Author Archives: dynamicwebs

Get a Website Quote

Posted on by Posted in How Tos, Uncategorized, What NOT to do

When it is time to get a new website or refresh your existing site, your starting place is the quote. Ideally you would ask for 3 quotes and be able to compare apples for apples… hosting, domain name and development costs all itemised.

Before enquiring however, it pays to sit down and think through how your website needs to change or what content you need on a new site.

Giving the addresses of sites you like is a great way to communicate the kind of look and functions you require and can be a big time saver.

Here are some important questions my might consider asking a prospective supplier during the quotation process:

  • Will I be able to edit my own website? In other words, will there be a content management system (CMS) for my site. If there isn’t then that commits you to returning to your web design for future edits which they will invoice for. I would also be good to know if training or orientation is provided in the CMS. If not, there may be a very step learning curve.
    My company uses the open source WordPress CMS to make new websites. We offer training by screen share in Skype and have http://www.how-to-wordpress.info as an additional resource.
  • What are the backup arrangements for my website? Most hosts say the have a nightly back up in place, but if you press them for this, they will not be able to produce it. This is especially important for database driven website (most web sites now) as they are not stored and edited locally, but are always live on the server. Its best to get a back up facility built into your website at the time it is made. My company makes two back ups a week and sends them to Dropbox so they can be shard quickly with the owner of the site.
  • Who has copyright over my website? This is an important question and one that is seldom addressed during the pre-purchase phase. And its a vexed question as there are three parties involve: you, the web designer and normally a software provider like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. You can try to claim copyright over the website in its entirety, but this probably wouldn’t stand up. For example, the engine of your site will be an open-source CMS – well, you can use that software for free, but you don’t own it (you can however download an instance of it at any time should you need the files). Its safest maybe to make it clear that your claim copyright over anything you write and and pictures you supply, but leave it there.
  • Does the price include marketing on Google? This service is called “search engine optimisation” or SEO and is a specialist’s area. Most web design form will outsource this to a partner. so, mostly the answer to this will be “no”, this is because it costs more than a website to set up and it is a distinct and ongoing service, so probably billed separately.
  • Will I be able to move my site to another supplier easily? This is very important, and many services like Wix and Fairfax Media’s offerings can not be moved – they need to be migrating a page at time – cut and paste. This is costly and unnecessary. Conversely, a website in a CMS like WordPress can be moved easily. All the page content can be exported as an XML file, or a SQL database can be imported into a new instance of WordPress, or a CPanel to Cpanel back up can be made. So there are many option PROVIDED you start with a the right software. It would also pay to get clear about termination arrangements – how and how much notice do you need to give if you want to move.
  • Ask the web designer “What do you require from me to make a website?” You need to be clear that building a web site is a collaboration between you and your chosen web design company. If you are organised and clear, the project will go smoothly. If you drip feed content it will drag the time frame out and inputs and directions from you will be mislaid. Typically you will be required to write the text for your site, provide a logo and photography. If you don’t have these on hand and want the web designers to produce these items, then you need to specify that from the outset.
  • How long will it take to make my website? Get the web design firm to say when they can start on your project. You don’t want to find out that they can’t deliver within the next month three months after you paid your deposit! But remember, if you drip feed inputs, you will slow the whole process down, so you have to hold up your end.

I hope this article was a useful primer to someone about to start the process of requesting a quote for a web site.

How much does a web site cost?

Posted on by Posted in How Tos, Uncategorized

The cost of a web site very much depends on…

  1. the website’s function i.e. what it has to do – is it a brochure site, photography site, a blog or e-commerce website? They are all very different.
  2. how much involvement you have in creating materials for the site: the text, photos and logo. We call these “inputs“.
  3. how long it takes you to deliver these inputs if you don’t deliver them all upfront after accepting the Xero quote.

Every web site is different and so are quoted individually. Efforts to make your project fit within predetermined “bronze, silver or gold packages” seldom works for the client or developer.

What is in a website quote?

A website quote can be comprised of the following line items…

  1. domain name registration (usually quoted annually)
  2. website and email hosting (some quotes/offers exclude email, so watch that. e.g. Wix sites)
  3. website development (this is where the rubber meets the road)
  4. photography & copyrighting (when required)
  5. search engine optimisation or SEO (this can be more than all the above put together!)

Also, there is a propensity for the website owner to add more content and functions as the website is being built. This new, unspecified work can be billed for separately.

How to save big bucks on your website

You will need to supply text and pictures for your site

Ideally you would sit down and make a list of all the pages (and products) you want on your web site. You can start authoring your web site’s text. You would gather all the photography you want on the site in Dropbox so you can just send a link to the images.

If you want an e-commerce website, collecting product data in a single spreadsheet that can be imported into the web site is going to be a big time saver, and therefore money saver. Ask you web developer for a “comma separate values” or CSV file that you can do data entry in. If you do this you will save hundreds and even thousands.

The Dream Client

While you gather quotes and find the best fit for the company to make your website, you can be the ideal “dream client” by:

  • having a clear brief – being able to say plainly what you want
  • writing compelling text for your site and having this ready before your web designer starts
  • have great photography on hand, supplied in Dropbox
  • giving the addresses of web sites you like as examples of what you have in mind
  • if some does not go as you expected, communicate that calmly taking an inquisitive approach and not a blaming or aggressive approach

Read the T & Cs

It pays to note the terms and conditions on your quote carefully. It will specify payment terms, who owns what and what will happen in the event of a failure. Read more about getting a quote here.

Mobile Friendly Design

Posted on by Posted in Uncategorized

You may have heard the term “mobile friendly” and like so many IT buzz words, be a little unclear on what it means exactly.

Mobile friendly design or tablet friendly design is web design that resizes or re-fortmats in real time depending on the display size or type. By “real time” I mean no screen refresh – the browser does not go back to the web server for new files or a different, cut-down version of your site. That was the design communities first attempt at making mobile friendly design. We have moved on.

“Responsive” design or mobile friendly design is preferenced by Google

So, for example, a mobile friendly design will shrink and expand depending on whether the site is loaded on a very large desktop screen, a smaller laptop screen and then a tablet and mobile phone.

The mobile friendly aspect of the site is controlled by computer code called CSS, or cascading style sheet. The style sheet will reformat the site depending on the available screen space, but it also makes other changes like: collapsing the the navigation into a tumbler, then the navigation flies out, normally to the left, so the user can see all the navigation items.

Typically to, items like banners are either made smaller or dispensed with completely. Sidebar content become stacked in two or one column. Mobile friendly web sites reduce the need for two-fingered zooming and pinching which is almost always mandatory on a non-mobile friendly site being viewed on a smart phone.

Mobile friendly websites came about to accommodate smaller screen sizes and particularly are aimed at overcoming an important usability issue for phones – the pointing device is your finger, and compared to a mouse pointer, it is very low resolution – literally a blunt tool.

Its worth noting that some mobile friendly design looks sparse on a desktop. Mobile friendly design sometimes creates more white space on larger screens. Some people prefer this, but its not what every one likes.

Handling navigation differently is important for smaller devices. You will certainly have had the experience of using a non-mobile friendly site… trying to activate a link with the finger touch and getting the link next door or underneath. This is a classic usability issue with non mobile friendly sites.

Google has a mobile friendly testing tool at https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly. There are other useful tools to see how different mobile phones display your site such as http://www.mobilephoneemulator.com.

The consequences for not having a mobile friendly website are mild at the time of writing, but likely to be much more important in the future. Most websites I manage have a mobile and tablet viewership of about 7-15%. The rest are laptop or desktop visitors using a larger screen and mouse. So that means up to 15% of visitor may struggle to navigate your website and the breadth of its content may be difficult for them to access.

However, it should be noted, that many site visits are just to get a phone number, location map or send an email, and many of these functions can be put up front on a site without the need to click away from the homepage.

Also, Google presently preferences mobile friendly websites on its mobile search platform, NOT all it search platforms, and typically that preference will likely only be a position or two higher on the search results pages compared to the desktop search.

In summary, if you are having a website made or design refreshed, you may as well build mobile friendly design into it. Although not critical, it will increase the number of people able to access your content and make it easier for them to interact with your site.

What is “Social Networking” anyway?

Posted on by Posted in How Tos

social-networkingWe hear this term frequently in the media, but what does it actually mean and refer to? Social networking is an umbrella term used to describe sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Neighbourly and Twitter. Social networking is a term used to denote the trend toward people connecting and interacting online.

Much is now being written on how these sites and trends can be used to promote commercial interests on the web, focusing mostly on engaging customers and interacting with them in new ways.

For example many website owners have been advised to start a Facebook page, yet few of them get more than a handful “likes” and “friends” and the page becomes a negative advertisement, damned with faint praise.

For this strategy to work, the business owner (or their agents, in the case of Donald Trump, Richard Branson or Anthony Robbins) has to be constantly “posting” and gathering “friends”. This creates an overhead for a small business, and often the small business owner spends hours posting and promoting too a very small number of “friends” or “followers”… where their time could be spent in other areas of their business, making a real difference.

Also, as they don’t own their page on Facebook, or anything they post there, they are playing someone else’s game and not their own. The small business owner mistakes Facebook for a website substitute. It simply doesn’t do what their own website could, it can be a useful adjunct, but it is certainly not the main game.

Which site should I use for What?

Also people are confused about what social networking site does what, so here is the skinny…

Facebook: used for connecting with friends and family for mostly personal reasons… sharing life events, thoughts and feelings, posting photos and inviting people to functions. Companies can create a page on Facebook as discussed above.

Twitter: the so-called “micro blogging” site used by an author to expound and digress on a topic of interest… but only in 256 characters (about the length of an SMS message). People “follow” the author and can interact with them. Ideal for experts wanting to engage a niche audience.

LinkedIn: used by mostly white collar workers to network. The site provides work history, qualifications, referrals and recommendations. Recently blogging was added to the site and job ads are posted there.

Neighbourly: designed to connect neighbours and build community.

So to summarise, Facebook is to connect to friends and family, Twitter to engage a niche audience, LinkedIn to build a professional network and Neighbourly to connect to those in your immediate geography – in other words, they all do something quite different to each other and its best to use the right tool for the right job eg. posting a Facebook styled post on LinkedIn would make the author look foolish.

Privacy and Copyright

But it is not all good. There have been concerns about privacy and the ownership of images and materials uploaded to these sites. Facebook particularly coming in for close criticism as it claims copyright on all pictures and comments added in an individuals feed. The bottom line is common sense (as it is in the offline world)… if you do not want some corporation to claim copyright on your photo, don’t upload it. Don’t make anyone a “friend” who simply isn’t.

Also, people are still learning how to use these sites, so sometimes they are unaware of what they are sharing with whom. For example, if they upload a picture of a group of people to Facebook, people who are friends with the person posting can “tag” the people in the picture ie. interact with the picture. When they do that, all of the people who are “friends” of the tagged person pictured, get a notification, alerting many more people to the picture than the original poster could have anticipated.

Summary

One thing is certain, we are going to be doing more social networking as people’s physical location becomes less relevant and work practices more flexible. Wikipedia’s outline on social networking is here >>

Promote Your URL

Posted on by Posted in Offline Marketing

As a web designer it is pretty disheartening when you make a web site, submit it to search engines, create directory pages for it, post about it on social networking, request links to it from other relevant web sites … and then this happens:

  • The web site owner runs a TV or radio ad …and excludes the web address
  • The web site owner takes out a number of classified newspaper or magazine ads… and excludes the web address
  • The web site owner has a panel van, large 4WD or location sign …and neglects to put their web address on it somewhere

Sounds like common sense? One would think. If I only had a dollar for every lost opportunity. My point is: don’t neglect an opportunity to market your web site in the real or offline world.

Here are some extra marketing ideas

  • Premium items or “plush” – have you considered using give-aways such as caps, pens, business cards and letterhead to display your web address?
  • Email marketing – have you got a collection of business cards? If so, you have permission to email those people. Create a Mailchimp.com list and email offers and updates monthly.
  • QR codes – create a a QR code, print it on stickers and add these to any packaging or containers.

Summary:
There are plenty of offline opportunities to market your web address. Try as much as possible to integrate your online and offline marketing.

Getting the most from your Auckland Web Designer

Posted on by Posted in How Tos, Uncategorized

When people call to discuss a web site, one of their concerns is design. Sometimes people have firm ideas about a design approach and sometimes they prefer to be lead. Resoundingly though, people ask for “clean”, “plain” design often on a simple white background. They complain about “clutter” and say it hard to get to the basic information on a web site or that its hard to navigate on a phone or tablet. Here are some design issues to consider…

Does your web design work on all platforms – desktop, mobile and tablet?

This is called “responsive design” and it simply means that the web site reformats to suit the device it is being displayed on. It does this without going back to the server to get a duplicate, mobile version of the site.  Google will make your site come up higher on the mobile search results pages if your site is responsive. There is a test here provided by Google so you can see if your site is mobile search friendly.

Does your web design respect your band or undermine it?

You may have invested thousands in your brand on signage, car wraps and business livery. The last thing your Auckland web designer should do is alter or vary your brand in some way. Your online and offline marketing should build on each other, and not fight each other.

Is there too much going on, on your homepage?

Clutter. Its a problem. Visitors load your homepage but don’t know where to look. Most news websites suffer from this problem. If you have a lot to offer and you want your homepage to reveal all your services and products, you run the risk of confusing people. Your homepage web design should focus your visitors on your high value products where most of your money is made. Try not to distract people with banners and widgets the flick on and off.

Does your Auckland web design have a clear call to action?

Have you ever had to search through a web site for a phone number? Its annoying and frustrating. Make sure your web design features your call to action prominently e.g “call this number” or “complete this form/survey”. In short, does your web site make it clear what you want people to do and when. Spell it out.

“I don’t want any text on my homepage!”

From a design point of view, having a homepage comprised of graphics alone sometimes appeals to a web site owner, but avoid this at all costs as doing so will make your site less attractive to Google. Also, text loads faster than graphics and normally says more. In this instance your are choosing between form and function: graphic intensive design (form) versus search engine visibility (function).

Photography will make or break your web design

The difference a professional Photographer can make

The difference a professional Photographer can make: the inset was supplied by the web site owner, who subsequently had a Photographer retake all the images.

Rubbish in, rubbish out: if you provide bleary, vertical mobile phone pictures to your Auckland web designer, you can’t expect them to return a top shelf, classy web site. Photography is the difference between a web site that is unmemorable and one that really pops.

In summary, in terms of web design, less is more. Web site owners prefer “clean”, “plain” and uncluttered web designs that load quickly on all platforms. Click through your competitor’s web sites, how does theirs compare to yours?

PPC: Think Before You Pay

Posted on by Posted in Optimisation, Search Engines
search engine optimisation auckland

SEO – incremental growth in traffic and enquiries

Are you considering using Pay Per Click (or PPC) advertising to grow your online sales? While PPC advertising channels like Google’s Adwords or Facebook Adverts has the benefits of immediate traffic and can cope with seasonal events, it is also very expensive and complicated to run.

Adwords and SEO (search engine optimisation) are competing and complimentary online marketing strategies. In Adwords you bid for position on the search results pages against your competitors. The budget required is generally well over $1,000 per month and few small businesses can afford it.

SEO works to bring your web site up higher and higher on the organic or unpaid results on the search results pages and a monthly budget of $300- $500 is required of a 6 month period. Ideally SEO would be ongoing.

Five Reasons to Think before you Pay of Adwords

  1. Adwords is really expensive
    Especially since April this year when Google changed the page layout of its search results pages to remove the right hand column of ads, thereby reducing the number of ads displayed per page load and making those remaining more expensive to bid for.
  2. No audit of click fraud
    What say your competitor saw your ad and clicked on it? Who pays for that? Google says they have a way to monitor and mitigate click fraud, but honesty, how can they? They wont disclose how they do this, so we cant test their claim. It would not take too much effort to make clicks on Adwords ad appear to be authentic.
  3. No investment in your site
    While you are distracted monitoring daily bids and monthly budgets in Adwords, you are missing the biggest opportunity: your website. You could be investing time in new content, on-page optimisation, new inbound links and myriad of other strategies to funnel traffic to your site… for free.
  4. People tend to ignore sponsored ads
    A recent survey revealed that 82-percent of people claim to ignore sponsored listings when searching via Google. Think about it; do you tune out advertising when you search on Google or post a status update on Facebook? When you are truly task focused, you never look at ads. One web marketing company recently said:  Overall, the study finds that online ads are ignored by the largest share of respondents (82%)  …the survey indicates that banner ads are ignored by the largest share of respondents overall (73%), followed by social media ads (62%) and search engine ads (59%). In each case the propensity to ignore ads rises alongside age – by a significant degree. (source)
  5. People are skeptical of advertising
    People have become skeptical of advertising, including PPC. Marketing efforts are looked upon negatively because, people know that you are trying to sell them something. And people don’t like to be sold or having advertisement constantly presented when they are trying to surf the web, pay a bill or browse status updates on their favorite social networks.

Summary: Adwords and PPC advertising are becoming more and more expensive and is out of reach of smaller companies. SEO activities, like building content, building inbound links and directory listings persist far beyond the month they were created in… and cost half the price. Adwords is renting the house: SEO is buying the house.

 

Select the Best Keywords for Your Web Site

Posted on by Posted in Keywords, Optimisation, Search Engines

Find below Dynamic Web Solution’s easy three step program to select killer keywords for your website.

1. How to Find the Best Keywords or Search Terms

Firstly, find out what your competitors think are good keywords for your industry class or product type. They may be completely wrong, but it is worth checking and it only takes a few moments. Here’s how…

  1. Go to three of your closest competitor’s websites
  2. On the homepage go View > Source
  3. Look for two lines of code at the top of the page that look like <meta name=”description”… and <meta name=”keywords”…
  4. Make a short list of search terms you think are worthwhile

Now, go and test your short list of these keywords on Google Keyword Planning Tool. You will need a Google account to log in. Select the country on the right that is relevant to your website, then supply a single phrase that you want your website to come up under.

For the keyword “real estate”, see how “house for sale” is also searched on thousands of times per month. Who would have guessed?

Recap: looking at your competitor’s web sites and using a keyword planning tool has a single purpose: to get real about what people are actually searching on. NOT what you think they are searching on, but what they are actually searching on. It is a litmus test. You are looking for synonyms to your search phrases.

Tip: the keywords you choose are not in fact words, but phrases. There are too many web pages that conform to a single word so people search using phrases.

 2. How do I Add my Killer Keywords to My Web Site?

Much has been written on this topic, so what follows are broad principles and not specific instructions.

So, you have your shortlist of keyword phrases and you now need to work them into your website – in such a way as to make it 100% clear to search engines what your site is all about.

But not all places on a webpage are equal as the following list explains.

  1. The <title> tag is glowing white hot. If you only do one thing, make sure each page of your web site has keywords in the title tag specific to that page. Many webpages are listed as “Untitled” in search engine results. These sites are missing the single biggest opportunity they have to present keywords phrases.
  2. The first link on your homepage is also burning hot for search engines. Try to include at least one keyword in it.
  3. The first main heading on your page (H1 or H2 tags) is burning hot. Tell those search engines what the page is about.
  4. The first para on the page is the one that introduces the subject of the page. It is cooler, but still very important. Add your keywords to it.
  5. Likewise, the closing para sums up the page. Put your keywords in it.

Any body familiar with direct mail marketing (now a thing of the past) will see some parallels between the above hierarchies and writing sales letters.

Recap: What does all this mean? It means that there are some parts of your page that are scrutinised more closely than others. Use this logic to present your keywords to search engines.

Tip:you are looking for 5% (not more) keyword density on your chosen phrase(s). Use www.seocentro.com/tools/seo/keyword-density.html to calculate your keyword density in relation to your competitor’s sites.
Tip 2: make sure your page is comprised of valid hypertext mark up. Go to http://validator.w3.org to make sure.
Tips 3:if your site is made with frames or Flash, get a web designer to rewrite it with tables or divs and css. Frames and Flash are old and out moded.

3. Evaluation: well, did it work?

To evaluate the success of the work above you need a ranking report. A ranking report takes your web address and chosen keyword phrase(s) and looks for your position or “ranking” on search engines.

There are free tools that do this like www.serps.com/tools/rank_checker but they tend to be blunt and not very helpful. If Dynamic Web Solutions made your web site, it is likely that we are submitting it to search engines and can give you a free emailed report of your search engine ranking on the leading search engines.

Summary:

  1. Compile a short list of keyword phrases you are going to target after researching competitor’s sites and using reverse look up tools like Goolge’s Keyword Planner
  2. Work these keyword phrases into strategic parts of your web pages
  3. Review with ranking reports at 12 week intervals. Google Analytics will provide traffic and visitor stats that will show you what your gains are.

If you have done the above, you will be clear what your objective is and you will have a subjective means of evaluating your progress.

This article was written by Peter Mitchell of Dynamic Web Solutions Pty Ltd

Building Quality Backlinks

Posted on by Posted in How Tos, Optimisation, Uncategorized

To do well on Google.co.nz you will have to get inbound links from quality web sites. By quality I mean sites with high Google Page Rank™ (you can check a site’s PR here).

These links are often referred to as “backlinks“. You will need 150+ backlinks coming into your site to get any traction on Google’s search results pages or “SERPs”. This is obviously a major undertaking and this article discusses how to approach inbound links.

You can start at Open Link Profiler. Enter your web address in the search box and this site will give you a report on who links to your site. You may be surprised who is linking to you, and you may even want to request some sites remove links to your site. Most people find they have very few links, and this is a situation you need to reverse.

The Open Link Profiler tool will list off who is linking to you, but more importantly if you search on your competitor’s pages, it will list off their links. This is valuable information as the list will contain websites and pages with high PageRank™ that you may not be aware of. These links may be free and with a little communication, you can get a quality backlinks to your site.

So, you know who is already linking to you, and you have a list of quality sites that don’t link to you but that do link to your competitors, its time to hit the phone or email and request these missing, high PageRank links.

Note that Dynamic Web Solutions can report on backlinks for you and contrast your site with one or two others in a table report. This makes it very easy to spot which links you could be going after.

What about outbound links?

Similarly, you can improve your reputation with Google by linking to quality sites – sites with high PageRank. This demonstrates that you are a good Internet citizen and are focused on your customers, not just your own interests.

Backlinks Q&A

Should I touch zero PR sites? Only if you have no links. Best left alone otherwise.

Should I pay for links? Can the site requesting payment prove that they can direct traffic to you, and not just any traffic but people ready to buy? Is their price per click lower than Google Adwords?

Timeframe. Ideally you would do linking work slowly and consistently over some months as getting too many links to fast indicates to Google an optimiser is at work. If you don’t have the time or inclination to do this work, please contact Dynamic Web Solutions as we are doing linking work all the time.

Other

Use the search box to see backlinks

Using advanced search options, you can search for websites which have linked to your website at all the major search engines.  Type the italicized, red text into the search engine, and it will give you a list of all the sites it has found that link to your site.  Of course, you have to replace www.domainname.com with your domain name!

  • Go to Google and search for link:www.domainname.com Remember, Google syndicates its search results, so there is no need to search for links to your site on any of the sites which use Google results (AOL, Netscape, Disney’s Go.com, Alexa, and iWon).
  • Go to MSN and search for link:www.domainname.com
  • Go to Yahoo! and search for link:http://www.domainname.com

Turn Google’s PageRank tool on and off in Chrome

On the right side of the Toolbar, click the wrench icon
Go to the Privacy tab > Enhanced features.
To turn on PageRank, check the box next to “PageRank” . To turn it off, uncheck it.
Click Save.

I Have Made My Website, What Is Next?

Posted on by Posted in How Tos, Optimisation, Search Engines

What's next?During the construction of your website we have been focusing on design, layout and technical issues and not focusing on marketing the site. It won’t take you long to realise that web marketing is as bigger job, if not bigger, than actually making a website.  It is also an area in which a lot of money is changing hands at present, and probably this trend will continue into the future. So what is next?

1. Links, Links, Links

You need to immediately find inbound links to your site. The first place to start is with directory websites such as Localist, Yellow Pages or Finda. Make sure you have a pin and a listing on Google Maps – which is very important for mobile searches. Do not delay in this task.

Getting inbound links from other websites greatly advantages you in two ways:

  1. firstly you start getting traffic from the link as soon as it is live
  2. secondly Google will have more conduits into your site and therefore will find your site easily and index it more quickly.

More importantly though is that each inbound link into your website will be viewed as a vote of confidence by Google and the other major search engines. The more votes of confidence that Google collects on your site the higher it will move you up the search results pages.

It’s worth mentioning two Google resources at this point: the Google tool bar and the Google website for Webmasters. The Google Toolbar has an important tool on it that measures the current page’s PageRank™. PageRank™ it is a patented Google technology that ranks pages according to Google’s own special algorithm. The Toolbar will show you the rank of any page from one to 10, 10 being the best.

Even large websites that have good traffic find it difficult to get a high page rank. If your site has a page rank of five, that would be very good. The Google website for Webmasters is an interesting place to find out what Google recommends in terms of linking and optimisation. It’s a good place to start and offers an excellent orientation to the world of search.

2. On Page Optimisation

You should be careful not to remove critical keywords or keyword phrases from your website. Your homepage in particular should repeat your most important keywords a number of times. The WordPress content management system has special, page by page title, description and keywords fields for you to complete. You will find these fields underneath the WYSIWYG editor. The three that start with “Meta” are the ones to focus on.  Meta means “information about information”. These three fields gives you the opportunity to feed information to search engines directly.

But on-page optimisation is about a lot more than just meta tags. In fact everything on a page: its headings, the amount of text, the frequency and density of keywords, how the HTML is structured… all count towards its PageRank™.  Ideally, each page on your site would be optimised for a different search phrase. You will need expert help with this, see the “SEO” link above.

3. Build E-mail Lists

E-mail marketing is cheap and fast. You will need to study up on issues of compliance regarding the Spam act, but if you can satisfy these requirements, e-mail can add real dollars to your bottom line. There is no need to hesitate, you can simply start collecting e-mail addresses and sorting them into groups immediately in your desktop mail client.

Once you get over a couple of hundred e-mail addresses you will need a more robust e-mail marketing solution (than sending e-mail from your desktop) as most ISPs choke large volumes of outbound e-mail.  This will include a third-party websites such as mailchimp.com who will report on bounced mail and report on who clicked what links in your outbound email. Mailchimp has HTML templates that allow you to dress your email up, but note that a plain text email will pass through spam filters more easily than its HTML counterpart. This is because spam filters look for hypertext links and images in email and can falsely categorise you HTML email as spam.

Mailchimp also has mobile apps so you can monitor “campaigns” (outbound messages) and see stats on your lists and sent mail. You can also use these apps to harvest email at your POS or tradeshow stall, say in conjunction with the chance to win some product or service. More on email marketing here.

4. Accelerate with Google Ads

You may wish to consider a Google Adwords campaign – although Adwords have become quiet pricey as more and more people compete for the same keywords. You probably need to allow a budget of $500 -$1,000 per month as a starting point.

It is going to take some time to get the search engine position that you want – more than 3 months and probably more than 9 months. If you are not working on linking as described above then your website will never really perform very well on search engines. If you need immediate traffic to your site from Google then you may consider running a Google ad campaign for the first 3 to 6 months after your website goes live. Here is more discussion on paying for ads on Google’s Adwords platform.

5. Social Networking

There is still a lot to understand about social networking and how it can be used to market websites. Be wary of hyperbolic statistics that do not relate to NZ and Australia as social networking sites are used much more in the US and UK.

Also, social networking does not apply to every type of business e.g. pubs and clubs do well with Facebook when promoting a visiting band. A manufacturer will not do well; they will collect 12 “likes” and 2 “friends” and their Facebook page will float out there as negative advertising.

Although there are some spectacular examples of social networking creating massive traffic to a website, in most cases there is an enormous amount of time invested in building an audience before networking would produce any money. Many businesses for example have a Facebook page and use it to interact with their customers but converting this  interaction into sales is tricky and can even contravene the user policies of the social networking site. So while it might be good to start to understand more about Facebook and Twitter there is a lot more water to go under the bridge before they become everyday marketing tools.