If you intend to be a hero or the good guy in search engine optimisation Derby, you should only use white hat tactics. There are certain limitations to the approach in the beginning, but you can be sure that your reputation stays stable for the long term. People will refer to your company more as a reliable source of products and information. You can get to your target market without having to resort to unacceptable means. Here are some useful tips.
The Use of Links
Internal linking is one of the easiest methods to help make your web site more visible to search engines. A lot of web sites use a type of script to enable fancy drop-down navigation and other complicated functions, thereby keeping search engines from crawling on the scripts easily. Your pages can become un-indexed as a result.
The effects can boost the visual appearance of your web site, but you have to be concerned about staying visible too, or else there will only be a very limited number of people who can appreciate the work. You can add text links and link internally to improve spidering to your web site because of the sophisticated scripts. You can put text links at the bottom or at your homepage that links all main internal pages. Also include a site map to all internal pages.
The Content
Content creation is highly different from doorway pages and the like. You have to make good quality and unique content that will grab the attention of your potential clients, thereby boosting value to the site and your reputation and credibility as well. The more content-rich the site is, the higher its value will be to search engines and human visitors.
You can invest in professional writers and ghost writers to update the content of your page every now and then. This is a good strategy in becoming a good resource in the industry. Having good content also means that you get to display keywords that will lead more people into the site through search engines.
You can post articles, blogs and posts in forums, blog sites and discussion boards online. People will want to read your works if these are related to their chosen topic. You can also build links back to your web site without having to reciprocate the deed.
Boosting the Site
Manipulating the content, site structure and words can improve the ranking of your web site in search engines. You should make solid meta tags and titles to boost SEO Derby. The optimization attempt should not go far from the main message and content quality contained in the web site. Always include the potential to sell and the quality of articles to maximize exposure on search engines.
06 July 2011
22 June 2011
SEO Effect of Duplicate Content
There are a lot of ways that you can improve your site’s page ranking in search engines, unfortunately, not all of them are good. Some people employ certain methods in acquiring a high page rank in search engines, even if these are considered to be deceitful in the sense that they are designed to trick the search engines – one of these methods is actually duplicating web content.
What is duplicate content?
Duplicate content in SEO Derby is actually any web content that is considered to be similar to another site. Search engines have actually implemented new filters specifically to monitor these types of deceitful attempts to improve site’s search engine page rankings. A lot of people think that by creating multiple but similar replicas of their web pages or content, that they will be able to improve their site’s page rankings since they will be able to get multiple listings for their site. Since search engines are now monitoring these types of trickery, sites using duplicate content can actually end up getting banned from search engine indexes instead of improving their ranking.
What are considered as duplicate content?
There are a couple of duplicate content types that are being rampantly utilized by a lot of people, each one a bit different in their use, but all of them employed for the same purpose, which is to trick search engines to get better page rankings.
One way of getting a duplicate content is by having very similar websites or identical web pages on different sub-domains or domains that offer basically the same content. This may include landing or door pages aside from the content, so make sure that you avoid using this if you don’t want your site to become vulnerable to search engines’ duplicate content filter.
Another method of creating duplicate content is by simply taking content from another website or page and reorganizing it to make it appear dissimilar to its original form, though it is actually the same.
Product descriptions from many e-commerce sites are actually being utilized by other sites as well. Other sites simply copy the product description of manufacturer’s utilized by other competitive markets as well. And add the fact that the product name, as well as the name of artist, manufacturer, writer or creator would be included, a significant amount of content would show up on your page. Although this is much harder to spot, it is still considered to be a duplicate content, or spam.
Distribution of copied articles by other sites other than the one that distributed the original article can also be considered to be a duplicate content. Unfortunately, although some search engines still deem the site where the original article came from as relevant, some however, do not.
How do a search engines filter duplicate content?
Search engines filter for duplicate content by using the same means for analyzing and indexing page ranking for sites, and that is through the use of crawlers or robots. These robots or crawlers go through different websites Derby and catalogues these sites by reading and saving information to their database. Once this is done, these robots then analyzes and compares all the information it has taken from one website to all the others that It has visited by using certain algorithms to determine if the site’s content is relevant, and if it can be considered as a duplicate content or spam.
How to avoid duplicate content?
Although you may not have any intentions to try and deceive search engines to improve your site’s page ranking, your site might still get flagged as having duplicate content. One way that you can avoid this from happening is by checking yourself if there are duplicate contents of your page. Just make sure that you avoid too many similarities with another page’s content for this can still appear as duplicate content to some filters, even if it isn’t considered to be a spam.
For more information on SEO Derby, duplicate content or internet marketing go to http://www.jdrwebsites.co.uk/
What is duplicate content?
Duplicate content in SEO Derby is actually any web content that is considered to be similar to another site. Search engines have actually implemented new filters specifically to monitor these types of deceitful attempts to improve site’s search engine page rankings. A lot of people think that by creating multiple but similar replicas of their web pages or content, that they will be able to improve their site’s page rankings since they will be able to get multiple listings for their site. Since search engines are now monitoring these types of trickery, sites using duplicate content can actually end up getting banned from search engine indexes instead of improving their ranking.
What are considered as duplicate content?
There are a couple of duplicate content types that are being rampantly utilized by a lot of people, each one a bit different in their use, but all of them employed for the same purpose, which is to trick search engines to get better page rankings.
One way of getting a duplicate content is by having very similar websites or identical web pages on different sub-domains or domains that offer basically the same content. This may include landing or door pages aside from the content, so make sure that you avoid using this if you don’t want your site to become vulnerable to search engines’ duplicate content filter.
Another method of creating duplicate content is by simply taking content from another website or page and reorganizing it to make it appear dissimilar to its original form, though it is actually the same.
Product descriptions from many e-commerce sites are actually being utilized by other sites as well. Other sites simply copy the product description of manufacturer’s utilized by other competitive markets as well. And add the fact that the product name, as well as the name of artist, manufacturer, writer or creator would be included, a significant amount of content would show up on your page. Although this is much harder to spot, it is still considered to be a duplicate content, or spam.
Distribution of copied articles by other sites other than the one that distributed the original article can also be considered to be a duplicate content. Unfortunately, although some search engines still deem the site where the original article came from as relevant, some however, do not.
How do a search engines filter duplicate content?
Search engines filter for duplicate content by using the same means for analyzing and indexing page ranking for sites, and that is through the use of crawlers or robots. These robots or crawlers go through different websites Derby and catalogues these sites by reading and saving information to their database. Once this is done, these robots then analyzes and compares all the information it has taken from one website to all the others that It has visited by using certain algorithms to determine if the site’s content is relevant, and if it can be considered as a duplicate content or spam.
How to avoid duplicate content?
Although you may not have any intentions to try and deceive search engines to improve your site’s page ranking, your site might still get flagged as having duplicate content. One way that you can avoid this from happening is by checking yourself if there are duplicate contents of your page. Just make sure that you avoid too many similarities with another page’s content for this can still appear as duplicate content to some filters, even if it isn’t considered to be a spam.
For more information on SEO Derby, duplicate content or internet marketing go to http://www.jdrwebsites.co.uk/
19 June 2011
Content and Link Building Strategies
The entire search engine optimisation (SEO) process is often misunderstood by a lot of people, which is why they often commit a lot of SEO mistakes that can cost them not only their page ranking in search engines, but also lose traffic volume of possible clients. SEO can help you direct traffic to your site, but getting them to stay is a whole new different ball game.
The entire SEO process basically revolves around the idea of getting a good page ranking in search engines by employing certain strategies so that people can find your site easier. The better your page ranking is, the easier it is for users to find it, the more appealing it is for them to visit your site, thereby increasing the amount of traffic that your site is able to generate. However, if the users do not find any relevant content in your site, then your efforts to get them to your site would just have been in vain.
Link building
Building links is also another content strategy that you can employ to help users searching for a particular content to find your site offering relevant content to their search. Try to link to those other sites that have similar content, or at least uses the same keywords in tagging their site’s content.
This way, any user searching in those sites will be directed to your page’s similar content, making it easier for users to find your page.
Ensure that you can get users to stay in your site, by using relevant and original content and link building with relevant sites to your product or service.
The entire SEO process basically revolves around the idea of getting a good page ranking in search engines by employing certain strategies so that people can find your site easier. The better your page ranking is, the easier it is for users to find it, the more appealing it is for them to visit your site, thereby increasing the amount of traffic that your site is able to generate. However, if the users do not find any relevant content in your site, then your efforts to get them to your site would just have been in vain.
Link building
Building links is also another content strategy that you can employ to help users searching for a particular content to find your site offering relevant content to their search. Try to link to those other sites that have similar content, or at least uses the same keywords in tagging their site’s content.
This way, any user searching in those sites will be directed to your page’s similar content, making it easier for users to find your page.
Ensure that you can get users to stay in your site, by using relevant and original content and link building with relevant sites to your product or service.
16 June 2011
Keyword selection For SEO
One of the main components that helps determine the success, or failure, of your search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign is your keywords selection. Although this may not appear much, choosing the right keyword to use for your website is one of the more gruelling parts of the entire SEO process, especially if you aim to find one that will be most effective for your site’s search engine optimisation.
When using keywords for SEO, you just need to follow a few simple steps in order to properly find the right keyword that will do the job. There are also a couple of things that you need to look out for in order to avoid any problems when trying to optimise your web page.
Make a list
The first thing that you should do if you want to be able to use keywords effectively is to start out by making a list of “key” keywords or phrases that are relevant to the content of your site, and by doing this, it can actually lead you to create or discover more keywords or phrases that may blossom from the original one that you have chosen.
Select key phrases or words
Once you’ve made a list, try to select ones that contain a “key” keyword or phrase that can help you identify your site’s content. Let’s say your site’s content is all about cars, using cars as a keyword won’t put you high up in the page ranking of search engines, especially since a lot of sites or pages have that as a keyword. Try to avoid using words or phrases that are too general, as this will not help improve your page ranking. By adding other key terms to your chosen keyword, such as “second-hand cars”, or “second-hand sports cars” will actually help improve your chances of going up higher in the page rankings. Just make sure that these are relevant to your site’s content.
Check your competition
It also helps if you took the time to search for keywords or phrases that your competition are using so that you can narrow down which ones to use, and which ones to avoid. There is no sense in using a type of keyword or phrase, such as “cars”, which a lot or most of your competition are using as well, and if their site’s are ranked high up in the search engine’s index, then you might have a difficult time going up against that.
Use your location
You can also improve your chances of getting a much better page ranking result if you incorporate your location to the keyword or phrase that you are trying to use. Let’s say your business is located somewhere in Hertfordshire, by simply adding the word “Hertfordshire” to your keyword selection (“Hertfordshire second-hand sports cars”), you can fair better in your page ranking. However, this type of method usually entails that people are planning on seeing you in person when they do searches like this, so make sure that you only utilise this technique if you are open to the idea of them visiting you in person.
Use your niche
Always try to choose the keyword that you specialise in, or at least the one that offers you with the most profit. Keep in mind that you want to offer the keyword that best describes your business, but if the search volume of users is leaning towards one that isn’t your main product, then you can actually opt to use that keyword instead, just as long as that keyword is still related or relevant to your site’s content.
When using keywords for SEO, you just need to follow a few simple steps in order to properly find the right keyword that will do the job. There are also a couple of things that you need to look out for in order to avoid any problems when trying to optimise your web page.
Make a list
The first thing that you should do if you want to be able to use keywords effectively is to start out by making a list of “key” keywords or phrases that are relevant to the content of your site, and by doing this, it can actually lead you to create or discover more keywords or phrases that may blossom from the original one that you have chosen.
Select key phrases or words
Once you’ve made a list, try to select ones that contain a “key” keyword or phrase that can help you identify your site’s content. Let’s say your site’s content is all about cars, using cars as a keyword won’t put you high up in the page ranking of search engines, especially since a lot of sites or pages have that as a keyword. Try to avoid using words or phrases that are too general, as this will not help improve your page ranking. By adding other key terms to your chosen keyword, such as “second-hand cars”, or “second-hand sports cars” will actually help improve your chances of going up higher in the page rankings. Just make sure that these are relevant to your site’s content.
Check your competition
It also helps if you took the time to search for keywords or phrases that your competition are using so that you can narrow down which ones to use, and which ones to avoid. There is no sense in using a type of keyword or phrase, such as “cars”, which a lot or most of your competition are using as well, and if their site’s are ranked high up in the search engine’s index, then you might have a difficult time going up against that.
Use your location
You can also improve your chances of getting a much better page ranking result if you incorporate your location to the keyword or phrase that you are trying to use. Let’s say your business is located somewhere in Hertfordshire, by simply adding the word “Hertfordshire” to your keyword selection (“Hertfordshire second-hand sports cars”), you can fair better in your page ranking. However, this type of method usually entails that people are planning on seeing you in person when they do searches like this, so make sure that you only utilise this technique if you are open to the idea of them visiting you in person.
Use your niche
Always try to choose the keyword that you specialise in, or at least the one that offers you with the most profit. Keep in mind that you want to offer the keyword that best describes your business, but if the search volume of users is leaning towards one that isn’t your main product, then you can actually opt to use that keyword instead, just as long as that keyword is still related or relevant to your site’s content.
01 June 2011
7 Tips To Instantly Improve The Copy On Your Website Increasing Conversion Rates
When setting up a new website, most business owners will focus on the design and the look of the new website. So when their web designer asks them for the text they often see it as a task to get done and out of the way as quickly as possible - the idea being that if the website looks good, you will get enquiries. Having now seen many professional looking website designs Derby that get lots of hits but few new customers, however, it is important to understand what a difference writing effective web copy makes. Most small business owners are experienced in their trade or profession but have little marketing experience, and as such most websites are filled with text that has been rushed, so busy in the day to day activities of their businesses that they don’t get much time to sit down and really plan their content.
So if you are reading this, you have either written your text for your website already, or are about to start, this is a simple guide which if you implement the ideas here, will improve your websites results.
Firstly, some questions to ask yourself:
What kind of people do you want to attract through this website Derby – who are your ideal customers (eg. General public, small business owners, men, women, teenagers and the older generation)? How can you tailor the content to those people?
What are the benefits of my product/service?
Why should they buy from your business, i.e. what is different about your business?
What action do you want them to take once they’ve read your website – do you want them to call you, fill out an online form or buy something online with their credit card?
1. Make sure content is easy to read
Most people will not read huge complicated paragraphs of text online, as it’s all to easy to click on to another website or another page, so it’s vital to keep your information simple, and to break it up into bite sized chunks. Here are some guidelines for the length of your content:
Headings: 8 words or less
Sentences: 15 - 20 words
Paragraphs: 40 - 70 words
Page word count: 250+ words
2. Break up the text wherever possible
Provide a summary of your information by clearly communicating the direction of your discussion. Use informative headings and subheadings with a paragraph of 4 to 5 lines that supports them. You only have a few seconds to grab your visitors’ attention.
Most will simply scan for the information they are seeking.
Use bulleted or numbered lists, boldface or coloured font to emphasize the points you wish to make. Include links at the end of your paragraph (or within the text) to direct visitors to other pages of your website for more in-depth information.
3. Write from a point of ‘you
The most powerful word in the English language is "you". As hard as it may be to swallow, let me be the first to break it to you that the people reading your website are not interested in you or your business – they are interested in themselves, and how you can help them. So your content must be written from their perspective, not yours, and must answer the question they will be asking themselves ‘what’s in it for me?’
4. Focus on benefits
Most websites will focus on the features of their products or services, not the benefits. Put very simply a feature is what a product does or has; a benefit is the reason why that is important, for example:
Heaters
Feature: It comes with a timer.
Benefit: Your house will be warm when you get home from work.
Mans razor
Feature: revolutionary triple-blade shaving system
Benefit: You will a closer shave
SkyPlus
Feature: Pre-programmable recording function
Benefit: You’ll never miss your favourite shows.
So you may have the highest quality service, or the very best product, but your reader will always be asking themselves ‘so what?’ A simple way to identify the benefits of your product/service(s) is to take a piece of paper, and on the left side, write down a list of your product or service’s features. On the right side, list the corresponding benefit(s).
5. Drive actions with content
What is the next step you want people to take? Each page should lead the reader on to another page – perhaps you want them to read about everything you offer, or perhaps you just want them to get in touch. One of the most common mistakes for a website is to have pages and pages of content which are all dead ends – if someone is reading about, for example, your new brand of widgets then they are interested and it is your job to tell them very clearly what to do next. For example: ‘enquire now’, ‘call us now to order your free brochure on 01234 5678910’, ‘come down to our showroom to talk to one of our team personally’, ‘add to cart’
6. Make your text descriptive so it gets found in the search engines
The search engines will read the text on your website, so if you want to be found for certain keywords it is very important to use those keywords in your content. For example, if you are a building surveyor in Birmingham, and want to appear high in the search results for ‘chartered surveyor in Birmingham’, then you should use those specific words, and make them bold so that the search engines know they are important words.
7. Write in your customer’s language
You may be highly intelligent, you may have a fantastic vocabulary - but if your customers don’t then they will not be impressed by your clever language or technical jargon. Similarly if your customers are highly technical and will want lots of detail, make sure your writing style reflects that – and get help if needed.
So if you are reading this, you have either written your text for your website already, or are about to start, this is a simple guide which if you implement the ideas here, will improve your websites results.
Firstly, some questions to ask yourself:
What kind of people do you want to attract through this website Derby – who are your ideal customers (eg. General public, small business owners, men, women, teenagers and the older generation)? How can you tailor the content to those people?
What are the benefits of my product/service?
Why should they buy from your business, i.e. what is different about your business?
What action do you want them to take once they’ve read your website – do you want them to call you, fill out an online form or buy something online with their credit card?
1. Make sure content is easy to read
Most people will not read huge complicated paragraphs of text online, as it’s all to easy to click on to another website or another page, so it’s vital to keep your information simple, and to break it up into bite sized chunks. Here are some guidelines for the length of your content:
Headings: 8 words or less
Sentences: 15 - 20 words
Paragraphs: 40 - 70 words
Page word count: 250+ words
2. Break up the text wherever possible
Provide a summary of your information by clearly communicating the direction of your discussion. Use informative headings and subheadings with a paragraph of 4 to 5 lines that supports them. You only have a few seconds to grab your visitors’ attention.
Most will simply scan for the information they are seeking.
Use bulleted or numbered lists, boldface or coloured font to emphasize the points you wish to make. Include links at the end of your paragraph (or within the text) to direct visitors to other pages of your website for more in-depth information.
3. Write from a point of ‘you
The most powerful word in the English language is "you". As hard as it may be to swallow, let me be the first to break it to you that the people reading your website are not interested in you or your business – they are interested in themselves, and how you can help them. So your content must be written from their perspective, not yours, and must answer the question they will be asking themselves ‘what’s in it for me?’
4. Focus on benefits
Most websites will focus on the features of their products or services, not the benefits. Put very simply a feature is what a product does or has; a benefit is the reason why that is important, for example:
Heaters
Feature: It comes with a timer.
Benefit: Your house will be warm when you get home from work.
Mans razor
Feature: revolutionary triple-blade shaving system
Benefit: You will a closer shave
SkyPlus
Feature: Pre-programmable recording function
Benefit: You’ll never miss your favourite shows.
So you may have the highest quality service, or the very best product, but your reader will always be asking themselves ‘so what?’ A simple way to identify the benefits of your product/service(s) is to take a piece of paper, and on the left side, write down a list of your product or service’s features. On the right side, list the corresponding benefit(s).
5. Drive actions with content
What is the next step you want people to take? Each page should lead the reader on to another page – perhaps you want them to read about everything you offer, or perhaps you just want them to get in touch. One of the most common mistakes for a website is to have pages and pages of content which are all dead ends – if someone is reading about, for example, your new brand of widgets then they are interested and it is your job to tell them very clearly what to do next. For example: ‘enquire now’, ‘call us now to order your free brochure on 01234 5678910’, ‘come down to our showroom to talk to one of our team personally’, ‘add to cart’
6. Make your text descriptive so it gets found in the search engines
The search engines will read the text on your website, so if you want to be found for certain keywords it is very important to use those keywords in your content. For example, if you are a building surveyor in Birmingham, and want to appear high in the search results for ‘chartered surveyor in Birmingham’, then you should use those specific words, and make them bold so that the search engines know they are important words.
7. Write in your customer’s language
You may be highly intelligent, you may have a fantastic vocabulary - but if your customers don’t then they will not be impressed by your clever language or technical jargon. Similarly if your customers are highly technical and will want lots of detail, make sure your writing style reflects that – and get help if needed.
26 May 2011
24 Ways To Promote Your Website Offline
Getting large numbers of visitors to your business website has two major benefits:
1) The more traffic you get the higher your website will feature in the search engines – when Google is deciding where to rank websites in its listings, it is going to put a website that gets 20,000 visitors a month much higher than one that gets 20. Why? Because it takes the assumption that if more people are using a website then it is likely to be a good, relevant and informative website.
2) The more people visit your site the more opportunity it gives you to test and measure – you can experiment with your content, with offers, layout, and calls to action.
Ultimately though, the main reason to get people to your site is so that they buy from you!
Below is a list of possible places to advertise your website – some you may be doing already, some you may not.
1) Advertise your website address on your business stationery – business cards, compliments slips, letterheads and invoices
2) Include your website in your email signature so it is at the bottom of every email you send
3) Email all your contacts (customers, prospects, suppliers etc) to let them know you have a new website and give them a link to it
4) Advertise your website on your brochures or other company literature
5) Tell customers about it via telephone, give the address to all telephone enquiries, and if you are telemarketing give every prospect the address too
6) Include your website address in all quotes and tenders
7) Advertise your website in the signage of your premises
8) Advertise your website clearly on the signage of your company vehicles
9) Include the website prominently in your directory advertising (Yellow Pages, Thompsons, BT etc)
10) Ensure any salespeople are using the website to show potential customers
11) Direct mail potential or existing clients and include the website address
12) Include your website address in your leaflets and flyers
13) If you are a retailer, include the web address on your receipts, on your bags, window displays and in your point of sale displays
14) If you have a premises which customers visit, advertise the website via posters and signs at your premises
15) Run a newspaper or magazine advertising campaign to direct people to your website
16) Run a radio or television campaign to attract visitors to your website
17) If your website is newsworthy and you can think of a story the press would be interested in, do a press release including your website address
18) If you have a PR company make sure they are promoting the website
19) Make the website clear and prominent in any trade shows or exhibitions you do
20) Include the website on any promotional gifts you give (pens, calendars, diaries etc)
21) Advertise the website on outdoor posters, billboards, cinema or post office advertising
22) Ask for an ‘email this web page to a friend’ link on your website to encourage referrals
23) Include your website on any company stickers, fridge magnets, tags
24) Include the website address on your company uniforms/name badges
1) The more traffic you get the higher your website will feature in the search engines – when Google is deciding where to rank websites in its listings, it is going to put a website that gets 20,000 visitors a month much higher than one that gets 20. Why? Because it takes the assumption that if more people are using a website then it is likely to be a good, relevant and informative website.
2) The more people visit your site the more opportunity it gives you to test and measure – you can experiment with your content, with offers, layout, and calls to action.
Ultimately though, the main reason to get people to your site is so that they buy from you!
Below is a list of possible places to advertise your website – some you may be doing already, some you may not.
1) Advertise your website address on your business stationery – business cards, compliments slips, letterheads and invoices
2) Include your website in your email signature so it is at the bottom of every email you send
3) Email all your contacts (customers, prospects, suppliers etc) to let them know you have a new website and give them a link to it
4) Advertise your website on your brochures or other company literature
5) Tell customers about it via telephone, give the address to all telephone enquiries, and if you are telemarketing give every prospect the address too
6) Include your website address in all quotes and tenders
7) Advertise your website in the signage of your premises
8) Advertise your website clearly on the signage of your company vehicles
9) Include the website prominently in your directory advertising (Yellow Pages, Thompsons, BT etc)
10) Ensure any salespeople are using the website to show potential customers
11) Direct mail potential or existing clients and include the website address
12) Include your website address in your leaflets and flyers
13) If you are a retailer, include the web address on your receipts, on your bags, window displays and in your point of sale displays
14) If you have a premises which customers visit, advertise the website via posters and signs at your premises
15) Run a newspaper or magazine advertising campaign to direct people to your website
16) Run a radio or television campaign to attract visitors to your website
17) If your website is newsworthy and you can think of a story the press would be interested in, do a press release including your website address
18) If you have a PR company make sure they are promoting the website
19) Make the website clear and prominent in any trade shows or exhibitions you do
20) Include the website on any promotional gifts you give (pens, calendars, diaries etc)
21) Advertise the website on outdoor posters, billboards, cinema or post office advertising
22) Ask for an ‘email this web page to a friend’ link on your website to encourage referrals
23) Include your website on any company stickers, fridge magnets, tags
24) Include the website address on your company uniforms/name badges
22 May 2011
Updating Content
When we introduced our website (which is a content management system which allows small business owners to easily edit their websites) we knew it was important that business owners could easily update the content of their websites, and you may be one of the many clients we have who chose to work with this system because of the fact that it is so easy to edit your website. However, we also come across many business owners who do not see the value of changing their website. One of the most common things I hear from business owners when I talk about content management (the ability to update your own website) is ‘but our business never changes!’
While it may be true that your core products or services have changed little over time, your business most certainly does change – the world is now changing faster than it ever has done before and your business is no different. Your industry is changing, you are doing new projects, working with new customers, there are new regulations, new opportunities, you have new members of staff, new procedures, new products, and your competitors are changing.
So why bother updating your website? There are two reasons for this. Firstly a website that is regularly changing is one that will perform much better in the search engines. Google will rank a website that is changing regularly higher than one that has stayed exactly the same for a year.
Secondly it gives your customers a reason to come back to your website – and the more they come back to your website, the more they buy in to your company message or identity, the more contact they have with the full range of your products and services and the more likely they are to buy again from you and refer you to their friends.
While it may be true that your core products or services have changed little over time, your business most certainly does change – the world is now changing faster than it ever has done before and your business is no different. Your industry is changing, you are doing new projects, working with new customers, there are new regulations, new opportunities, you have new members of staff, new procedures, new products, and your competitors are changing.
So why bother updating your website? There are two reasons for this. Firstly a website that is regularly changing is one that will perform much better in the search engines. Google will rank a website that is changing regularly higher than one that has stayed exactly the same for a year.
Secondly it gives your customers a reason to come back to your website – and the more they come back to your website, the more they buy in to your company message or identity, the more contact they have with the full range of your products and services and the more likely they are to buy again from you and refer you to their friends.
19 May 2011
Stay Visible
Much debate out there on the net about whether or not to include a sitemap, and after much though and reading and research, always include a site map page. Spiders cannot index your websites pages if these can not be crawled. Make sure you use a site map plus the correct HTML and other codes which will ensure you stay visible to spiders. The spider will easily comprehend the hierarchy of your site. Don't forget to have an easy-to-crawl navigation menu. You may discuss the details with an experienced webmaster to help you to improve visibility. For those who have a huge web site, make many site map pages. Every one should have less than 100 links. All your SEO moves should have a clear objective. Make use of web analytics software along with online experts to track the best methods and get rid of, time consuming and irrelevant efforts that don't produce results.
The URLs and file names should be friendly to SEOs. Use two to three hyphens at most to avoid your file from appearing like a spam. Always use hyphens and not underscores, in your URLs and filenames. Hyphens are considered as a "space", unlike underscores.
Relevance Matters
Always ensure that you have a relevant title and meta description on each web page. The title of your page is by far the most important factor of on-page SEO. It is extremely unlikely that you will rank high for a primary term if the word is not included in the page title. Disregard the keywords meta completely should you find that these are not relevant and only confuse visitors. Always write for both users and visitors. The content of your site and articles should always be associated with your industry and company.
The URLs and file names should be friendly to SEOs. Use two to three hyphens at most to avoid your file from appearing like a spam. Always use hyphens and not underscores, in your URLs and filenames. Hyphens are considered as a "space", unlike underscores.
Relevance Matters
Always ensure that you have a relevant title and meta description on each web page. The title of your page is by far the most important factor of on-page SEO. It is extremely unlikely that you will rank high for a primary term if the word is not included in the page title. Disregard the keywords meta completely should you find that these are not relevant and only confuse visitors. Always write for both users and visitors. The content of your site and articles should always be associated with your industry and company.
15 May 2011
Stay Visible
Stay Visible
Much debate out there on the net about whether or not to include a sitemap, and after much though and reading and research, always include a site map page. Spiders cannot index your websites pages if these can not be crawled. Make sure you use a site map plus the correct HTML and other codes which will ensure you stay visible to spiders. The spider will easily comprehend the hierarchy of your site. Don't forget to have an easy-to-crawl navigation menu. You may discuss the details with an experienced webmaster to help you to improve visibility. For those who have a huge web site, make many site map pages. Every one should have less than 100 links. All your SEO moves should have a clear objective. Make use of web analytics software along with online experts to track the best methods and get rid of, time consuming and irrelevant efforts that don't produce results..
The URLs and file names should be friendly to SEOs. Use 2 to 3 hyphens at most to avoid your file from appearing like a spam. Always use hyphens and not underscores, in your URLs and filenames. Hyphens are considered as a "space", unlike underscores.
Relevance Matters
Always ensure that you have a relevant title and meta description on each web page. The title of your page is by far the most important factor of on-page SEO. It is extremely unlikely that you will rank high for a primary term if the word is not included in the page title. Disregard the keywords meta completely should you find that these are not relevant and only confuse visitors. Always write for both users and visitors. The content of your site and articles should always be associated with your industry and company.
Much debate out there on the net about whether or not to include a sitemap, and after much though and reading and research, always include a site map page. Spiders cannot index your websites pages if these can not be crawled. Make sure you use a site map plus the correct HTML and other codes which will ensure you stay visible to spiders. The spider will easily comprehend the hierarchy of your site. Don't forget to have an easy-to-crawl navigation menu. You may discuss the details with an experienced webmaster to help you to improve visibility. For those who have a huge web site, make many site map pages. Every one should have less than 100 links. All your SEO moves should have a clear objective. Make use of web analytics software along with online experts to track the best methods and get rid of, time consuming and irrelevant efforts that don't produce results..
The URLs and file names should be friendly to SEOs. Use 2 to 3 hyphens at most to avoid your file from appearing like a spam. Always use hyphens and not underscores, in your URLs and filenames. Hyphens are considered as a "space", unlike underscores.
Relevance Matters
Always ensure that you have a relevant title and meta description on each web page. The title of your page is by far the most important factor of on-page SEO. It is extremely unlikely that you will rank high for a primary term if the word is not included in the page title. Disregard the keywords meta completely should you find that these are not relevant and only confuse visitors. Always write for both users and visitors. The content of your site and articles should always be associated with your industry and company.
11 May 2011
The Blog Article
Don’t have enough readers for your free blog website? Do you want to create your own blog the fast and easy way?
If you answered yes to any of these questions then free blogging sites are for you. Firstly, you might be wondering what blog is all about. A blog or a web blog is like an online log where you can use to build traffic for your website. It can contain any topics you want and it can even contain your diary.
So just how do you start blogging for free?
Creating your own blogging website is very simple. You can visit websites that offer free blogs which has step by step process on creating your blogging website. It will usually just take a few minutes of your time to create a blogging websites in sites that offer free blogging web pages.
However, before starting to go to websites that offer free blogs, you should first determine several factors for your blogging web page.
Firstly, you have to think of a name for your blog. To do this, you must first determine what kind of topic you will dedicate your blogging webpage to. Ask yourself what you want to discuss, what are your interests or hobbies or if you have a website that is dedicated to a particular topic, you can discuss that to. It can be anything, it can be dogs, cars, casinos, food, travel, and you can even create a blog about yourself.
After knowing what name your blogging site should have, the next step would be what to put in it. Basing from your title, you will have an idea on what to put on your blog. You can put in any comments you want with different topics regarding your title and headline. You can even post in surveys as your topic; this is very useful if you sell a particular product where you can get consumers opinion on how to sell your product more effectively.
Another way to generate interest in your blog and attract a lot of readers is to make your blog a bit controversial. People like controversies and making your blog one, can create a lot of curious people to read your blog. You should post comments that can be controversial and this can result in many people wanting to post in their comments too.
Now that you have finished creating your blog, with title or headline, a comment, how should you attract people into reading your blogs? One of the best ways is to write an article about a particular topic in your blog and post them into article submission websites. This can generate a lot of targeted traffic and in no time at all.
To make this work, you should write the article with your blog site URL included at the ending of the article or in the footnote. With a good article and a little bit of luck, your blog will be discovered by people and chances are, your blog will create a lot of traffic by word of mouth.
Free blogging websites are one of the most useful tools to generate targeted traffic to your website. It can even generate a lot of loyal readers or fans of your work to post in comments and suggestions regularly to your blogging website and will often recommend it to other people. The best thing about this is that it’s easy, convenient, fun, and as the name suggests, it’s all for free.
Natalie Eastaugh is the Internet Marketing Specialist for JDRwebsites.co.uk
If you wish to find out more on
If you answered yes to any of these questions then free blogging sites are for you. Firstly, you might be wondering what blog is all about. A blog or a web blog is like an online log where you can use to build traffic for your website. It can contain any topics you want and it can even contain your diary.
So just how do you start blogging for free?
Creating your own blogging website is very simple. You can visit websites that offer free blogs which has step by step process on creating your blogging website. It will usually just take a few minutes of your time to create a blogging websites in sites that offer free blogging web pages.
However, before starting to go to websites that offer free blogs, you should first determine several factors for your blogging web page.
Firstly, you have to think of a name for your blog. To do this, you must first determine what kind of topic you will dedicate your blogging webpage to. Ask yourself what you want to discuss, what are your interests or hobbies or if you have a website that is dedicated to a particular topic, you can discuss that to. It can be anything, it can be dogs, cars, casinos, food, travel, and you can even create a blog about yourself.
After knowing what name your blogging site should have, the next step would be what to put in it. Basing from your title, you will have an idea on what to put on your blog. You can put in any comments you want with different topics regarding your title and headline. You can even post in surveys as your topic; this is very useful if you sell a particular product where you can get consumers opinion on how to sell your product more effectively.
Another way to generate interest in your blog and attract a lot of readers is to make your blog a bit controversial. People like controversies and making your blog one, can create a lot of curious people to read your blog. You should post comments that can be controversial and this can result in many people wanting to post in their comments too.
Now that you have finished creating your blog, with title or headline, a comment, how should you attract people into reading your blogs? One of the best ways is to write an article about a particular topic in your blog and post them into article submission websites. This can generate a lot of targeted traffic and in no time at all.
To make this work, you should write the article with your blog site URL included at the ending of the article or in the footnote. With a good article and a little bit of luck, your blog will be discovered by people and chances are, your blog will create a lot of traffic by word of mouth.
Free blogging websites are one of the most useful tools to generate targeted traffic to your website. It can even generate a lot of loyal readers or fans of your work to post in comments and suggestions regularly to your blogging website and will often recommend it to other people. The best thing about this is that it’s easy, convenient, fun, and as the name suggests, it’s all for free.
Natalie Eastaugh is the Internet Marketing Specialist for JDRwebsites.co.uk
If you wish to find out more on
09 May 2011
Keyword Selection For SEO
One of the main components that helps determine the success, or failure, of your search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign is your keyword selection. Although this may not appear much, choosing the right keyword to use for your website is one of the more gruelling parts of the entire SEO process, especially if you aim to find one that will be most effective for your site’s search engine optimisation.
When using keywords for search engine optimisation, you just need to follow a few simple steps in order to properly find the right keyword that will do the job. There are also a couple of things that you need to look out for in order to avoid any problems when trying to optimise your web page.
Make a list
The first thing that you should do if you want to be able to use keywords effectively is to start out by making a list of “key” keywords or phrases that are relevant to the content of your site, and by doing this, it can actually lead you to create or discover more keywords or phrases that may blossom from the original one that you have chosen.
Select key phrases or words
Once you’ve made a list, try to select ones that contain a “key” keyword or phrase that can help you identify your site’s content. Let’s say your site’s content is all about cars, using cars as a keyword won’t put you high up in the page ranking of search engines, especially since a lot of sites or pages have that as a keyword. Try to avoid using words or phrases that are too general, as this will not help improve your page ranking. By adding other key terms to your chosen keyword, such as “second-hand cars”, or “second-hand sports cars” will actually help improve your chances of going up higher in the page rankings. Just make sure that these are relevant to your site’s content.
Check your competition
It also helps if you took the time to search for keywords or phrases that your competition are using so that you can narrow down which ones to use, and which ones to avoid. There is no sense in using a type of keyword or phrase, such as “cars”, which a lot or most of your competition are using as well, and if their site’s are ranked high up in the search engine’s index, then you might have a difficult time going up against that.
Use your location
You can also improve your chances of getting a much better page ranking result if you incorporate your location to the keyword or phrase that you are trying to use. Let’s say your business is located somewhere in Hertfordshire, by simply adding the word “Hertfordshire” to your keyword selection (“Hertfordshire second-hand sports cars”), you can fair better in your page ranking. However, this type of method usually entails that people are planning on seeing you in person when they do searches like this, so make sure that you only utilise this technique if you are open to the idea of them visiting you in person.
Use your niche
Always try to choose the keyword that you specialise in, or at least the one that offers you with the most profit.
When using keywords for search engine optimisation, you just need to follow a few simple steps in order to properly find the right keyword that will do the job. There are also a couple of things that you need to look out for in order to avoid any problems when trying to optimise your web page.
Make a list
The first thing that you should do if you want to be able to use keywords effectively is to start out by making a list of “key” keywords or phrases that are relevant to the content of your site, and by doing this, it can actually lead you to create or discover more keywords or phrases that may blossom from the original one that you have chosen.
Select key phrases or words
Once you’ve made a list, try to select ones that contain a “key” keyword or phrase that can help you identify your site’s content. Let’s say your site’s content is all about cars, using cars as a keyword won’t put you high up in the page ranking of search engines, especially since a lot of sites or pages have that as a keyword. Try to avoid using words or phrases that are too general, as this will not help improve your page ranking. By adding other key terms to your chosen keyword, such as “second-hand cars”, or “second-hand sports cars” will actually help improve your chances of going up higher in the page rankings. Just make sure that these are relevant to your site’s content.
Check your competition
It also helps if you took the time to search for keywords or phrases that your competition are using so that you can narrow down which ones to use, and which ones to avoid. There is no sense in using a type of keyword or phrase, such as “cars”, which a lot or most of your competition are using as well, and if their site’s are ranked high up in the search engine’s index, then you might have a difficult time going up against that.
Use your location
You can also improve your chances of getting a much better page ranking result if you incorporate your location to the keyword or phrase that you are trying to use. Let’s say your business is located somewhere in Hertfordshire, by simply adding the word “Hertfordshire” to your keyword selection (“Hertfordshire second-hand sports cars”), you can fair better in your page ranking. However, this type of method usually entails that people are planning on seeing you in person when they do searches like this, so make sure that you only utilise this technique if you are open to the idea of them visiting you in person.
Use your niche
Always try to choose the keyword that you specialise in, or at least the one that offers you with the most profit.
06 May 2011
SEO Traps To Avoid
Even though SEOs have been considered as very cost-effective and useful tools for online marketing, it is important that you understand the risks and potential drawbacks. You can help your business run more efficiently by staying prepared for the possible consequences. You can also determine which approaches will work best for your target customers, thereby giving them quality service and unique content each time. Here are some proven tips.
You first have to determine your current risk level to know what more you can do to protect your business completely. First of all, you have to gauge your level of expertise and experience in using SEOs. The more experience you have, the less problems you may encounter since you may already have gone through and solved a number of common pitfalls and problems. Consider the types of SEOs that you have used in the past, then check which ones can still work for your current industry.
Black hat SEO users are putting themselves at risk for losing credibility and even getting penalised or banned. Some web sites and webmasters have been banned by search engines because of the abuse or misuse of certain techniques. There are plenty of black hatters who still believe that overstuffing keywords and using irrelevant content that boosts visibility can work for them in the long term. You are only waiting for search engine crawlers to find the site and render it useless.
White hat search engine optimisation is the ideal since these promise you long term visibility and a good reputation. Your target customers can better relate to you if you follow the guidelines and rules given by search engines to boost rankings. It will take some time before you score high on search results pages, but the wait and experience will be worth the wait.
Reward is not proportionate to the workload given. A single click may be enough for some web sites to instantly land on the first page of search engine results. The hard work of other webmasters who practice ethical methods can be trampled by unapproved techniques like spamming, content aggregating, scraping and plagiarism. Manipulating an algorithm may temporarily catapult your site into the front page, but you can face greater consequences once your actions are discovered.
Although several black hat approaches can offer you visibility instantly, the results are only temporary. People cannot refer to you or your company as reliable if you resort to unapproved techniques in trying to get their attention. You can boost your reputation and experience by following the right guidelines and patiently waiting for the right traffic to start flowing into your web site. Over time, you will find that your client base expands continually as long as you maintain good content and quality service.
Try to write good and informative articles yourself. Visit online discussion boards and listen to what other online experts have to say. Check out other ethical methods used by top web sites and learn over time how you can also become a master in your chosen industry. You can start learning more about keywords and meta tags to improve your visibility. Review how search engine crawlers work and what items and elements are needed in your site to make it easier for them to find you.
You first have to determine your current risk level to know what more you can do to protect your business completely. First of all, you have to gauge your level of expertise and experience in using SEOs. The more experience you have, the less problems you may encounter since you may already have gone through and solved a number of common pitfalls and problems. Consider the types of SEOs that you have used in the past, then check which ones can still work for your current industry.
Black hat SEO users are putting themselves at risk for losing credibility and even getting penalised or banned. Some web sites and webmasters have been banned by search engines because of the abuse or misuse of certain techniques. There are plenty of black hatters who still believe that overstuffing keywords and using irrelevant content that boosts visibility can work for them in the long term. You are only waiting for search engine crawlers to find the site and render it useless.
White hat search engine optimisation is the ideal since these promise you long term visibility and a good reputation. Your target customers can better relate to you if you follow the guidelines and rules given by search engines to boost rankings. It will take some time before you score high on search results pages, but the wait and experience will be worth the wait.
Reward is not proportionate to the workload given. A single click may be enough for some web sites to instantly land on the first page of search engine results. The hard work of other webmasters who practice ethical methods can be trampled by unapproved techniques like spamming, content aggregating, scraping and plagiarism. Manipulating an algorithm may temporarily catapult your site into the front page, but you can face greater consequences once your actions are discovered.
Although several black hat approaches can offer you visibility instantly, the results are only temporary. People cannot refer to you or your company as reliable if you resort to unapproved techniques in trying to get their attention. You can boost your reputation and experience by following the right guidelines and patiently waiting for the right traffic to start flowing into your web site. Over time, you will find that your client base expands continually as long as you maintain good content and quality service.
Try to write good and informative articles yourself. Visit online discussion boards and listen to what other online experts have to say. Check out other ethical methods used by top web sites and learn over time how you can also become a master in your chosen industry. You can start learning more about keywords and meta tags to improve your visibility. Review how search engine crawlers work and what items and elements are needed in your site to make it easier for them to find you.
08 March 2011
The 11 Critical Web Design Mistakes Costing You Money
Recently I spoke to a client of mine who had just made £250,000 from his website in the 12 months since we had designed it for him. His old website had generated approximately nothing. Zero. Was his previous site expensive? No. He wanted to keep the cost of the site down so he had it built through a friend of a friend for ‘mates rates’.
So he wasn’t losing anything, was he?
Yes, he was losing the £250,000 he could have made the previous year. In fact, in the four years before he set up his new website with a professional web designer, not having an effective website was actually costing him £1million in lost revenue and all for the sake of spending between £1-2,000 to get an effective website.
So how much did it cost to set up your website? How much do you spend on hosting and marketing the site? How much money would you be making if it was performing at its full potential? Every website is different – but there are some fundamental rules to having an effective website. If you are guilty of any of these 11 mistakes then get in touch with a professional web designer.
1) Nobody can find you. Have you ever had a set of company brochures printed that are still sat in your office somewhere? Never to see the light of day? How many businesses do this with their websites? Let me ask you a question – how many different ways do people have of finding your website?
Here are some of the most common:
• Pay per click advertising
• Search engine optimisation
• Email marketing
• General Directories (e.g. yell.com)
• Trade directories (e.g. Applegate)
• Affiliate programmes
• Article submissions
• Video submissions
• Banner advertising
These are just online strategies! What about offline?
• Business cards
• Invoices
• Packaging
• Brochures
• Direct mail
• Advertising
• Vehicle/in-store signage
How many of these are you using? If it’s not at least eight, your website is underperforming.
2) Your content is unclear, hard to read, boring - or all three. A wall of text is deadly for an interactive experience. Make sure your text is easy to read by using:
• Sub-headlines
• Bullet points
• Highlighted keywords
• Short paragraphs
• A simple writing style, and
• Speaking in your customers language – no jargon, waffle or ‘marketese’
3) You have no ‘calls to action’. One of the classic mistakes in marketing – telling your customers how great your product or service is, but not how to buy it, or how to get in touch. Make it clear and easy for your customers to buy, enquire, join your newsletter – whatever you want them to do, make it clear what the next step is. When browsing the internet people are lazy and will simply browse onto another site if you don’t get them to act on whatever interest your website has aroused in them.
So, include special offers, ‘buy now’ buttons, offer people a free brochure, tell them to call your free phone number (now!), complete your online form – but tell them to do something or you could be wasting money driving people to the site who then find it too easy to leave the site without taking any action.
Remember - your website has a conversion rate – it might be three in 100 people that visit the site, buy or enquire from you – if you increase that conversion rate by, say, 50%, you increase your website revenue by 50%! There are many ways of doing this – simply speak to a reputable website designer who will guide you with the right content.
4) You are not keeping in touch with potential customers. How many websites have you visited where you have been ‘researching’ a potential purchase or looking at something that you were interested in, but it wasn’t quite the right time to buy that product or service? Well guess what - people are doing with your website? So the question is – how do you find out who these people are – and how do you keep in touch with them?
Gather their details – people will trade their contact details for something of value. Why not offer a free guide on how to choose their purchase? A free ‘trial’ of your product or service? Maybe a subscription to a newsletter or website that will have lots of useful benefits? A ‘VIP’ Club? All they need to do is give you their name, address, phone number and email address.
You would be amazed at how many businesses have huge customer databases they do absolutely nothing with. There are two simple ways of staying in touch – the passive way is to have a section of your website you regularly update (you will need a good content management system to do this), a better way is to send direct mail either by email or by the traditional postal system. If you do, guess who these prospects will go to when it is the right time for them to buy?
If not? You could be wasting thousands of pounds driving traffic to your site, generating interest in your product or service, only to let them slip through your fingers and into the grateful arms of your competitors.
5) You have a poor website design. Have you ever clicked onto a website only to be immediately unimpressed and clicked straight off again? The choice of colour on the website is not only important for the visual appeal of the website design but also for usability of the website. Lack of contrast between the background and colour and the font colour on the website can make the font difficult to read and have a negative effect on the usability of the website. It is important to keep the colour scheme in mind when designing your web site. One of the popular principles in web design suggests that you should not use more than three colours in the design of your website.
You wouldn't send out a marketing brochure that's all words and no pictures. So why do so many companies create web pages without graphics or photos of any sort? If a single picture paints a thousand words, use a judicious number of them on your website to communicate volumes. Photos of your store or office, your products, your employees — these images make your business feel "real" to online visitors. Images give you a tangible presence and let visitors get a sense of the kind of business you run.
6) Your website is confusing to use. Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience states that "users spend most of their time on other websites." This means that they form their expectations for your site based on what's commonly done on most other sites. If you deviate, your site will be harder to use and users will leave.
Visitors to your website will use the navigation on your site to find information that is interest to them. Your own business or your web design company may have a good knowledge of your website and its structure so you may not have trouble locating information. However visitors to your website are less likely to have this knowledge and will rely purely on navigation that is available on the website.
Navigation is mostly available in the form of menus. The menu should be consistent on every page to avoid confusion. Customer behaviours and trends also need to be considered when designing the website. Studies have also shown that web surfers prefer the standard left or right side navigation over other layouts.
7) Your content is out of date. ‘Latest news – last updated 2003’… Ever seen that on a website? What about when you ring a business to enquire about a product that’s on their website and they tell you they don’t stock it anymore? The vast majority of small business owners still either can’t update their own website, or they don’t.
If they can’t it’s often because:
• They don’t have any kind of content management at all
• Their content management is difficult or complicated to use
• They have had no training
• They get no support, there’s no-one to ring to ask questions, or if there is they are held in a queue
So when hiring a web design company ask for a demonstration of the content management system, and ask how and if they will keep in touch on an ongoing basis.
8) Your website does not answer your customers’ questions. It sounds like another no-brainer, but you would be surprised at how many small business websites leave you looking at them for minutes while pondering, "What does this company actually do?"
What’s the first question most prospective customers ask you about your product/service? How much is it? One of the biggest frustrations with websites in not showing prices – it will be one of the first things they are looking for. Most business people usually say to this: ‘but I don’t want my competitors to know my prices’. They probably already do.
And am sure you know most of theirs. What other questions do your customers ask you? Have you created an FAQ’s page to answer these questions? If people can’t find the information they need on your site quickly and easily they will leave and go to someone else’s website
9) Your website does not show contact details clearly!
Your phone number should feature prominently on your website. Quite often people will read the information on your website for research but will actually phone you to ask questions. How easy is it to find the contact details on your website?
Contact information should be visible in a prominent place of the website and be clearly visible. It instills confidence in your visitors. This is particularly important for an e-commerce website that sells products on the site. It is advisable to have your contact information on every page instead of hiding it from customers who visit your web site.
10) Your website shows what you do but not why people should buy from you.
When someone searches for a product or service in a search engine they will be presented with thousands, possibly millions of websites – there is a lot of choice online. As such it’s ever more important to differentiate yourself in the market place by doing things quicker or better or in a different way – you need to define your USP. USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition – it’s what sets you apart from your competitors. Why should your customers buy from you rather than your competitors? What makes you stand out? With most businesses they either have no point of difference at all from their competitors or they differentiate themselves by being cheaper. So here’s how you can show why you are the right choice for your potential customer (how many of these are you using):
- Use of a strap line illustrating your USP (e.g. FedEx: ‘absolutely positively overnight’)
- Testimonials
- Case studies to show the quality of your work
- Before and after photos
- Logos of well known clients you have worked for (the theory being ‘well if they have worked for X then they must be a good company)
- A guarantee
- Accreditation symbols
- A benefits list
Sometimes a simple bullet point list of benefits or a testimonial from a satisfied customer can be the difference between making the sale and not making the sale. How many sales have you missed out on because your ‘why buy from us’ message is not strong enough?
11) Your website is too slow to load. Many small-business websites load far too slowly – and how many people will wait? How many people will lose patience and go elsewhere? Slow loading websites are due to images or videos that have not been compressed properly, or because of the platform the website is built with. There are a number of online tests you can take to measure the load speed of your site, if it is too slow then speak to your website provider about speeding up the process or consider setting up a new site.
So he wasn’t losing anything, was he?
Yes, he was losing the £250,000 he could have made the previous year. In fact, in the four years before he set up his new website with a professional web designer, not having an effective website was actually costing him £1million in lost revenue and all for the sake of spending between £1-2,000 to get an effective website.
So how much did it cost to set up your website? How much do you spend on hosting and marketing the site? How much money would you be making if it was performing at its full potential? Every website is different – but there are some fundamental rules to having an effective website. If you are guilty of any of these 11 mistakes then get in touch with a professional web designer.
1) Nobody can find you. Have you ever had a set of company brochures printed that are still sat in your office somewhere? Never to see the light of day? How many businesses do this with their websites? Let me ask you a question – how many different ways do people have of finding your website?
Here are some of the most common:
• Pay per click advertising
• Search engine optimisation
• Email marketing
• General Directories (e.g. yell.com)
• Trade directories (e.g. Applegate)
• Affiliate programmes
• Article submissions
• Video submissions
• Banner advertising
These are just online strategies! What about offline?
• Business cards
• Invoices
• Packaging
• Brochures
• Direct mail
• Advertising
• Vehicle/in-store signage
How many of these are you using? If it’s not at least eight, your website is underperforming.
2) Your content is unclear, hard to read, boring - or all three. A wall of text is deadly for an interactive experience. Make sure your text is easy to read by using:
• Sub-headlines
• Bullet points
• Highlighted keywords
• Short paragraphs
• A simple writing style, and
• Speaking in your customers language – no jargon, waffle or ‘marketese’
3) You have no ‘calls to action’. One of the classic mistakes in marketing – telling your customers how great your product or service is, but not how to buy it, or how to get in touch. Make it clear and easy for your customers to buy, enquire, join your newsletter – whatever you want them to do, make it clear what the next step is. When browsing the internet people are lazy and will simply browse onto another site if you don’t get them to act on whatever interest your website has aroused in them.
So, include special offers, ‘buy now’ buttons, offer people a free brochure, tell them to call your free phone number (now!), complete your online form – but tell them to do something or you could be wasting money driving people to the site who then find it too easy to leave the site without taking any action.
Remember - your website has a conversion rate – it might be three in 100 people that visit the site, buy or enquire from you – if you increase that conversion rate by, say, 50%, you increase your website revenue by 50%! There are many ways of doing this – simply speak to a reputable website designer who will guide you with the right content.
4) You are not keeping in touch with potential customers. How many websites have you visited where you have been ‘researching’ a potential purchase or looking at something that you were interested in, but it wasn’t quite the right time to buy that product or service? Well guess what - people are doing with your website? So the question is – how do you find out who these people are – and how do you keep in touch with them?
Gather their details – people will trade their contact details for something of value. Why not offer a free guide on how to choose their purchase? A free ‘trial’ of your product or service? Maybe a subscription to a newsletter or website that will have lots of useful benefits? A ‘VIP’ Club? All they need to do is give you their name, address, phone number and email address.
You would be amazed at how many businesses have huge customer databases they do absolutely nothing with. There are two simple ways of staying in touch – the passive way is to have a section of your website you regularly update (you will need a good content management system to do this), a better way is to send direct mail either by email or by the traditional postal system. If you do, guess who these prospects will go to when it is the right time for them to buy?
If not? You could be wasting thousands of pounds driving traffic to your site, generating interest in your product or service, only to let them slip through your fingers and into the grateful arms of your competitors.
5) You have a poor website design. Have you ever clicked onto a website only to be immediately unimpressed and clicked straight off again? The choice of colour on the website is not only important for the visual appeal of the website design but also for usability of the website. Lack of contrast between the background and colour and the font colour on the website can make the font difficult to read and have a negative effect on the usability of the website. It is important to keep the colour scheme in mind when designing your web site. One of the popular principles in web design suggests that you should not use more than three colours in the design of your website.
You wouldn't send out a marketing brochure that's all words and no pictures. So why do so many companies create web pages without graphics or photos of any sort? If a single picture paints a thousand words, use a judicious number of them on your website to communicate volumes. Photos of your store or office, your products, your employees — these images make your business feel "real" to online visitors. Images give you a tangible presence and let visitors get a sense of the kind of business you run.
6) Your website is confusing to use. Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience states that "users spend most of their time on other websites." This means that they form their expectations for your site based on what's commonly done on most other sites. If you deviate, your site will be harder to use and users will leave.
Visitors to your website will use the navigation on your site to find information that is interest to them. Your own business or your web design company may have a good knowledge of your website and its structure so you may not have trouble locating information. However visitors to your website are less likely to have this knowledge and will rely purely on navigation that is available on the website.
Navigation is mostly available in the form of menus. The menu should be consistent on every page to avoid confusion. Customer behaviours and trends also need to be considered when designing the website. Studies have also shown that web surfers prefer the standard left or right side navigation over other layouts.
7) Your content is out of date. ‘Latest news – last updated 2003’… Ever seen that on a website? What about when you ring a business to enquire about a product that’s on their website and they tell you they don’t stock it anymore? The vast majority of small business owners still either can’t update their own website, or they don’t.
If they can’t it’s often because:
• They don’t have any kind of content management at all
• Their content management is difficult or complicated to use
• They have had no training
• They get no support, there’s no-one to ring to ask questions, or if there is they are held in a queue
So when hiring a web design company ask for a demonstration of the content management system, and ask how and if they will keep in touch on an ongoing basis.
8) Your website does not answer your customers’ questions. It sounds like another no-brainer, but you would be surprised at how many small business websites leave you looking at them for minutes while pondering, "What does this company actually do?"
What’s the first question most prospective customers ask you about your product/service? How much is it? One of the biggest frustrations with websites in not showing prices – it will be one of the first things they are looking for. Most business people usually say to this: ‘but I don’t want my competitors to know my prices’. They probably already do.
And am sure you know most of theirs. What other questions do your customers ask you? Have you created an FAQ’s page to answer these questions? If people can’t find the information they need on your site quickly and easily they will leave and go to someone else’s website
9) Your website does not show contact details clearly!
Your phone number should feature prominently on your website. Quite often people will read the information on your website for research but will actually phone you to ask questions. How easy is it to find the contact details on your website?
Contact information should be visible in a prominent place of the website and be clearly visible. It instills confidence in your visitors. This is particularly important for an e-commerce website that sells products on the site. It is advisable to have your contact information on every page instead of hiding it from customers who visit your web site.
10) Your website shows what you do but not why people should buy from you.
When someone searches for a product or service in a search engine they will be presented with thousands, possibly millions of websites – there is a lot of choice online. As such it’s ever more important to differentiate yourself in the market place by doing things quicker or better or in a different way – you need to define your USP. USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition – it’s what sets you apart from your competitors. Why should your customers buy from you rather than your competitors? What makes you stand out? With most businesses they either have no point of difference at all from their competitors or they differentiate themselves by being cheaper. So here’s how you can show why you are the right choice for your potential customer (how many of these are you using):
- Use of a strap line illustrating your USP (e.g. FedEx: ‘absolutely positively overnight’)
- Testimonials
- Case studies to show the quality of your work
- Before and after photos
- Logos of well known clients you have worked for (the theory being ‘well if they have worked for X then they must be a good company)
- A guarantee
- Accreditation symbols
- A benefits list
Sometimes a simple bullet point list of benefits or a testimonial from a satisfied customer can be the difference between making the sale and not making the sale. How many sales have you missed out on because your ‘why buy from us’ message is not strong enough?
11) Your website is too slow to load. Many small-business websites load far too slowly – and how many people will wait? How many people will lose patience and go elsewhere? Slow loading websites are due to images or videos that have not been compressed properly, or because of the platform the website is built with. There are a number of online tests you can take to measure the load speed of your site, if it is too slow then speak to your website provider about speeding up the process or consider setting up a new site.
03 March 2011
What Can We Do For You
How can we help you?
View our video and see what we can do for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwCXvk2VIT4&feature=BF&list=ULCh_2rYF9gCQ&index=6
View our video and see what we can do for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwCXvk2VIT4&feature=BF&list=ULCh_2rYF9gCQ&index=6
See What They Say About Us
See what our clients say about us!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbeez8Ok4MA&feature=autoplay&list=ULCh_2rYF9gCQ&index=1&playnext=2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1X5YIhOG_g&feature=autoplay&list=ULCh_2rYF9gCQ&index=2&playnext=3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHzvY4E9tdg&feature=BF&list=ULCh_2rYF9gCQ&index=3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrHgvulv8bM&feature=BF&list=ULCh_2rYF9gCQ&index=4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS7wzqG0YrA&feature=BF&list=ULCh_2rYF9gCQ&index=5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbeez8Ok4MA&feature=autoplay&list=ULCh_2rYF9gCQ&index=1&playnext=2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1X5YIhOG_g&feature=autoplay&list=ULCh_2rYF9gCQ&index=2&playnext=3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHzvY4E9tdg&feature=BF&list=ULCh_2rYF9gCQ&index=3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrHgvulv8bM&feature=BF&list=ULCh_2rYF9gCQ&index=4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS7wzqG0YrA&feature=BF&list=ULCh_2rYF9gCQ&index=5
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