Karen Skidmore's Kick-Ass Blog | CanDoCanBe

Have you finished your website yet?

Websites are often something that sits on your to-do-list, waiting to be ticked off.

You spend a few sessions with a web designer or graphic designer, write your copy and get it published.  Tah-Dah! It's live. Your website is complete!

But actually your website work has only just begun.  A website is NOT something that just gets ticked off from your marketing list.  A website is actually an evolving tool which needs to be nurtured, cared for and grown to keep up with your business.

One of 1-2-1 clients was getting very frustrated with her new website the other week.  She had decided to set one up using www.mrsite.com [a great way of getting a very affordable, user-friendly website up and running very quickly].  But after a week of playing around with different templates and writing copy for her 5 pages, she was pulling her hair out.

I shouted "Move away from the website!!!"  It was time to take a break and stop trying to make it perfect.

My advice to her was to leave her website alone for a week and then come back to it for an hour or two every week over the next month or so. No more, no less.  The site was working, the right pages were up, people where able to book a place on the workshop she was launching - but to keep fiddling to make it perfect before "launching" was just driving her nuts!

You see, a website should never be finished.  When you run your own business, you are probably evolving and growing at a rate of knots.  You start working with clients you hadn't thought possible, you create products and partnerships you hadn't quite planned for.  You are being flexible to meet the needs and demands of your clients [or you should be!].

And your website has to reflect this.  It's not a corporate brochure that once printed, has to be thrown out when out of date.  It's moving and evolving marketing tool that you need to be reviewing at least once a month. 

Have you finished your website, yet?  Good - so you shouldn't have!

Doesn't blogging & social media take up so much time?

I was speaking at a networking lunch this week sharing some tips and ideas on how to use blogging in one's business.  And the same old question came up "But doesn't all that stuff take a lot your time?"

Let's get this straight. All marketing takes time!

Driving to a networking lunch, spending 2 hours eating, talking and sharing business ideas, driving back from to your office, following up any contacts you met and sending them the info you promised - this all takes time!

Is it time well spent?  Well, hopefully yes especially if you met some interesting new contacts and some of those new contacts told others about you and your business.  Networking is an incredibly effective marketing tool.

So, why wouldn't using tools like blogging, twitter, facebook and all the other social tools out there take time to use, too?

And if the time you spend on twitter, facebook and writing your blog is used effectively - it will be time well spent too!

PLUS! anything you do online has the added benefit of being there forever.  Blog posts, twitter links and facebook photos can be found today, tomorrow and forever more.  So, yes blogging and social media does take up your time but before you use a lack of time as an excuse not to use these tools in your business, ask yourself how effective your marketing time is at the moment?

Each business needs its own separate website

If you have already been trading for a while and have had a website up and running for a few years, it could be an easy option to use this existing website to market your new business.

However, it couldconfuse both your target customers and the search engines.

Just this morning, I had a call from a lady who has been running a successful wedding dress business for the past 20 years.  About a year ago she decided to go in to the new and upcoming market of selling prom dresses and she decided to continue to use the successful wedding dress website to "host" her prom dress collections.

However, she has already found that it is taking some time for her prom dress pages to be found high up on the old google search rankings.  And although her prom dress pages where well optimised with the targeted key word phrases, her home page was still obviously all about wedding dresses.

Creating new websites is no longer an expensive nor complicated process.  Using blogging technology, for example, allows you to create new websites for very little money or techy expertise.  And the great thing about using a blog to create your new website is that they will be found far quicker by the search engines because of the amount of content you can add.

So if you are planning on moving your business focus or intend to set up a couple of different businessses then always plan to create a separate website for each of your business focuses.

Great for the search engines and even better for your customers.

How to Choose an SEO Consultant

Knowing about how SEO (search engine optimisation) is one thing, but hiring an expert who can help you with SEO is another!  If it is an area that you don't much about (and to be honest, most of us feel this way about SEO don't we?), it can be pretty daunting finding someone who you feel you can trust and who won't rip you off.

But out-sourcing your SEO to an expert can be the best business decision you can make if you are serious about your online marketing strategy, and having had a coffee with Sam McArthur the other day, I thought you would be interested in her latest newsletter article:  How to choose an SEO Consultant.  Over to you, Sam.

For many small businesses starting out in search engine optimisation (SEO), one of the first things they look for is an SEO consultant who can help them decipher the jargon and understand how their website can rank highly in the search engines. However, as with any service, what an SEO consultant offers can vary hugely from one person to another, offering different promises and outcomes which can make the process of choosing the right person to work with quite difficult.

So what should you look out for when looking to choose someone to help you with your search engine optimisation?

1. Transparent Service:  Any consultant you hire, whether they’re offering search engine optimisation or even financial services, should be completely open about what they’re going to do for you. This is particularly important with SEO as it will involve your website which you own. You need to be told what kind of access they need to your website, what changes will be made, what the main processes involved are so that you know when you need to be involved. The process works two ways and your consultant should be working with you at each stage of the process they outline to you. They should not hide anything from you or refer to any ‘special’ techniques they claim to use.

2. Guarantees: No consultant worth bothering with will make guarantees as to rankings. No one can guarantee specific rankings in the search engines as the way that search engines rank sites is information that only the search engines themselves have. Absolutely no one else has this information, therefore no consultant can possibly make guarantees. Don’t touch anyone who guarantees rankings of any kind. I would even be dubious if you’re guaranteed specific traffic figures as no one can predict how many people will click on your listings from the search results.

3. Access to Your Website:  Any one optimising your website will need access to your site (to your web pages), unless you are competent at making changes to them yourself or you pass this onto your web developer. This is important as the optimisation involves making changes to your web pages. If any consultant says they don’t need access then you need to question this.

Some companies send traffic to sites via doorway pages hosted externally from a website and can literally turn traffic on and off, therefore when you decide you no longer want to work from them, your traffic stops overnight. This is one of the many cowboy tactics some search consultants use and we’ve written about some of these previously in Marketing Karma. Other tactics used could even lead to your site being banned from the search engines, so you need to make sure you’re crystal clear about what work will be done to your site (as in 1 above).

4. Relationship:  As with many companies you work with, you need to build a good working relationship. People buy from people so make sure you have a good rapport with whoever you choose. This can be particularly important if things don’t go as smoothly as planned, then any differences can be ironed out more amicably.

5. SEO Success:  Your consultant should talk about conversions through your site, return on investment and how much you’re making from your online marketing. If all your consultant is interested in is rankings, then avoid using them. Any consultant worth their salt will be interested in the return you’re getting from any campaign, advise on how you can make improvements to your website to encourage more conversions, even advise on how your online and offline fit together within your whole marketing mix. Don’t trust anyone who has no interest in this as rankings are no measure of success!

Finally, there’s no harm in asking for references and case studies of other companies the consultant has worked with. You can then get an idea of the results the consultant has gained for them. Also make sure you know what is required from you so that you understand the amount of input you're expected to contribute and that you can actually commit to your part of the process!

For more information on dodgy SEO tactics, download our white paper on Cheap SEO Services (in pdf format)

For more information about Sam and to sign up for her email newsletter visit her website:  www.forty-first.co.uk

Does having more websites help increase your google rankings?

Got a question from someone who bought several of my teleforum audio downloads on internet marketing & websites:  “Does having more websites lift your profile on Google with SEO or doesn't it make any difference?”

Thought I would share my answer with you, too.

In answer to your question – no, the act of having more websites on the web does not increase your SEO directly. Each website is treated individually for its own SEO merits. (Links do help, but I want to keep things simple here)

However, having a website that is focused on one product/service/niche does tend to perform better from an SEO capacity because the SE’s will rank a site that focuses on a particular topic higher than a site that is full of different topics/key words.

Also, (and possibly the human element is more important than the SE element) a website that is focused on one product/service/niche does tend to perform better from a marketing and sales point of view. Confuse a potential customer with too much choice and the easiest answer for them is no and move on. 

I see it happen all the time when I give my 8 year old daughter £1 to spend on anything she wants in a toy shop and she then goes in to panic mood flitting from one shelf to the next wondering what she should be.  A very stressful shopping experience!  Give her a choice of between 3 toys – and its easy. Job done.

Link Building Courses Up for Grabs

Do you have an Internet based business? Struggling to find it on Google and the other search engines? Well stop looking and start finding.  There are two main activities you need to carry out to make sure your site is listed and ranking well for your search terms.  Getting links and writing great content.

For link building, there are a huge number of different techniques and it can be overwhelming. Now link building expert, Jason Hulott has put together a 6 week modular programme to show you what to do and when to do it.  He will provide you with a full blueprint of what is needed.

And he is looking for some feedback to make the course even more usable and profitable for your business.  He is kindly giving away 10 complete copies of the course to subscribers to gain some valuable feedback.  What do you need to do to get one of these 10 copies...

Simply contact Jason at jason@speediepr.co.uk and tell him I sent you.  He will want to know your website address as he is looking for those who will implement this and he will be able to give you feedback too.

What else can you do when your .com domain name is already taken?

A question came in to my inbox today, which I thought I would share on my blog:

“How important do you think it is to have a .com domain name? My favoured .com domain names appear to be taken. I know I need to find out more about 'search engine optimisation', but if I were to by an equivalent .co.uk domain name, and worked hard at SEO, do you think that the potential for customer confusion with a .com company via a google search is significant? Would you recommend that I persevere to find a name that it available as a .com?”

Great question and here are some of my thoughts.

First of all, it really depends on the market place you are going after.  .com addresses are used more by businesses who are going “global” and are wanting to attract the US market. .co.uk addresses are “better” for your search ranking if you are focusing on the UK market, as Google apparently ranks .co.uk sites higher in a UK search than a .com address (but that obviously is dependent on how well your site is optimised overall and where you host your site, too!).

If your .com name has gone already, and you are focusing on the UK market only, the think about using the .co.uk address.  But it is worth checking out the other website and making sure you are not in direct competition.  For example, if your website address is AppleConsulting.co.uk and you offer training and development programmes for customer services teams, you don’t want the AppleConsulting.com to be doing the same.  You will lose prospective customers who click on the .com web address.  If AppleConsulting.com is a consulting business specialising in apple tree growing, then your prospect customers should realise that they have come to the wrong site and should keep searching for you.

As more and more web addresses are taken, it is getting harder and harder to be unique in your own domain name.  I would always recommend you own both the .com and the .co.uk addresses to save any problems as mentioned above.  You don’t need to go overboard and buy all the others, such as .biz or .org.

If you want to keep looking here are a few more suggestions:

• Use a hyphen in the name, for example Apple-Consulting.com
• Use your product instead of the name, for example TrainingForCustomerServices.com
• Use your personal name instead of the business name
• Use initials (although do make sure the initials you use is used in your overall branding, too)
• Come up with a different business name!

You are right to be concerned about which web address to take on because too many times, people start up a new business and come up with a name, before checking whether they can own the url.

Hope this offers some useful tips for you to consider. If you are interested in finding out more about SEO and what you can to do to get your website found on Google, then do check out my audio “SEO Made Simple”.

The importance of a site map on your website

“Can you just remind me the importance of having a site map on your web page, is it the spiders impact?”

As I answered this question today for someone on email, I thought I would share my comments on my blog just in case there are a few of you out there with the same question

The importance of having a site map is so that the search engines can “trawl” through your site easily.  It is like giving someone a map of the local town centre so that they know where all the shops are and can visit them all without missing any out.

It’s not essential as the search engines will certainly find your site eventually through external links to your site and be able to get their way round a site with simple and easy navigation but as it is free to submit, it doesn’t harm to possibly speed up the process.

Google’s site map facility can be found here and Yahoo’s can be found here.  You can do more but to be honest, these 2 are the main ones and spend the time on the others focusing on writing compelling copy for your website!

Hope that helps.

Want to know how to get your website found on Google?

Then join me this Thursday for a special 90 minute telephone workshop where I will be sharing my tips, tricks and techniques to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

SEO is not something that you spend every other Tuesday afternoon doing.  It isn’t a to-do-list item that you tick off once a month.

Once you understand how the internet works and, more importantly, how your customers use the internet, you can easily incorporate SEO in to every day aspects of running your own business.

It really isn’t as technical and geeky as many SEO experts make out

Click here for more details:  www.Kick-AssTeleForums.com/SEOMadeEasy.php

 

7 SEO mistakes home business owners make

Why is it so important to get your website optimised for the search engines?

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is all about getting your website ranked favourably by the Google and Yahoo so that your website appears on the first few pages of a search.  Although page one is not altogether essential, page 237,935 is just not going to cut it.

To be honest, there is absolutely no point spending money designing and creating a beautiful looking website that not one potential customer is ever going to see.  It's like spending £400 on a TV commercial that appears once about 2am on a Monday morning.  Is anyone going to see it? And if they did, would they take any notice?

You just wouldn't do it, would you? And yet, spending £400 on a website to promote a home business is an average price to pay to get yourself online.

My question to you today is to ask how much you have invested in your website and whether you feel you have a good rate of return on that investment?

Are you doing enough to get your website optimised so that your potential customers find you when searching for a key word relevant to your business?

Don't get caught out and avoid the 7 most common SEO mistakes that home business owners make.

Mistake No 1:  Think SEO is a "black art".  It's not surprising that so many self-employed professionals and home business owners feel that SEO is a mystical science that only a favoured few know how the search engines work.  There are many SEO consultants out there who love to use lots of technical jargon and blind you with science.  And, yes you can argue that there is a science to SEO, but there is also a lot of common sense to SEO.  Once you understand how the search engines work it doesn't take long to work out what you can do to optimise your site.

Mistake No 2:  Abdicate rather than delegate.  Delegating in your business is a definite plus, especially when it comes to the more technical subjects such as SEO.  But too many business owners abdicate rather than delegate.  They find a SEO consultant who guarantees them "Page One Visibilty" and let out a big sigh of relief once they feel someone finally understands what is needed to get their website found.  Don't get ripped off.  Don't absolve the ultimate responsibility of creating a profitable website.  Getting an understanding of the subject will allow you to delegate and stay in control. 

Mistake No 3:  Do it once and wait for it to happen.  SEO is not something to be ticked off in your marketing plan, never to be looked at again.  SEO is a continual marketing process that needs being made a part of your day-to-day business.  There is no reason why you can do the things that you do already in your marketing and tweek them to be SEO compatible too.  SEO can be done each and every day of your week, once you realise how simple little actions build up your site presence.

Mistake No 4:  Don't ever do it and wonder why their website doesn't work.  Publishing a website and waiting for the search engines to come and find you just doesn't work any more.  There is too much competition out there. And can you really afford to wait 6 or 12 months for your website to be indexed? 

Mistake No 5:  Focus on getting on page one.  One of the most common business objectives that many home business owners have for their website is to "top of page one".  Page one of what, exactly?  Page one of a search for your business name?  Page One of a search for the name of your product or latest workshop?  What do your customers search for and would you be on page one of that search?

Mistake No 6:  Make their websites work for the Search Engines.  From meta-tags to page titles, it is very easy to get focused on the technical aspect of SEO.  Writing white text on a white background to increase your key phrase content may fool Google for a few days, but not only will you get penalised for future rankings, it certainly doesn't help your visitors become customers.  Know how the search engines work and then focus your SEO activity on attracting the human beings who will be spending the money with you.

Mistake No 7:  Decide that it is a subject too complicated to learn about.  Your website is your responsibility and just because a subject appears too complex does not mean you ignore it.  Your tax return may not be the easiest of documents to digest but you wouldn't dream of ignoring the deadlines just because it was too complicated to fill in, would you?  To grow your business and move it forward, you have to learn new skills.  And you have to be prepared to step outside of your comfort zone.  Having a website is no longer a luxury and for the majority of businesses, it is fast becoming an essential marketing tool to stay ahead of your competitors and be the No 1 choice for your customers.

SEO may feel like a complex and jargon-rich subject but being a naturally curious person, I have come to realise that SEO is actually a very simple subject.  In fact the very title of SEO was so off-putting to me that when I started to read around the subject and "tinker" about with my website, I couldn't believe I spent so long avoiding it.

So, if you would like more information about SEO and how you apply it to your home business, I have a special recording of a 90 minute session on "SEO Made Easy".  Click here for more info.