Hands up if your website is floating around in hyperspace, attracting no more than a few dozen clicks every month?

It’s easy to fall in to the trap of getting a website up and running, only to hold your head in despair because you are not getting the online traffic you thought you were going to get.

You are struggling to find enough clients from your face-to-face networking so using the internet has to give results; and fast! So why isn’t your website being found? And what can you do about getting found on Google?

Buying in SEO – search engine optimisation – expertise can be hideously expensive. And to budget for a few hundred pounds every month for Google Adwords is a waste of time if you don’t know what you are doing. But for a business owner like you, who is probably on a low cost marketing budget, there are certain steps you can take to make sure your website can get found by the right people online.

Take control of your website content

I’m not suggesting you start learning HTML and CSS and mess around with your own website coding, but once a site is set up for you, there really is no need to keep relying on your website designer to make every little adjustment and change to your website. I have met many small business owners who hate their website, complain that it does nothing for their business and yet don’t want to make any changes because of the expense of using their website designer to do it for them!

Blogging platforms such as WordPress.org and Squarespace.com allow you to take full control of your website content once the site has been set up for you. It really can be as easy as editing word documents before clicking that publish button to make the changes live on your website.

Many website designers who build websites on WordPress.org offer content management training as part of the package; a solution I highly recommend you explore.

Know exactly what your clients are searching for online

Being top of Google’s Page One for “life coaching” may sound impressive, but if your potential clients are looking for “tips on how to deal with redundancy” or “how to change careers”, then your “life coaching” keyword focus is going to get you diddly squat!

And if your visitor statistics are showing good figures for the “life coaching” keyword, make sure they are just other life coaches checking out the competition! How are those visitor rates converting to genuine interest in what you offer?

Keep your website content relevant

The more niche and focused you are on the content on your website, the more likely Google is going to give you higher search listings for certain keywords. Redundancy may be your niche area but if you try to cover all the bases such as graduate options, mid-life crisis and what to do after retirement, Google is going to get confused about what your website is all about.

This is a common problem that many of you will have with your website and it may be that you end up having two, three or more websites to promote the various services and products that you offer.

Overwhelming thought? Start with one area of your business first and get your website focused on this! Better to spend time refining your current website to specialise in just one area of your business and create additional websites over time as you see success in this strategy, than have a “one size fits all” website that is doing nothing for you!

Website page titles and descriptions

Did you know that Google will show your pages higher in the search listings if the titles of the pages and their description show exactly what you want to get found for?

If you had written a book about how to make career changes after redundancy and had not included this phrase in either the book title or description, then Waterstones is not going to know where to put your new book in its’ stores. It’s not going to get found!

Check each page title and description to see how well it matches the content on that page and the keywords you want to get found for.

Add content to your website

A five page website is OK. But five pages are not going to give Google much to refer to and bring you up in relevant searches. Google loves content and the more relevant content you have on your site, the more likely the right pages are going to appear on the right search listings.

Yup, that’s right; blogging is not just for those who love to write. Blogging is there for businesses that love to get found!

Avoid flash when building your website

Animations and fancy graphics may look lovely but if there’s no text, Google can’t read it and won’t put you in the search listings. A client of mine couldn’t understand why her website never came up in Google, even when she tried searching for her specific name. Her teenage son had beautifully designed her site but, as it was all built in flash, it was one big image. It was never going to come up in any search results because Google could not read it.

Are you telling anyone about your website?

It’s one thing to make sure Google will be able to show your website up in relevant search results, but to rely only on this is suicide. You have to take control over your website and make sure you have a marketing plan.

“Build it and they will come” is not a philosophy that you can afford to follow. You have to take responsibility and decide on an online – and offline! – plan on how you are going to attract the right clients to your website.

Remember to add “you”

A big mistake many small business owners make is to forget to add content about themselves. If someone wants to try to find you after meeting you at a networking event or has been recommended to speak to you but hasn’t got your phone number, you want to make sure your website comes up in a Google search of your name.

You are often the reason why your clients come to you, so you’ve got to make sure “you” are found easily on Google!

Want to discover more about your Googleablity?

Check out this month’s Web Tech Training Session – How To Manage Your Googleablity. Practical, no-nonsense advice on how to make sure you get found on Google!

What came first?

What came first? The chicken or the egg?

This legendary conundrum can puzzle kids of all ages (and yes, I know I am still a big kid too?!)

This same conundrum can puzzle small business owners who struggle with deciding what to start with first:  a website, a blog or an email newsletter.

To be brutally honest, it really doesn’t matter.  To get all three of these marketing tools working well for you, you need to have them all up and running so they can bounce and link back wards and forwards.  And sideways and upways!

But that’s not very helpful and you’ve got to start somewhere.

So, here’s what I recommend to my clients.

1. Start with working out what house you want to live in

You wouldn’t walk in to an estate agency and tell them you need a place to live.  They just wouldn’t be able to help you unless they knew your price backet, the number of bedrooms you wanted or whether it was a flat of a house you were after.

So before you go calling upon the first web designer you meet at a networking event, decide on what you need your online house to be.

Who are your customers?

What are you selling online?

What’s the purpose of your website going to be?

IMHO, small business websites need to have one primary function.  Yes, you want to sell your goods and wares, but all in good time.  Your primary goal for your website is to build a mailing list.

2.  Do you want to be blogging?  And what room is it going to be in your house?

Not all of you will feel you are cut out for blogging but if you feel you are (and that’s good news!!), it makes sense to have your blog incorporated in to your main website.  It works better for the search engines and it keeps things simpler for you.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Your blog can be like an annex – attached to your website, with the same look and feel but essentially a separate site.  This may work better for online retail businesses selling stuff such as baby clothes, handbags or cosmetics.  The last you want to do is to jump on the blogging bandwagon and make your online shop difficult to find!

For more service based businesses, it makes sense to have your blog as your website.  The articles you write and publish, showcase your expertise and build that trust with the potential client cruising around your website.

3.  How you are going to manage your blog/website?

Blogging platforms such as self-hosted WordPress or Drupal or hosted sites such as Typepad or Blogger all give you the power to manage your own blog/website once it’s all set up without the need of a web designer.

WordPress.org is my personal favourite piece of blogging/website software but you have to decide what’s right for you and how you work.

If you don’t want to do any of the admin of your own site, you can always delegate this someone else.  It doesn’t always have to be you!

So get moving on your blog/website project first.  And then start on your email newsletter project.

(Notice that I use the word “Project” here – “Do Website” isn’t something for your to-do-list!!  This is a project that will need breaking down in to daily tasks, timescales, etc)

4.   What newsletter subscriber system are you going to use?

Whilst your blog/website is getting set up (I make this sound so easy don’t I!!??!), now is the time to start researching the newsletter systems and make a decision on which one to go with.

Do you want to stick to a basic newsletter package? Constant Contact is good for this.  Do you need autoresponders? ( my most favouritist web tech tool that most small business owners should be using in their online marketing).  Aweber and iContact are two systems to check out.

Are you going to be selling stuff online?  If so you may need a newsletter system that works with a shopping cart.  1ShoppingCart is the system I use – not the holy grail and sometimes it annoys the pants off me! but it works.  Especially if you find a Virtual Assistant who can manage the whole system for you.

5.  What are you going to offer?

Adding a “Sign up to my free newsletter” to your blog/website is just not going to cut it today.  Blah, blah, blah – so you offer a newsletter?  So what?

What can you create or offer that would be of value to your target audience.  It could a be a free report, audio recording, videos, discount coupon or even a taster product in the post.  Think about your clients and if in doubt – ask them! Don’t guess!

So before this blog post becomes the length of War and Peace, I’ll leave it there.  And, to be honest, if I give you much more information I think your head will probably explode :O)

Get to this stage and you will be well on the way to sorting out your online marketing plan.  I often find that if one looks too far ahead on these type of projects, the sheer size of the project is enough to put you off from starting.  And that’s not something that should be an option for you!

If you are serious about getting tools such as blogs and email newsletters working for you and you feel you really need some practical, hand holding through the whole process – this is exactly what I do for my clients.  Click here to find out how you get your blog/newsletter/website project fast tracked and less painful.

If you knew you were expecting visitors at your home, would you leave your pots and pans stacking up in the kitchen sink and your washing hung up to dry in the front hall?

So why would you leave your website in a mess when you go out and invite interested clients in from social networks?

It’s great that you want to use tools such as Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to your website.  It’s wonderful that you want people to find you from your tweets and updates.

But if your website is out of date or even looking a little bit shabby, then all your good work in providing links back to your website will be wasted.

Any clicks through to your website, will be quickly followed by the back button or delete page key.

Your website is your home.  And your social networking profiles are your doormats to your business.

And I see too many business owners getting carried away trying to get Twitter and Facebook to work for them, only to have their websites in a mess.  And it is usually these business owners who then claim to find that social media just doesn’t work.

Here’s what you need to your website to be to make sure your social media activity does work:

1. A website with a purpose.  If there is a no call to action when someone visits your site, then they will drift off again.  Give them a report to sign up to.  Offer something for free in exchange for their email address.  It’s absolutely critical you do this for your long term success as a small business.
2. A website that is focused to your target audience.  Too often a website is trying to be everything to everyone one.  If you are trying to engage with finance professionals on Twitter, then make sure your website is all about working with finance professionals.
3. A website that speaks the right language. Twitter and Facebook are very social networks.  They are relaxed and friendly.  If your links send them through to a stiff, corporate website, it may present a too big leap for someone to feel they have found what they are looking for.  Your copy and style certainly doesn’t need to be 140 character based tweets!  But you if step out of a warm hot bath in to a cold shower, then you are going jump out again very quickly :O)
4. A website that is about you. You are you on social networks.  Going from someone’s twitter feed who tweets about life as a solopreneur or a mum from working from home, in to a website that talks about the “royal we” and avoids any mention of being a small business, is just not going to be congruent to your online brand.  Decide to be one of the other – but don’t be both on different platforms.
5. A website needs to be up to date. An events page with workshops listed from 4 months ago just looks bad.  A “latest news” page with a press release from 2009 is lazy.  Get your events updated … or take the page down.

So get your house in order before you invite people in.  Get your website working for you.  You will find your social media results improve dramatically if you do.

Yesterday there was uproar around Facebook communities.  Facebook where making changes to the business pages and after a 9 minute outage, the new look Page had gone as quickly as it appeared.

“How dare they change the format of the Pages” was one comment I read.

“Don’t they know it businesses like ours that pay their salaries – I’m not going to advertise if they take away my welcome page” was another.

Why the uproar?  The new look Page moved the tabs to a left hand menu and had taken away the ability to set a default landing page for “non-likers”.  Lots of businesses have invested several hundred pounds (if not more!) to get this page designed to incorporate opt-in boxes to their mailing lists and persuade the first time visitor to their page to like them.

The problem in all of their complaints is that Facebook is free!  None us pay or subscribe to their services.  Do any of us have the right to complain?

And here lies an even bigger problem – especially if you are relying on Facebook to market your business.

Never make Facebook your home.  Never make any of these social networks THE place you build your business.  If Facebook is the hub of your marketing, it makes it a very dangerous place to be when Facebook keep changing the rules of engagement.

Facebook should always be your welcome mat – a place to direct and invite interested people to find out more on your own terriority.  Your own terriority is your blog, your website.  This is the place you can control.

So hold on to your hats, guys and girls.  It looks like Facebook is going to be pulling in Pages to match up with the new look Profiles.  There seem to be some fab new features – the fact that there were offering a different login for your Profile and Page should allow you to get notifications of when someone posts or comments on your wall.  And I am sure there will other goodies too.

Oh and if you are thinking of asking someone to design a new landing page for your Facebook Page – hold off for the moment!!  It looks like it could be a waste of your money.

How much do you rely on Facebook in your marketing?  And what do you think about these upcoming changes?

When businesses first started going online and creating websites to promote themselves, it seemed appropriate to replicate exactly what they did offline – create online versions of the brochures they sent out by mail or gave directly to clients.

But what worked in the 90’s and early part of this decade just doesn’t cut it in today’s web world.

Today’s web world is driven by the consumer. It’s no longer ruled by the corporates. Today, every consumer, no matter how influential, is able to have their say and control over what content they want to consume on the Internet.

And when you, as a business entity, start embracing social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin, you start to lose control over how and where potential clients come to click through to your website.

Your website home page used to be THE page to get right on your website. It was the entrance, the grand opening, the doorway to how your business was portrayed on the web.

I know I have advised many clients over the years about how to create a home page that converts, engages and turns website visitors into potential customers.

But how many of your website visitors now come via this front door?

Two years ago, before I started using sites such as Twitter and Facebook as engagement tools, more than 55% of visitors came via my home page. Over the past few months, that figure has dropped to 32%.

My blog became incorporated into my main site in Spring 2009. Over the past year, Twitter and Facebook have been fuelling my blog articles. 31 different landing pages (the first page a website visitor is logged as visiting) in one month last autumn have now become 134 in the past month this year.

Now, I know that some of you reading this will have not started a blog yet. You may have only just started to dip your toe in the social media waters. So, yes – your home page may well still be that main front door where people find you.

But you’ve found me to learn more about this stuff haven’t you? When you start to embrace and turn up the volume of your online marketing, you will have to start thinking about the many doors to your website. And every page on your website needs to be prepared for your new visitors.

You need to get your house in order before you start laying out the welcome mats.

Here’s what you need to do to ensure every page on your website is a home page:

• Opt-in offer in your static margin – by having your navigation across the top of your website, you can make room for a static left or hand margin to offer your newsletter, opt-in report or what ever it is you use to build your subscriber list.  This static margin is automatically added to all new pages which means you don’t have to worry about remembering to add it.  Consistency and constant placement of your offerings will encourage familiarity with your website visitor and increase your opt-in conversions.
• Quality copy writing on every page – don’t loss steam and write throw away copy.  Your about page is a great example of this.  Often left to the end and put together in a hurry because you want your site to go live and you’ve had enough of all the tooing and froing, but if your name is mentioned on this page, then it’s probably this page that will come up on a Google search for your name.
• Make every page count – don’t create pages for the sake of creating content.  The same goes for your blog articles.  Post throw-away “cheap” articles just to keep the search engines happy because you think that’s what’s needed to get your website high up on the search listing, is a waste of time.  You will soon be the loser when the potential clients who find this content, click away because the content is dross.
• Contact details less than one click away – If you make it difficult for potential clients to speak to a human being, you are going to lose business.  One of the easiest ways of ensuring your contact details are easy to find is to make it part of your website banner design.

So you started a blog … but you just haven’t got round to writing articles for the past few weeks.  Or is that months?!

What about your email newsletter?  You started with good intentions but things got … well, a bit busy.  And you haven’t sent one out for a few months.

It’s OK.  It’s a common problem.  Constant and consistent marketing is tough, especially when it comes to writing articles.

But the worst thing you can do when your blogging or newsletters have lapsed is apologise for it when you have finally taken your pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard!).

I see it time and time again.  An email comes through starting off with “Hi, it’s been a while. So sorry! It’s just business is so busy I’ve just had the time to write a new blog post/newsletter.   But it’s OK – I’m back!”

Never draw attention to the fact that you just haven’t made the time to blog or email.  Never highlight the fact that you, quite frankly, haven’t been able to prioritise this all important, value added part of your business.

For those readers and subscribers who have missed you, will be delighted to hear from you again.  But for those who haven’t missed you, will only realise that they haven’t actually missed out on your articles and content.  And may well be slightly peeved off that you haven’t made the time to do this already.  Now, where’s that unsubscribe link?!

And once you’ve apologised and told your readers and subscribers that you’re back … then you’ve set yourself up for a fall if you lapse once again!

No, never apologise!  Just get on and do it.  Don’t draw attention to your failings, no matter how guilty you feel.

Just get on and do it!

An email newsletter is one of the most effective methods of communicating and building a relationship with a potential client.  You spend the time writing an article, a welcome note and coming up with the offer you intend to make in the newsletter.

You spell check, make it look pretty, add a picture if you are using HTML and test all the links before you send it again.

And then the next time, you start the process all over again.

It’s get a bit wearing after a while.  I have to be honest here.  Once you start publishing a newsletter you need to be consistent and constant with your emails otherwise you lose the confidence of your subscribers.

But what I want to share with you today is that what you write for your email newsletter does not have to be a one send wonder.  The information you create for your newsletter can be used time and time again, packaged up in all sorts of ways.

Here are a few ideas:

• Submit your newsletter article to online article directories – improve your google rankings, increase the number of links to your site and drive traffic to your email newsletter sign-up page.
• Turn your newsletter articles in to a product – what you write about once or twice a week builds up over time.  Before you know it you have a 20 page e-book, 7 part e-course or even a draft for a soft cover book that ends up being a best seller on Amazon.
• Post your newsletter articles to your blog – build up your site and increase the opportunities for key words to be maximised by blogging your articles.
• Offer your newsletter articles to magazines and get published.  And remember to include a by-line which directs interested readers to your email newsletter sign-up page.

Do you get the picture?  Don’t write and send.  Write once and benefit dozens of times.

** Next Email Newsletter Training starts 15th November **
Click here to check it out

Up and down the country, there appears to be a domino effect.  Advertising agencies, marketing departments, web masters – they all seem to be bolting on “Like Me” Facebook buttons and “Follow Me on Twitter” links to websites.

People are being friended on Facebook by national carpet companies and major coffee chains. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be friends with these sorts of brands. And certainly don’t consider carpet companies or coffee chains to be on my Christmas card list this year.

Many of these campaigns seem to be knee jerk reactions to the media frenzy surrounding social networks and the CEO’s or Marketing Director’s demand to keep up with the times. If it’s there, we must use it!

There is no doubt that social media can be a very powerful communication channel. When used right, it can harness the power of raving fans who promote links to your latest promotions without you even having to ask them, let alone pay them.

And platforms such as Twitter provide an excellent way of searching and finding negative feedback about your products, giving you the opportunity to reach out and solve these problems.

So, are these new social networks critical new ways of communicating with your customers? Or are they the Emperor’s new clothes – the next new shiny thing to add to the marketing mix, that doesn’t really work?

Before jumping on the bandwagon, here are some essential points to consider:

1. Your Customers: Is social media an appropriate channel to communicate with them?  How are they using Facebook?  Are they signed up to Twitter? And are they using these platforms to connect with brands? It’s essential you do the right market research before embarking on a social media project, so start with your current customers. It will save you money and months of time and energy.

2. Your competitors: Just because your major competitors are doing it, doesn’t mean you have to. This “copy them” mentality is the reason why certain advertising media, such as The Yellow Pages, have survived as long as they have. Yes, innovation can make you stand out but do your market research first, rather than race to be one step ahead just to have the Twitter logo on your leaflets.

3. Your current marketing strategy: The danger of jumping in to social media unprepared is that it can be an all consuming activity. Many businesses will take resources out of one area of their marketing mix before starting something new. And if you take away resources from something that works already, only to get sucked in to the new technology hype – it could put you back even further. Add social media – don’t replace it with something that works already just because it’s “old hat”.

4. Your website: If you have a standard brochure-type website, bolting on the Twitter and Facebook logo on to the home page is just not going to cut it. Why would you want to direct traffic away from your own site, in the first place?! Take a step back and work out why your customers would want to “like” you on Facebook or go check out your Twitter feed. What value are you creating? And how can this add to your online visitor’s journey?

5. Your outcome: Have clear goals and objectives to your social media plan. What results are you expecting? And how are you going to measure them? Just because something looks cool or pretty, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s adding to your bottom line. Social media is not a place to do hard sales, but it’s got to have a return on your investment.

Social media is here to stay, so don’t continue to ignore it. Brands are no longer dominating the web and it’s the customers who are having their say (just check out sites like Trip Advisor or Amazon to realise how powerful customer testimonials and complaints can be).

But don’t have a knee jerk reaction to social media and just bolt on that Facebook page and Twitter account. Because if you do, it won’t work and you will end up with the Emporer’s new clothes!

Quick Plug - Stuck on how Twitter works?  If you want make sure Twitter doesn’t become a waste of time you, check out this month’s Web Tech Twitter Training.  Click here for more details.

Earlier this month I published an article about the 6 Things You Need to Know About Writing Website Copy and suggested that you take a look at your own website copy to see how many “I’s” and “you’s” where mentioned.

How many of you did this?

Well, Nic Oliver, who writes at www.Nic-Oliver.com, has been doing just that.  But not on his own site.  He’s been checking up on some of the big names in social media blogging.  And he’s included little ol’ me too

With all this talk about social media engagement, he found that – fortunately – the big names where all doing it right.  It wasn’t just a Social Media urban myth!  The talk is actually being walked (phew, thank goodness for that!!)

It’s a great article and you can read here – In Social Media, Size Matters!

And if you want to check your own website copy, get in touch with Nic. He’s got the software to do it quickly for you (rather than the “getting out the highlighting pen” process that I suggested!)

There’s lots of bad things you can do on social media, isn’t there?

You can sell to everyone all the time and create noise that no-one listens to.  You can automate your updates to the point that people wonder if you really a bot, rather than a human being.

You can get obsessed by numbers and spend your whole week focusing on getting more and more followers, irrespective of whether they are porn stars, get-rich-quick-system-sellers or C-list celebs.

You can even kid yourself that because you spent the whole morning replying to tweets and retweeting other people’s tweets that you are actually contributing to the profitability of your business.

But what is the worst thing you can do?

It’s getting started and quitting before you achieve anything.

Most small business owners throw themselves in social media tools, such as facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, create a profile, start updating their status and then after a few weeks, let it all peter out and give up.

It can actually be more damaging to your brand and business to have a twitter account lying dormant or a LinkedIn profile with a half-done profile than having nothing at all.

Sites like LinkedIn and Twitter are indexed so quickly by search engines that your online profiles can appear very quickly in the search results.  Go on, try it now – google your own name and see how many of your half-done social networking profiles appear.

And that’s what your potential clients will see too.

By all means, you need to have a play with many of these online tools before deciding how best to use them in your business – there’s a lot to get your head round, isn’t it?

But, start your social media marketing with purpose.  Have a strategy, know what you want to get out of using these tools and work out how you are going to incorporate them into the rest of your marketing.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, so don’t start until you are ready to achieve.