Increase 'visibility' of your Merchant Shipping Related web site.

The very dependence of maritime business on internet makes it the strongest medium of communication and information so far as the shipping industry is concerned.

The benefit of having a web site for your business lies in its availability to the visitors searching for services it offers. What ever your business is, it needs exposure due to global nature of maritime and marine transportation industry.

Your site has to be easy to find on the web and in search engines queries. Services you offer need to be available to a vessel arriving at the port of call, a manager looking for services should be able to find you.

Search engine spiders follow hyperlinks when crawling the internet. A site linked to other quality sites of similar content is crawled frequently and gets listed faster in the search engines.

Presence of strong back links, where the other sites has a hyperlink to your site, is the best technique for getting listed in the search engines and directories. Manual submissions may be made to directories related to your business.

Let’s see what shipping related businesses we are talking about, the very long list may include the following:

• A Ship chandler,
• A shipping agency,
• Deal in cargo chartering and brokerage,
• Deal in ship sale and purchase,
• Associated with ship demolition industry,
• A shipping company,
• A bunkering company,A crewing agency,
• A marine lawyer,
• A marine stevedoring company,

• Running a ship repair work shop,A marine contractor,

The list is endless!

Following services offered on PakistaniMaritime.Com may help increase the visibility of your web site on the WWW:

• PakistaniMaritime Site Ring - Increases visibility of a site by linking sites of same trade together.
  
• PakistaniMaritime Web Site Awards - The winner sites are listed in the award winners list consisting of quality maritime shipping related resources.
  
• PakistaniMaritime Links Page - Submit your site to merchant shipping related resources page.

I highly recommend excellent free lessons offered on this subject at SEO Training Class - Ethical Search Engine Optimization Classes to optimize your site for search engines.

Same is true about Resume Sites of Mariners and other merchant shipping employees.

Free Resume Web Site Hosting and Development

Very recently, I have introduced free Resume Web Site Hosting and Development for the merchant navy employees.

Here I offer the serving officers and seaman in merchant shipping a web presence that may supplement information provided in their Resume.

It roots from my own good experience - it won me the long awaited shore job thus enabling me to say good bye to sea, atleast for the time being. See my article ‘From Ship to Shore Job’ for details. Let me add that I did not know about this job, never applied for it, never had an interview and never contact the employer. The employer searched on the net, ‘found me’( my Resume Web Site), contacted me and offered me a job precisely to my qualifications and experience that I joined whole heartedly.

Difference between a Resume and Resume Web Site.

There is difference between a Resume and a Resume Web Site - Resume is only a part, a downloadable part of a Resume Web Site. Resume may direct the visitor, employer in this case, to the Resume Web Site. A resume site must expand to bring resume to life, so that it does no remain a peace of paper with text only. The visitor after surfing must know all about applicant- his personality, interests, hobbies, and company. Resume Web Site has lot more to offer the visitor, who happens to be the potential employer:

• Details of service.
• Details of qualifications,
• Scans of certificates and other documents that the visitor may like to see,
• Links to academic institutions that made you earn your qualification,
• Links to the last employments / jobs etc.

The main theme is to expand on the information contained in the resume to answer queries that may arise in the employer’s mind.

As I said in my case, I was not interviewed certainly for the above reason. The employer had gathered information from my site that he wanted, knew all about me and the credibility of my qualifications and experience. He was, therefore, confident to offer me a job straight away.

Free Web Site Development and Hosting for Shipping Related Business Concerns.

In order to help maritime shipping businesses that does not have presence on the web I offered free maritime related web site development and hosting on PakistaniMaritime.Com web site.

The web sites are as good as I am at web site development :), but at least they may make a difference for a small business to expand and it does not take much of my time since I do it as a hobby and intend to make myself useful to the others.

Presently, I have assisted two shipping businesses to come on line, one is from Pakistan and the other from Turkey.

How WWW entered the life of a mariner.

I have served in merchant navy for 23 years, got my Certificate of Competency Class One (Deck), Master Mariner Unlimited and served to the rank of Chief Officer onboard merchant vessels. I mainly served onboard oil tankers of varied tonnage from small product tankers to ULCCs – ultra large crude oil carriers; even served on ship carrying vegetable oils, palm oil and soyabean oil.

In 1998, while serving onboard a tanker vessel I fell sick, and was diagnosed with sciatica. Doctors advised me to under go immediate surgery after seeing the MRI reports. They explained that the disk between my lumber vertebra L5 and sacral vertebra S1 had collapsed and busted with fragments pressing the nerve, which as a result was causing sciatica pain in my left leg.

Once decided I under went sugary. It only took one and a half hour, the second day I was made to walk and the third day I was discharged from hospital. It took two months of long walks and some exercises to get healed fully, until my doctor told me to go back on job. I was lucky to recover fully and found my self working like before without any difficulty. Let me add that a chief officer onboard oil tankers has quite a physical job: entering tanks for inspection and visiting odd confined spaces that require bending and all sort of ‘gymnastics’ with very long working hours and tense tanker operations.

During the sick leave I bought my first computer, a Celeron 266MHz with a 2.1G hard drive, got use to it by studying self help books and found myself fascinated by the power and scope of the WWW.