By Jon Roberts
www.jnkservices.co.uk

I hear this question all the time, right along with I got a website…

This argument is given by people who tell me that there website is performing well in the search engines, when asked for what keywords they often have a blank expression on their faces and reply, “if you type the URL of my website in Google, it is No1!”

OK, this isn’t a trade secret – your website should be No1 if you type the URL of the website, in fact it should also be No1, on most occassions, if you type the name of your business into the search engines.  Unless of course, you are trading as Marks and Spencer (assuming you are not THE Marks and Spencer of course!)

Another common argument against SEO (search engine optimisation) is that, if every website used SEO techniques then we would all be back at square one.  The logic behind this is that (well there isn’t any real logic, but I will explain this in a moment) every site using SEO techniques would line up one after the other behind the website who takes top-spot in the search engines and would just be placed in a huge list of well optimised websites.

Firstly, SEO is just a tool (one of many) used by website marketeers to ensure that your website is fully optimised, It is not a guarantee of a number 1 ranking, or even a high ranking in the search engines!

Secondly yes, I believe SEO is necessary and should be considered as part of your investment when you purchase your website.  Here is why, SEO is about ensuring that your website is complient with standards set out by the search engines and by the W3 Consortium and helps to ensure that your website is fully accessible.  This should be one of your major goals when setting up, or purchasing a website.  Accessibilty should be very high on your agenda, as it ensures that the maximum number of people will be able to visit and enjoy your website, without accessibily being foremost, websites become difficult to use at best and impossible to use at worst.

By complying with the search engines standards and rules, you also ensure that there are no obsticles to your website ranking high.  Good SEO is about ensuring useability within your webiste, ensuring that the navigation system is easy to use and there is nothing misleading in your website, focusing on the visitors needs and not the search engines.

With the advent of personalised search, good SEO is going to become more and more important – ensuring that your website’s visitors enjoy their experience, improving the chances considerably that they will repeat visit and become regular visitors/customers.

So is SEO necessary?  Yes it is!  In fact SEO is vital to ensuring that your website has great content and is easy to use.  it is vital to attracting and keeping visitors and turning them into customers.

Odd title?   In this post I would give three short tips for improving your website’s return on investment.

When visitors first arrive at your website, you have three seconds to catch their attention.  How you hook these visitors and get them to stay longer at your website would take a huge post to discuss as there are thousands of different ways to consider.  However, one of the best ways is to remember that the human eye naturally falls in the middle third of the screen (also bear in mind my earlier post “shop mentality”) here you should add your “hook” to keep your visitors at your website and perhaps turn them into customers.  Examples could be, a special offer, an item of particular interest and so on, the list is endless.

If you tie your hook (sorry for the fishing pun!) in with websites on-page optimisation, so much the better as it will be far more effective; it should be based on the web-page’s main keyword afterall, a visitor to your site will most likely have arrived there after searching for that keyword – so make sure you give them what they want!

This is really the key to successful web marketing – providing visitors with what they want, no point in having a visitor find your site by searching for a particular product, only to have them see something that has nothing to do with what they were looking for!

OK next tip!   Driving traffic to your website is vital, but just how can you do this without spending huge amounts of money or if you are quite low in the search engines?  Three ways that won’t cost the earth are:

• Add your website’s URL as a signature at the bottom of every email you send
• Make sure that your website’s URL is on every bit of paper you send out i.e. letterheads, business cards etc
• Make a short instructional video (the content must have something to do with your business’ specialist area!) and add your website’s URL as a title, upload this video to www.videojug.com and www.youtube.com – also make sure it is on your website, video content is a great way to offer your visitors quality content.

My final tip is really a don’t do!  In my opinion one of the worst things to do is to add adverts from providers such as Google to your website.  We are all tempted to do this as we are promised earnings from our websites.  But, in truth, what is more likely to happen is that these adverts will be for your competitors – a big no no!  Also, everytime I see these adverts I am of the opinion that the owner of the website didn’t have anything of quality to add to their site and so added these advert banners.

At the end of the day, your website is only as good as its content, but to ensure your great content is seen, you need visitors and you need these visitors to stay longer than three seconds!

Author:  Jon Roberts
www.jnkservices.co.uk

You may have noticed that more and more social media is being talked about.  You cannot go anywhere without people asking for your Facebook handle, or asking you to tweet them!  [A tweet is the term used to describe a post on the website Twitter.com a great social media tool.]

Sites such as Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and Twitter allow casual social groups (and not so casual groups!) to communicate in a fairly informal way and have had a stark effect on how p2p communications are conducted in the 21st century.

Peter Kim recently wrote “The 22 Step Social Media Marketing Plan” where he lists 22 different types of social media tools – I must admit until I read his blog I could only list the following social media tools:  Blogs, Bookmarking, Content Aggregation, Discussion Boards, Pod-casting, Photo sharing, Mashups and Wikis.  His article is quite insightful and is well worth a read especially if, like me, you didn’t realise the huge number of different tools available.

Social Media Websites offer a website owner a great opportunity at free advertising.  For example, Twitter allows you to summarise a new product launch and give a link to it on your website in 140 characters or less.

Used regularly social media sites can really pay dividends in driving traffic to your websites giving you a great opportunity to show off your web design, using bookmaking tools such as Stumble Upon and Digg let others know about your site and give them the opportunity to visit it if they wish.  But this is an important point, and perhaps my reason for writing this post, give your readers the opportunity to visit the site – don’t ram it down their throats.

Let me give you an example, I use Twitter regularly most of the people I follow write 1-2 posts a day of well constructed comments.  A small minority seem to go mad and you end up with 10-20 posts at a time almost every hour!  This is over-doing it people!  This is the point when social media marketing turns into anti-social media marketing.  These sites are intended to allow like minded people to communicate with each other and not to become a mass marketing tool, please don’t abuse them.

Instead of writing about every minor change to your website, why not tell your readers about major events at your business, a special promotion, a new product line etc don’t be tempted to write a post for every product in your catalogue every single day, whilst you may be interested in this, your readers aren’t.

Don’t forget the old adage “Keep It Simple Stupid” or “KISS” applies to social media as well as other forms of marketing.  Don’t over tax your readers, some of the people I used to follow I have stopped following for that exact reason, they were posting too many entries about xyz product.

Keep your marketing posts relevant, short, interesting and don’t flood the social sites with posts.  You could also try using different social tools rather than flooding just one, turn your readers into fans – don’t bore them to death!

Author:  Jon Roberts
www.jnkservices.co.uk

During these times when the financial markets are collapsing and on the high street we are all playing the game “which shop will close next?”  It is easy to get caught up and see only a bleak future for our businesses.

The other day, I was talking to a refrigeration engineer (nothing to do with IT or websites I know!) – his business has never been so busy!  At first this seemed crazy to me, the recession aside, it is the middle of winter  after all!  He explained that instead of buying new refrigeration units local businesses are spending money on servicing and maintaining their existing units; giving his industry a welcome boost at a time when others are closing the shutters.

This got me thinking, a recession is not something that effects every business, we all still need certain goods and services and businesses that are involved commercially in the procurement of these goods or services need not fear recession.  We all need food, fuel, clothing and so on.

OK so admittedly some clothing stores are finding it difficult Adams went into receivership recently, Marks and Spencer recorded a drop of 7.1% in its retail sales figures for the 13 weeks to 27 December 2008.

However, Marks and Spencer also revealed that its online sales for the same period were up 29%!

• Debenhams reports year-on-year online sales in the 12 weeks to 3rd Jan 2009 were up 37.4%
• Domino’s Pizza said online sales soared 73.7% to £55.8million in 2008
• Ocado reported its best ever festive season.  During the week before Christmas 2008 its online sales soared 97% year-on-year
• Play.com, the UK’s third most visited online retailer, had more than 1000 orders per minute being processed on its busiest trading day (8December 2008) this was up from 700 on the previous year.

(source for these statistics imrg By the way IMRG is a great resource for online usage statistics pertaining to Retail and e-commerce in general)

Is it just me, or is there a trend happening here?   Could this recession herald the much promised Golden Age of E-Commerce?  OK, I don’t need a history lesson here, I know about the .com boom, but that went bust!  We are yet to see a time when the majority of transactions are carried out online, perhaps if this recession isn’t the event to usher this period in, it may well be the precursor.

More and more people are using the Internet and this is being used more and more for common areas of peoples lives.  Areas that are quite time consuming, such as the weekly grocery shop, and waste valuable leisure time.  Recent statistics about how the UK use the Internet are good indicators of this:

• 68.6% of the UK population regularly used the Internet during 2008 (ETC New Media Trend Watch, 2008)
• Britons have spent more than £100bn online since 1995 (IMRG 2007)
• UK Shoppers spent £4.67bn online in December 2008 – 14.2% up on last year (IMRG Capgemini, 2009)
• 60% of the population are turning to the web to find what they want locally compared to 22% who used traditional print formats (Search Engine Watch, June 2008)

“It’s tempting to cut marketing spending in a downturn. Don’t. If anything, you should be increasing your spend. “When we look at the last recession, the better business actually held that expenditure to win market share,” Will says. “When things turned around they were much better placed.”

If your competitors are struggling during the downturn, you can quickly take advantage of the fact and grab customers from them – but it will only happen if your brand is in good shape.

A great example of a company ramping up its marketing spend at a time when its market is struggling is online travel company Wotif. It has launched its first mainstream advertising campaign, just as the tourism market is softening. It’s gutsy, but you can bet those people that do want to buy online travel will have Wotif at top of mind.” – Greg Will, PwC’s Private Companies Practice (extract from Strategy in a Downturn – 10 lessons for the last recession by James Thomson 1 May 2008 Smartcompany.com.au)

Search through Google and you will find countless stories of companies that not only survived the last recession, but actually increased their market share and came out stronger.  Without exception, all of these businesses have one thing in common – they increased their marketing expenditure.

One piece of good advice I was given years ago when I was a young salesman still holds true today – “everyday do something to market your business” doesn’t matter what (well don’t waste your time with things that actually won’t get your businesses name out there) just do something.  Also, don’t think that just handing your business card out is good marketing, it helps but unless you effectively follow it up, it won’t help you in the slightest.

In my next article, I will look at ways to improve your marketing in this recession – simple ideas that may help, perhaps that can be built upon.

Published by Jon Roberts
Website Grants

Content is king is the old adage. It hasn’t changed.

Over the next few months we are going to see a lot of changes in the way that search results are found and presented. You may have noticed recently Google have started mixing with your standard search results shopping results, map results, video results and many other items; you may also have noticed the Google Wiki. Google Wiki allows you to personalise your search results.

OK, so what? Now more than ever content is vital to your website. At one time a website could acheive a high rank on a given search engine by having good keyword density and good on page optimisation, or by having a huge number of quality links or both. Whilst these are still important i.e. you should still have a website that has been fully optimised to ensure that complies with accessibility standards (W3 Consortium Guidelines) and Search Engine Compliency Rules (see the individual search engines i.e. the gang of three Google, Yahoo and Live). You won’t go far wrong with websites that have a similar theme/industry/content as yours, with a Google PageRank of 4 or more linking to your site either.

Now more than ever however, how high your website ranks in any given search engine will depend on its ability to provide quality content that visitors would be interested in. Content such as video and articles are going to give your website an edge in the search market of the future. You should be writing your website with the view of improving your visitors experience with content that is useful and informative (and maybe even entertaining!). I would also suggest that you regularly change/update your content, this will keep your visitors coming back time and again; and if your content is decent may even have your visitors bursting with anticipation!

Whatever your view, the days of writing content for search engines is long dead, Web 2.0 has made a web viewing public a lot more savvy about the content they want. Link building still has an important role to play, but content and well optimised websites are vital.

Just a slight sidetrack (apologies) – I was recently approached by an SEO company to set up three way link exchange, they told me that standard link building is no longer pulling the results it once did and the best way to overcome this is to build three way links. In my opinion this is SPAM, I think that you will find that Google is able to trace up to six way links, so it won’t be fooled. The best way to overcome any perceived slow down in the effectiveness of recipricol link exchanges is summed up with three simple words: content, content, content.

Published by Jon Roberts
Web Design and Development

An odd title perhaps for a web design blog?  One thing that has been bothering me for a while about the countless websites I visit or asked to look at to help with marketing them – the sever lack of thought about what the viewer wants.

How many times have you gone to a website and been faced with a nice banner (or a really rubbish one for that matter) that has nothing to do with the subject you searched for in Google.  The website is little more than a list of text and one or two rubbish images?

OK, let me say sorry if that describes your site.  If it does, email me and I will design you a nice shiny new  website!

What is the problem with that site I described?  More often than not it is simply lack of thought when it comes to what the customer wants.

It is essential when designing a website or rearranging your current site (or at any other time!) that you put the viewer first.

So in terms of your viewer (read potential customer) what does shop mentality have to do with web design?  Have a look at your local high street and see how the shops market their business and products, lets face these guys have a lot of experience at marketing their business.  This is particularly true if the shop is long established.

What lessons can be learned from your local high street?  No matter what the product is, they all have some basic principals in common, these are specifically concerned with window dressing, but we will use them to help with dressing our website:

The three principals of window dressing are:

1. To serve as an index to the class of goods kept in the store
2. to attract attention of people to the store
3. to show goods which will excite in the people the desire of possession

OK with these principals in mind, I will digress very slightly and consider “web site dressing”

The workspace

To permit web dressing to advantage the window should be as large as possible.  Here I am not talking about optimum screen widths etc as these can be argued in another place and time, here I mean ensure that your website makes the best use of space and the product isn’t crowded out by banners or side bars.

Background

This should be the first thing planned, it should be in keeping with the website.  The test of a good background is “does it bring out the products or services and show them in strong relief and harmonize with them in tone?”  A background may harmonize with a display either by blend or contrast, the former being the more pleasing however, the later is useful for drawing attention to a product.

Light

Er, you can’t change the light a website!  However the principal here is to ensure that key products are highlighted and that colours compliment or contrast to produce the effect that the viewers eye is drawn to your key product.

This you can do with a website, ensure that your key product is easy to see.  Jakob Nielsen et al has carried out huge amounts of research about usability of websites, far be it from me to add to this work.  Drawing from Jakob Nielsen, we learn that the human eye naturally falls on the middle third of a computer screen, in other words – put your key products in this middle third and your users will find your products easier.

Colour Blending

Colour is the easiest way to attract your viewers eye to your key products, good colour effects are difficult to obtain where goods of a variety of colours are used, try to pick the products that you place on your home page to complement the design of the site, make sure that the colours draw the eye to the products not away from them.

Objects of Web Dressing

Remember the three principals from earlier:  Your website (homepage) should serve as an index to the class of goods kept by your business.  Second, your homepage should attract the attention of your users (in the real world a shop window display is used to attract customers away from the competition and to your shop) for a website, this means producing a website that is pleasing to the eye, uses clever design, whatever you want to do, but make sure that you attract people not put them off.  Third principal is to show good which will excite in the people the desire of possession.  Lets face it, this means getting a really nice photo of your product not some rubbishy photo you took on a mobile phone!  The old addage goes “a photo is worth a thousand words” make sure that those thousand words aren’t negative because your products photo is poor.

Special Features

You see these all the time on the high street, devices designed to catch the eye, moving displays interesting animals etc ****LISTEN CAREFULLY**** overuse of animation and moving items on your website will destroy all your hard work.

Please don’t make the mistake of going mad with moving displays!  Tastefully and tactfully done, a website can incorporate animation very effectively, but be really careful that you don’t draw the eye away from your products and to the animation.  it would be a shame that people remember the animation on your site and not your products.

Disctinctive Displays

Keep your home page distinctive, don’t fall into the trap of following the crowd.

Under this section we also need to mention the effectiveness of changing your display regularly, this doesn’t mean that you need to redesign your website regularly.  I really cannot stress enough how important it is to keep your content fresh, rotate your products to give your viewer something new, and change your text regularly to prevent your site being boring.

I could rattle on for hours about how important it is that your shop window display is used at its optimum, we are all guilty (and I hold my hands up here) of overlooking this most important part of website ownership, time is usually the key here.  But it is important to remember that a website is nothing more than a shop front, use it exactly as if it were your shop window in the real world.

Written by Jon Roberts
http://www.jnkwebdesign.co.uk

Published by Jon Roberts
Web Design Help

OK you have your new website, it looks great – your web developer says so!  You excitedly look at the statistics to see how many people have visited since it went live (at this point I assume that your hosting package has live statistics, if not you got the wrong package!) uh oh!  You have 2 visitors – yourself and your developer?

Eventually, you will get other visitors, normally Search Engines will visit your site to index it, these will also be recorded in your site statistics.  You will also get visits from friends and family, all boosting your websites traffic.

By now you will notice something (besides my cynicism I hope!)  You are not getting much traffic to your website!

A good website is much more than just a pretty interface – it is a business opportunity.  Pure and simple, any business that has a website designed for it have one purpose in mind – to improve their turnover and therefore, profit.

In reality, how many people purchase a website and sit watching the statistics (if they can be found) to see if they go up.

Apart from the odd traffic from search engines, friends and family, the number of visitors to your site are not going to increase unless YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT THEM! Sorry for shouting, but this is something I am really passionate about.  Time and again I have heard people complain that their site is  not working for them as they hoped.

Time and again, businesses look to blame someone for their site not performing.  Sadly, they themselves, must take some of the blame.  Unless of course they have paid someone to actually market their site for them.

As I said earlier, a good website is a business opportunity.  You may recall from business school the SWOT analysis (some may know it by another name).  A SWOT analysis, or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, is a way of analysing your businesses current climate and seeking to improve your position by positively shifting negative forces.  For instance, for every weakness you write down, you should seek to turn them into strengths, likewise any threats to your business should be turned into opportunities.

How does this apply to your website?  You have a strength, a great looking website.  You have a weakness, people don’t know it exists.  You have an opportunity, your website can increase your turnover by at the very least improving brand visability.  You have a threat, you competitors have a great website that is number one in Google for your keyword so thousands of people as seeing them daily, their turnover and profitability is going through the ceiling.  You, their competition are silent, your website is miles behind their in Google rankings!

OK so how can you turn this around?  If you haven’t done so already, put your website at the heart of your marketing strategy!  Start thinking of it as your one and only tool to sell your product (or service).  That way you will start seeing it as a means to an end, and hopefully not just sit back.

When people visit a website, believe it or not, they are not wanting to be bombarded with keywords!  As I have said before, your readers visit your site to find information or purchase products.  Remember that, and you will start understanding why people visit your website.

Start meeting the needs of the viewer and the sales/traffic will take care of itself.

I am making a big guess here, you are an expert in whatever field you are working.  Granted there are others who know about your work, but that doesn’t matter.  What matters is that the majority of people who visit your site, are not.  OK I am not rambling here, honest!  My point is that you could start providing your customers with expert knowledge about your chosen field, that way your website will become a great source of information and hopefully be a useful resource for your viewers.  As useful resource, your website could start attracting visitors who need to find out about a particular subject, whilst on your site finding information they note that you sell related products, their interest is caught.

Let me give you a great example, you have a great looking website that discusses legends and tales from Celtic Britain.  This is quite a popular search, trust me, I live in Wales and see the huge number of foreign visitors who flood every tourist site to do with legends, ghosts and other tales.  As it happens in addition to discussing/retelling legends your site happens to sell Celtic memorabilia you can expect your sales to rocket.

Besides great content, you really need to think about how many people are linking to your website.  The more links you have the better, provided they are good quality of course.  A good quality link is defined as one that compliments your site’s subject.  E.g.  going back to our Celtic Souvenirs website a good link would be a tourist attraction to a Celtic site.

As your new website is now at the heart of your marketing plan, don’t forget to advertise it in the real world.  When I started my web design business, my wife would carry a note book with her whenever we went anywhere.  She would note the name and telephone numbers on vans who didn’t advertise a website.  The thinking here was, if they didn’t advertise their site on their vans they didn’t have one!  Believe me, the percentage of companies who don’t advertise their site on their vans is high!  Is this because they are ashamed of their sites?  No, according to most, their sites are doing really well and are bringing them lots of money!  (funny thing – I usually couldn’t find their sites in Google!)

If you are not ashamed of your website and want to get some business from it, advertise it from the rooftops, get the URL out there, put it on your vans, cars, letterheads, business cards, emails (set up a signature), kids bikes, dogs collar, granny’s zimmer-frame – you get the picture, put it anywhere and everywhere.

OK to land this plane (quote from a Pastor from the US); the bottom line is your WEBSITE MUST BE YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY!  Get great content on there, get great links, get it out there in the real world – get real business.

This isn’t going to happen overnight, it will take time (see earlier post) unless you want to throw good money into the black hole that is Pay Per Click!

Published by Jon Roberts
Add your site to our UK Business Directory

How long will it take?  This is a common question when it comes to web promotion.  How long will it take for my site to be in Google?  How long will it take for me to get to the top spot?  How long will it take for me to start earning money from my website?

These are common questions asked by every single business with a new website.  The problem is that when you have a new web design you are going to be competing for those rankings with everyone and his dog so to speak!

How long will it take to list my site in Google? I have seen a website posted within two hours, the trick here is to get your site linked on a web site that has a page rank of 4 or more.  But then again, I have known it to take two weeks!  Google don’t make any guarantees to this.  Does submitting your site to Google suggest system speed things up?  There is no evidence of this, as Google’s bot works its way through the entire web you will get listed sooner or later.

The easy answer is anytime between 2 hours and 2 weeks, depending on where your website is linked.

How long will it take to get my site to the top spot? The top spot for which keyword I would ask in return.  There are many unscrupulous developers out there who tell there customers that they guarantee them top listing in Google – time and again I have heard this only to discover that the guarantee extends to the business name and geographic location!  Unless your business has a competitor in the same town with the same name, any idiot could get you to the top spot in Google!

If you are looking to get to the top spot for a particular keyword (remember that you should really try to focus on a single keyword to a single page or website) then that depends on how competitive your keyword is.  Do a search in Google and see how many hits it returns.  A point to note here, if you are not in the top 20 you are nowhere as far as your customers are concerned, most people will only search at best the first 2 pages of Google (in most cases on the top 5).  I read somewhere that whilst Google returns possibly millions of hits, you can only view hundreds for a given keyword – worth bearing in mind.

Then there is also the possiblility that the fabled Google “sandbox” really does exist and your first years ranking is helped by the Google system, only to be reduced after the first year to a really low ranking – I have yet to be convinced of this or see evidence of it.

How long will it start for me to start earning money from my website? This again is a difficult one to answer, but depends again on what you mean.  Most shopping sites that launch will have family and friends visit and purchase something within the first week or so.  If this is what you mean then the easy answer is that you will sell something within the first week or so!

In reality though, this goes hand in hand with the answer to the above questions, getting into the top ten and ensuring that you have good links, good content and great eye catching offers.

Truthfully, you may never sell anything from your site unless you employ real world marketing techniques.  Can you imagine going along to your local food store and their window display doesn’t change from one week to the next or  they hide their mouthwatering goodies behind a poster that tells you the owners life story?

When people visit your site they are looking for a number of things:

1. The product they have searched for

2. The product they have searched for at a reasonable price (this doesn’t mean the cheapest)

3.  The product they have searched for at a reasonalbe delivery fee (this doesn’t mean free)

4.  The product they have searched for displayed in a number of different views

5.  The product they have searched for described in a manner to convince them they won’t be disappointed

6.  The product they have searched for being sold be a store they can trust (reviews can help here as can a reputable payment system such as worldpay, paypal or nochex (of course if they have a bad experience of either of these then that can go against you!)

7.  The product they have searched for being guaranteed

8.  The product they have searched for will arrive yesterday!  (lets face it, we buy something we want it in our hands!)

The old saying “build it and they will come” really doesn’t apply to a website.  As I have said on a number of occassions, if you put up a site and expect it to do all the work for you – you would be better visiting Vistaprint and paying them £12.50 for 250 business cards and giving them out around town, the odds of getting some business are better than from a website that you don’t market correctly.  If this is your thinking save yourself some money and buy the cards!

Having a real world business helps here.  Businesses such as Amazon, Ebay and Google who are true dot com businesses are few and far between.  Personally, I would be looking to use a website as part of my business, I would also get out and market my business traditionally as well as virtually!

Published by Jon Roberts
Web design grants for SME’s

For several years now SEO practitioners have told us that Flash websites are bad for search engine optimization, claiming that as Flash relies heavily on images with very little, if any, text.  Therefore, how can search engines possibliy index a website.

I began to really suspect that this thinking is slightly flored, afterall check any typical search in Google and you will find several Flash websites in the top 100 for any given search, therefore Google must be indexing something.

It could well be that these sites are solely relying on links, but I don’t think that this is the whole situation.  Google PageRank for instance, looks at the value of your content conpared to other sites, (yes this does include inbound links) and rates them accordingly.

To help answer this situation Jonathan Hochman has written an excellent article, you can find this article at:

http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/seo-friendly-flash.shtml

Published by Jon Roberts
Web design services

For your site to go global you need to ensure that the market is able to find it, this involves spreading the news about your site as loudly as possible and in a better way than your competitors.

One of the biggest mistake a business can make when investing in their website is to believe the old saying “build it and they will come.”  Building a great looking website and placing it on the web is only the start, ensuring that you have a decent ROI (return on investment) can be a daunting task, you must ensure that you have a solid SEM (search engine marketing) plan in place – to not commit to either PPC (pay-per-click) or SEO (search engine optimization) is a plan in itself – but in reality it is a very short sighted plan.

Your competitors will be using SEO – check out their ranking in one of the top search engines for yourself.

What a business needs to decide is do they have the time and resources to effectively market their own website?

The cost of paying for key employees time needs to be established both in terms of their hourly rate and the cost of them not carrying out their main role.  Lets suppose that this calculation arrives at £30.00 per hour (a very modest sum of money in todays world) thats £240 for an eight hour day, £1200.00 a week, £4800.00 a month, £57,600.00 a year!  Now ask yourself how much a decent SEO campaign would cost for the same period?  If you were spending £57,600.00 on PPC you would be getting seriously good quality click through rates and therefore ROI that would exceed initial cost of the website and the SEO!

SEM is not just about PPC however, SEM involves organic SEO, in other words quality on page search engine optimization, quailty code optimization, content building (possibly through syndication) and quality link building to name but a few different methods.

A good SEM may involve both PPC and SEO – this can be a very difficult task for employees with little or no experience of the subject to suddenly have to undertake, part of your investment may/should involve training staff in the field of web marketing, this all adds up.

Every business starting out wants to be the next Amazon or EBay, but fail to realise that to do so costs time, money and a great deal of effort coupled with a really clear understanding of your goals and what is required to achieve them.

As I have stated in previous posts, search engines love good well written content – and so do your customers/users!

Content for your website is king!  Have you ever considered hiring a copy writer?  This is part of a good SEM.  A copy writer will ensure that you are maximising your copy for the keywords your are seeking to market under.

What about analytics?  Most hosting packages come with a raft of tools to analyse your websites performance, our own hosting packages come with some great analytic tools.  These provide you with lots of information about how your website is performing in a given search engine, listing the unique visits from them.  In addition to analytics on your own site there are a huge range of tools that will help you analyse search engines and the popularity of key words – Rank Sense (costing $25.00 per month for the basic subscription) is a good example of these.

All in all, a business must ask the all important question – to pay for SEO or not to pay for SEO?  I cannot answer that for you, it is something you need to consider given all the facts.

What a business must not do is sit back and expect their site to get into the top three for their chosen keyword on its own – to get to the top costs money, whether you pay for an SEO company, or undertake to do-it-yourself.

Can I just make a very important point here.  A while ago I had a conversation with a business lady who had just had a new website built and was very please that the web designer had managed to get the website listed in Google at position one!  My obvious question was “for what keyword?”  The customers reply is typical of many, “for the name of my website!”  Lets face it, anyone can get a website to be number one in Google for the name of the website!!!!  You only need to submit your site to Google (something Google will do all on its own eventually!)

Whatever you decide, please please please ensure that you do some search engine marketing, otherwise you may as well spend the money you intend to invest on the design of your website on some business cards from a well know online publisher – costing £12.50 for 250 cards (the £12.50 is for postage and handling – the cards are free) because that is all you will have without SEM – a fancy business card!