Marketing and SEO – some useful tips

Do you want to generate new leads and sales? If so, it is important to regularly review your marketing strategy.

Marketing is not just about improving your website or advertising online – it needs to be approached from many different angles. For example,

· Have you done your research about who your competitors are, what they do well or what puts you off their products?

· Who is your target audience? What products / services do they want – and are you providing it?

· How do you reach potential customers - do you attend networking events? By email newsletter? Advertising?

Writing an article or online blog can increase your market, but you should write about what you know, and make sure that it is of interest to your readers – don't just try and sell your product directly. When drafting a media release you should write in the third person. Do you need to use the services of a professional photographer – for printed media such as glossy magazines the quality of images is important. Don't forget about printed materials and branding – do you need to update your business cards, flyers, and so on?

Branding is a way of clearly highlighting what makes your product or service different to, and more attractive than, your competitors.

The main benefit of branding is that customers are much more likely to remember your business. A strong brand name and logo/image helps to keep your company image in the mind of your potential customers.

People usually associate branding with larger businesses that have the money to spend on advertising and promotion. If you can create effective branding, then it can make your business appear to be much bigger than it really is. This can be especially important when a customer wants reassurance that you will still be around in a few years time.

If you have a website, what first impression does it give? People usually on stay a website for a few seconds, so first impressions count. Colour schemes can be off putting – is your website easy on the eye? Does it look professional?

Think about what makes you stay on a website, or click away.

· Can you add to the content, or give away something for free such as a downloadable PDF brochure?

· Do you have testamonials from other clients on your website?

· Do you have a professional email address (rather than a web-based free service)?

· Do you use an automatically generated email signature at the end of emails that you send out?

· Is your domain name effective? Does it include hard to spell words, such as jewellery (or jewelry) which is spelt in different ways by the UK and the US?

· Have you used keywords in your titles, and changed them to reflect each individual page?

· Have you submitted your webpage to directories, search engines and link exchanges?

· Have you thought about adding a sitemap to your website?

· Do you use analytics to look at traffic to your website? If you have a shop or restaurant, have you placed yourself on Google Maps? You can add videos to your website, and link them to Youtube.com or Google Video. When searching Google, videos from Youtube.com, Google Video and Google Maps all appear before the normal results.

More search engine optimisation help can be found at www.walkerwebsites.co.uk/seo_checklist.htm.

I hope you found this article useful. Please feel free to contact Jane Walker on 0777 169 1194 to discuss website matters and for more SEO advice.