How To Start Getting New Business From Google By Tomorrow

Getting to the top of the free or natural listings (on the left hand side) of search engines takes time and know-how but there is a much quicker, simpler way to start getting new business from Google – advertise!

Here are 4 Good Reasons Why You Should Advertise with Google Adwords;

1. Your ad will appear at the very moment someone is looking for your solution to their problem using the most popular Search Engine of all
2. Your ads can be up and running in just a day
3. You can control how much you spend and pause the ads whenever you like
4. You can quickly learn which search phrases are the best for your business

There are a few things you need to know before you get started:

With search engine advertising (also referred to as paid search and cpc – cost per click advertising) you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

The ads are at the top, to the right and now at the bottom of a page of listings.  The listings on the left are there naturally ie because Google has decided that those web pages are completely relevant to the searched for phrase, you don’t pay when someone clicks on one of these natural listings, you get there by search engine optimising your website for them.

You decide how much you want to bid for each keyphrase and this determines where on the page your ad appears.  If you’re the highest bidder you’ll appear at the top of the listings.  If your bid is too low it won’t appear on page one at all.  Depending on your market and the results of your keyphrase research you may want to start bidding £1/click and then adjust it depending on where your ad appears.

Your ads will appear at precisely the moment someone is looking for a solution to a problem you can solve.  They will be timely and relevant and with a strong, compelling offer and a website that converts those new visitors to buyers Google Adwords offers businesses a controllable and affordable way to find new clients.

Get the most from your campaign and spend your advertising budget wisely by following these 8 Budget Maximising Tips.

1.        Do your keyword research first.

Spend some quality time deciding which search terms or Most Wanted Keywords you would like your website to appear for.  Read my post How To Help Google Find You for more details on how to do this research.

2.        Add Google Analytics to your website

When your campaign is up and running, you’ll want to know where your new visitors went in your site and how long they stayed etc.  Google’s analytics programme will help you learn all about your visitors and how to improve your site and the campaign.

3.       Optimise your landing pages

You don’t want your ads to just click through to your generic home page.  You want them to go to a page that includes an offer or information that is specific to the keyphrase you are targeting.  So create some new pages that are very focused and which ideally also include a free report/voucher/offer/article which visitors must sign up for.  This way you not only get a new visitor but also an email address so that you can continue the conversation with them.  Creating specific landing pages also improves your ad ‘Quality Scores’ which can reduce your bid price.

4.        Limit your daily spend

When you’re starting out with Google adwords it’s wise to limit your daily spend to just a few pounds a day.  I generally begin with a maximum of £5 a day and then see how that goes depending on how much the clicks are costing.  This means you don’t risk spending too much money on keyphrases which may not generate any business for you.  Once you are convinced that you are seeing a good return on your investment then you can increase your daily budget.

5.        Only bid on exact keyphrases

To begin with only target exact keyphrases [they’ll be listed in square brackets if they’re exact] rather than broad matches.  This means that you’ll only pay if someone actually typed in that precise phrase rather than a phrase that included those words.  You can open it out later once you have a good idea of how your campaign is running.

6.        Limit your location

If your business is very local then only advertise in the areas you serve.  You don’t want to pay for an ad that’s been clicked on in Hull if you only offer Garden Maintenance in Surrey. You can limit your advertising spread by town or country, just bear in mind that the smaller the area, the fewer the number of clicks you’ll get.

7.        Make your ads very specific

If your product is a luxury item, make that clear in your ad, you don’t want to pay for a click from someone looking for a cheap or DIY product.  If you have a special offer on include it and it’s price in the ad.  Remember you’ll pay for this click even if someone immediately leaves so you want to cut out as many wasted clicks as possible.  Test two or three different ads at a time.  Delete the ones that don’t generate clicks and add new ones which improve on the ads that are working.

8.        Monitor your campaign closely.

Once you start your ad campaign running, keep a close eye on it.  If you find you’re not getting enough clicks you’ll need to tweak your ads.  If you’re getting lots of clicks but for less relevant phrases you’ll want to reduce your bid price or remove those phrases all together.  For the first week or two you’ll be checking your progress every day making sure you’re only paying for the clicks you want.  This is the beauty of online advertising.  You can pause the campaign, increase or reduce your daily budget and edit your ads whenever you want – you are in control.

With those tips in mind you can run a Google adwords campaign that will start bringing new visitors to your website quickly.  It will cost you in advertising budget (unless you have one of those handy Google vouchers) but the education you’ll also get will be enormous.

You’ll find out which ads and offers work best, you’ll discover if your site and promotions convert browsers into buyers or not.  Most importantly you’ll learn which keyphrases convert into new business and are worth your time and effort search engine optimising your website for.

So why not fast forward your marketing this week and get your site listed on Google?

Marketing Goal for the Week  

Follow Google’s easy instructions here www.google.co.uk/AdWords and my 8 tips and get your advertising campaign up and running this week.  Depending on your business, it’s likely to be much cheaper and more effective than advertising in any other medium.

Goal Complete!

Three Ways to Help Your Business Stand Out

When I ask my clients at our first web briefing meeting what is unique or different about their business, they will often tell me that they provide fantastic customer service, that the quality of their product or service is second to none or that they are the cheapest…

But most consumers expect great customer service, quality and value for money as standard now, so these are no longer areas where it is easy to differentiate.

When you know what makes your company really different from the rest you’ll be able to convey that uniqueness clearly and the benefits of working with you rather than anyone else will quickly become evident to all your prospects.

So this week I’m encouraging you to take some time out to think hard about what makes your business different from your competition – why should anyone do business with you?

Once you know your USPs (Unique Selling Points) inside out, helping your business stand out becomes much easier.  Here are three low-cost ways to promote your differences;

1.        Develop a signature product, programme or service which is unique to you and your business. 

It’s all too easy to want to be all things to all people, but filtering what you offer down to one remarkable and benefits driven service which becomes synonymous with you is a very effective way to stand out from the crowd.

It might be a workshop, a specialised coaching session or a small sample of your most popular product.  Give it an eye catching and memorable name.   If you make your “thing” a fairly low cost offer then it also provides a less risky way for your prospects to get to know more about you and once they experience what you do at this level, they’ll be more receptive to hearing about your more in-depth programmes or more expensive products.

It’s then vitally important to communicate the direct and tangible benefits of your signature product to your customer.  Try to convey a vision of how they will feel after they’ve been served by you.

2.        Share your uniqueness with the world

One of the main challenges a small business faces is a lack of budget for marketing and advertising.  Social media offers a low-cost way to talk about your business and reach a far wider audience than you would otherwise be able to afford.  But social networking can be a fairly slow burn process in terms of seeing a return and it can take up a lot of your time.

In spite of this, a very good reason to start engaging with social platforms and especially blogging is to establish and position yourself as an authority on your area of expertise or as an insightful aggregator of information on it.  Having a clear, ‘education driven’ strategy makes it far less intimidating to get started and allows your prospects to get to know you and what you stand for before they contact you.  Maintaining a helpful, keyword rich blog, although time consuming offers solid search engine optimisation benefits and can extend your reach further than a static website would manage on its own.

But most importantly, when your prospects read your blog they will get to know your unique perspective in a much more personal way and if they like and appreciate what you have to say, they’ll be far more likely to do business with you rather than the faceless corporate that you’re up against.

3.        Follow up

One of the great benefits of doing business with a small company is the personal service you can enjoy.  We’ll often throw in complementary extras and favours for our clients which larger companies would not.  We can also offer a much more personal service and one of the nicest ways to stand out is to  follow-up with your customers after they’ve done business with you.

A handwritten note or friendly gesture of appreciation is the most affordable way to do this, whether it be included in the package containing your product or sent after your project is complete.  It can be a tough one to remember to do, but very effective in terms of encouraging referrals and future business.  One clothing shop I use wraps the dresses I order in beautiful tissue and they add a pack of “Love heart” sweeties to the top.  I rave about businesses that employ little touches like these to friends and family as they’re so uncommon in this day and age.

What little extra can you add as a follow-up for your clients that will really make you stand out from the crowd?  Make sure it’s low cost and as personal as possible, if you can combine it with asking them to review your service and provide a testimonial then you’ll make the effort involved even more worthwhile.

Your Marketing Goal for the Week:

1.  Write down three unique selling points about your business.
2.  Stick that note to your wall and mention them to all potential customers.
3.  Consider implementing one of the three ideas above to promote and celebrate your uniqueness.

Goal Complete!

I’d love to hear what your unique selling points are.  Let me know by adding them in a comment below with your website address.  I’ve started by adding mine!

Five Top Tips To Help Your Words Sell

[With thanks to Kathy Lawrence of Wrightwell Editorial Services for this Guest Blog Post.]

You’ve got a fabulous looking web site, not to mention amazing products and services to sell. But are the words you’re using working hard enough to convince your audience to buy?

Here are a few tips to help you make the most of your web content.

1. Who’s reading this stuff?

Surprisingly, your web site is not about you. It’s about your customers. And especially about the people who are not yet your customers but could be.

The key to selling is to make your potential customers feel like you are answering their needs, their wants or their desires.

Tell your visitors why they would want your product or service. How it’s going to fix that problem, make life simpler, save time and money or add a little luxury …?

If you’re not sure if you’re doing it right, then stand back from your site and put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Just ask “So what?” about everything you’re claiming for your offering.

At the same time, weave in your case for being just the right supplier to meet that need.

To make that task easier …

2.  Read this free paragraph on attracting attention now!

Your web site is an advertisement for your business. Would you start an ad with the words: “Welcome to my advertisement?” So don’t start with “Welcome to my web site”.

Make your first words on the page much more exciting. Write something enticing and yet informative to encourage your visitors to read on and click through.

It’s sale time right now. Just drop into any store site and see what it says on the front page.  Here’s one: “Up to 70% off Debenhams biggest sale now on”. That one line manages to be exciting as well as mention the company name, adding extra search engine appeal.

And talking of search engines …

3.  Stay calm and optimise

As I’m a writer I’m certain your priority is to create high-quality content for your site. But no one’s going to read it if you don’t find ways to bring in visitors. So you do need to ease keywords into your writing to attract the search engines. What’s needed is balance.

There’s some great advice elsewhere on this site about finding your keywords. When you’ve gathered the terms you need to get onto your site, try to work them in naturally without going all out on repetition. It actually makes your writing more interesting if you use different terms to describe your offerings throughout your web site.

Another way to keep the search engines happy is to add links to other pages on your site from each page. You’ll already have tabs along the top or down the side. Now you can also include interesting text links to spirit your readers away to another page full of great headlines, exciting offers and reasons to buy.

Remember though to ..

4.  Speak as one

The faster your web site grows, and the more people who are writing for it, the more opportunity there is for it to start to become confusing and confused.

A great way to address that issue is to create a house style guide for everyone to follow so that you appear to be writing as one.

Here are a few things to think about:

• Are you going to talk about your business as “We”, “I” or only by company name? This is a particularly tricky one for micro-businesses. You may be only one person, but do you want to seem bigger than that?
• How formal or casual is your language going to be? Chatty or traditional? What will work best for your readers?
• US or UK English? On a basic level it’s about deciding whether to –ise or –ize, but on a grander scale these are two different languages in many ways. Who are you trying to attract? Whom might you alienate?
• How long are your pages going to be? And your paragraphs? Mixing up the lengths of sentences can keep the writing interesting, but make your copy too long and visitors will move on before you’ve made your point

Before you hit that Publish button …

5.  Read it again

I know as an editor and proofreader I’m in the business of being picky, but I’ve just changed my mind about buying cardboard boxes from a web site simply because the writers can’t spell. A little voice says “If they don’t give attention to detail in their marketing, where else will the quality fail?”

Some potential customers won’t be worried about poor spelling, bad grammar and accidental mistakes, but why risk losing those that do?

If you’re the author of content that’s about to be published, ask someone else with a good grasp of the language to read everything you write before it goes live. If there’s no one willing and able, then try printing out what you’ve written and re-reading it. Simply looking at your words in a different medium will help you see it in a new light.

Offer to do the same for your colleagues. You don’t have to mention that they’re remarkably poor at writing – just say everyone needs help with reading for typos. Just as I hope Anneve will do for me before publishing this guest blog.

How about a task or three for the week?

• Read through your whole web site and check for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors
• Check if your headlines on each page could be more exciting
• Replace any “click here” type links with more interesting text

Kathy Lawrence is a marketing writer with over 20 years of experience in copywriting, journalism and editing. She is constantly rewriting her Wrightwell web site in the light of advice she gives and gleans from others. She also writes a business writing advice blog.

Three New Year Resolutions

2012 is here and it’s time to decide which marketing activities you should be focusing on this year – a task that can often feel overwhelming!

Your website should form a major part of your marketing plan so to help narrow things down I have three New Year resolutions for you.  Focus on these and you’ll help your website to actively bring you new business opportunities over the next 12 months.  You’ll notice your site will attract more visitors and convert more of your browsers to buyers.

A good website has the potential to act as a full time sales person for your business and the best thing is it doesn’t take tea breaks or holidays!

But the only way you’ll help it reach its full potential is by investing some time and energy.  So here are three areas of your website for you to focus on during 2012.

Resolution 1

Commit to keeping your site updated with fresh, new content regularly.

If you don’t have an easy to use Content Management System consider investing in one this year.  The thought of editing your own site fills some with panic but a good CMS is not overly complicated to use.  In fact the e-Vis CMS is designed to allow you to  edit the text and images on a page in much the same way as you would a word document.

If you really can’t face the thought of doing it yourself then agree a fee or retainer with your web developer and ask them to make the updates for you whenever you send them a new article or offer.

Another option would be to start a blog using www.wordpress.com.  This isn’t as effective as having a blog integrated into your main website but for that design and development fees will apply.  If you fancy just getting started then follow wordpress.com’s simple instructions and you can build a blog which can be easily updated with new articles and tips.  Link to it from your main site and add a link from your blog to your main site too and you can make sure that they interact with and support each other.

Google loves sites which are regularly updated with fresh content and sends its spiders more frequently when it knows it will find something new each time.  Interesting updates keep your prospects and customers engaged too.

Resolution 2

Regularly build links to your site from other sites.

This means finding other related websites, directories, blogs and social media hubs and adding your website address to their pages.  Sometimes you’ll have to pay for the listing in a directory or add a reciprocal link to your own site in exchange for a link from theirs.

You can also get inbound links by writing helpful comments on other people’s blog posts, by speaking with clients, colleagues and friends about giving each other reciprocal links on your sites or by writing articles and posting them on social media bookmarking sites such as Digg and Squidoo and article directories.

Without lots of links to your site from others you will find it very difficult to get your site a free listing on the first page of a search engine’s results so include link building in your monthly marketing plan.

Resolution 3

Use your Most Wanted Keywords and phrases in your site.

Hopefully as a result of reading this blog you will have already done your keyword research using the Google Keyword Selection Tool so you know what your Most Wanted Keywords are

If not, please spend some time in January finding out exactly which words and phrases potential customers are using in search engines to find businesses like yours.

Without knowing your Most Wanted Keywords or phrases – ie those with the most searches and the least competition – it will be very hard to make sure your site is relevant enough for Google to give you a free listing on page 1.

A good quality website can represent a hefty investment for a small business so make sure that you put that investment to good use and make it work really hard for you next year.

With a little bit of consistent marketing we can make 2012 our most profitable year yet!  I look forward to helping you get the most out of your website and marketing budget.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous 2012!

Best wishes, Anneve x

Anneve runs e-Vis Web Design Surrey a Marketing & Web Consultancy dedicated to helping small businesses promote themselves online.

A Shop With No Sign

Can you imagine walking down a street and coming across a shop without a sign and with nothing displayed in the window?

Would you pop in to take a look around on the off chance it might have something you want or need?  Unlikely!

Well if the words that you’ve written for the home page of your website don’t include your Most Wanted Keywords (MWKs) it’s  like owning a bricks and mortar shop that doesn’t have a sign saying Butcher, Estate Agent or Hairdresser and the chances of you getting to page one of the natural search engine listings are dramatically reduced.

You probably won’t make it even if you pay for a search engine ad!

If you don’t include your MWKs on your home page and you then try to buy search engine ads for those phrases they won’t be displayed no matter how much you try and bid!  Google will give your site a low quality score as it will deem your site irrelevant to the term you are bidding on.

So how do you include them and let everyone know that your ‘shop’ is open for business.

There are some strategic places within your site’s content (ie the words that you write for it) where you can place your MWK’s that will really help your search engine rankings.  It’s so important that you make these changes to your site as without them you may as well have a shop with a sign that says “Closed” on the door.

You may have heard the phrase “Content Is King” when it comes to website search engine optimisation, if you haven’t then let me explain.

Search engines send out little snippets of software (often called search engine spiders or robots) which index or record web pages by jumping from link to link.

Each time they find a new page they record it, decide what it’s all about from the text on the page and other factors and then add it to their huge list of indexed pages (back in 2008 Google had already found over 1 trillion web pages!)

These spiders can’t read text that is within an image, so the words that are on each page are very important, this content must be unique, useful and include your Most Wanted Keywords in the exact format that people use when they are performing a Google search.

Google uses a formula of factors which helps it decide what a page is all about.  This formula or ‘algorithm’ changes fairly frequently to take account of changes and trends, to constantly improve the relevance of the listings they display and to keep on top of the clever people who manage to find ways to manipulate the results using dodgy or simply unnatural tactics.

A recent change means that they are now taking far more notice of new and fresh content.  Google wants the results it displays to you to be the most up to date as well as the most relevant, so regularly adding new and well optimised articles, posts, news and views to your site has become more important than ever.

So where are the best places to include our Most Wanted Keywords in the content of our sites?  Here are my top 5:

 1. The Headline

Most Content Management Systems (CMS’s) enable you to add a headline which updates the H1 metatag within the code of the site (using a good CMS means you don’t have to know how to do this manually, it just does it for you).  This tag is one of the first places a search engine will look to determine what a site is purporting to be all about.

 2. The Subheader

Adding a subheader within a good CMS will affect the H2 tag and is also very important for SEO.

Examples of effective use of H1 and H2 tags;

Headline (H1:) e-Vis Web Design Surrey

Subhead (H2:) Let our Web Designers based in Surrey Transform Your Website

NB: Just adding a bold headline to your copy doesn’t do the trick, you have to make sure it has been placed within the H1/2 tags – if it’s not clear in your system how to do this, check the help pages.

 3. First Paragraph

Include your Most Wanted Keywords in the first paragraph of your content and then sprinkle it lightly throughout the rest of your copy.  You musn’t overdo it, too much repetition is spammy and will do you more harm than good.  You’re always writing for humans not search engine spiders.  So use the phrase only once or twice for every 2-300 words of content.

 4.  To The Images

When you add an image to a page using a good CMS is should give you the option to add a descriptive ‘Alt Tag’ this is the text that will show up if for some reason someone’s browser cannot display the image itself and it’s another place to include your MWK:

Ie:  A website designed and built by e-Vis Web Design Surrey

When you add a new image using a good CMS it will usually prompt you to include a description in the Alt Tag box.

5.  Anchor Text Links

You can make your MWK’s anchor text links by highlighting and making them bold and then adding a link from them back to your home page or another relevant page.  Search engines place greater value against bold/highlighted text and of course they follow links (unless you tell them not to).  By using your MWKs in this way you are once again reminding Google that your page is all about your Most Wanted Keywords.

Ie “For Web Design Surrey, talk to us”

Your ‘index’ or home page will always be the most important ‘store front’ page whether your site is a shop or not and so it should always be optimised for your top Most Wanted Keyphrases.

But it’s worth knowing that if you use your content effectively not everyone will enter your shop through the ‘front door’ or home page.  If you optimise other pages for less important and less competitive keyword phrases (also referred to as ‘long-tail keyphrases’) you may find you start welcoming a stream of interested customers fairly quickly through an entirely different ‘doorway’

To sum up, make sure all your content is unique (ie not borrowed or plagiarised from anywhere else without full acknowledgement and a link back), useful and includes your Most Wanted Keyphrases.

The web is all about finding solutions to problems, so by keeping your site a fresh, useful resource that is clearly focused on your customer’s most frequent search queries, not only will they come back time and time again, but the search engines will too.

Your Marketing Goal For The Week

Make sure you use your top Most Wanted Keyphrase throughout your home page, particularly in the headline, subheader and body text.

Check that your Content Management System is adding the appropriate H1 and H2 tags to the headers.

Highlight one or two of your Most Wanted Keyphrases, make them bold and add a link from them to other relevant areas of your site.

Finally, tag your images with descriptive text that includes your MWK (ie the alt tag).

Goal Complete!

Take Control of Your Site

If you cannot edit your site independently then please do speak to us about adding the e-Vis CMS to it.

Our Content Management System lets you quickly add new pages of fresh content and helps you search engine optimise them as you go.

You can keep the existing design and layout of your site, go for  a quick refreshed look or a complete redesign, the choice is yours.

Visit e-Vis Web Design Surrey for more details or call 01932 701432.

Who Are You And What Do You Do?

If you’ve ever gone to a business networking event and survived giving your 60 second ‘elevator’ pitch you’ll know the importance of being able to succinctly describe who you are and what you do.

Your website also has to give a pitch on your behalf but it has less than 10 seconds to grab a visitor’s attention and stop them clicking away to your competitor.

This pitch should be visible in the main content of your home page but when you also put it in the engine room or code of your site it will help improve your rankings in the search engines.

When you go into your Content Management System and update your website’s ‘Description Tag’ to  make sure it includes your Most Wanted Keywords; next time your site is visited by a search engine ‘spider’ this little snippet of description is often what’s then shown in your listing beneath the Page Title and Web address:

So it has two jobs – one it’s yet another indicator for Google showing that you are relevant to your Most Wanted Keywords, but it also serves as a hook for searchers helping them choose your listing over all the others on the page.

Think carefully about the main message you want to promote in this blurb as you don’t have much space and it has to be as punchy as possible.

You can usually update the Meta Description in your website’s Content Management System by finding Site Properties and then editing the Meta Tag:  Description field.

Use your top Most Wanted Keywords a couple of times in the sentence that you write, make sure it reads well and will appeal to your potential customers and encourages them to click through and find out more about you.

By making this relatively small change to your site you will have moved your business one step closer to a page one listing on any search engine, including Google.

What If You Can’t Update Your Own Site?

If you can’t update your website, then you need to make sure that your web designer or search engine optimiser has updated the Page Titles and Meta Description of your site. (If you didn’t ask for a search engine optimised website from the outset then this service will come with a charge for the time involved in updating it).

Check by looking at your website’s source code:

Internet Explorer:  Go to your site and then right click with your mouse and select “View Source”

Google Chrome:  Go to your site and then click Ctrl U.

Don’t Panic!  This screen just shows the code that has been used to build your site.  Make sure you start from the very top of the page and carefully scan for the words:

<title>This is where your Page Title should be</title>

<meta name=”description” content=“This is where your website’s description should be“>

If these areas are blank or aren’t written in a way that includes your Most Wanted Keywords, write them out the way you would like them and ask your web designer to update your site accordingly.

Your Marketing Goal For The Week

Go into your website’s Content Management System and update the Meta Description, making sure it now includes your Most Wanted Keywords.

Or

Check your website’s Meta Description is written the way you want it to be and if it’s not ask your web designer to amend it

Goal Complete!

__________________________________________________________

Take Control of Your Website with e-Vis CMS

If you can’t add new information to your website whenever you want to it’s much harder to get your site to page one of Google’s search listings for your Most Wanted Keywords.

Search Engines love fresh content and your customers want to be kept up-to-date with your latest news and offers.

If it’s time you took control of your website then speak to us about e-Vis CMS, an easy to use content management system that can be added to your site making it much easier to grow and promote your business.

Visit:  www.e-Vis.co.uk for more details.

The First Simple Step To Search Engine Optimising Your Site

So you’ve defined your Most Wanted Keywords (MWK) and you know that your ideal customers are using those words and phrases to look for the products and/or services you offer in search engines.

How do we start making sure your site is screaming “Google, look at me, I’m relevant!!”

Your site’s Page Titles are one of the first things a search engine will look at when it is determining whether or not to include your listing.

Use them wisely and they will help towards improving your rankings and could also encourage a searcher to click on your link instead of someone elses.

We know Google is all about relevance – ie it only wants to show searchers results that are as close as possible to what they are looking for.

So if your Most Wanted Keyphrase is Garden Design Surrey we want to make sure that phrase is included in your home page title.

In most Content Management Systems you will be able to change your Page Titles in the “Page Properties” tab.

Write the title carefully making sure that while you use the MWK a couple of times you do so in a human friendly way.

Here’s an example;

Garden Design Surrey –  e-Vis Landscapes – Award Winning Garden Designer Surrey

There’s no doubting that this website is all about Garden Design in Surrey and our page title reflects that without being too spammy or ‘keyword stuffed’.  Not only have we optimised the title for Garden Design Surrey twice, but we have also  included Garden Designer Surrey, our secondary MWK.

If you are targeting more than one MWK then try and make sure all your main pages have unique page titles that include them once or twice.  You’ll also be making sure the content on that page is completely relevant too, but we’ll deal with that another week.

Optimising your site in bite size chunks means it can take a while for you to climb the rankings but it’s much more achievable than trying to do everything at once.

Your Marketing Goal for the Week

Have a look at the page titles of your home page and three other main pages.  Do they include your Most Wanted Keywords or Phrases?

If they don’t, rewrite the titles, trying to include them or slight variations of them at least twice.

Goal Complete!

____________________________________________________

Do You Need More Customers?

Then find out how Online Marketing can help you promote your business affordably at my next Online Marketing Workshop:

Harness the Power of the Internet and Take Your Business to the Next Level – 30th November, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.

Visit www.e-VisWorkshops.co.uk for more details.

Turn Your Browsers Into Buyers

Running a successful website is very much like having a real bricks and mortar shop.

When you start out it’s as if you’re positioned down a backstreet, hidden away from the majority of your shoppers.  Rent is cheap there, but the likelihood of your customers stumbling across you is quite small.

As you work on your marketing activities you slowly move your shop from that depressing backwater where the till barely rings towards the bright lights, hustle and bustle of the high street where there are much higher levels of footfall.

Except an internet high street (the listings on page 1 of Google) is even better than a real one – all the shoppers on your online high street are looking for a solution to their problems that you can solve!

So when visitors start coming to your website, what’s in your shop window to entice them in?  And once they’re in, what are you doing to encourage them to become loyal customers?

High Street stores spend millions making sure that once their expensive ad campaigns and costly location have tempted customers to their door that they then have a fantastic in-store experience and come away having bought something and wanting to return.

Your store can be no different – it must engage your prospective customers and entice them to buy and return, otherwise you’ll be shelling out huge amounts of time and money getting them there only for them to walk away empty handed.

Factor in the statistic that says the average website (including the really big successful ones) achieves a conversion rate of only 2-5% (ie for every 100 visitors you get between 2 and 5 sales/bookings or enquiries) and it becomes even clearer how much effort we need to put into making our sites encourage a sale or booking, rather than just hoping for the best!

So here are 3 key features that every successful website must have in order to turn browsers into loyal buyers:

1.  Eyecatching Headlines

When you’re surfing around the internet looking for a solution to a problem you’re dealing with (let’s say you want to find out how to promote your business using online marketing! ) when you click on a listing you want to know you’re in the right place before you waste any more time there and click away.

Some say we have less than 7 seconds to grab a browser’s attention, so having a bold headline or two which spells out what you do in a crystal clear way helps your visitor relax knowing they’ve come to a worthwhile place and spend time reading the rest of your copy.  Without that clear indication it’s too easy for them to move on.

2.  Clearly Presented Offers and Packages

New visitors do not want to have to click around very much to get to your offer.  Put brief details about special offers, packages and gift options on your home page and quick links from there to the pages which set them out in more detail.

Also make them easy to find and get to from your other pages as these days not everyone will find your site through your home page alone.

3.  Include a Bold, Bright and Clear Call to Action

It’s so easy to forget to ask for a sale, but this tip applies to all your marketing activities.  Make it really obvious what someone must do to start the process of working with you.  These can be bright buttons, or even subtle text links but they must say something like;  Buy Now, Book Now, Enquire Now, Sign Up, Join Up etc etc.  Simple, clear and concise.  A confused customer NEVER buys!

There are many more ways to ensure you turn more of your browsers into buyers and I go through some of the most important ones at my Internet Marketing Training workshops.  These small group, boutique workshops takes place in Walton-on-Thames and will give you a really good overview of online marketing and how it can help you promote your business cost effectively.  If you’d like to book a place on the next one, please Click Here.

Your Marketing Goal for the Week

Have a look at your website’s home page and ask yourself these questions:

1. Is it completely obvious what I do for my customers?
2. Have I included brief details about my offers, packages and gift options?
3. Have I used a bold and clear Call To Action?

Goal complete.

Now spend some time rejigging your pages a little to make sure they do include these features.

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Do you need more customers?

Then find out how Online Marketing can help you promote your business affordably at my next Online Marketing Workshop:

Harness the Power of the Internet and Take Your Business to the Next Level – 30th November, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.

Visit www.e-VisWorkshops.co.uk for more details.

How to Help Google Find You – Part 2

Six Easy Ways To Get Inbound Links To Your Website

Is your site appearing on page 1 of Google for your Most Wanted Keyphrase yet?  If it is, well done!  Go and treat yourself to a latte before getting stuck into fulfilling all those orders!  (Orders and bookings not coming through as fast as they should?  Then look out for my next article on how to help turn your browsers into buyers, coming soon.)

If your site hasn’t made it to page 1 for any of your search terms yet then one of the main reasons could be a lack of good quality inbound links.

Some say proactively getting inbound links is now even more important than keyword focussed content in terms of where Google will rank your site.

Making sure your content and site is optimised for your keyphrases is still vitally important, how else do search engines know what your site is all about?  (Find out how to research which key search phrases are the most important for your business by reading last week’s post How To Help Google Find You)

But it’s likely that the 80:20 rule applies, with inbound links being the most valuable factor at the moment.  Without good quality links pointing to your site, the chances of it getting a free listing on the first and most important page are extremely slim.

Yahoo seems to attach far less importance to inbound links so it can be easier to achieve high rankings there, the only problem is most people use Google – so that’s where we need to focus our efforts!

The average Google page – excluding paid for ads – offers between 10 and 12 free listings to websites which they deem to be most relevant to a particular search query (you’ll see these listed on the left hand side of the page).

If the search term you want to be listed for is very sought after, you’ll really have your work cut out.

So make a start now by finding out how many inbound links the companies that have already made it to page 1 have and where they got them.

To get a reasonably good idea of how many inbound links a site has, use the Yahoo site explorer.  Visit Yahoo and enter the following query into the large Web Search Box:

link:www.your-competitors-website-address-here.co.uk

Yahoo will show a list of websites that have a link pointing to that site.   It doesn’t show all of them but it certainly gives you a clue about how many your site needs to be in with a chance of reaching the same position!

So start getting those links.

Here are 6 good ways to start:

1.  Speak to the owners of other businesses you know and like and ask if they would like to do a reciprocal link swap with you.  Make sure they can return the favour and that they are a good fit for your brand.  Never offer a link on your site to a company you don’t know, have never heard of or can’t recommend.  These requests work best with business owners who actually know you and can vouch for your service.

 2. Create great content and post it on your site or blog.  If it’s useful other people will want to link to it.  When you write something good, tweet about it, put it up on your Facebook page, your Linkedin profile and add it to social bookmarking sites so others can find it.

3.  Submit articles, reports and press releases to article and press release directories and make sure you include a link back to your site in the resource box.  When online publishers pick up on your article and want to include it as a resource on their own site you’ll be rewarded with a high quality link back.

4.  Submit your website to relevant, high quality online directories, although a bit time consuming this is a great way to start, making sure you avoid dodgy looking ‘link farms’.

5.  Check  out your competitors links using the Yahoo tool we talked about before and see where they got their links.  Can you get one there too?

6.  Write guest blog posts and add useful, relevant comments to other people’s blogs.  Both of you will benefit from the interaction and new content and you’ll usually get a link too.

There are lots of other ways to build your links but these 6 are a great way to start.    Without these valuable inbound links the most important search engines may well ignore you, because to a search engine like Google, each link counts as a ‘vote’ for you and they’ll want to see that other people think you’re worthy of that valuable top spot before they reward you with it.

Your Marketing Goal for the Week:

Get three inbound links to your site today.  Start with these sites which will give you a free listing:

www.FreeIndex.co.uk, www.iSurrey.co.uk and Google Places

Goal Complete.

Now aim to get 2 – 3 new links per week.

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Next Online Marketing Workshop:  Harness the Power of the Internet and Take Your Business to the Next Level – 30th November, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.  Visit www.e-VisWorkshops.co.uk for more details.

How To Help Google Find You – Part 1

How to choose your Most Wanted Keywords and phrases (MWK’s)

Chances are if you’re not sure what words and phrases people are using in the search engines to find your kind of product or service, you won’t be using them on your site.

If you don’t use those specific words and phrases on your site, Google won’t think you’re relevant for them and there is very little chance that you will be rewarded with a sought after free listing which is displayed on the left hand side of a Google results page when someone searches on that word or phrase.

So how do you choose your Most Wanted Keywords or phrases (MWK’s) for your business?

Every day, millions of consumers use Google to find a solution to their problems.  Google knows exactly what we’re searching for and magnanimously (?!) shares that information with us in the form of the Google Keyword Selection Tool.

Use it well and this resource will help you discover what words and phrases people are using in the search engines to find your products or services, how much competition there is for those phrases and even how much it is likely to cost to advertise.

Let’s say you have a landscape gardening business.

Google helps us find out which words and phrases people are searching with to find garden designers.

Fire up the tool by clicking here:  https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Enter all the possible words and phrases that you think someone with a weed ridden garden might search for.  Some examples could include:

• Garden design
• Gardener
• Gardener surrey
• Landscape gardener
• Landscape gardener surrey
• Garden design surrey

Etc etc.  Include variations of the phrases, geographic locations if you want a local business and plurals.  When you’ve exhausted every possible variation you can think of, enter them into the Word or phrase box, with one on each line.

Type in the characters you see in the captcha code box (this ‘weeds’ out the spammers) and hit search.

Now before you get too excited, stop and click on the box which says Exact Match on the left hand side, this puts all your words into [brackets] and only shows you the results for people searching on those exact phrases.

Next sort your results by clicking on the ‘Local Monthly Searches’ column.  This will show the keywords and phrases with the highest number of searches in your area first (edit your location using the ‘Locations’ link further up the page if it is not showing your country.)

The bar chart shows that the competition for all these phrases is fairly high (hover your mouse over the competition bar).

If you want to find out how much it would cost to advertise your garden design business on Google, then sign in to your Google account before starting your research and a new column with average cost per click charges will appear.

By narrowing your search down geographically ie Garden Design Surrey, your numbers reduce dramatically but the relevance of that search for you increases too, especially if your business is going to be specific to a certain area as Garden Design would be.

Remember that small, local businesses do not need huge numbers searching for them on Google, a few can keep you very busy indeed, but the larger the search numbers and lower the competition the easier it will be to gain traction and visibility in that market.

You also need to think about the commercial value of each phrase.  You might be excited to see in the suggestions that Google helpfully provides below (which will help you expand your research and comes up with ideas you might not have thought of) that the word ‘Garden’ has 33,000 people searching for it in the UK each month with only medium levels of competition!  But is this word being typed in by people who need someone to design their outside space?  Unlikely!  This kind of term is too vague to target, we want phrases that indicate that someone is looking for something to buy and is ready to make a booking or place an order.

Of course the numbers that Google gives us need to be taken as indicators of need rather than a hard and fast calculation of the number of customers we are likely to get.  There are many more factors at play here; once you’ve found your niche you need your site to appear on page 1 of the search results (no mean feat!), your description needs to entice someone to click on your listing and then your site needs to convert that browser into a buyer.

But once you know the main keyword or phrase that most of your potential customers use to find products and services like yours then you can focus your site content on those specifically and start working your way up the rankings to page one.

Once you’re on page one, your business listing will be seen by your hottest prospects exactly when they are looking for a solution to a problem that you can provide, and better yet, when they click on your listing it will cost you nothing!  Well worth the effort involved in getting there.

Your Marketing Goal for the week

Research the exact keywords or phrases that most people are using to find your product of service using the Google Keyword Selection Tool.

Choose a maximum of three which have the most searches and lowest competition – these are your Most Wanted Key Phrases.

Now write them down on a sticky note or blu tack them to the wall.

Goal Complete.

From now on, whenever you write new content for your website, blog, social media accounts, articles, PR and advertising, include these phrases naturally in your writing.  Over time Google will come to find that your content is entirely relevant to that word or phrase and subject to a few other factors will start to feature links to it whenever someone types them into the Google search box.

Tip:  Don’t overuse your keywords in your writing, always remember you’re writing for humans not just search engines!

NB: If you’ve already done this,  it might be time to do it again!  People’s search queries change over time and depending on seasonality and trends.  Top up keyword research  is worth doing every 2-3 months.

Next Week:

How To Help Google Find You – Part 2

I’ll be talking about the second most important thing you HAVE to do if you want to appear on page 1 of Google for your Most Wanted Key Phrases.