Online marketing news and resources.

Not immediately anyway! An experienced web design agency will plan to help you get there.

It takes a little time – usually depending on the quality of your online marketing campaigns and how thorough and knowledgeable your website design agency are. You are not automatically guaranteed a top three position, but they should be able to advise what has worked previously and devise a customised strategy for your business.

The key to successful advancement up the rankings is always “organic” search engine optimisation. Every web page on your site should be made as search engine friendly as possible. Each individual page must have just the right amount and combination of title tags, meta tags, headings, sub headings and keyword/phrase links so the search engines will up your ranking and your visitors are able to navigate easily.

It is worth remembering that search engines frequently change their algorithms!

Example : If you know for a fact that a current rule is a ‘right combination of text in the title tag’, say ’cheshire web design’, is crucial to your site being found more easily, then all you have to do is to tweak the title tag to conform to the rule, and you will automatically climb the ranking from that point on.

However, if that  rule suddenly changed one day later and now the most important factor for the search engines to use for ranking a site is the ‘content of the meta description tag’, e.g. ’Provoke Design for PG Tips’, all the work you went to yesterday to fix the title is now useless. All of your attention is now to be focused on fixing that description tag!

The actual reality is, that over time the focus of the search engines will vary, anyway. It’s best not to try and beat the system. Rather than tweaking a site one way today and another way tomorrow, the best way to approach optimising a page or a whole site is to add value to the site. It makes more sense to aim for long term results. Patience and careful planning is a far more conclusive strategy to help give your site ranking real staying power. By constantly keeping it active with fresh optimised content, you are guaranteed frequent search engine indexing.

Every website designer proclaims that “content is king”. But only if it’s talking about the actual content!

There was a time when “content” meant specifically that the words ‘filling a space’ were referring directly to what they were speaking about. Now of course, the development of online marketing and the importance of search engine optimisation means the content can often be seen as a mere ’vehicle’ to carry the all-important SEO keyword links to drive traffic to a specific website or page.

The continued prevalence of the idea that content is just a ‘space-filler’ is not only one of the reasons why there are so many terrible websites, but it is killing the real purpose of ‘content’. For a visitor to have a good ‘website experience’ that would encourage repeated return visits, means quality website design not only gives instant access to visually attractive and navigable layouts that gets the visitor quickly and easily to what they are looking for, but they should also discover new and interesting information and background about a company or industry services and products.

Many organisations think that they can save money and write site content themselves. Aside from the different approach each type of page application demands, e.g. writing the Home Page is different from writing a blog entry or an email marketing newsletter or a Case study, there is of course the basic problems of spelling, punctuation and the writing has to be understood for the message to be clear.

In addition, there is the actual, and often not understood reality of :

• The time it will actually take you! ( Blogs and articles need to be written daily)
• Getting the tone just right and focused on your specific market sector audience.
• Knowing which exact SEO keywords / phrases your target audience exactly search for and respond to.
• Putting thoughts into words to say what you mean in short easily digested paragraphs of concise 1-4 line sentences only.
• Ensuring the message is clear and straightforward, without resorting to tired clichés or business-speak jargon.

The real purpose of online content is to impress your first time visitor, confer authority on your organisation – and keep visitors returning to read your daily uploaded blogs, articles, news, information that is of genuine interest to them and encourage sales conversion.

You’ve heard of pay-per-click (PPC) but you’re not sure how it works, if it will work for you, what it costs and how to do it !

But you’re interested to know more …

So, here are the answers to those questions!

How PPC works :

By carefully selecting keyword/phrases that you know your potential customer will type into their search bar, you offer a price – defined as a ‘sponsored link’ – you wish to bid for each of your keyword/phrases. Payment is made only when each time a customer types a keyword /phrase matching your list and clicks onto your ad, which immediately appears top of the Google right-hand side page rankings.

OK, now you’re thinking – does this mean more customers ?

Yes, it also means more quality customers, because it is well-targeted!

When a potential customer from your targeted marketplace is looking for what you are advertising, types in your specifically selected keywords/phrases, sees your ad top right hand side of the Google search page and clicks on your ad, they immediately enter your site – and thus, are prevented from losing patience and clicking through.

Once a transaction has been completed or become a lead, the chances are increased for a return visit to your site.

In other words, GoogleAds drives traffic directly to you!

Right – so what is the next step ….

Masterminding entire PPC campaigns for businesses should be part of an overall online marketing plan.

You therefore, require a web design agency possessing considerable experience, who can offer expert advice and the ability to conduct a precisely targeted PPC strategy for your individual market sector.

They must have a proven competency in the following essential areas :

• Comprehensive targeted keyword/phrase analysis.
• Carefully determined page-by-page, selected keyword/phrases and their frequency of use.
• Measurable increase in click-through rates.
• Focused location-based traffic from a 25 – 150 mile radius.

In a nutshell …

PPC will immediately drive up high-volume quality traffic, increase customer conversion and generate the all-important profitable return on investment.

No budget ? Too busy ? It doesn’t cost you anything to spend just 10 minutes, once a week, improving the quality of site visitor traffic !

It may come as no surprise to hear there are some very easy and simple actions you can take to tweak your website and open the doors to brand new customers! The guys and girls on the team here at Provoke are always coming up with red hot online marketing ideas for our clients, some tried and tested, others spanking brand new!

So we thought, why not share a few with you to get your feedback – and maybe even hear about a few ideas you have tried and if they worked?

First off, a standard procedure we should all know about …

Practice a purchase – Ask somebody in the office, at home, family member or best friend to go on to your website, show them how a customer goes through the process of buying an item or getting in contact with you. Write down all of the things you both notice during the process. The results might surprise you! Usually there will be at least one or more changes you can make that will increase your conversion rate.

Ask for feedback – Add a button that says: “Can’t find what you are looking for? Email us your question.” It’s considered a trusted and reassuring method of establishing customer contact, info collecting, database and relationship building. After all, there is no way you can know what your visitors are experiencing. Let them tell you what they want!

Request for signing up to your Newsletter – This will help prepare for creating a highly targeted email marketing campaign.

Change the colour of your “Buy Now” button to green – This might also be your main call to action button, like “Apply Now”. But remember, red equals “stop”, and green equals “go”. Are your buttons telling users to stop or go?

Change your home page main image – Nothing is more persuasive than seeing a website that is changing and evolving. You will definitely encourage bookmarking and return visits.

Just to finish up with, as this might take you longer than 10 minutes …

Add a page of content – Keep your online presence active with regular and frequent fresh text content. The more pages Google can see on your website, the more chances you have of ranking for any particular keyword phrases.

More online marketing tips soon !

The principles of effective web design start with the need to understand how users interact with web-sites, how they think and identifying the basic patterns of users’ behaviour.

We should all know some of the basic ground rules for today’s successful website:

•    User-friendly design and usability
•    Targeting your audience
•    The widest possible visitor access
•    Increasing your conversion-rate
•    Continuous maintenance and fresh online content

Usability and the utility determines the success or failure of a web-site. Since the visitor to a web page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has become a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. After all, if users can’t use a feature, it might as well not exist.

Web users are impatient and insist on instant gratification. If a web-site isn’t able to meet users’ expectations and the less intuitive is the navigation, then visitors are more willing to leave the web-site and search for alternatives.

We generally don’t read web pages! We scan, trying to find what we’re looking for as quickly as possible.

We scroll down the page looking at the items that stand out from the rest of the text. Accessibility to your website, means the use of headings, links, bold text and bullet points and making sure they contain descriptive text so the page can be instantly understood simply by scanning quickly through.

By improving website accessibility, you’re also improving its ability to be found and accessed by search engines.

Search engines can’t usually understand images, JavaScript, Flash, audio and video content. Search engines will be able to understand the purpose of your website more easily if you provide alternative, accessible text content to each of these. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) means the more confident a search engine is of what your website is about, able to match the key words and phrases with relevant content, the higher in the search rankings it will place your website when a search is made for those keywords and phrases.

Let’s look at these stats :

53% of business users check their email six or more times during the working day.
34% of internet users check their email continuously throughout the day.

If you add ‘mobile’ usage via Blackberry, iphone and Netbook then email checking is 24/7 with on-the-fly emails customised to individual recipients.

Yet the main reasons why email marketing is still universally popular with busy business people from all types and sizes of organisations is because it is so incredibly easy to do and extremely versatile.

If you are aware of how to properly use the applications it provides, email marketing is still the most cost effective method you can use to establish customer contact today.

Let’s remind ourselves that email marketing:
• Will enable you to precisely focus and target your niche market audience.
• Is data driven and will track and collect vital key customer information to help shape and refine your approach
• Drives direct sales that you might not have obtained by passive advertising.
• Builds client relationships, loyalty and trust.

A properly planned email marketing campaign is not difficult and the results can often be surprising! Simply by offering a Subscription option, all manner of valuable customer feedback may give you just the answers you were looking for to fine tune your sales strategy.

Lead nurturing – or the sending of a series of emails over a defined period – helps to inform about a product or service and is an almost cost-free method of customer building, reinforcing your message and building your brand.

You can create a Press Release or NewsLetter in minutes, but it’s worth remembering that your target market may need to see your message at least seven times or more during the confidence building phase !

In the current economic climate, regular and frequent emails keeps you in touch with your customers and gives your brand an edge!