In the current economic environment, consumer confidence low and many businesses are feeling the pinch of poor sales. Retailers like Myers and David Jones are competing aggressively to stimulate sales in a down market, so what are you doing to improve your sales?

What strategies are you planning to entice new buyers? Perhaps discounting certain stock items may help cash-flow.

Once customers are attracted to your business, it’s much easier to cross or up sell on additional products or services. In this way it’s good to think about what items are easy to cross or up-sell. E.g. if you are a beauty salon owner, you might advertise waxing at a discounted price, and then once you have your customer through the door, up-sell them to laser hair removal or a skin care treatment.

It’s surprising how many businesses cut their marketing budgets in weaker economic conditions at a time when marketing is crucial to preserve existing clientele and attract new buyers to the business. Naturally costs and overheads are a factor for any business so the key is marketing your business smarter. If you currently use traditional marketing methods such as newspaper, magazines, radio and letter box drops why not consider web marketing. Web marketing by comparison to traditional marketing methods is quite low cost, and is often not only more effective but more measurable as well. This means you can better track the cost of obtaining a sale.

If you’re already utilising web marketing, take the time to work on developing and improving your web strategy. You should consider improving your current site from an information perspective and improving it for sales conversions. Increase or develop a social media presence, send out email newsletters, write blogs etc.

Whilst some of these strategies will drive sales immediately, other strategies will develop sales long term.

Not getting the best results from your website and not sure how to get them?
Call us today on 02 8904 0288 or complete our free website assessment here.

Google recently announced their new Twitter timeline search feature. It is quite an exciting feature, as it helps to track hot topics being searched for, what was being discussed relating to those topics at specific times and so, provide better insight into user behaviour and interests.

Google’s initial release allows you to explore tweets going back to February 11, 2010, and soon you’ll be able to go back as far as the very first tweet on March 21, 2006.

To access this feature:

• Search off the topic of interest
• Click “Show options” on the Google search results page, then
• Select “Updates.”

The first page will show you the familiar latest and (what Google considers) best updates from a comprehensive set of sources, with the new timeline chart at the top. In that chart, you can select the year, month or day, or click any point to view the tweets from that specific time period.

So how will this benefit you? Where there is a hot topic in your industry, it gives you the opportunity to leverage off that topic, and apply it to your own business. This  will be extremely valuable if you have your own Blog, Twitter or Facebook account, and start discussing that topic. By doing so it gives you more opportunity of having one of your web marketing mediums picked up by a potential customer as they are searching off that topic.

Other ways this can be utilised is to change your Pay-Per-Click or Organic SEO campaign(s) to use these words. For example, if you are a dietician, and the hot topic is on a new diet fad sweeping Hollywood, you could use these topical keywords for your campaigns, and write your opinions on whether that diet is effective, or dangerous (if using Pay-Per-Click, don’t forget to make sure your Ad Campaign landing page is the page where you have discussed this topic). Not only are you more likely to have your website found this way, you are also building credibility, and have the opportunity to increase sales for your business or services.

The only thing I found when searching various hot topics is that these results are not very ‘localised’, and so if you are looking for topics that are within say Australia, or even your city, you may be disappointed. In the example screenshot below, I have search off ‘interest rates australia’ for April 2010, then narrowed down to the spike shown on the 6th April 2010. The top 10 results displayed did not include any Australian websites, only international ones.

In saying that, this is a newly released feature, and as Google is ever evolving, we may see localised results in the near future.

search: ‘interest rates australia’ for April 2010

search: ‘interest rates australia’ for 6th April 2010

Looking for the best results in building your business on the web? Call us today to find out how we can build your business.

Are you going through the process of a website rebuild?

There are some very important points to take note of during this process, to make sure that your site:

• does not lose any search engine rankings, or
• have any broken links, be they within your website, or through anyone who has bookmarked your website.

So what are the things that could affect my website?

Each page in your website will very often have an associated rank, especially with Google. If your page is named www.website.com.au/page.html, and in the new site this exact page is now called www.website.com.au/new-page.html then Google will view this as a new page, and your rankings could start from scratch.

Of course wherever possible keep the old page names exactly the same as the original names.

How do you minimise the risk of a loss in rankings?

A 301 redirect in a .htaccess file on the server is the best way of doing this. The 301 redirect is a command that shows you have moved that page permanently. You may still find a temporary drop in rankings of pages within your site, but from experience, I have found that this generally ranges between no time at all, and a two to three weeks.

Please note, the above reference to a 301 redirect will not work on a windows server. Refer to your Windows hosting support for this reference.

Other important elements to think of, that can also affect your search engine rankings, as well as lost traffic/business.

• Bookmarking – When people have bookmarked your website in the Internet Browser – a 301 redirect will fix this.
• RSS feeds – Internal and External.
• Social Media/Networking/Bookmarking sites, and Directories – Try to updates your links on all of these sites.
• Internal Links – Internal links within your website carry SEO value from one page to the next.
• External Websites that link to you – These can be very important, as Google places high value in some external links that point to a website. Changing your pages, could result in a large drop in rankings. – Try to updates your links on all of these sites.
• HTML Structure – Is it the same as it was, or improved? Consult your SEO expert on this to be sure.
• Meta Tags – Are these the same as they were or improved? Consult your SEO expert on this to be sure.

Please note, that using the 301 redirect method will certainly ensure there are no broken links, however it will not pass on the same SEO value associated with each site link, so it is important to update as many of these links as possible, to ensure minimal impact to your site.

If you need help with your site move, contact us today for a quote.

Has Google penalised or banned your site in the past or currently? These days, many businesses have a strong reliance on Google, and as such, a drop in rankings for whatever reason can be a cause of great stress. At times a drop in rankings may be caused simply by Google changing their algorithm, but it can also be due to a Google penalty.

So what do you do?

Well firstly, don’t panic. It is important to wait at least a few days to a week, to make sure that the cause of the drop is not due to an algorithm change. An algorithm change can make your site drop a few places, a few pages, or even drop from the rankings altogether. During this time:

• speak with your SEO expert as they should know of any recent changes within Google, and
• document any recent changes that have been made to your website to see if anything obvious has cause a Google penalty.

If nothing obvious has been the cause, and your site is still not appearing after a week, have your SEO expert conduct a thorough full site analysis to determine anything that has caused the penalty. If you are still not getting answers, or your SEO expert is not able to help, call us today for a full analysis of your website. We specialise in search engine services, and keep up-to-date on the right techniques to help keep you at the top of Google.

You may also be interested in this video below:

‘How Google Penalties Can Help Your Site’.

Author Note: During the interview, it is mentioned that ‘link building can never hurt’. We disagree with this, and you should consult with an SEO expert before you commit to any link building within this time.

There has never been a better time than right now to give your website a health check. Businesses around the country are using the start of the New Year as a great excuse for redefining goals and setting new targets, so why not include improving your website as one of your New Year’s resolutions?

I’m always amazed by the number of businesses who don’t take the opportunity to invest time or effort into developing or improving their websites. The end result being a shabby representation of their business. All too often, websites have been quickly thrown together without much thought or imagination, or the website is years old and out-dated.

Starting the process can be difficult, so I’ve put together a checklist:

Step One – Appealing to the eye

The first step is to consider whether your website is appealing to most people and whether the design is modern and up-to-date. If you are unsure, you can easily find out by asking staff, colleagues, or friends. I would also recommend that you take a look at your top main competitors to see what they are doing with their websites.

And,… if you find yourself apologising to people for how your website looks, this is a definite sign you need to upgrade fast…

The simple fact is, if people see a website that doesn’t visually appeal to them, they will leave before they even get to see how good your products or services are.

Step Two – Content

How up-to-date is your content? Does it accurately reflect all the products or services you offer?

Do you have content that entices visitors to return to your website at a later stage? This is really important, if on their first visit to your site, they are early in the buying cycle, then you want to make sure they remember you so that when they are closer to making a decision to purchase, you will be number one in mind. Having interesting hints, tips, or features of your website is a good way to bring them back at a later stage.

And while we are on that note, if they are early on in the buying cycle, what can you introduce to your site to better educate them and bring them closer to making a decision?

Step Three – Usability

Is your website easy to navigate, enabling your site visitors to find the information they want quickly? For websites that grow quite quickly, it’s easy to lose the right navigation structure, making it difficult for website visitors to get around the site. Take the time to map out the flow of your website on a piece of paper (for smaller sites), or for larger sites Excel can be a good way to setup the flow. Remember, if someone can’t quickly find what they are looking for on your site, it is only a couple of clicks back to the search engines to find your competitors.

Usability and accessibility standards can also be an issue many do not consider. If users with disabilities visit your site, not only could you be losing potential valuable business from them, but did you know that in Australia and many other countries, it’s a legal requirement to have your site accessible for disabled users?

An interesting case back in 2000 proved that these laws can be enforced, as in the case of Bruce Lindsay Maguire v Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, in which Maguire won.

Step 4 – Pages being accessible

Do all of the links in your site work? This can be a problem more frequently than you think, as many website owners are simply unaware. A free tool called Xenu will easily scan through your site and provide you with a report to verify this.

Step 5 – Your home page

Does your home page provide a simple, clear message of what your business offers? Many businesses make the mistake of cramming so much information into their home page, because they want their visitors to know everything about them the moment they visit their site. The end result, a home page that looks messy, hard to read, and searchers leave before they find out what you have to offer.

Step 6 – Your sales message

Do you have a call to action, or a strong message to “buy now” if applicable? Without reasons to buy, you are likely to see a low conversion rate throughout your site.

Placing video on your website is  also a great way to connect with your site visitors and to convert new business. So if it’s in your budget, I would really recommend it.

Step 7 – Website Reporting

Last, but definitely not least, what are your website analytics reports telling you about how your website is performing? Chances are, that the majority of people reading this are asking, “website reports?” Most businesses don’t look at their reporting, either because they don’t understand the information in the reports, or think they don’t have the time.

The information in these reports can be critical to properly, and effectively managing your website. Without this understanding, you won’t know how to improve your site, or worse still, you may change a section of your site that is performing really well for you.

Small changes to your site, based on this information, can have a big impact on your bottom line, which means more $$$ for you. Isn’t that one of the main reasons you’re in business?

Conclusion

If you’ve answered ‘no’ or ‘unsure’ to any of the questions above, then I encourage you to make improvements to your website a priority. Whether it’s your in-house web development team, or an external web development company, making sure your website is brought up to today’s standards in design and technology is of vital importance if you want to keep your business moving forward.

Think of it like this; if you walked into a shop or office, and it was really shabby, how would you feel about giving them your business? A website is no different… So what are you telling your potential clients about your business?