Learn Website Marketing & Promotion

Getting your website ready for Xmas

Its that time again, the Summer is almost over and we're starting to think about Christmas!!!
Am I mad....its only August!!!

Not mad at all - August and September are the months to start preparing and writing your Xmas content so you have plenty of time build links and time for Google to find your new pages and hopefully rank them at no. 1! Now is the time.

Here's a quick check list of the main things to work on:

• Look at your title tags and make sure they read wonderfully well and contain key phrases.
• Check H1 tags are all in order and contain key words and phrases.
• Create individual Xmas content for your products or services.
• Start building links with Xmas products and sales in mind.
• Stock pile your press releases so you can just bang them out.
• Search out blogs that can do reviews for your products.
• If you sell online look again at your shopping cart process and streamline it as much as possible.
• If you use a major credit card processor look at adding PayPal & Google Checkout to give customers more options to pay.

Do you need some help? We're starting to take bookings for our Xmas SEO and marketing training sessions which we run during August and September. We'll help you get your website ready for the Xmas rush and give you a full report on what we think could be changed. Read all about the training here.

Do you have a problem website? Common Web Design Mistakes

Its no good having a fantastic marketing idea or advertising campaign when your website doesn’t convert your traffic. Having a website doesn’t always mean sales and its really easy to make mistakes that will effect your conversion rates and search engine rankings.

How do you spot problems on your website?
Analysing each page carefully is the only real way to check your website for problems. There’s software available to analyse your website but they tend to stick to strict rules and they can’t look at site layout which is important to converting traffic.

What problems to look for?
Here’s a list of the most common problems I’ve found when evaluating and reviewing websites:

• Title Tags not descriptive Enough – The HTML title tag of your website is really important. It can be the phrase that the search engines use to display your website in their results so make sure you get it right. Use key phrases from your page, don’t make it too long and make sure it reads as a sentence.
• No ALT Tags in images – Its really important to make sure all of your images have proper descriptive Alternative Text (ALT) tags. You can use key phases to describe your images. Remember that screen readers for the partially sighted use ALT tags to describe an image.
• JavaScript or Flash navigation – Your users and the search engines need to be sure about your website navigation so stay away from JavaScript and Flash navigation menus. Search engines don’t follow the links in flash or JavaScript very easily and a lot of mobile devices don’t support them so play it safe and use a text based navigation menu.
• Browser incompatibility – Does your website look different in Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3, Safari, Internet Explorer 7. Make sure you check compatibility issues and fix them quickly.
• No Contact Information – Believe it or not there’s a lot of websites out there that don’t have phone numbers, postal and email addresses.
• Lengthy Shopping Carts – This can really effect your sales and conversion rates. Make sure your buying process is quick, sleek and easy to use. Make sure checkout buttons are obvious and keep your look in tune with all other shopping sites out there – conform – don’t try to do anything different with your cart!
• Not enough text – Make sure you have plenty of text on your website. I recommend at least 300 – 400 words per page to get the search engines really interested. Make sure you write fluently for your visitors whilst keeping in mind the search engines want to see some good key phrases so they know what your page is about. Well written content will naturally be great for your visitors and the search engines.

How to fix your problems?
The first step would be to contact your website designer. Work out a plan, take some advice and ask your designer to make the changes – It will be worth it.

If you designed the website yourself then search the net for ways to fix your problem areas. For anything HTML related look at W3C for tutorials and best practise code. Check browser compatibility using some online tools. Look at your successful competition and see what they are doing, and then do better!

If you don’t have the time to review your site then you can get an full evaluation done from an expert. I run a service that looks at compatibility, usability and how friendly your site is for the search engines. You can have an extensive review of your website with suggestions on how to fix any problems.

Take a look at the website report service we offer.

What does your email address say about you?

I was talking to a recruiter over the weekend and she was telling me how she gets applicants to change their email address before sending out C.V's, sexypinkchickxxx@hotmail.com doesn't really ooze professionalism. The same goes for your marketing.

Using a free email service is ok but be careful what your email address says. Try and stay professional and not use nick names or pets names, be boring and have something like press@ or your.name@. It really is better than tomgetswasted@ !

Even better, use a proper email address from a domain. If you have a website, get email set up using the same domain, it doesn't cost much and makes a huge difference.

If your looking for email on a budget the likes of Microsoft and Google offer you the chance to use their Hotmail and Gmail service with your own domain name for free.

Your email address is one of the first things someone may see when you email a press release or contact them about a promotion so make sure you make a great first impression.

I know its boring, but content is king.

No matter which way you look at it content is king. I've been spending some time working on an e commerce site in the fashion industry and when looking at the stats they had a huge amount of hits coming from their resource and blog pages. These are the pages where site owners can let rip, go into detail and talk to their visitors.

For example, the site has a number of size conversion pages which go into quite a bit of detail and get inbound links from the BBC, industry press and manufacturers. The problem was that these pages were not trying to sell! What we've done to solve the problem is link all the conversion sizes to the size search feature in the site and insert a few call to action ads to try to get some sales from these great traffic pulling pages.

Talking to your visitors
You don't always get the opportunity to talk to your visitors much with a shopping site. Experts tell you too much text is confusing and people don't read it but then the search engines want well written, descriptive text that explains what the product is and how to use it. This is where a company blog or resource pages can really help. Put all your boring textual content, lengthy descriptions and how to's on your blog or resource pages. Don't try to do it all on the product page, but don't forget to link your blog through to your products or slap a buy now button on your blog.

When you write content for your product pages make sure you are to the point, offer very descriptive text and use lots of key phrases that are related to the product...but don't waffle!

The only way to get the backlinks you really want and the traffic you need is to write good quality content for your website or blog.

My favourite saying at training sessions and seminars is "Become an expert", so go forth and become one and reap the benefits!

Schedule your marketing

So you've got newsletters to send out, press releases to write, Twitter and Facebook to update, blog entries to write.......Oh, and you have to run your business too. How on earth do you fit it all in?

There's a lot of things that can chew up your time and working out your priorities is important if you want to turn all this wonderful marketing into sales and money.

Create yourself a schedule and decide what needs to be done daily, weekly and monthly.

• Work out what marketing techniques actually work for you and do these often.
• Set aside time to Tweet and update Facebook or use your mobile phone when on the move.
• Connect Twitter, Facebook and your blog together automatically. Use Twitter Feed to pass your blog posts to Twitter. Use the RSS feature of Facebook to get blog posts onto your wall.
• Be regular and consistent with your blog posts and use your platforms scheduling system to post into the future. This way you can still post during busy times.

Try to work your marketing jobs into your daily and weekly routine, this way you'll hardly notice the extra work.

Be consistent and don't give up and stick to your schedule, don't get fed up if ideas don't work. Your first press release may get you nowhere but your second may get you into a Sunday paper. Your first blog post may not get read but your second could bring in some great traffic.

Use a dry wipe or chalk board to write down your marketing ideas and schedule, this is a great way to help build the work into your routine.

Web Safe Fonts

You never know what kind of computer your marketing blurb or website is going to be displayed on so make sure you use standard web safe fonts. The machine may be years old, a Mac, a mobile device and you don't want all your hard work to display in the default font.

You can make a good looking piece of work If you use any of the following fonts and change sizes, bold weight, use multiple fonts on one page.

Arial
Verdana
Geneva
Helvetica
Georgia
Times New Roman
Times
Courier New
Courier

All these fonts should work fine on all machines.

Flyer for seminar on 20th July

I've just finished the flyer for the seminar on 20th July. It covers the main topics of the day and has pricing and contact information.

Feel free to pass it around.

Download An Introduction to Website Marketing and Promotion

5 ways to get email addresses for your newsletter

Its a common question and to be honest its one that's quite easy to answer!

As a business you come into contact with people all day long, they buy things from you, enquire about your prices and services and fill in your forms. These are all excellent opportunities to ask for their email address. Remember that in the UK you have to ask to send email and also provide an easy way for people to unsubscribe from your list.

Here's 5 great ways to generate more email addresses for your newsletter:

• Have a tick box on the contact form of your website.
• Create a page on your website to sell your newsletter and get more subscribers.
• Every now and then mention your newsletter on Facebook & Twitter, point them to a sign up page.
• If you use paper order forms or anything that a customer has to fill in, have a spot for your customers to write down their email address.
• Run a competition where your visitors sign up to your newsletter to be entered into a prize draw.

Go forth and collect and remember to offer good content in your newsletter, this way it may get forwarded and shared around.

Post a comment if you have other great ideas.

Flyer for seminar on 22nd June

I've just finished the flyer for the seminar on 22nd June. It covers the main topics of the day and has pricing and contact information.

Feel free to pass it around.

Download An Introduction to Website Marketing and Promotion

Magnetic car signs

I spent some time on the phone this afternoon with a guy who runs a Gym. Half way through the conversation he said "Magnetic car signs!". Today he's got 3 new customers from the signs he sticks on the back of his car.

Its worth doing, I've generated business myself from stick on signs which are cheap to buy and don't damage the paintwork - make sure you get decent quality as one of mine is somewhere down the A5!

Make sure the text on your sign is to the point, says what you do, and offers a call to action with your phone number and website in sensible sized text so you don't get tailgated by someone armed with a notepad and pen.