Good day folks! It's time to start talking about marketing your website. Let's assume you've gotten a site up or have had one up and are ready to start the long process of pointing traffic to it.
Yes, I said long process. If you are anything like me, I am ready to start seeing those traffic numbers rise the minute I hit the "post" button. Unfortunately it doesn't usually happen that way. The process of getting the word out that your here and open for business isn't as simple as putting up an open sign. You have to really work to get that traffic looking at your site. Trust me, as familiar as I am with this process, I am still working on it for this blog.
But everyday I do something else to put it on the map, so to speak. Whether it's submitting it to a search engine or a reputable directory or finding a new inbound link or simply telling someone I am talking to about this very topic, "Hey, check out my blog." Whatever it takes, persistence should be the key.
Most of us don't have all day to sit in front of the computer and find new ways to point traffic to us. But if you commit at least a little time each day, it will pay off.
So, to start, the first thing I would think you would want to be paying attention to is your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Now there are articles after articles written daily on the best SEO practices out there. I am not about to re-write the book on SEO. But it occurs to me on a regular basis that a lot of small business owners aren't even familiar with the basics. So that's what I am going to touch on in this post. The basics. The high points.
Let's start with the Meta Tags.
META TAGS
As previously mentioned in an earlier blog, the meta tags are lines of "code" within your HTML that tell the search engines who you are and what your about. Two of these tags are called your "Keywords" and your "Description." These are important to have in place for your website.
KEYWORDS
If the spiders from the search engines come crawling your site and you don't have any associated keywords then they will have a harder time establishing your relevancy and a harder time indexing your site. The keywords directly relate to what other people type in to a search engine you. That is to say, if you are in bathtub sales then you would want to make sure that you are capturing keywords that are directly related to how people search for bathtubs online. So words like bathtub (obviously), bathroom remodeling - might be good, tub - in case someone doesn't use the term bathtub, bath tub - as two words in case someone spells it that way. Get the idea? Simply putting your company name and address as keywords is assuming that people are going online to find YOU specifically. It's good to have your name in there in case they've seen another form of advertising for you and are actually searching for you but you also what to throw your hat in the ring with those folks who don't know who you are and are online to do the research about which company they want to use.
There are resources to help you determine the best keywords. Google\'s Keyword Tool is a great example of a resource to help you determine new keywords in your related industry.
Once you have the company name and related keywords to your industry, you do not want to forget including the locations that you will service. In other words, if you are a plumber and you only go to certain cities in your area, you would want to list ALL of those areas as keywords. That's what makes you different than every other plumber on the Internet. Also include the states your service. Where I live we are on the border of Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina. So if your company is pulling customers from all of those areas, you would want to include those as keywords as well as their abbreviations. Don't forget, you are looking at the keywords of your site through the eyes of your potential customer. Some people will type out the whole name of the state, others will simply use the abbreviation. So you want to include both in your keywords. You may even go as far as putting in zip codes. Some people will search using those too.
Things you would want to avoid using as keywords are your phone number (I means who's going to type in your phone number into a Google search? But I want to mention it because a local directory service was offering profile pages with keywords and they included those in the keywords) and your physical address (it's just simply unnecessary). Also you have to consider flooded keywords. A good example of this are Real Estate agents. The word "Real Estate" is a completely flooded keyword. Same with "Insurance." If you happen to be in one of those categories, then you would want to try and find niche words also to make you unique and stand out. Including the cities you cover will help but you might also consider words like "ranch style house" or something. Don't think that people won't search that term and coupled with the city your in and you may have no problem appearing favorably in a search result.
DESCRIPTION
This will be short but sweet. I touched on it in my last post. The description is what sums up who you are and what you do. It's also what the people will read below the link to your website in a search engine result.
If you don't have one, the search engines will simply use part of what's on your first page.
In my case, I got a bit anxious and submitted my blog before I had my meta tags in place thinking it was going to take longer than it did for a spider to crawl it. So now, until the spiders crawl it again, it shows the beginning of my introduction blog. Which actually tells very little about what all of my blogs are about. Lesson learned.
You can still have good search engine results without the description meta tag, but you really want it so that you can control what the people first see when they see you in a search engine.
It's what's going describe how your better or different than your competition.
OK, so when I first started writing this post today I thought I was going to touch on all of the high points of beginner's SEO. But the "experts" say that the attention span of the average Internet user is pretty short. Do you guys agree? Well, assuming that everyone else is right, then I will continue the second half of this conversation in my next post. The topic then will be inbound links. A necessary evil to great search engine ranking. I say evil because it takes time, effort, creativity and persistence to develop good inbound links.
So in the meantime, I will leave you with some links to other very useful articles about the subject. If you have time to read them, then I highly recommend that you do so.
SEO For Local Markets
Local Search Engine Optimization - Revisited
Keyword and Meta Description Tags
8 Useful SEO Techniques That Every Webmaster Should Know
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Small Town Websites: More on Design
Good day once again. After having written the last post I realized that before moving on to marketing your website, I should probably touch a little more on the design and content of your site.
Your website is your virtual store front. Imagine having a store in a heavy traffic shopping area. All the people walking by are looking into your store. What do you have there in the window to make people come inside? Once they come inside, what do you have or say that makes them do business with you and not your competitor down the street?
It's the same with your website. Tons of people searching for your products and services are walking by your website listed in the search engines. What makes them want to do business with you? Once they've clicked on your search engine result, what takes them beyond the home page and into your website to investigate further then ends in a sale or inquiry??
The META DESCRIPTION TAG
Let's start with your search engine results. When a spider or crawler indexes your site for a search engine, the little description that appears below the title of your website is determined by what you have in your "meta tags." Meta tags are usually things that your designer knows about because it's part of the code to write your website. But if you are informed about the meta tags yourself, then you can make sure that the designer provides an accurate description of your business the way you would describe it. No one knows more about your industry than you. Don't leave it up to your designer to describe your business. Provide them with this info. The meta tag that influences the way search engines will describe your website is called the "Meta Description Tag." That really is all you need to know to tell your designer what it is and what you would like it to say. This is the first thing that people see when walking past your website. So try to make is say something that not only describes what you do or sell but also what makes you better or more unique than the next website down the line.
YOUR HOME PAGE
OK, so you've got someone who has seen your search engine result and it has looked like something they want to pursue further. They click on your link and it takes them to your home page. Now what do you want them to see?
Well, there are a few things you should avoid at this point. You cannot and should not try to put everything you do or sell on the front page. Too much information will confuse the visitor and they wont invest the time into finding what they need. Especially if you make it too hard for them to find.
Instead you should give a very brief overview of all you have to offer. Again, think of this as a potential customer first walking in the door of your store. Greet them. Make them feel comfortable. Provide an easy page for them to browse around on with out feeling like the sales person is hounding them to make a decision.
Layout your page so that links to what they might be looking for are easily seen. For example: if you sell gift items, provide links that break down those items by a broad category on the home page. If you have Christmas items and brand name items and plush toys and so on. List those as broad categories on the home page. If someone came to your site looking for a Santa Claus trinket. They would plainly see that they need to go to your Christmas items page. From there you can break it down to Santa Clauses, Christmas trees, snowmen, etc.
This applies to ANY type of business. If you are a plumber and you offer commercial and residential services, start there. Provide two links on your home page offering "Commercial Services" and "Residential Services." Then from there, list more specific items. Under commerical you may have "New Construction" and "Existing Buildings." Under residential you may have "Bathroom Services" or "Kitchen Services." (OK, I'm not a plumber but you get this idea. Like I said, you know your industry better than anyone else! haha)
If you have someone interested in something specific coming to your site, and they clearly see another page that will provide them information on what they are looking for without having to guess, then they will click on it. Then BOOM! The next thing you know, there in!
The store equivalent to this would be someone walking into your store and you greet them pleasantly. They see the section of the store that contains the items they came in to look for and the next thing you know, they are walking to the check out with the item they needed.
Keeping it simple and easy to navigate. That's the key! Think of organizing things like you would build a pyramid starting from the top. List the biggest categories first. Then on each of those pages break it down further and so on. The catch 22 is not to get too detailed. In the end you have to have more than one item on a page. So, using the example above, if you have only one Santa trinket and one snowman trinket, you may only have to go as far as "Christmas Items" to list all that you have. Use your best judgement. The designers will want to keep the pages to a minimum. So try to find a nice balance.
The other links that can and should be found on your website are your "About Me" page. This is the page where you tell people who you are and all about your experience and where you explain what makes you unique from your competitor in more detail. People who buy online have to feel like they can trust the site they are buying from or they have to feel like you are a trustworthy person to do business with before they will call you for your services. This can be a pretty important page and shouldn't be left out of your design.
This is where the person who walks into your virtual store that may be considering a purchase or using your services and may make their final decision to do so. Illustrating that you have the experience, the knowledge and the reliability to earn the potential customer's business can go a long way.
You also need to have your "Contact Me" link on your home page. If someone has walked into your virtual store and looked around and read about you and still has questions, you NEED to make yourself accessible to that customer. How you do this is up to you. You can simply provide an inquiry form where someone can fill out their question, provide you an email address or a phone number where they can be reached so you can get back with them and have them click the "submit" button. The good side to this is it provides you a "lead." An interested person who has shown enough interest in contacting you and wanting you to contact them back. The downside to this is some people will be leery of giving out their information. They may want to remain anonymous until they make the decision to do business with you. These folks may prefer to simply call you with their questions. If you choose to do an email inquiry form, I highly recommend that you clearly state that you wont be spamming them or selling their email to a third party. That may help ease their minds about submitting their information. If you have an e-newsletter (again, another topic for down the road) then offer the ability to receive it or not. I wouldn't just use the information you gain to start pushing e-newsletters out. That can work against the good reputation your trying to build with your customer.
Other links on your home page can vary. You may have items to sell that you want to "closeout" so a simple link to sale items may be great. Other useful links to other websites should be there. Resources you can provide your customer can show you are helpful (plus, reciprocating links are important to good SEO).
I just wanted to touch on the basics. The high points. Your designer will undoubtedly have more suggestions. Do some give and take. Brain storm with them. Your input is as valuable to them as theirs is to you.
Now you should be prepared for those customers to go browsing around in your virtual store. Hopefully they are hanging out. Looking around. And eventually turning into a sale. A return on your investment.
There are ways to measure your "conversion." That's when your customer does what you hope they will on your website. That comes when you understand your Analytics.
But geez! Don't even get me started on that right now!
Until next time...
Your website is your virtual store front. Imagine having a store in a heavy traffic shopping area. All the people walking by are looking into your store. What do you have there in the window to make people come inside? Once they come inside, what do you have or say that makes them do business with you and not your competitor down the street?
It's the same with your website. Tons of people searching for your products and services are walking by your website listed in the search engines. What makes them want to do business with you? Once they've clicked on your search engine result, what takes them beyond the home page and into your website to investigate further then ends in a sale or inquiry??
The META DESCRIPTION TAG
Let's start with your search engine results. When a spider or crawler indexes your site for a search engine, the little description that appears below the title of your website is determined by what you have in your "meta tags." Meta tags are usually things that your designer knows about because it's part of the code to write your website. But if you are informed about the meta tags yourself, then you can make sure that the designer provides an accurate description of your business the way you would describe it. No one knows more about your industry than you. Don't leave it up to your designer to describe your business. Provide them with this info. The meta tag that influences the way search engines will describe your website is called the "Meta Description Tag." That really is all you need to know to tell your designer what it is and what you would like it to say. This is the first thing that people see when walking past your website. So try to make is say something that not only describes what you do or sell but also what makes you better or more unique than the next website down the line.
YOUR HOME PAGE
OK, so you've got someone who has seen your search engine result and it has looked like something they want to pursue further. They click on your link and it takes them to your home page. Now what do you want them to see?
Well, there are a few things you should avoid at this point. You cannot and should not try to put everything you do or sell on the front page. Too much information will confuse the visitor and they wont invest the time into finding what they need. Especially if you make it too hard for them to find.
Instead you should give a very brief overview of all you have to offer. Again, think of this as a potential customer first walking in the door of your store. Greet them. Make them feel comfortable. Provide an easy page for them to browse around on with out feeling like the sales person is hounding them to make a decision.
Layout your page so that links to what they might be looking for are easily seen. For example: if you sell gift items, provide links that break down those items by a broad category on the home page. If you have Christmas items and brand name items and plush toys and so on. List those as broad categories on the home page. If someone came to your site looking for a Santa Claus trinket. They would plainly see that they need to go to your Christmas items page. From there you can break it down to Santa Clauses, Christmas trees, snowmen, etc.
This applies to ANY type of business. If you are a plumber and you offer commercial and residential services, start there. Provide two links on your home page offering "Commercial Services" and "Residential Services." Then from there, list more specific items. Under commerical you may have "New Construction" and "Existing Buildings." Under residential you may have "Bathroom Services" or "Kitchen Services." (OK, I'm not a plumber but you get this idea. Like I said, you know your industry better than anyone else! haha)
If you have someone interested in something specific coming to your site, and they clearly see another page that will provide them information on what they are looking for without having to guess, then they will click on it. Then BOOM! The next thing you know, there in!
The store equivalent to this would be someone walking into your store and you greet them pleasantly. They see the section of the store that contains the items they came in to look for and the next thing you know, they are walking to the check out with the item they needed.
Keeping it simple and easy to navigate. That's the key! Think of organizing things like you would build a pyramid starting from the top. List the biggest categories first. Then on each of those pages break it down further and so on. The catch 22 is not to get too detailed. In the end you have to have more than one item on a page. So, using the example above, if you have only one Santa trinket and one snowman trinket, you may only have to go as far as "Christmas Items" to list all that you have. Use your best judgement. The designers will want to keep the pages to a minimum. So try to find a nice balance.
The other links that can and should be found on your website are your "About Me" page. This is the page where you tell people who you are and all about your experience and where you explain what makes you unique from your competitor in more detail. People who buy online have to feel like they can trust the site they are buying from or they have to feel like you are a trustworthy person to do business with before they will call you for your services. This can be a pretty important page and shouldn't be left out of your design.
This is where the person who walks into your virtual store that may be considering a purchase or using your services and may make their final decision to do so. Illustrating that you have the experience, the knowledge and the reliability to earn the potential customer's business can go a long way.
You also need to have your "Contact Me" link on your home page. If someone has walked into your virtual store and looked around and read about you and still has questions, you NEED to make yourself accessible to that customer. How you do this is up to you. You can simply provide an inquiry form where someone can fill out their question, provide you an email address or a phone number where they can be reached so you can get back with them and have them click the "submit" button. The good side to this is it provides you a "lead." An interested person who has shown enough interest in contacting you and wanting you to contact them back. The downside to this is some people will be leery of giving out their information. They may want to remain anonymous until they make the decision to do business with you. These folks may prefer to simply call you with their questions. If you choose to do an email inquiry form, I highly recommend that you clearly state that you wont be spamming them or selling their email to a third party. That may help ease their minds about submitting their information. If you have an e-newsletter (again, another topic for down the road) then offer the ability to receive it or not. I wouldn't just use the information you gain to start pushing e-newsletters out. That can work against the good reputation your trying to build with your customer.
Other links on your home page can vary. You may have items to sell that you want to "closeout" so a simple link to sale items may be great. Other useful links to other websites should be there. Resources you can provide your customer can show you are helpful (plus, reciprocating links are important to good SEO).
I just wanted to touch on the basics. The high points. Your designer will undoubtedly have more suggestions. Do some give and take. Brain storm with them. Your input is as valuable to them as theirs is to you.
Now you should be prepared for those customers to go browsing around in your virtual store. Hopefully they are hanging out. Looking around. And eventually turning into a sale. A return on your investment.
There are ways to measure your "conversion." That's when your customer does what you hope they will on your website. That comes when you understand your Analytics.
But geez! Don't even get me started on that right now!
Until next time...
Friday, June 6, 2008
Small Town Websites: What You NEED to Know!
OK. I have spent the first two entries to this blog making it pain-stakingly clear that your presence online is necessary for the success of your business, not to mention is most likely being requested by your past, present and future customers.
So now what do you do?
Well, the most obvious start is to consider your website. We'll start with those of you who don't currently have one. There are a lot of mistakes and pitfalls that business owners fall into when trying to get started on their website. I have a few very sound suggestions for you to consider when starting this process that should prove to be helpful and hopefully save you time and money.
The WHO Factor:
The first step to consider is WHO. Who is going to do your website? Now I know a lot of you probably are tempted to say something like, "My teenager knows all about building websites." While that can be a very cheap way to get the job done, it may not be the best option when you look at all of the things that need to be covered when building a website. In fact, there are even some website designers who may not have all of the information you need to get the ball rolling on your online marketing plan.
Here's a list of things to consider when choosing a website designer:
So now what do you do?
Well, the most obvious start is to consider your website. We'll start with those of you who don't currently have one. There are a lot of mistakes and pitfalls that business owners fall into when trying to get started on their website. I have a few very sound suggestions for you to consider when starting this process that should prove to be helpful and hopefully save you time and money.
The WHO Factor:
The first step to consider is WHO. Who is going to do your website? Now I know a lot of you probably are tempted to say something like, "My teenager knows all about building websites." While that can be a very cheap way to get the job done, it may not be the best option when you look at all of the things that need to be covered when building a website. In fact, there are even some website designers who may not have all of the information you need to get the ball rolling on your online marketing plan.
Here's a list of things to consider when choosing a website designer:
- Website content is very crucial not only to getting an effective message across to your customers, but also plays a very important roll in SEO (search engine optimization). I will go into more detail about SEO in a separate blog later down the road. If your designer doesn't know about keyword saturation within the content of your home page (and now all of your pages really) you may either want to move on or educate yourself on what you need so you can be very specific about the content. It's not surprising that designers don't know as much as they could about SEO. They are designers. They are there to write the code. If you can't find a designer to work with that knows about marketing websites as well as building them, then it will be up to you to know what you need to do. The only other option is hiring someone to do it. This can be VERY expensive and in my opinion is not necessary to get the basic SEO high points down. It's very simple, I promise. Anyone can figure it out, it just comes back to a little bit of time. Like I said, I will cover the most important steps in another blog. But for now, just keep this in mind when trying to choose a designer. Ask the questions. Make sure you are clear on what they will be doing for you and what they don't handle.
- Another thing related to designing a website and marketing a website is submission to the search engines. Believe it or not, search engines don't just know your website is there the minute you put it up. You actually have to tell them to come look at you. You do this by submitting your website to the search engines directly. However, once again, this may or may not be something your designer will handle for you. Please make sure that you ask your designer if they will be doing the submitting to the search engines for you and if they are, how often and which search engines. Once you submit your website, the search engine will send out what they call a "spider" or a "crawler" to index all of the pages of your website. When they do, those spiders will look at your keywords, meta tags, and content for each page on your site. Good SEO is very important to the spiders so that they can clearly identify who you are and what you do so they know where to rank you in a search. Good SEO has to be on every page. The search engines aren't just referring people to your home page anymore. This entire process of being "crawled" by a spider and being indexed by the search engines can take several weeks. So expect that and be patient.
- Many website designers want to sell you on a lot of "bells and whistles." Don't get sucked into this. Everyone of these flashy banners and fancy do-dads will tack on extra $$ in the overall cost of the website. You don't NEED them. An attractive site, that is EASY to navigate, and sends a good message to your potential customer on WHY they should do business with you is usually all you need. Especially to start. Designers will want to sell you the flashier stuff to raise the cost (obviously, I am in sales, I get the point) but when you are first getting your feet wet you want to focus on the point of your page, not just the appearance. So resist tons of flash and video up front. Video can be extremely useful but not necessary in the beginning. Get a good site up, let it be recognized by the engines and ranked favorably and then you can add more rich media (bells and whistles) later on.
- Also keep in mind; .jpegs, .swf, .gif and .pdf file's content cannot be recognized by the spiders who crawl your site. Don't let a designer place all of the important information about who you are and what you do into a flash or .jpeg file then paste it onto your website. The spiders will be completely clueless when they look at your site at who you are and what you do and your ranking in the search engines will be lost.
- Do find a designer that offers you content management software. This is software that allows you to update and change the things that are on your website yourself. Things like, calendars of events, specials or sales, pricing, or even photos can be altered by using this very easy content management software. It can be as easy as filling in the blocks that allow you to insert type or images into certain parts of your web page. You will want this capability because you have to be updating your content fairly regularly. Not daily, necessarily but at least monthly. Nothing will turn a customer away from doing business with you faster than information on your website that is out-of-date. It doesn't have to take you all day to do it but if you update it at least monthly, then you can spend at least a half a day working on it.
- Check with your designer and ask them about the hosting package. Hosting is basically the server (or big computer) on which your website coding and files will be stored for access by online visitors. It usually includes your email and may or may not include your URL (the address of your website, like http://www.smalltowndigital.blogspot.com/) Are they providing you hosting? Are you getting it from somewhere else? Who ever is handling your hosting, you need to make sure you are set up with some form of Analytics. This is a very important feature to have on your website. You will be using this a lot in the future to help you gauge the response of the visitors who come to your website. I will go into Analytics more in detail in a later blog but for now make sure you ask about it. If no one knows what your talking about or if the hosting company or your designer isn't including this for you, then have your designer set up a Google Analytics account. It's free. It's important. And all you need to do to get it is have your designer copy and paste a small chunk of code onto EVERY page of your website. If you are having the designer do it for you, then make sure you tell them up front that you need and want this so they can include that code as they design the pages.
The WHAT Factor:
Many people don't really have a clear picture on what their website should say. I read an article that put it as simply as I can think to put it myself; answer the question, Why? You need to clearly explain to someone why they need to do business with you and not the next person down the line. Do it in such a way that would be the same as if you were explaining it to someone standing right in front of you. Don't turn your website into an online brochure for your company. If you make it look too good to be true people really will think it is too good to be true. Try to make your content sound trust worthy. Use facts about your products or services. Answer questions you've heard your customers ask a hundred times. Give a visitor to your website all the information they need to cause them to pick up the phone and call you for more information or fill out an online inquiry form or email you or whatever it is you'd like to see them do. Just follow the K.I.S.S. rule and keep it simple. Get started with the important information then watch your Analytics reports. You will be able to tell if what you have up is working for you or not. If it's not, then tweak it. Nothing is set in stone. The only mistake you can really make is not getting started!
If you already have a website up and running (and I realize this is cheating but...) read over what I've already written. This applies to you as well as anyone who hasn't already gotten started. You can change anything you need to, you can add your analytics even after the fact, you can change your content to answer the "why" question. The only pitfall there is to already having your website up and running, is if you don't have the content management software in place. If that's the case then you may need to look to start over. I hate to say that but it's true. You don't want to have to pay a designer every time you want something changed and the designer doesn't want you to call them every time you want something changed, so please consider taking what you already have and finding a company to work with that can include this for you. Changing the copy on your website is extremely important. You truly can't put a website up and then never touch it again. You will have invested your time and money into something that will never show you any return. It's not worth it.
Once you have your designer in place and you have completely thought through what it is you need to let your customers know about you and why they need to do business with you then you should be ready to start the process. Just remember these last few tips:
- When it comes to overall design, trust your designer. They most likely have excellent ideas on color and style.
- Take suggestions and make suggestions.
- Work with your designer to create what you want.
- Keep it simple and easy to navigate.
- Make sure all of your pages link to each other.
- Have an "About Me" page and a "Contact" page.
- FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) pages are always helpful.
Ok, Ok.... I'll stop. Truly the tips and tricks are endless for designing your website. Don't just take my word for it. Search online for more tips. Look at the links listed on my blog. Site Pro News is an excellent resource for helping you figure out content.
I know there can be a lot to read out there. A whole world of resources for you to consider. Yes, it's going to take time. I already admitted that to you in the beginning. It will pay off. Invest the time. Read, research and study. The best decisions to make are informed ones.
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