Apr 29
MikeGeneral Business Practices small business
I am still surprised by how many businesses these days still have no kind of web presence at all! And then there are those businesses that have websites which are so poorly designed that potential customers give up before they have even got past the home page. If you are business owner, put yourself in your customer’s shoes – where is the first place you would look for more information on your business? Answer: The internet!
Simply, having a website is not enough; you need to know how to use it for best results. Websites need to be informative, and by that I mean going much further than simply providing a business address and contact details. As a marketing tool for your business the internet provides a wealth of opportunities, many of which can be far more cost effective for a small and growing business than many other traditional marketing methods.
Here are 5 reasons why you need to grab yourself a piece of cyberspace and get a good website up and running today:
- Increase business awareness: most of us will turn to the internet when we need information, so having a website for your business is vital if you are to catch potential customers ahead of your competition
- Improve branding: every business, no matter what sector you are in can be marketed as a brand. A good name, good logo and matching web graphics will all help to place your business in the minds of potential customers
- Showcase products and services: so many businesses fail to see the potential websites have to offer in promoting the core of their business. Whether you go for ecommerce or simple photo galleries showing your latest products, allowing customers an insight into what you do or what you sell is an open invitation to buy
- Open the global marketplace: you may or may not be in a position to offer your products or services on a global scale, but placing your business in front of a global audience could open up new opportunities for you and can help you to expand at a rate which is often unachievable via more traditional marketing routes
- Conduct cost efficient marketing: many companies, particularly those who used to spend vast sums of money on printed materials, are now using their websites as catalogs/promotional tools and are now saving money on printed marketing materials. Offering e-catalogs/leaflets/brochures etc. which can be downloaded will decrease mailing costs and has become a big trend, particularly in light of increased environmental pressure to reduce paper consumption.
Achieving a good website does not need to be expensive, you simply need to plan it right and know how you want to use it for the benefit of your business. Today’s potential customers will assume you have a website. If you don’t, then you are about to get left behind.
Apr 27
MikeWeb Design, Web Industry 404, dc website firm, Web Design
404 error pages are often overlooked and taken too lightly. If designed well, these pages can reel back in a lost or misguided visitor and bring them to the page or information they initially set out to see. Unfortunately, many websites don’t use 404 pages. If any of their links are broken, pages down, or any other mishap they run the risk of losing their visitor.
The last few days, we took a look at over 30 404 pages hosted by local DC website firms. The research was quite startling:
- Nearly 1/3 of the DC website firms didn’t have their own 404 page;
- Roughly 1/2 of the firms had very dull and plain pages; and,
- Only a very small handful had ones that reeled back in their users and added a creative twist at the same time. (Another reason, I’m a big fan of creative 404 pages is because they are rarely seen and thus design agencies, or any company for that matter, can be more creative with this page.)
Here are a few great examples:
Cohenspire, http://www.cohenspire.com/404/
Text: Oh no you broke something! Ok well…let’s be honest I probably messed something up. Find your way home or let me know what broke.
nclud, http://www.nclud.com/404
Text: Whoops! We’ve slipped! If you think a page should be here, then there probably should be one. We’ve slipped-up and apologize; but rest assured that someone somewhere just got an email about this, we’re sort of fanatics about that whole user-experience thing. Don’t let one bad banana hold you back. Learn more about us, our work and our process, read a bit from our sketchbook or contact us. If you’re one of our many awesome clients looking for our client login, you can always login at http://clients.nclud.com
TK Designs, http://www.tkdesigns.tv/404
Text: OMG! I think I’m lost. ?#$! Looks like the file you are looking for is not available. This may be because we just added our new page and it is still missing a few files. You may contact us or go back home.
And of course, our very own 404 page…
Text: 404 Oops, the bulb burned out. You must have entered in a wrong URL, or the page is down… or maybe we should build a new page because you thought there would be one here. We’re not blaming anyone… let’s get through this together. Here’s the way back, browse through our work, learn about our expertise, read our story, view our awards, or get in touch with us.
Apr 26
MikeGeneral Business Practices, SEO, Web Industry SEO, small business, social media, social networks
Although they have been about for a few years now, social networks have been the big buzz in Internet marketing circles. Everyone, especially businesses, are busy trying to figure out how to get the most from them. The fact is social networks like Twitter and Facebook give you the potential to reach thousands if not millions of customers, depending upon your business. Truth is, many businesses hear of Facebook, Twitter, etc. and deem it necessary to join in. First, every business should consider which ones are most appropriate for their individual businesses instead of following others.
Think about it, you have your brand, you have your products or services, you have set up a great looking website, but now you’re missing the customers! In terms of Internet marketing, social networks are worth their weight in gold, providing a cost effective (if not free) means of reaching out and telling people you are there. But before you rush off and open accounts on every site you find, you need to take a moment to consider what you want to achieve and how social networks can help you do it. A look at your target audience should help you to determine which social networks are the most viable, for instance Facebook are generally used, although not exclusively, by a younger demographic, students, young parents etc. On the other hand, Twitter has become popular with many businesses, politicians, celebrities and various agencies, in addition to the same market that Facebook serves.
Not every social site will be of benefit to you and a quick tour around them will help you to determine which ones are right for your particular business. While all of the popular social networking sites have millions of users, finding potential customers among them can be difficult if you do not use the features and tools of the site effectively. For instance, Flickr offers a means of sharing photographs, ideal if you manufacture products, but not so well for service industries that would probably find Facebook or Twitter a better choice. Before embracing social media, know your audience. For example, companies whose target market is the federal government may want to research which social media applications the government allows its employees to use. If employees aren’t able to use the technologies at work, is there a point to launching that particular social media application?
Social networks offer additional methods of improving your web presence and elevating your business in the search engine rankings. Creating profiles on various social networking sites will give potential customers plenty of scope to find out more about you and ultimately be directed to your website. But you need to maintain these sites, ensure all links are active, profiles are up to date and information is current and accurate. This has created a need for staff to be able to use various social networking sites and know how to update them as necessary, and this in itself can be a crucial factor in your choice of site.
Social networking websites have become the way forward for increasing web presence and when combined with other Internet marketing techniques they can be very powerful tools in increasing business and attracting customers. In essence there has never been an easier way of spreading the word so quickly and on a global scale.
Apr 15
MikeGeneral Business Practices, Web Industry blog, small business
Sure, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and plethora of other social networks are on everyone’s tongues but for me, I still prefer the good ol’ hearty, frequently updated, blog. Blogs can be more business oriented or more personal – yesterday, I read a blog that has a poodle writing in 1st person.
Both as a small business owner and search engine marketer, I see the incredible benefits of blogging on a daily basis. Sure, they may often be difficult to find time for or to think of a topic but those that are determined to keep up truly do set them up for far greater success. Don’t just take it from me though – here are some concrete facts: according to a HubSpot study of 1,500 companies, companies with a blog have:
- 55% more visitors
- 97% more inbound links
- 434% more indexed pages
Another study states “businesses that published at least 5 blog articles in the last 7 days draw 6.9 times more organic search traffic than those who don’t blog at all.” This also means more page views and hence a higher probability of business leads via your website – do you really think that ALL blog readers will read your post then exit your site? Of course not! They’ll get curious and learn about you, your company, services or products that you offer, etc. Enough stats though, blogs also allow you to build:
- Name/Brand Recognition. Blogging builds credibility and creates a readership. If my fiancé can have a few thousand fans from her cupcake blog, you can undoubtedly find people that enjoy your writing and have a positive association with you. What other channels can offer this?
- Rapport with Prospective Clients. Everyone says the best way to get a job (or business) is through your personal network (“who you know”). By blogging, you will develop a rapport with your readers and prospective clients, alike. Not only will they trust you but they will have a chance to get to know you through your writing.
- Personal Voice. If your website is more “corporate”, blogs enable you to be a real person – a more personalized voice for your company. This makes it easier for you to engage your visitors. If you were a prospective client, would you get a greater sense of the person or company through static newsletters and press releases or through less formal, more conversational style?
From a search engine standpoint:
- Each blog article serves as a page of content. A SEM best practice is to target 1-2 keywords per page of text. If your website has 10 pages of text, roughly 15-20 keywords can effectively be targeted. Consider adding a blog and writing 10 articles – this enables you to target another 15-20 keywords! (This is effective if your blog resides on your domain; for example, www.domain.com/blog and not on a BlogSpot server.) Below is an example of a client’s Google Analytics snapshot illustrating the top landing pages from search engines. (A landing page is the first page that a web visitor visits from search engine, it may or may not be the homepage.)
As you see, the #2 landing page for this time period is a blog article in which we targeted the keyword [utilization review process].
- Blogs allow structured content. Through the use of “categories” and/or “tags”, articles are categorized together by their content. This makes it easier for search engines to understand your content; the less work search engines have to do, the greater payoff for you.
- Search engines (and humans) love “fresh content”. Just like you would like for articles to be kept up-to-date and current, search engines do too. The more current and frequent the information, the more you come back on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. Same idea applies to search engines. A trend of “fresh content” enables search engines to index your pages more quickly (resulting in an increased size of your website, see #1) and deem you more of an authoritative source.
If you don’t already have a blog, what are you waiting for? Get out there and set one up! If you need help, feel free to give us a shout.
Apr 09
MikeClient Spotlight, SEO, Website Launches redesign, SEO, spilled milk catering, Web Design
A few months ago, Washington DC catering company, Spilled Milk Catering, contacted us for help expanding their clientele and reaching a wider target audience. Although the site redesign and preliminary SEO took place back in February, we haven’t had a chance to sit down and tell the world about this exciting project. Actually, it worked out for the best — since a couple of months have passed, we’ve been able to get a good glimpse of how our optimization and content restructuring efforts have helped Spilled Milk.
During our analysis of the website, we noticed that there was limited content on the site and all of the search traffic was coming from brand name keywords, not a single local targeted or service specific keyword. Unless the prospective customer knew “Spilled Milk Catering”, the DC catering company was invisible. To address these concerns, we:
- Improved the site structure. Geographic pages were added to speak to each of Spilled Milk’s target markets (Maryland, DC, and Virginia). Additionally, specific service pages were added to maximize the search engine exposure of each of their individual service offerings.
- Researched and analyzed keywords. Keywords were researched and analyzed to capitalize on the high local search volume and catering-specific keywords.
- Optimized the web content. Using the keywords identified, keyword density was improved to build credibility and relevance in the eyes of the search engines.
In a short ten week span following our efforts, we’ve accomplished quite a bit.
- Improved total website traffic by 163%
- Improved the number of unique visitors by 207%
- Improved traffic coming from referral sites by 234%
- Improved the number of landing pages in which users entered the site by 120%
- Improved the number of page views by 146%
- Placed 24 keywords on the search engines radar that were not previously ranking
- Improved the ranking of the #1 desired keyword by 94 places in Google
It’s been a pleasure working with the guys over at Spilled Milk. Since SEO is an on-going process, we haven’t completed the job yet but the results are headed in the right direction. Lastly, if you have an event coming up, give them a shout. Tell them I sent you and try the Three-Cheese Puff Canapes – you won’t regret it. Yummmmm………
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