Marketing Your Website - Getting Your Website Noticed

**Marincky** · Newbie Joined: 18 Aug 2007 Posts: 6 Location: UK

It’s as good as a necessity these days for all businesses to have some form of presence on the internet as more and more people turn to the search engines to search for products and services. I remember watching a television programme about 13 years ago that said that people would not have to leave their homes anymore to be able to survive. Well that time is here…right now! My car probably gets used about once a fortnight as I work from home and all my shopping and business needs can now be carried out on my computer. From my weekly shopping to banking, to arranging a plumber to fix my leaking tap to buying my car tax through the DVLA website, I can do this all from the comfort of my comfortable living room.

I don’t own a telephone book, nor can I remember turning to the Yellow Pages in the last five or six years, in fact I believe this year’s business telephone directory is propping up one of my wonky bedroom cabinets!

Nearly everyone now either owns or has access to the internet and with the search engine technology growing day by day, it is far easier, more convenient and in most cases more productive to search for our needs online. If you are taking the trouble to read this article then I can probably presume you either already own or are considering setting up a website to promote your business, so let’s start talking about how you can ensure that your website presence works for you as you want it to and does not become one of many hundreds of millions of websites that don’t get a look-in.

There are many articles similar to mine, probably hundreds of thousands, so how do you know which one to read and take notice of and actually implement into your business marketing plan? This is quite a difficult question to answer because all website builders and marketing specialists will all have their own unique ways of promoting their own and their client’s businesses.

So what makes my information any better than the others? Well, I am not going to tell you that it necessarily is… What I can tell you though is that I have now been building and marketing sites for around 10 years now and have had a 100% record of achieving page one rankings on every single website I have ever been involved with. As well as making a living from this, I also do this as a hobby, I take great interest and self reward in what I have achieved to date and it’s because of this that I put everything I have into every single website and have researched intensively on what you can do, what you should do and what works!

I have made mistakes along the way, but it is because of these mistakes that I have now built my business up into a very successful one and have learnt the hard way how to achieve the very best for an internet presence. If you take on board what I have to share with you this will save you from making the mistakes I made at first and hopefully you can jump ahead of the growing stages and promote your business the correct way from day one.

So, let’s discuss how to ensure your business is noticed on the world wide web…

Please note that the advice below is just a brief outline of what is involved in a successful website. There is too much to discuss in full detail but I hope I can bring you enough advice to get you on the right track to gaining the goal of a very successful internet presence.

Designing Your Website
Too many people these days make the very easy mistake of thinking too hard about what the search engines want to see on their website as opposed to what your potential customers want to see. This is probably the worst mistake anyone can make.
When the internet first appeared, I would probably be correct in saying that the opposite was the way to go, as search engines had not evolved enough to distinguish between sites made purely for search engines rather than for visitors. Now, with sophisticated software by the likes of Google, search engines really do make their decisions where to place a website on the content of the website and the ‘likeability’ factor of your potential visitors, as well as the ease of navigation and look of the site.

Google very rarely take meta keywords into their decisions now and tend to go straight to your page content to decide what to do with your creation.

The golden rule here is, build your website for your customers and NOT the search engines!

Many people ask me about what content to put on their website and I often get people saying to me that they heard that the more content there is, the better they will rank. Yes and NO. Content is good yes, however, there are a couple of factors here.

A little GOOD content is far better than tons and tons of BAD content.
So what is ‘good’ content? Your website is your shop front, if people like what hey see in the ‘window’ they will want to come in to browse and hopefully spend! Put nothing at all in your window, or overcrowd your window and your viewers will walk on by… I probably close more sites down within 2 or 3 seconds than I stay on one for a few minutes or more. This is because too many websites are overcrowded with information, or has information dotted about in no particular order that I just don’t want to look anymore… I just can’t be bothered, and so on I go to the next website. Who loses out?... The first website owner.

So what can they do to ensure I want to stay on the site, look around and hopefully spend some of my hard earned money on there?

The answer to this is very easy. When creating your website, and in particular your home page, ensure that all visitors have a pleasant and easy experience. If I visit a website and like the product or service offered but then spend 20 minutes looking for a way to purchase that item or service, or if it takes me half an hour to find an enquiry form or a phone number to contact the owners of the business then I am afraid that I will go onto the next site, probably their main competition and spend my money with them.

A site I created for a client a year back is an excellent example of what I am trying to get across. Take a look at www.aspiregowns.co.uk . At first glance there may appear to some of you to be very little information on the home page. But look again. From the home page alone my client’s potential customers can tell the following:

Who she is: Aspire Gowns.
What she sells: Prom Dresses, Party Frocks, Ball Gowns, Cocktail Gowns, Mother of the Bride, Hats for sale or Hire, Shoes.
What brand names she has in stock: Gino Cerruti, Tom Bowker, Medici, Official, Aftershock, Crystal Breeze, Peter Martin and many more besides.
What sizes she sells: Our dresses are available in sizes 8 to 18+.
Where she sells it: Worcestershire, Shropshire and Herefordshire.
How she sells it: Showroom Facilities.
Why people should buy from her: Exquisite gowns at affordable prices, Browse in comfortable private surroundings with no obligation to buy.
How to contact: Full address and phone numbers can be seen on the home page.

The way I have optimised the website for her means that people in the Worcestershire, Shropshire and Herefordshire area will see her on page one of the search engines for ALL the products that she sells. (I will talk about how to achieve this later in this article)

So, together with her site being seen in the search engines for the searches she requires along with her site being extremely ‘user friendly’, my client receives a huge amount of business.

The ratio of visitors to her site to actual buyers is extremely close.

Google like this website because it’s plain and simple… no fussy flash work, no lengthy page downloads, it looks crisp and
clean, it’s extremely obvious what this website sells and it is easy for the visitor to get around. Keep your website plain, simple and easy. Build a website that YOU would want to visit yourself.

If you take this important advice on board then you are already more than halfway there to making a website that will rank highly within the search engines.

Optimizing Your Website
Building a website with good content on the pages as discussed above is the most important factor of website optimisation. Search Engines DO read this content and if it can’t make sense of it, or if it feels you have overdone the information on the
pages then this will affect your ranking and give you a lower place in the results than your competitors.

As well as content on your pages you also have website META data which is ‘behind the scenes’ website content such as page
titles, page keywords and page descriptions. If you are having a professional website company build your website then ensure you ask them to complete the meta data for every page, you will be surprised how many companies won’t do this for you unless you insist. If you are creating the website yourself then all website building software should have a section for completing the meta data yourself, ensure that you use this feature correctly!

Meta Page Titles

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. Page titles are not seen on your website, they are the text content in the very top of your browser.

Page titles:
Page titles give the search engines a very quick insight into what your page is about, again your home page being the most
important here. Again, keep this content simple and short. Too little is not enough, too much is just as harmful.

http://www.limotec.co.uk/
The website above is a client of mine who offers technical advice on engine and wiring problems on limousines, so as you
can see the page title here is:

Limousine Technical Support – Engine Problems – Wiring Problems – Limo Tec

This lets the search engines know the site is primarily a technical support site for limousine engine and wiring issues.
If your website serves a particular area then you could add this here too. So if you are a photographer based in Kent then your page title could be something along the lines of:

Wedding Photographer | Portrait Photographer | Kent

Each page of your site must be individually page titled, so our wedding photographer in Kent may have a gallery page showing his work, so maybe his page title for his gallery page could be:

Sample Photography Work | Wedding & Portrait Photographer in Kent

I have a client who is a Gardener in Worcester and Hereford, his page title to his home page is:

Worcester Gardener | Hereford Gardener

He is currently number one on page one of Google for both search terms ‘Worcester gardener’ and ‘Hereford gardener’. The page titles have a lot to do with why he is number one!

Page Keywords:
Keywords or keyphrases cover the main aspects of each page of your website. Many people make the mistake of stuffing the meta keywords with as many words or phrases they think people may type into the search engines in able to find their site, however this will be detrimental to your ranking rather than improve it. The meta data is where you should keywords or
phrases that MUST ALSO be present on the page you are keywording.

So, if on the page in question you have the following text:

‘We sell cheap wedding dresses and bridesmaid gowns as well as veils, bridal shoes and accessories. Our showroom is based in Kent and is by appointment only. We have stunning bridal wear by top designers Alfred Angelo in stock.’

Then in your meta keywords you could place the following: Cheap wedding dresses, bridesmaid gowns, bridal shoes, Alfred Angelo, Kent

Notice that all those phrases and words are also in the page text too. If the search engines don’t see your keywords within your page content then they will just bypass this information and make up their own keywords. Google in fact bypass the keyword meta data now anyway, but some search engines still use it so it is worth adding where possible. Four or five words or phrases are more then enough, any more will just have the opposite effect.

Page Description.
Fairly self descriptive, just write a small paragraph (around 20-35 words) about the content of the page. This must also vary from page to page. So a good example of a page description for the above example could be:

Bridal shop based in Kent, selling wedding gowns, bridesmaid gowns, veils, bridal shoes and accessories. Our showroom can be visited, by appointment only, 6 days a week. Main designers include Alfred Angelo and Maggie Sottero.

Who are you targeting?
Think seriously who your customers are likely to be. Are you trying to sell your business just to people in your town, county, country, or are do you have a service or product that will appeal worldwide?

Let's say you sell Carpets in Nottingham. Anyone typing 'Carpets' into Google will get roughly 15,500,000 results. Wow! There's no way you're going to get seen anywhere near page one here!... Ok, let's now presume the customer has narrowed his search down by clicking on the UK search results for 'carpet suppliers' only. Now this takes the results down to an amazing 1,550,000; this is increasing your chances of being seen greatly. Now let's say the customer types in 'Carpet suppliers in Nottingham'. He is now confronted with just 25,400 results. This may sound a high number but trust me, 25,400 is a very low result and the chance of your site coming up on page 1 or 2 if you had your page titles set to 'Carpet Shop - Nottingham - UK' and had keywords on your site such as 'Carpet suppliers in Nottingham'. In fact if you look closely at the results there are actually only two carpet suppliers in Nottingham on Page one of Google for this result and that's because they both have correct page titles and keywording. So out of 25,400 results, if you set up a carpet shop in Nottingham you would definitely without fail get a page one result if keyworded correctly.

If a majority of your business is going to be local, then keep your keywords and page titles and description local. Put your address or at least your town and county on your home page somewhere so the search engines will put you into the correct local section for whatever service you provide. A mobile hairdresser in Essex doesn't want a customer in Glasgow, so her site would have 'Mobile Hairdresser' and 'Essex' in the page titles, keywords and description and so anyone looking for a hairdresser in Essex should get directed to her site.

If you are looking to appeal to a much wider audience, then unless you are providing a service or goods absolutely unique to you then you are going to have your work cut out. But don't panic, as it is not impossible. Out of the millions of websites out there, very few are optimized properly so do a good job on yours and you could queue jump very quickly!.

What else can I do to make sure my site gets seen?
Let people know you exist! Very few businesses set up and then get inundated with more clients than they can handle, in fact quite the opposite. This is no different on the internet. Hoping for a page one slot on the search engines will be enough to get you a lifelong income is just fooling yourself. Search engines use many factors in deciding where to place you on their system, some of these I mentioned above, but this is by no means the end of it. They also count how many other websites mention you on theirs and include a link to your site from within their pages. When they send out their ‘spiders’ to scour the net, when they pick your site up they also count how many links coming in to it from other websites, so a site with 1000 other sites linking to it stands a better chance of being higher in the results than a site with say just 10 links coming in.

So what is the best way to get other sites linking to yours? There are several ways, firstly search the internet for business directories, especially ones covering your particular area. So if you provide a wedding related service, search for wedding directories and get listed in as many as you can, there are many directories out there that will let you list your website for FREE. The ones that charge usually have a very good readership and so this is worth considering to as your listing will not only act as a link which is readable by the search engines, it will also get read by many viewers of the directory and will more than likely increase hits to your website.

Get yourself listed on the following sites:
HotFrog
SirLook
Free Index

Search for forums that discuss your type of product or service, join up as a member and if allowed, add your website link to your signature in your profile. Google often counts every post you make as a link to your website then. So post 1000 times and you have 1000 potential links. Don’t just sign up to these forums to spam your website on though, offer free advice to
those asking on the forums, help people out and you will soon find they will become inquisitive to who you are and more often than not become a potential customer! I belong to a forum that helps people create websites, I help out quite a lot and in return many of the forum members have asked me to either take over or restart their websites for them. I get a lot of my work this way.

Find websites that are similar, but not the same, as yours and politely email them requesting a link exchange. So for example, if you sell ladies handbags, then find a website that sells ladies shoes as there is no conflict between the businesses then and ask them to put a link to your website on theirs in return for you putting a link from your website back to them.

All of the above are lengthy and very laborious tasks, but the rewards can be more than worth it.

It doesn’t happen overnight:
I own a wedding directory which I built over 3 years ago now. In the first month I was receiving around 60 – 80 visits. Three
years on and I now receive around 28,000 visits a month and the revenue I earn from both advertisers and sponsored listings was well worth the wait. Very few sites are overnight successes. Work hard, keep your site updated, promote yourself wherever and whenever you can and you will achieve your goals in the end.

I have made all the above sound very easy… and it is.. but it is more time consuming than anything. If you have the time and effort to put into your websites then you will do well. However, I understand that most of you will just want to get on with your business itself rather than spending 80% of your time trying to push your website. If this is the case then use the services of someone you can trust to market your site for you and let them do the hard work whilst you get on with yours! There are many people out there specialising in SEO and marketing techniques.... Just choose wisely!
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www.marinckygroup.co.uk
www.weddingsitedesign.co.uk