company provides a unique service in its one-minute videos for those seeking employment. It’s more than just a “talking head.” Shown behind the job seeker can be seen photos, graphics and even an image of the person’s resume. The overall effect is an attractive and professional-looking presentation.

“Only a few years ago, the cost would have been several thousand dollars. Now, you can have Super Bowl quality at a fraction of the investment,” says Dick Bradley, company owner. The company’s “e’mercial” is produced for $285. The video can be linked from one’s email or website, or displayed on Vimeo.com, which, although not as popular as YouTube, reaches a more professional audience. The video can also be embedded on one’s personal website or posted on social media sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn.

“We feel that the purpose of an ‘E’mercial is to showcase the ‘Real You,’” says Bradley. “And the best way to do that is for you appear in your own ‘E’mercial.”

Not too long ago, one of our clients got a phone call from a Channel 2 news reporter in Chicago. The reporter wanted some information about Natural Family Planning, and our client was the local chapter of the Couple to Couple League, which teaches the method.

The reporter was asking whether our client had seen a recent Time magazine article on Natural Family Planning. Local media often look to the big guys such as Time, the New York Times, the Washington Post for news ideas, and this reporter probably found our client by simply typing “Natural Family Planning Chicago” into a search engine. You can try this and you will find our client’s site, www.naturalfamilyplanningchicago.com, coming up first in the rankings.

That was good news for us at TreeFrogClick. We built the site in September 2008, and then began our SearchRank program for them the following March. With this program, we research and write three original articles about Natural Family Planning, birth control, and related subjects per month. As you can see in the graph above, the website visits have gradually increased. We also post the same article on our network of press release sites. (See the PDF info sheet of the graph above on our TreeFrogClick website.)

In addition to this, our client is now linked from the popular sexuality website, RHRealityCheck. While this website, which promotes birth control and abortion, is the polar opposite in ideology from the Natural Family Planning site, they consider our client an authority on the subject. And incoming links from authoritative websites on the same subject give a kick in search engine rankings.

It’s this kind of help that will make your website rank high in search engines and deliver more visits.

A popular new year’s resolution is not to make the same mistakes as we did in the past. Here are three blunders made by businesses and non-profits in our experience that will show you what not to do.

1. Can’t find Google

A man who is not too familiar with the ways of the web called us asking how people who did not know about his non-profit could find his website. When told to look on the website Google, he got to the website and asked, “It’s not here. All I see is this blank space and the words, ‘I’m feeling lucky.’ ”

2. Website — adios

A business owner in the Chicago area lost his website when a former employee, who built the site, refused to give the business access to the website. The former employee had registered the domain name in his own name rather than the company’s.

“Why don’t you prosecute him?” we asked the business owner.

“He went back to Mexico and we can’t reach him,” was the answer.

3. Missed the big time

Years ago a friend of mine asked me for a $300 loan to start up a computer company. “I’ll give you returns on your investment if the company takes off,” he pleaded. “I’m thinking of naming it something unique, like ‘Microsoft.’” I turned him down and the rest is history.

Well, OK, the last story is completely made up, but I got you to chuckle, didn’t I?