Promoting Your Website Both Online and Offline

If you have a website and you are finding that you have a lack of users visiting it then you need to start looking at how you can promote it. There are a number of ways in which you can do this:

SEO

This should always be your first port of call. An experienced search engine optimisation company will be able to optimise each page making the whole website search engine friendly. They can also advise and provide you with social media services to help get your brand out to the masses.

A good SEO campaign should be carried out over a long period of time so that your website can build momentum and maintain its new found level of search engine results.

Pay Per Click

This is a system that can be used with both Google and Bing web browsers. It entails bidding for keywords through adverts. You will find these adverts at the top of the search engine results page and to the right, they are normally in a coloured box with something like sponsored result titled above them. The more you bid the higher your advert will appear.

Pay per click is a very effective system to encourage users as its based on what users search for, it is as effective however as the person using it as you can quickly find that costs spiral out of control and can very quickly eat into your profits if used poorly.

Remember that some keywords can cost upwards of £10 per click but some more niche ones can be as little as 5p per click. Depending on your budget and your industry will determine how much you spend.

If you ask an experienced SEO company to handle your PPC then you could find yourself saving money and increasing results.

Email Marketing

If you are running an e-commerce website you really should be emailing both your current customers and past. You will have access to their details and they would have been given the opt out option to not receive further information.

If you email this already target audience you could see some instant quick sales because you already know that they are interested in your products. Do not email these people too much though as they will end up just deleting them, if you email them on a monthly basis they will find the email more interesting and are likely to read it.

Paper Advertising

Just because you have a website please do not shun paper advertising, especially if you are trying to attract local business. Within the advert you must include a bit about yourself, special offers and your web address (URL).

If you are trying to target a national audience then look at national magazines and newspapers. Think about your service or product carefully and select the right publication, you could offer a promotion exclusive to that magazine to get great coverage and maybe an editorial. This can increase traffic dramatically.

Word Of Mouth

I know this sounds like a simple one but tell everyone about your website! Self promotion is seriously overlooked as most people tend to shy away from it but you must tell people who you are and what you do. Hand out as many business cards as you possibly can, but talk to that person first don’t just force it on them.

People are very inquisitive and even if they don’t like the sound of your business they will always have a look at your website just to fulfil their own curiosity and who knows they might just like what they see.

By just using the above examples you can seriously increase the traffic to your website ultimately increasing sales and enquiries.

Making Sure Your Website Is Suitable For People With Disabilities

Designing a website that caters for everybody’s needs, tastes and requirements is a really hard thing to do, some would say impossible. Every website user will have different wants and needs, requirements and tastes, and it is very hard to try and make sure that your website is suitable.

The use of the internet for people with disabilities has become easier over the past few years, with improving technology and more help available. Not every website can be 100% perfect for people with disabilities, but there are a few things that you can do to really help anyone using your website that may have a disability.

Resizable Texts – Check out the majority of Council run websites and government websites and you will see you have the option to increase or decrease texts. The majority of newer websites are now using this kind of tool to help everyone be able to access their websites, especially important for organisations and official bodies like the two mentioned above. You can buy this software to sit on your website, or if you are using WordPress you can find a couple of plugins that take care of this for you, opening up your website to many more viewers.

Easy To Read Colours – People with vision problems or impaired vision really struggle if the website is full of colours that do not blend or are just very harsh or bright when mixed. Some of the best websites are quite plain and simple but designed perfectly, as a good design does not mean you have to have loads of pretty colours, as sometimes the simple touches make the difference. Do not have white text on black backgrounds or have really harsh backgrounds on the site, as this can cause real problems for people who have problems with vision.

Images Tagged – Make sure all of your images are tagged correctly, as there are some brilliant bits of software that read out load website text, and if your images are tagged correctly, this software can also help to portray exactly what that image is about, making everything much more dynamic and understandable.

Simple Layout – Some websites are confusing for most users, and this becomes even more confusing if you have a disability, especially with vision. Keep the website simple to navigate, use decent sized menus and try to make everything so obvious that you do not even have to think about how to get from page to page through your website. The more confusing your website layout, especially if it contains loads of different and ill thought out sections, the harder it will be for everyone to use, so its well worth keeping things simple.

Listen To Users – One of the most important and best ways to make sure your website is suitable and accessible for disabled people and is often overlooked, is to simply ask them! There are national groups and government bodies that are really helping to change the web and are always open to webmasters wanting advice when it comes to making the web better for people with disabilities. You can also ask local groups who work with disabled people to make sure your website really is working for them and more importantly, what you can do better or improve upon.

 

Cost Per Click Advertising – Top Five Places You Really Should Try CPC

As any webmaster or site owner will know, it can take a good few months of hard and determined search engine optimisation work to really start ranking naturally for your chosen keyword. If you can afford it, cost per click or pay per click is a great way of getting early traffic for your website and seeing how well your product or service is going to do.

Many people think that cost per click advertising is only done through Google, but there are many others sites and search engines that accept CPC advertising and we look at the top five pay per click advertising methods below.

Google Adwords – Many find the Google Adwords to be the leader of pay per click advertising, featuring one of the easiest systems to use across all three of the major search engines. Advertising on Google gives you maximum exposure, with well over 60% of the world’s searches heading through the search engine. If you know what you are doing, you can really get some very competitively priced keywords, especially if you aim at the long tail keywords, with some of the tools on offer also an excellent addition to this comprehensive service.

Yahoo Search Engine Marketing – In recent years, the marketing arm of Yahoo as has really improved beyond all belief, now offering a very smart and sophisticated pay per click system for advertisers. It is really easy to set up a campaign and you should be away within 10 minutes of signing up, but you do need to work with the system to make sure you get the most out of it.

Bing / Live Adcentre – The Bing or Microsoft marketing tool is still in its early days but, just like the search engine, is showing signs of improvement. The system can be quite hard to use but with around 12% of the world’s searches going through this engine, it really is worth a shot. It can take a little bit longer than Google to see the rewards, but once you get to grips with the system you will be tinkering and playing often to get the most out of it. They also offer a free optimisation service via email and phone, which really can help you to get more for your money and learn how to use the system efficiently.

Facebook – One of the newest places or sites to begin pay per click advertising, but one that we found really can work for your business, depending on your niche. Facebook is able to display your ads based on much more accurate data and given information than other advertisers, because Facebook knows pretty much everything it needs to know about everyone with a profile there. For example, if you were wanting to display your Over 50’s Insurance on Facebook, the system is so clever that it will only display your advert to people over 50 or to people that have taken an interest in the niche concerned.

MIVA – Started in 1999, MIVA currently delivers performance-based solutions to thousands of advertisers and publishers. In March 2009, MIVA was acquired by AdKnowledge, which simply extended its network of paid advertisers even further, meaning a advertisements via this pay per click system had even more exposure. MIVA works by allowing publishers to sign up to the system and then display adverts on their site, very much like Google Adsense, so your advert can be seen on many different sites, with you also having the option to filter and control these to quite accurate levels.

Top Five Open Source Downloads

There are many free open source software programmes that you can download; this article lists the top five available in different formats.

There are many options available from word processing software to sound converting programmes. There are opportunities available to make a donation, this can be any amount chosen by you and is worthwhile doing to help fund these well developed programmes.

Here is the top five downloads:

OpenOffice.org

This is a great free download and supports Microsoft Windows files. You can word process, create spreadsheets, create brochures etc… The best part is that you can turn documents into PDF formats with just a click of a button all completely free. This is a very highly recommended download especially if you do not want to pay large amounts for PDF converting software or expensive word processing programmes.

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox web browser is a must download. It is fast, secure and offers the easiest use of web browsing out there. It has come out top of all web browsers in many top lists of the major browsers including Internet Explorer. It is can be completely customised to suit your tastes. Once you have used it all other web browsers just seem poor on reflection. There is also a great host of add on’s to choose from to make your web browsing even better.

Miro Video Player

Miro offers a fantastic viewing experience; you can view videos in HD and in any format. It offers a really good interface and is simple to use, so much better than Windows media player and all of those other standard issue programmes. Like most open source software it is free to download. A must download even if just for the HD quality it offers.

GIMP

This is a photo editing software suite which in some instances rivals’ features found on Photoshop. It is simple to use and you can layer just like expensive editing software, great for designers and editing your photos to get rid of red eye and colouring to get the right balance.

FileZilla

I use this all of the time, it is a great FTP (file transfer protocol) programme and is available in both client and server options. It is as good as anything I have ever used. It is used for transferring files to your server uploading to the internet.

A great solution for any individual or company who which to upload files to internet servers, both dedicated and reseller.

It is very simple to use and just proves that open source software really is worth investigating and downloading.

Mozilla Thunderbird

An open source email application that makes storing and sorting your emails a breeze. If you are used to using Mozilla Firefox internet browser then this is the option for you. It is fully customisable like the browser and allows you to open tabs and keep your email system easy and quick.

It also features advanced spam filtering systems to stop unwanted emails and archiving emails is so simple and effective.

Open source software really is something you must be looking at and not just because it is free. Open source software is continually updated so you are always using the newest and safest version; this is something that you normally have to pay for with paid software.

Five Essential Firefox Add Ons That You Simply Must Have

Firefox is one of the leading browsers for everyday Internet users and has risen rapidly to now be on a firm level with the industry leader Internet Explorer. More and more people are switching over to Firefox, mainly due to the security but also due to the excellent plugins or addons that you can get for the browser.

Firefox has seen its market share rise beyond many people’s expectations when it first launched, with regular updates and additions being provided by its open source community of talented developers.

Some of the addons you can get on the browser are well worth a look and we have listed some of the essential ones below.

SEO Quake - Seoquake is a powerful tool for Mozilla Firefox, aimed at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization and internet promotion of web sites. Seoquake allows user to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet project under study on the fly. This tool is just brilliant if you work in SEO or web design because it allows you to find out tons of information about the site, including indexed pages, links, whois information, Google Adsense details and so much more, this addon really is a must.

Google Toolbar – If you use the Internet on a regular basis, the Google Toolbar can help to make things much easier. Once installed it gives you the ability to search quickly, view site information, search for news articles, keep your bookmarks in order and view the page rank of the site you are one. The Google Toolbar just makes life easier when it comes to operating on the Internet, and it also has many smart little features that really help organise what you do.

StumbleUpon – This addon allows you to find a site, tell the world you love that site and then allow others to view the same site and let you know what they think about it. It really is one of the ultimate social bookmarking tools, and with one click you can view a site that someone things is great and you can then cast your opinion on it as well. It can be a great way of generating traffic and allowing people to find your site, so if you are a webmaster this is also well work a look.

McAfee SiteAdvisor – This vital plug in or add on has saved many people from entering sites that could potentially harm your computer or steal your identity. The system works like a traffic light, Red for don’t go, Orange for you can go but be careful and Green means everything is OK and the site is safe to surf. The McAfee protection system is probably the best package for security on the Internet, and this little addon for Firefox is a must if you surf the internet.

FireBug - Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. This plug in is a major asset if you are developing websites or simply need to try and fix a problem, with a full range of debugging options available to see why things are not working and development tools that will really help when it comes to web design.

Creating Sales With An E-Commerce Website

Selling online can be a great way to increase your current sales or can be used as your number one selling tool.

Firstly you need a website that has e-commerce capabilities; this can be either a fully integrated shopping cart with automatic stock level and delivery calculations or just a website with simple buy it now buttons. This obviously depends on how much you are intending to sell and of course the budget you have for your website creation.

If you are intending to sell your products online only then I would always suggest using a fully integrated shopping cart as you have the option of changing and adding products easily without fuss, the system will also work out what delivery charge is to be incurred on the item, this can be done through either weight, size or multiples. You will have full access to the merchant services and be in total control of your website. This is the more expensive option but one I think that is definitely worth it if you want to create high volume sales and allow you to fully focus on the task in hand.

Using buy it now buttons is a great cost effective option for selling products. You can easily add these buttons with a small basic knowledge of HTML coding. This option is ideal if you are selling small quantities but you will have to manually stock take and adding or removing products can be time consuming.

Any merchant service such as PayPal or Google Checkout will charge a fee as a percentage of your of your total sale value, this generally starts at 3.4% for sales under £1000 and lowers thereafter.

Once you have your e-commerce website you must remember that the work has only just started. The website now needs promoting to create sales just like if you were to open a shop in a town. There are several ways of doing this:

Social Media
Paper advertising
Television advertising
Optimisation services

Get the word out by using social media websites such as Twitter, Youtube and Facebook, you can create a lot of attention by effectively blogging and letting others see what you’re up to and engaging them with your business.

Paper advertising is always very effective and if you want to create local and national interest then advertising in magazines and newspapers with an advert and your website address works very well.

Television advertising is obviously very effective but also very expensive, depending on how niche your market is and how financially high you view it will tell you whether or not it is worth doing.

Optimisation Services are a great way to get your website ranked highly within the search engines. Most people will find your website by using engines such as Google, Bing, Ask, Yahoo etc… so you need to be visible to these people. SEO companies can do this through using a variety of methods including:

Link building
Social bookmarking
Social Media
Press and article releases
Continued web development
And many more…..

This should be factored in as an ongoing cost relevant to your website as this is very important that your website is visible to people when searching.

You should continually be updating and adding things to your website to keep it fresh and unique, just owning a website isn’t enough to start selling. It is hard work like owning a store in town but without the rent.

If you work hard at your website and employ SEO services you can keep yourself at the top for years to come, if you are setting up an e-commerce website think about the above first and good luck!

Improving Your Page Load Time – Tips And Tricks To Optimise Your Pages

With the latest announcement that page loading times would soon be a factor in site ranking, it is now more important than ever to make sure that your website loads quickly, efficiently and doesn’t hang on various problems that make not only Google but the visitor waiting for ever.

It can be quite usual for webmasters and site designers to want to cram as much into the website as possible, but if it takes forever to load or causes browser hang ups, then the visitor is unlikely to stick around and will move onto your rival or a better alternative.

Below are some ideas to help make sure that your page loads quickly.

Compress Images – One of the biggest causes of slow loading times for website pages generally seems to be images that have not been compressed or optimised well enough before being uploaded to the internet. There are many ways to solve this, including using specialist software to compress and optimise or reducing the size of photos if you are taking them on a camera, or you can even choose to host them elsewhere and then link them back into your site via a gallery or embedding the images.

Split Text – If you have a page with lots of text, try splitting the text into a few pages. This benefits you in many ways, with the reduced loading time the most obvious one, but you are also then creating more pages for Google to index, which will only look good for your website.

Analyse Code – All websites run on code, whether you do this by hand, use a WordPress template or design it using a WYSIWYG editor. When coding, it can be quite hard to get things perfect, so it is important to look at all of your code and make sure there are no errors and that all of your content is correctly coded and shows no breaks or errors. Make sure there is no unnecessary code left in your pages if you have removed something and then not checked how it affected the coding etc.

Reduce Page Content – If your page is full of widgets, gadgets and lots on interactive media, you might want to look at reducing this. Quite a few websites seem overloaded with polls, videos, flash banners and all of the other types of wizardry that you can have on a website. This does impact when loading a webpage and if it is really slowing it down, you might want to either reduce the amount of content on the page, or at least remove most of it from your home page and spread things evenly throughout the website.

Improve Navigation – Sometimes the navigation on a website can cause issues when it comes to the page loading time. If you have a text or graphic heavy menu with lots of options, your browser will try to load all of them usually before loading the content, and a spider will also struggle with a heavy navigation menu. You can try to reduce your menu options or split them into better and more efficient categories, using sub categories and side menus to help reduce loading time.

Advertising Online – The Advantages Of Advertising Online Compared To Traditional Offline Media

Many companies are looking to cut costs during the current financially difficult times and the recession that has hit many of us very hard. One of the costs that businesses always look at saving money on is advertising, with a lot of companies now changing the majority of their advertising to online, leaving the sometimes costly world of offline advertising behind them.

Although both types of advertising of course has benefits and advantages, does online advertising really offer more than offline? Or, should they both be used in conjunction with each other, as long as the company can afford it? Below are some of the reasons online advertising is getting more popular and effective when we compare it to offline advertising, including newspapers and flyers etc.

Cheaper – If you weigh up the difference between offline and online advertising, online advertising is usually much cheaper than offline advertising. A decent cost per click budget or website advert is generally much cheaper than a series or run of offline or newspaper advertising and is often much more targeted and rewarding. This is not always the case, especially if you get deals for long term advertising offline, but on the whole you normally find that online advertising works out to be more cost effective and controllable in the long run.

Target Audience – A major advantage of online advertising is that you can target your audience much more efficiently. For example, if you advertise in a newspaper, although you can choose the newspaper that you consider being nearer your perfect audience, you will still have many more people who do not fit your criteria. With online advertising you can select who your advert is seen by, by niche, age, location and many other factors, especially when using cost per click or other social media types of advertising.

More Options – When you consider the types of offline advertising there is, you will normally be able to name the top three, which are newspaper advertising, flyers and television. But when you look at online advertising the options seem to be much more, with cost per click, banner advertising, email marketing, site sponsorship, directory advertising and many more. Online advertising also has more flexibility using these options, as they can easily be turned on and off, changed or re-written and republished to take advantage of any related news that might be relevant to the advert.

Quicker – One of the biggest advantages of advertising online is how quick it can be. From the second you publish your new advert, news story or pay per click advert, it will be live on the internet and have the potential to be viewed by thousands of people. With offline advertising, especially newspaper adverts, you could be waiting up to a week for your advert to go to press and then be delivered to all of the possible readers, meaning you have to plan well in advance to capture time critical or seasonal advertising opportunities.

So, should all businesses ditch offline advertising and go fully online? Of course they should not, as for some businesses offline advertising will always have some mileage to it, and although it is hard to believe, not everyone has access to the internet or the know how to use it successfully to find what they want. Even so, online advertising is growing rapidly and offline advertising is really suffering, as online seems to offer much more flexibility and options to get the message across for many businesses and companies.

Why Blog?

A blog or blogging is a term used to define a weblog. What it basically means is to write an article of information on the internet where it is logged.

Blogging opened up the internet to many individuals and companies; you could say its father was GeoCities which was created in the early 1990’s to help people build their own website. This gave people their own space on the internet in which to say anything they liked. People built web pages about themselves telling the world what was going on with their lives, this was unbelievably popular especially as the internet was then in its infancy.

Blogging is exactly the same process; there are free blog sites such as WordPress and Blogger which allow users to create their own website/ blog which can be completely customised to your own design and preferences. Within this blog you can write about anything you like such as yourself, current issues or your business.

If you are looking at this from a business perspective blogging can really help to promote your business and website. By writing interesting information about your business, your services and products you can create a great online interest. If you have a website you can directly link your blog to your website or better still integrate it into your site.

Keeping the content fresh and unique and you will be able to create a following of loyal readers as well as attracting new visitors. This can lead to new levels of traffic into your website from localised traffic specifically aimed at your demographic increasing your chances of sales and enquiries.

Blogging gives you the opportunity to interact with your customers allowing you to understand what they require and give you feedback; this can create new ideas and new markets for your business.

Make sure the content you provide is interesting and you will be surprised at just how effective blogging can be.

Page Titles, Descriptions and Keywords Are Important

Going back a few years keywords were very important to a website as the major search engines used them to define what your website was all about. Many website owners and designers picked up on this and used many keywords within the site structure; however this was quickly abused with many sites having hundreds of keywords not even relevant to their content.

Many keywords were stuffed throughout a websites design and in the worst cases ghost pages were set up within the structure. Ghost pages are white pages with white writing on them so the user can never see them but the search engine spiders could, this is a method known as black hat SEO, a bad thing indeed. Lots of websites found themselves being penalised by the major search engines, taking years to get back to where they were using correct methods (white hat SEO).

The major search engines such as Google now either do not take keywords into account or just lightly use them. This however has led many web developers and designers to believe that keyword research is no longer important to a website, this is however incorrect.

Keyword research finds the most common used search words and terms within your chosen genre. This allows for good page titles, descriptions and footers to be created. Search engines always read page titles and footers before your main page content so it is vital that these are well researched and correct.

Using these keywords you can mix up your page titles per page and have a nice consistent footer telling search engines the information they require, this is very important when it comes to search engine results. Also do not completely abandon the use of page keywords as there some search engines, that as previously stated, use them lightly to aid results.

DO NOT go overboard with these words and terms, your page titles should be fairly short and make sense, this is also true of your description. Page footers should be no longer than two lines, this way you are helping the search engines but not taking advantage which as we already know can get you penalised.

Employing the services of a good SEO company or a web design company who specialises in optimised websites can really help, their research and knowledge of the ever changing subject is vital to your websites prominence in the search engines.

Remember that good keyword research is important to you but that information should be used wisely, this way your website will benefit.

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