Inbound Links – boost your ranking

I often talk to businesses about how they spend lots of time and money optimising their website but they still struggle to get good search engine rankings. After we have looked at their onsite optimisation elements I usually ask the question ‘what’s your inbound link strategy?’

Usually businesses are plagued with calls from perhaps less reputable companies offering to get them onto page one by building links for £200-£400 pcm without any thought for relevancy. Some website owners have built their own thought through plan, however more often than not it is an area that is overlooked and unclear as to the approach to take.

I would suggest that the value of inbound links are crucial in the optimisation effort to ensure your site is well ranked. There are many arguments to support my belief an example of one of these is

‘There are two reasons to build links to your site. 
1. Direct Traffic: Links send direct traffic to your website that could convert into leads and clients.
2. Search Engine Optimization: Links are the key to getting you ranked on the first page of the major search engines for your target keywords. This search traffic is very likely to convert into leads and clients. ’

If you are still not convinced there is more from the source of the quote at the following article Why You Need to Build Links and What A Good One Looks Like

The subject of this post is not really to convert you to the idea of the need for inbound links but to give an idea of how this can be done.  There are some basic steps that site owners can take but before you do I would encourage you to ensure you have your statistics in place so that you can measure the your success.

Step 1. Business directories & Social media – simple entries in directories are good to get, some may cost others are free. Your site statistics will begin to show which are referring traffic to you so you can decide which of those paid links are worthwhile. Social media sites may or may not provide much in terms of link score benefit but may well send visitors to you.

Step 2. Press releases and articles – there are lots of online sites you can post your press releases and place articles, pressbox.comis an example of these, remember to include a link to your site in the article. This step involves more work and of course there is no guarantee that the press releases will get picked up. If you have a blog and are writing content for that then this step should not take too much extra work. The good news if that there are experts out there you could consider contracting to deliver regular content for you. Your local Business Link can provide details of local businesses providing the service.

Step 3. Link with other websites – my tip here is not to beg, think how you would network at business event, or business meeting, can your site add value to their site visitors, and build links through a natural synergy. Of course this approach won’t work for everyone and sometimes a more aggressive strategy is needed. A tracking spreadsheet might be worthwhile keeping as you would use a contact manager, so you know who you need to follow up.

Obviously its not as simple as that, there is hard work, time and effort to put in along the way.  Looking at other businesses blogs, responding to their articles to build your relationship, or networking in your local area will be the challenge here.

Another technique that some businesses adopt is the creation of multiple sites with specific content to each and use of a blog that promotes them. David Lakins @ KeyMultimedia who specialise in website promotion work, use this technique well on behalf of their client. The sites form a three way link, each building important page rank with unique content, promoting and supporting the other. Check out the following sites to see the example at work, the first site is the wet suit centre second site is the sorted surf shop and the surf related blog that serves both is interestingly named manky monkey .

If you want to try getting started there is another blog article that takes a similar view and gives more tips here on link building there is another article from the same blog which covers how not to do it which makes for a really good read how not to link build

Website Conversion Problems – Solved!

Website owners often invest a lot of time and money into optimisation of their ecommerce or business website, but find that it fails to generate sales, leads or enquiries. This usually hints that either the optimisation is being targeted incorrectly so the wrong traffic is coming to the site, or the site is not convincing enough to convert visitors to customers.

My previous post looked at how small business owners can improve their content with to put the basic building blocks in place, if you thought that topic was useful then I bring news of a new  free Business Link seminar! This session will cover conversion, taking the basic ideas from our previous Google Analytics session, getting more involved in measuring visitor behaviour on the site, giving tips on how you can use tools to assess which version of a page is more powerful, watch where visitors click on your site and the path they take.

This Business Link seminar on website conversions is a must attend for anyone who is serious about their site generating sales leads and increasing enquiries. We are joined by Adrian Durow an experienced conversion specialist from Refreshed Media, I’ve seen the run through of the presentation and think it will be a really good session. To book your free place at one of our sessions in the South East visit the Business Link events page at http://www.innovationevents.co.uk

Website copywriting – how to get it right

Hopefully anyone interested in improving their site has checked out the subject of my previous post, and now has a little more of an understanding of how to structure a site and the elements that are important from a search engine perspective.

I attended a presentation run by Intergage back in May, and have been meaning to mention it ever since. The session included a really good slot from Roan Fair their Digital PR Manager. He has years of experience of copywriting working at one point as the Business Editor of the local Echo, and speaks really well on the topic.

The subject is an area of focus of the Business Link website reviews, and is commonly an area that is weak in small business websites. His basic principles are really easy to follow, and echo a lot of the points that I make when meeting customers.

He takes a simple 5 step strategy:
1. What is your readers’ biggest headache? Feel their pain!
2. Why have others failed to solve this nagging problem?
3. Why is your solution different? Prove it works!
4. Tell them how much better their lives will be with your solution
5. Calls to action – tell ‘em what they need to do!

The presenation, attached for anyone who is interested, has some really good tips in there that can be implemented to improve the effectiveness of business websites. Perhaps it’s time to ditch the company history from the homepage and think customer focussed!

Intergage Presentation Copywriting May 2009

Would be interested to hear from anyone who has made or is making similar changes to the site and the impact that it has to improve conversion rates. If you found that useful and feel that a Business Link run seminar would be worthwhile to learn more leave a comment and we will see what we can do.

Roan has a useful twitter feed for anyone who wants to keep up to date with the topic http://twitter.com/roanfair

Website Review Session – from Google’s perspective

Getting a site right that will promote its core services and products to meet the objectives of the business and all in a search engine friendly approach is the holy grail for many website owners. Business Link has its ever popular website review service that attempts to help businesses get to grips with the issue, which is by far the most in demand service of the team.

Matt Cutts of Google has recently released a video of a session he ran which is a lot more search engine focussed of course, but gives a really good insight into the balance between good site techniques to please your visitors and how these can benefit your search engine rankings.

You can watch the video at Matt’s blog at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/webmaster-site-reviews/

Links from Gosport SEO & eCommerce Seminar

Good to see you all at the seminar last night in Gosport, thanks to Charles of ICG who gave a cracking presentation. It is available online at http://www.internetconsultantsgroup.co.uk/

Below are the links that I mentioned that you may also find useful.

Search Engine Optimisation
There is a great tool that checks to see if you have the basic onsite elements at http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/

Business Link has a couple of guides as well http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/layer?topicId=1081852287

The Google Keyword Tool that can help you determine which phrases to optimise against is at https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

From the eCommerce session
The payment gateway comparison which can help you decide which is the most cost effective can be found at http://www.electronic-payments.co.uk/

The shopping basket software comparison which is a sister site to the above is at http://www.ecommerce-comparison.com/

Reading SEO 2.0 & Google Analytics event

Great to see nearly 70 of you at the Business Link Search Engine event last night at Green Park. The evening had a really good buzz to it and there seemed to be some useful networking taking place. Good to see so many familiar faces in the audience.

Feedback from you all was greatly appreciated, it is always hard to pitch content to appeal to as many as possible, on the whole feedback scores are really good and a number of excellents so thank you for that. We will be making a couple of tweaks to the presentation to take into account a couple of comments given, as we have another five events around the South East to go.

The questions at the end of the sessions were really interesting to hear, and hope you all got a chance to raise your own. If you didn’t or have thought of any since please do use this as a platform to ask or to keep us updated on how your efforts are going, and tricks or tips that you find along the way. You can also email me at my Business Link address or find me on LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesccope

Technology permitting we will be podcasting the event so that you can recap on the presentation when you need too, my colleague Sarah will be putting the note round when this is up and running. I would expect this to be availble early July but don’t hold me to that. In the meantime you can download the presentation from http://www.internetconsultantsgroup.co.uk/internet_resources/seminars.html

One of our delegates, Nigel Woods, has also give me details of a Chartered Institute of Marketing event this Thursday on Web 2.0 and social marketing if anyone is interested. They will open up the event to any of you that wish to attend, details of which can be found on my events page.

We are currently developing the August/September seminar which will build on the basics of this seminar to look at website conversions and email marketing tp help develop your web presence a step further so what this space!

SEO 2.0 + Google Analytics – June Seminars

Have been busy this week meeting the presenters to put final finishing touches to Business Link’s June seminar series. This time it’s an update on search engine optimisation with the presenters take on SEO 2.0, youve all heard about web 2.0 well this is the next step for search engine success.

Also falling under the spotlight is Google Analytics, by far one of the most widely used stats packages the presenters show some common KPI’s that website owners should be looking at and how to get clever with the package that will save you time and money, gain more customers and bring your website visitors behaviour to life.

If you are a small or medium sized business in the South East you can come along to the seminar free of charge, visit the site http://www.innovationevents.co.uk for more details and to book your place. See you there.

Power of local search – tip of the week

A number of the small businesses I talk too work within a specific geographic location, but often over look the power of local searches.

My tips here are usually to make sure you include mentions of the area you operate in within the usual meta data of the site, and within the body copy.

Keep it local by including testimonals from any well know local clients, people will have more confidence in your services if they are supported by a good comment from a peer in the community, a business they have heard of, or perhaps someone they know.

Add your business to Google local, its free and easy and as more and more searches seem to be including local search results its a really good technique. More information on that at http://www.google.com/local/add/splashPage?hl=en-gb&gl=GB

Local business directories and council directories are good sources of traffic, consider tripadvisor.com if you are a B&B or a hotel, checkatrade if you are a service company. Also get links from any local businesses websites that you can build working relationships with whose customers may find your own services useful.

Those are a few to start with, feel free to chip in on any that are working well for you.

eTrader Success Seminar – what a success!!

The seminars have now finished and were a great success. Had some really good feedback from delegates, who especially loved Alans presentation on focussing on the customer, how to garner their trust, and get them to buy. The presentations are available online at  www.businesslink.gov.uk/southeast/eventresources

For those who want to look more into eBay and how this could be a good route to market for all or some of their products there is an upcoming show in London on the 11th October that will feature a great eBay speaker Dan Wilson who has published a very successful eBay book. Details of the exhibition are at http://www.sb20.co.uk for our attendees the organisers are giving away a limited number of free places, so get in quick and quote TAMEBAY08 to get your free place.

Our next set of seminars will be coming up late October – November, and will be based around design principles and wow factor to increase your sites performance. Watch this space for early announcement, or join our eshot list by emailing innovation@businesslinksoutheast.co.uk

 

eTrader Success Seminar – Book Your Place Now!

We are pleased to announce our latest seminar programme which will hit the South East in September. By popular demand they will focus on eBay and eCommerce, I think there are still lots of opportunities for businesses thinking about selling online, and lots of room for improvement for those already trading. We have created this seminar with that in mind, and I am sure the presentations will benefit anyone who attends.

Details of the seminar are below, if you would like to book your place please visit www.ebusinessseminars.co.uk

eTrader Success 

In our new series of free seminars our presenters will show you how you can take advantage of the web to sell your products and services. You will be given hints and tips to ensure you make the most of your e-Trading potential, whether it is via an eBay type service or your own e-Commerce site.

The programme covers the following topics:

• Develop or improve your eBay type site
• Develop or improve your own e-Commerce site
• Increase sales, decrease costs
• Choose the right solution
• Killer product descriptions
• Winning calls to action
• Develop a successful sales strategy
• Abandoned shopping baskets
• Optimisation tips

 eBay Advantage

Mark Chivers, Certified eBay Education Specialist and a leading eBay Business Developer will share his expertise on how you can increase your sales using the power of eBay. This online market place offers an easy and safe environment to sell online, with search engine optimisation, transaction processing, and quality scoring already built in. With millions of potential eBay users this is an opportunity not to be missed.

Confessions of an e-Trader

Allan Cummings will provide his “top tips” and share years of experience in marketing for online businesses such as www.iwantoneofthose.com to transform your business for substantial gain. Allan will look at marketing strategies and best practices, how to improve conversion rates and the secrets of leading sites. Most importantly, Allan will share the secret of developing trust between you and your customer

Tuesday 2nd September - The Rose Bowl, Southampton
Thursday 4th September - The Madejski Stadium, Reading
Tuesday 9th September - The Oxford Centre, Oxford
Thursday 11th September - Holiday Inn, Guildford
Wednesday 17th September – Basingstoke Country Hotel, Basingstoke
Tuesday 23rd September – Brighton Racecourse, Brighton
Thursday 25th September – The Ramada Hotel, Maidstone

Registration opens at 4.00pm. Seminars run from 4.15pm to 6.15pm.