In addition to developing new websites, a lot of the work I do is in analysing, optimising and promoting existing websites.  Often, the websites I look at have been beautifully designed but aren’t working for their business because they’re either not drawing in enough visitors or not converting enough of those visitors into customers (or both).

Good Web Design is Not Enough for Search Engine Optimisation

A good web designer will build a brilliant looking website but, in my experience, they are rarely able to optimise the website for search engines and don’t pay enough attention to calls to action for converting visitors into customers.  Optimisation is specialist work that requires special skills, experience and tools.

How an Internet Marketing Consultant Can Help Your Website

Here are the sorts of things an Internet Marketing Consultant can do for your website and your business.

Competitive Analysis

1. Conduct a full analysis of your website and your competitors’ websites to see how you rank against the competition.
2. Identify the most popular search terms used by those searching for your products and services.
3. Determine the most effective keywords to help you rise above your competition.

Search Optimisation

1. Provide instructions to your web developer on how to deploy the selected keywords in content, titles, URLs, headings, link names and alternative text.
2. Ensure that page descriptions are compelling so that they draw in visitors when they appear in search results.
3. Provide instructions to your web developer on how to improve visitor conversion.
4. Review the changes made and ensure that Analytics are set up to monitor performance.

Website Promotion

1. Use directory listings, social bookmarks and article marketing to provide valuable inward links to your website.
2. Where appropriate use online PR to build high value links to your website.
3. Use social media (e.g. Linked-in, Twitter and Facebook) to further improve your online presence.

 How Your Optimised Website Will Help Your Business

With your website optimised for the search keywords, Google will properly index it and give it a better ranking in searches.  The online promotion will build inward links and further improve rankings.  The compelling descriptions will draw visitors to your site.  The conversion improvements will help turn more of those visitors into customers.

Here is a picture of an unhappy website – it’s very lonely.  It’s lonely because it’s not getting many visitors.

How do you help a lonely website?  Simple, you bring it more visitors by doing two things…

1. Make it easier for people to find.
2. Make it engaging so that people want to visit it.

Search Marketing – How to be Found on the Web

Imagine that you’re going to a sales presentation in a really big conference centre that has loads of rooms.  You’re going to need very good directions and signposts to find the right room.  Well, you can imagine that the Internet is like a conference centre with over 50 Million rooms so your going to needs some really good directories and signposts to help visitors find your site.

Signposts for your Website

You’ve got to market your site to search engines so they can help visitors find you – this is known as search marketing (or search engine optimisation) and these are some of the things that you need to do.

1. Make sure that Google indexes your website  against the search terms that prospective customers will enter when looking for your products and services.  Google will use titles, headings, link names and descriptions (not just keyword tags) to index your website.  You want to make sure that these titles, headings, link names, descriptions and keywords match up to the terms that people will use when searching for the products and services that you provide.  It’s particularly important to make your description tage compelling as this is what will appear when your website appears in search results.
2. Build lots of inward links into your website from other sites.  This has two uses.  First, Google ranks sites higher the more inward links they have so if you have lots of (relevant) inward links then you will appear higher in the Google search results (you need to aim to be on the first page at least).  Second, you are setting up more places on the Internet that will point visitors to your site – just like signposts.  Article sites and business directories are the best ways of building inward links to your site.
3. Make sure that you’ve set up your Google Place.  This is another free directory entry and will appear in search results when people search for your products and services along with a geographic reference (e.g. a city or region).
4. You can also use paid search advertising to drive visitors to your site.  This is useful in the early days as the indexing and link building will take some time to work.  Depending upon your business you may want to consider using Linked-in or Facebook for paid advertising in addition (or instead of) search advertising.

 Make Your Content Valuable

search engine optimisation brings website visitors

Once prospects have found your website they not only need to actually visit it they also need to make money for you buy buying stuff (or at least contacting you or signing up for your newsletter so they may buy stuff in the future).  This is known as ‘conversion’ (i.e. converting visitors to customers).

You do this by making your content and sales offers valuable (and hopefully unique).  The content has got to be engaging – interesting, useful or entertaining.  The visitors need to be given reasons for conversion (i.e.to  do what you want them to do).  These reasons need to be very clear and the path through your website blindingly obvious.

If you do all these things right then your website won’t be lonely any more as it will have lots of visitors!  Also, you’ll be happy too because those visitors will be buying stuff from you.

The Internet is a great tool for giving companies a much wider (even global) reach.  With the Internet’s reach, companies can market and sell to customers far and wide.

However, the Internet can also help those companies who just sell to customers in their local geographic area.  Over 15% of searches on Google are related to a geographic area.  People will search for shops, restaurants, hotels and services near where they are or near where they’re going to be.  Also, many will use their mobiles for such searches.

So, if you have a local business you can use the Internet to bring in more business from people searching for products and services in your area. 

Local Search Essentials

When somebody searches for a company, product or service and adds in a geographic qualifier (town, county, post code etc) then Google Search will return a set of entries and a map (Google Places).  Something similar will happen when the Google Places app is used for a search on a smartphone.

Local Search Optimisation

Optimising for local search follows the same basic principles for standard SEO but there are a few extra things to look out for.

1. Make sure that your Google Places entry is complete and correct.
2. Make sure that you have entries in the main online business directories.  These should be a mixture of national, regional and town directories.  Ensure that all the different directories are consistent (ideally using a common directory submission service or an experienced Internet Marketing consultant).
3. Get lots of customer reviews for your service (particularly on Google Places).
4. Make sure that your website content and template is properly optimised for your locality as well as for your products/services.
5. If prospects are likely to search for you on a smartphone then make sure that your website is mobile friendly.

This could bring you in a lot of extra business.  Remember, your competitors may well be about to grab your market share using local and mobile search optimisation.  If you need help then please contact me.  You can find more information from some of my related blog posts.

• Search Marketing
• Google Places
• Text Marketing
• QR Codes & Microsoft Tags
• Mobile Websites & Apps
• Location Based Services

Some time ago, I posted an article on search marketing.  I’ve recently helped quite a few clients who’ve been using Google AdWords to advertise their business online.  In many cases their adverts have not been working well for them.  Therefore, I’m giving a few tips to help you plan and manage your search advertising better.  There’s more that you need to do but these are the basic things that I’ve seen people get wrong.

Planning an Adwords Campaign

1. Think Like Your Customers.  What terms are they likely to use for when searching for the products and services that you provide.  Use a keyword tool to build up a list of these and similar terms.
2. Research Your Keywords.  How many searches are there for each keyword every day and how many (competing) sites feature these keywords?
3. Set Your Budget.  Research how much the keywords cost for PPC and plan a sensible budget so that you can capture a decent amount of traffic.
4. Design Your Adverts.  Look at similar adverts for those keywords from competitors.  Make your Ads compelling and have at least 4 (so you can find out which are the most effective and tune them).
5. Build/Select Your Landing Pages.  Make sure that ad clicks lead through to appropriate landing pages in your website.

Managing An Adwords Campaign

1. Google Analytics.  Make sure that your Adwords account is linked to your Google Analytics account and that auto-tagging is enabled.
2. Monitor & Measure.  Check your Google Analytics and your AdWords account every day for the first week and then at least weekly for the following…
   • Is your bounce rate on landing pages less than 50%?
   • Are your conversions justifying the advertising investment?
   • Which adverts and keywords are performing best?
3. Modify & Improve.
   • If you have a high bounce rate then visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for so either modify your landing page or your adverts/keywords.
   • Look at which adverts and keywords are performing best and either improve or remove the ones that aren’t working.
   • Make sure that your investment is brining you either more sales or more leads.

If you want any advice or help then please contact me.

More and more companies are exploiting mobile marketing techniques.  This is a great way to communicate with both customers and prospects.  New advances in technology mean that mobile marketing is no longer the preserve of large companies.  In fact, it’s now an excellent and cost effective technique for small and medium sized companies.

In this and the following few articles, I’m going to outline some particulary effective mobile marketing solutions.  If you have any questions or want any more information then please do not hesitate to contact me.  First, I’m going to write about Google Places.  In the next two articles I’ll write about Text Marketing and QR Codes.  Following that I’ll write about some emerging and more advanced solutions such as Apps and Augmented Reality.

Google Places

Google Places is a free local directory.  Most companies already have a Google Places listing (Google has created them by scouring other directories).  Check by Googling your company name and location.  If you have a listing then you should verify that you’re the owner and develop the listing with further information (including pictures and videos).  If you haven’t got a Google Places listing then create one.

There is a Google Places app for the major smart phones (iPhone, Android and BlackBerry).   When a user launches this app, it will list businesses near to his or her current location (as determined by GPS).  The user can select a particular business type (e.g restaurants) and get all those nearby listed.  The user can also select another location for listings (e.g. a city to be visited).

So, a business can use their free Google Places listing to be found by mobile users.  Also, Google Places includes reviews (including those on review sites such as Qype).  Therefore, it’s not only important to be on Google Places (and to make your listing compelling) but also to know what reviews you’ve got listed on it.

When you do digital marketing it’s important that you do the right things to make it cost effective and to gain the maximum return on investment.  This article contains some hints and tips to help you get the best from your time and money spent on digital marketing.

Know Your Audience

You should understand your audience: visitors, customer and prospects.  You must know their needs for information and education on the areas in which you provide products and services.  You need to understand the factors which will determine whether they will buy from you, from your compeitors or not at all.

Provide Valuable Content

From your knowledge of your audience you should craft content which is of value to them (not just sales blurb).  Distribute this content over your marketing channels (website, email marketing, mobile marketing and social media).

Make Yourself Easy to Find

Use search engine optimisation, search advertising, display advertising, social media presence, mobile marketing, directories, articles and press releases to make people aware of how your products and services can help them and to draw them to your website.

Make Sure They Convert

Make sure your website is designed to convert visitors into buyers.  Don’t distract visitors from your preferred conversion funnel.

Test & Measure Incrementally

Know what your goals are and how you can measure against them.  Test everything.  Use analytics to monitor performance and tune your marketing.

Search Marketing

Search marketing is all about getting your website to appear when prospects search on something that relates to your business.  Search marketing covers both pay per click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimisation.

Here are some tips on both forms of search marketing.  Paid advertising will give quick results whilst search engine optimisation can take three months or more to build up an effect.

Paid Search Advertising

1. You must think like your customers and pick keywords that they will search on when looking for products and services that you provide.
2. Make your ad compelling to get searchers to click on it.  Remember, the higher the quality of your ad, the lower PPC cost is needed to win click auctions.  Create several ads so that you can monitor relative performance.
3. Your ad should link to a page dealing specifically with the search related products or services; not a general home page.
4. Use the Google tools to research keyword PPC cost and set realistic bids and daily budgets.
5. Monitor your campaign and optimise keywords, ads, bids and budgets as necessary.
6. There are now tools that automate a lot of this process for you and perform regular optimisation to maximise both cost effectiveness and conversion.

Search Engine Optimisation

1. A good general rule is what’s good for visitors is good for search engines.
2. Make sure that the keywords are reflected in your content.
3. In particular put in keywords into headings, titles and descriptions.
4. Make sure that all images have alternative descriptions that are keywords.
5. Make sure that you update your content at least once a month and that updates are dated.  People and search engines all love fresh and dated content.
6. Put in a site map.
7. Get lots of inward links from partner sites, directories, blogs, articles press releases and social media presence.

I’ve written quite a bit about how to make websites work  in two previous posts (http://wsidigitaladvantage.com/2010/11/28/successful-marketing-just-do-three-things and http://wsidigitaladvantage.com/2010/12/14/is-your-website-lonely/).  Now, I’m going to write about some of the reasons that websites don’t work properly for their businesses.

One of the things I do is analyse websites using the Webscan tool (http://wsidigitaladvantage.com/services/webscan/).  This helps me determine how well a website is working for a business and what needs to be done to improve it. 

To work properly, a website needs to attract and retain visitors.  It also needs to support the conversion of those visitors into customers.  If it doesn’t do those things then it’s not working properly.

Here are the top 5 reasons I’ve found for a website not working properly for it’s business.

1. Lack of Analytics – if you don’t know how many visitors you’re getting, where they’re coming from, how they found you and what pages they visit then how can you manage your marketing?
2. Poor or Missing Titles, Headings and Descriptions – these help search engines to index you against your desired keywords and they also help visitors.
3. Content Not Regularly Updated – everybody likes fresh content, especially search engines.  Your content should be compelling enough to attract and retain visitors.
4. Lack of Inward Links – these help visitors to find you and also improve search engine rankings.  Links from social media are particularly good.  Remember to verify and develop your free Google Places listing as this is a great directory link.
5. Website not Optimised for Conversion – your website should encourage your visitors to do what you need them to do (buy, contact, download etc).  The way for them to do this should be clear, easy and free from distractions.

If you sort these problems out then your website is going to have more visitors and convert more of those visitors into customers.

Following my last article, I’m now going to give some tips on ways of engaging on each of the main social media channels: Facebook, Linked-in, YouTube, Twitter and Blogging.  Remember that engaging with social media gives you a number of advantages…

• It drives more referral traffic to your site
• It raises your overall brand awareness
• It gives you new ways to communicate with your customers and prospects
• It gives you new ways to advertise

Facebook

•  Set up a Facebook page for your business (distinct from personal pages) to promote your brand and to allow you to have discussions with customers and prospects.  You can make this page as elaborate as you want (it is even possible to make it look like a mini website or to include an online shop).
• Use Facebook advertising to target your ads so that they are displayed to the demographic segments that are your best prospects.
• You can invite prospects and customers to share (part) of their Facebook profile with you so that they can give you their contact details easily without having to type them in.
• Remember to link your Facebook page to your website.

Linked-in

• Build your professional profile (including your website reference) and make connections with others (colleagues, old colleagues from previous jobs, customers etc).
• Build a profile for your business as well as for yourself.
• Join groups related to your business to make connections, build your credibility and find information.
• Targetted advertising

YouTube

• Upload videos describing your company and your products.
• Upload ‘how to’ videos on using your products.
• Upload customer testimonial videos.
• Upload related videos that are entertaining or informative so that they become valuable content to draw in visitors.
• Include a link to your website.

Twitter

• Use as a channel for announcements and information with links back to your website.
• Make sure that you tweets and their links are valued content so you will build up followers.
• Make time sensitive special offers as tweets.
• Use your Twitter profile as a compelling overview of your business with a link to your website.

Blogging

• Blogging is a way to improve your personal and brand credibility as well as driving traffic to your site.
• Blog on things which will be entertaining or informative for your prospects and customers.
• Encourage comments and engage with those making comments in a positive way.
• Make sure that your blog links to (and from) your website.

Last week I wrote about how small and medium companies can exploit email marketing.  This week I’m going to look at social media: Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter, YouTube and Blogging.

People are talking about you so not only do you need to know what they’re saying, you need to be part of the conversation.  If they’re not talking about you that’s bad and you need to get the conversations started.

People will tell others if they’ve received good service from your company.  They’ll tell even more if they feel they’ve received bad service!  They used to do this by word of mouth; now they can do it through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Blogs and a plethora of review sites.

There are a variety of tools to help you monitor what is being said about you.  These range from the free Netvibes (www.netvibes.com) through the relatively inexpensive Trackur (www.trackur.com) to more sophisticated toolsets such as Brandwatch (www.brandwatch.com) and Lithium Social Media Monitoring (www.lithium.com/what-we-offer/social-customer-suite/social-media-monitoring).

OK, so these tools can help you know what’s being said about you but you really need to join the conversation.  However, you need to do this in a controlled way. 

• Anybody who engages on the web (social media, forums etc) talking about your company, your services and your products has got to act like a responsible ambassador. 
• You need strict policy and guidelines on what should and should not be said and how it should be said.
• You need a plan and policy on how do deal with negative news and comments.

Although social media use by companies is still fairly new there is already a great body of knowledge that’s been built up on how best to exploit it.  Social media is one of our fastest growing areas.

I’m going to split the article on social media across two blog entries.  In my next blog entry I’ll talk about how to engage on each of Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter, YouTube and Blogging.