Well, I have just been pottering with my own website and was frustrated because my wordpress google sitemap file wasn’t working properly with my blog, as were are a few other things, but that’s another story… Anyway I discovered this fantastic video from Andre Chaperon from Super Affiliate Marketing without the blah blah that shows people how to get Google to notice you straight away using google’s sitemap generator for Wordpress.   You don’t have to have wordpress to create a sitemap.  You can find a free google sitemap generator , create the sitemap and then upload it to your main directory using ftp (if you don’t have an ftp programme, I usually recommend Core ftp for a good solid free ftp software).  Then following the very clear instructions set out by Andre you can let Google know that you have done it and then just wait for the bots to visit.

In my current phase of marketing activity, I have decided to join BNI Lakeside (the Wimbledon Chapter).  For those that aren’t in the know BNI (Business Networking International) is a really interesting networking organisation that helps small businesses build their business through referrals.  The process is more structured than other networking organisations I have used in the past and much better for it.  One of the founding principles of BNI is ‘givers gain’, meaning the more referrals I bring to the organisation, the more referrals will come back to me.  They have set up the meetings in such a way that within each chapter there is only one of each business type (in my case web design) and through our personal and business networks we share contacts and opportunities with each other.  Each business has an opportunity to stand up and share what they do and make a request for the types of referrals that they are looking for.  Following on from that we then have to stand up and tell the group what referrals we have brought that week.  It is very effective and interestingly some of the most successful for receiving referrals in our group are the trade practices such as plumbing and electrical services.

Some of the interesting organisations that I have met there include Frank Layton Displays, a Wimbledon printing company that specialises in printing on bespoke items including fabric printing and vehicle printing, Advintage wines, an online wine company that makes buying wine not just fun but affordable, Julia Boggio Photography a very talented Wimbledon photographer and Calm Time a mobile beauty therapy company that was set up by Fiona Gordon.

Please get in touch if you are interested in finding out more about either BNI or the networking in Wimbledon

I had a call today from a woman that has been very successful selling second hand clothes on ebay, making up to £500 per week which is fantastic.  She’s now thinking that she would like to translate her ebay business into an online store that is seperate and bespoke from ebay.  While I think this a great idea, she really needs to consider the costs and effort that will be involved in making this transfer from ebay to real world.

 The benefits of staying with ebay

• The first issue that she will need to take into account is that ebay already has an enormous customer base that she is benefiting from, it will be hard work to generate the same type of traffic to her own site
• The storefront is familiar and ready made, she doesn’t need to worry about merchant services or storefront design
• The review functionality makes her a trusted source to her customers, so she doesn’t need to persuade them that she is a legitimate business

Disadvantages of staying with ebay

• Ebay have the relationship with the customer, though it is possible for her to start building this on her own
• Cost, it costs her the listing fees each time she puts an item on the shelf, this is a real issue if an item doesn’t sell

The benefits of setting up her own store

• She will be able to develop her own brand and customer loyalty, building her own relationship with her customers
• She won’t be competing directly and immediately with every other seller in her niche area
• It will be her own business, with assets and value attached to it

The disadvantages of setting up her own store

• Cost, cost, cost - everything costs when setting up an online business.  The domain, the logo / branding, the online store, the hosting, the advertising.  Even the free stuff costs in time, even if not in money
• Finding and pulling customers to a website is hard work - she really needs to understand how to get her business listed organically for her niche products and build the site accordingly (luckily for her she is a journalist so at least has the writing skills to submit articles)

Her biggest problem at the moment though is that she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know.  She needs to pull together a business plan, marketing plan (both real world and internet), set a budget and targets so that she can figure out where to go from here.

Ok, just a quick rant.  I am trying to get rid of a wardrobe that we have had hanging around for a while and I’m discovering that it is very difficult to give something away for free!!  Freecycle is a great tool for recycling unwanted things and my local freecycle site is one of the most used in the London area, but I have had my description rejected twice now, firstly for not putting the word OFFERED in the headline (fair enough) and then secondly for not putting my postcode area (just plain irritating now).   It wouldn’t be so bad if the moderator who keeps rejecting my description didn’t take 24 hours to respond each time!

It can be difficult to know where to begin when you want to update your website.  You know that the animated logo in bright pink isn’t doing you any favours but don’t really know where to start when thinking about how you can improve.  Before you write a word of copy or think about the graphics and images you need to do some research. 

Identify the purpose of your site:  Who is your target market and why do they come to your site.  Are they coming to to find out more about what you do?  Are they coming to buy products?  Will most of your traffic be directed by you or do you want to be found using keywords and phrases through the search engines.  Do you want to build a community, earn money through advertising, build a blog, use it as a portfolio of your products /services.  There are many ways you can use your site effectively for your business, what do you want it to do for you?  And more importantly what can you put on the site that is going to convert a visitor to a customer.

Identify the purpose of the update: Do you want to drive more traffic? do you want a better design? do you want to add more content? do you want to change the focus of your content?

Use what you’ve already got:  Go through your website statistics and identify where your existing visitors are going and how they got there ie did they type in your URL, come via search engine (if so which ones ), what search terms did they use to get to you.  Which pages are the most popular, how long are your visitors spending on  your site.

What is your competition doing?  Visit your competition and see what is working for them.  Use different business related search terms and see who is landing at the top, think about why that might be as you visit their site.  Identify what you like and what you don’t and think about what you can put on your site that is as good or better than theirs.

What are people doing in other industries that you can use on your site:  We are all using the internet so much these days, odds are you are visiting sites that you think are really useful and effective, what can you take from other industries / sector websites that might work on your site.

These are only a few of the things you should do before you start planning or building a website.  I will be covering more of the process in later posts.

Search engine marketing is not the black art that many think it is, but it is a science.  To be successful you need time, a clear keyword strategy linked to well written content, a strong linking strategy, and a socialising strategy.  A good rule of thumb is “first you must give to receive”.  So what does this mean in reality. 

Keyword Strategy

Choosing the right keywords and then optimising your content for those keywords is the key to success, but to get a high ranking for those keywords is an enormous challenge.  For the small business owner, rather than competing with the popular keywords, a better strategy is to go local initially, for example web design sutton, and then optimise your content over time for more keywords where there is less competition.

Articles

It is well known that content is king in terms of improving your search engine ranking so people started churning out articles that were full of optimized key words.  The problem was, they didn’t read well, didn’t really say much, and weren’t adding much value.  Quality articles are now required if you want the articles to be used by other sites.  There are so many free articles out there that only the ones that are well constructed and well written are going to be used.  Copyblogger has a lot of great tips to help you get started and wordtracker can help you choose the high value keyword phrases that you need to optimize in your copy.  If you get this right you are ‘giving’ the reader value in terms of interesting and valuable content and as a result you will ‘receive’ lots of links to your site.

Linking strategy

Many of the free directories require a reciprocal link before agreeing a link to your site.  A clear example of give and receive, but a more interesting way of giving and receiving is through the trackback functionality on blogs.  If give and link to your blog and say something interesting (of value and a unique perspective), chances are you will notice and possibly, if I’m really lucky, link back to me.  That trackback will then link back to my blog post and (hopefully) bring some traffic to my blog . 

Exactly 1 year ago today I visited a potential client to bid on a project to update a website.  I didn’t win the business as they decided to go with a local web design company, but it looks like I was saved from what could have been a very long and drawn out project. Today their website remains unchanged from the one they had last year. I have been told that the design has now been agreed (I would hope so after 12 months!) but the design company has other commitments that they need to fulfill before they can start building the new site.

So what went wrong? My guess is that the key decision maker wasn’t involved early enough or engaged in the process. This is a common problem when building or updating a web site, and can also be very costly in the long run. It is clear that the website has not been a priority for this organization, and undoubtedly it has cost them, not just in terms of the cost of the design, but also the resource cost and reputation cost. People expect a lot from a website, and ones that are old and outdated are going to disappoint.  The moral of the story?  Get the key decision maker involved early, make sure they are committed to the project and save time, money and aggravation!

If you’ve not read it already,  The three little blogs - A cautionary tale  is worth a visit.  Bloggrrl has written one of the most creative posts that I have seen in a longtime.  What I particularly like about it that it has purpose and value but is done in a funny way that quite frankly makes everyone that reads it to want to be the third little pig. 

There are a number of things that Bloggrrl has done really well in this blog:

1. She’s got something interesting to say
2. She does it in a humorous way (though hopefully this isn’t a necessity as it’s really not my forte :D)
3. She’s educating as she’s writing
4. She has been noticed by some of the blogging big-wigs and has been mentioned on Problogger and John Chow

What the bloggrrl site also shows it that you don’t have to be a technical whiz to create a successful good looking blog.  Bloggrrl has built her blog on wordpress and modified the misty look theme by Sadish  to suit her ‘voice’ and image and voila she is live and posting.  Good luck Bloggrrl, I look forward to reading some more.

To help my clients, I have decided to put my money where my mouth is and launch a blog that caters to small businesses.  I will be covering all sorts of topics relating to marketing web sites on the internet, email marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing, small business marketing, blogging, podcasting, google, affiliate programmes and anything that tickles my fancy.  If there is any topic that you would like to see me cover, please send me an email from the contact us page and I will see what I can do.

 I am also keen to get any feedback on how I can improve this blog and what, if anything you find useful so that I can make sure that I am posting on valuable topics. Happy reading!