Should I Use a Free Website Template?

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Lucy

There are quite a few places you can go to get a reasonably customizable, pretty good-looking and quite functional website template nowadays … and many of them are free. So, how is it that web designers stay in business? And doesn’t having a template kill your SEO and web marketing chances? We have the answers. Well, some of them, at least!

SEO

Won’t people be able to tell that I’ve used a template?

Well, not necessarily. They might be able to tell that you’ve used a template … and if your audience is in the web design and build industry, or the IT industry, I wouldn’t ever recommend using a template. However, the majority of customers will not be the least bit interested in whether you used a template to build your website … they just want to know if you’ve got what they want to buy at a reasonable price!

Doesn’t it hurt your business credibility to have a website that looks like it’s come off a production line?

Not necessarily. People who study usability on the web agree that predictability is one of the major factors in ensuring that your website is user-friendly. Remember that if people can’t figure out what the heck your site is about, all the clever Flash tricks and pretty graphics in the world won’t stop them throwing up their hands in disgust…

What if something goes wrong with the site?

Many free templates and themes made for WordPress, Joomla and Drupal websites can be pretty buggy. And when you didn’t pay for something, you can hardly demand that the creator give you your money’s worth by fixing up the bugs :-) . Do keep in mind that there are plenty of quite cheap templates, that are less likely to be buggy. Also keep in mind that the most reliable solution of all, especially if you want to have people intereact with your website in any way, or will be changing content more than occasionally, is to have the professionals build your site.

What about my web marketing?

Excellent point! The free websites that look the best may not always have an SEO-friendly structure … and if something so basic is missing from your website, your business is instantly and forever on an uneven footing with all the other businesses in your industry that have customised, search engine optimised templates. This final consideration is perhaps the largest…

Think carefully before you use a free website template. The usual objections might not be the ones that impact your business the most … but remember, you get what you pay for!

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Article and Content Writing: Striking a Balance Between Info and Sales

Posted on March 10, 2010 by Lucy

One of the ongoing dilemmas in web content writing is not inserting keywords … with a little practice and good guidance on densities (ask your SEO experts!), the keywords are a fairly simple part. More difficult is deciding where your web copy should lie on the informational versus sales continuum. Today we give you a few guidelines.

SEO

Does your web copy inspire trust?

Informational copy versus sales copy

The difference is not always apparent when you are the one behind the keyboard! As a general guide…

Informational copy

  • Gives the reader information about a product or service, looking mainly at the features
  • Usually doesn’t mention company names
  • If a company is mentioned, there is no bias towards them in the copy. May mention several companies at once.

Sales copy

  • Looks mainly at the benefits of taking out a product or service with a particular company
  • Mentions only one company name
  • Tells readers about how to take action towards purchasing a product or service

Benefits of informational copy

There is a heck of a lot of sales copy on the internet … and people really tend to distrust it. Anybody can write anything they like and publish it on the internet – there is little governance and few checks and balances in that regard. So sales copy is taken with an enormous grain of salt.

Having informational website copy makes your site seem much more trustworthy to visitors. You have no interest in giving bad information, because there is no direct financial gain to be had from doing so.

Additionally, people that aren’t ready to purchase will come to your site, building traffic and branding, purely for the information. However, when they’re ready to purchase (a week or year down the track), they’ll remember your site and trust it.

Benefits of sales copy
At some stage, if you’re selling something, you’ll have to tell your prospect about why they should buy from you rather than Joe Blow down the road. If you don’t let your customer know why your company is good, they might assume that it isn’t!

Several studies have shown that people have trouble finding products related to informational copy if there isn’t a direct ‘sell’ … and might then Google to find the very same product on the site they were already on … YOUR site! Thgis is one reason why some sales copy is essential.

There is a compromise between the two. For sales copy to be trusted and effective, it should have plenty of informational, factual backup – like user reviews, testimonials, technical data, etc.

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Flash … Is It Really 99% Bad?

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Lucy

Poor old Flash … while some people love it, it has to deal with all sorts of abuse from high profile internet personalities like Jakob Nielsen. Nielsen wrote (a while ago now, in 2000) that Flash as 99% bad. Today we are evaluating the truth of that statement in an internet marketing context – better put your money where your mouth is, Flash defamers!

SEO

-Nnnn- Flash is bad -nnn- does not compute

What’s the problem?

Before we can start extolling the virtues of Flash, we probably should run through why Nielsen famously said that it was 99% bad. Bear in mind that Nielsen is a web usability expert, and most of his statements are made from that position. His arguments against the use of Flash in websites were:

  • The use of Flash in ‘forced’ intros
  • The Back button doesn’t work, neither do link colours or the text zoom
  • Just because we can animate something, doesn’t mean we should – Flash is distracting
  • It is superficial – no concrete value

Another common complaint about Flash is that it hurts SEO efforts, as any text within Flash isn’t indexed by the search engines, and is therefore ‘wasted’ from an SEO perspective.

The Skip Intro button

This is not only available on the majority of sites with Flash intros, it is now also available as a page opening option from Google results. On sites that do force intros, users typically complain so much that they are taken down – forced Flash intros are certainly not regarded as best practice in web design nowadays. Problem solved.

Logistics

Yes, not having a back button, links that change colour when they’ve been visited, or text zoom is bad. But if you don’t make an entire website in Flash (not usually recommended anyway), this won’t be a problem.

Distraction

Yes, Flash is distracting, in the same way that animated banner advertisements are. Just use it for emphasis and attention, and don’t overdo it.

Flash …used on top ranking sites

There are hundreds of high profile, highly trafficked sites on the net that use Flash. They may use it for illustration rather than explanation and have it not as a core part of the site. Or, it may have concrete value -  the Barbie site with Flash games is one that comes to mind.

Flash and SEO

Lastly, without getting into the technical details, it is now actually possible to have Flash that is indexed by the search engines.

There are certainly some valid complaints about Flash … but don’t listen to that big meanie that says it is 99% bad!

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4 Ways to Get Local Links and Visitors to Your Site

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Lucy

A lot of businesses tend to assume that because they mostly serve people that walk in off the street and live in their local area, that web marketing is pointless. In fact, SEO can add quite a bit to that cash register at the end of the day, even if you only see people that live within a ten kilometer radius. Today we are looking at how to use web marketing to links from local business websites, and other direct ways to get visitors to your site that live close to your shop.

SEO

Get the people that matter to yoour business through your doors!

1. Join your chamber of commerce

There is one in most cities and suburbs – chambers of commerce are a place for all the shop owners in the area to meet and talk, well, shop. They usually have websites, and if you’re lucky they’ll be affiliaited with the local council, which gives you a .gov link. Great value in general business as well a s link building.

2. Check in with your local business partners

Send out an email, or make a few phone calls, to your local suppliers, agents, and other business partners asking if they would like to exchange links with you. There is a real possibility this will drive both foot traffic through your door, and net traffic through your home page.

3. Launch an affiliate program

Start an affiliate program where people are rewarded for recommending new customers to you. In many cases, they will do this via the internet … talking to people they know on Twitter and Facebook and Myspace. These links may have no Google juice, but the exposure they create could certainly lead to ordinary links.

4. Submit your site to relevant government resources

Government departments often create resource lists of businesses that can help people in an area do something. Take the time to look through your local and state government websites, seeing if your site fits into any of the categories. Write asking for inclusion if it does.

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5×5 Minute Ways to Make Your Site More Linkable

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Lucy

Link building is often seen as something that takes a long, long time. Lots of research done, lots of articles and press releases written, lots of blog comments made and lots of directories to list in. All simply to bring yourself up to the level of competitiveness that companies who have been doing SEO for a while are at… not to get to the top of the heap and stay there.

SEO

Making your site more attractive!

Today we’re looking at a few easy, very quick, and mostly fun ways to make your site more linkable. We’ll focus on making people want to link to you, not the ordinary (but very necessary) method of spreading your link across the net, all by yourself. They may not all take 5 minutes … but are close enough!

1. Write a ‘Top Ten Myths’ List for your industry

People can’t resist reading about either the misconceptions they had, or the misconceptions other people have. Myths-list often get Dugg, and can even go viral if they are useful, funny or amazing enough. Myths are often one of the major talking points within an industry – people rarely understand your business from outside, so this should be quick and easy!

2. Spellcheck your site

Print out every page of your site and go over it for grammar and spelling errors. If you want to get authority links from .edu and .gov domains, you need to be as slick and professional as possible.

3. Get a standard privacy policy

It doesn’t take much time to download a Privacy Policy form a standard forms site on the internet, or make a quick phone call to your usually company legal service to have one made up. Privacy policies are important for building trust in the site. People are choosy about who they link out to because Google will penalize for linking out to untrustworthy sites – putting a Privacy Policy up helps overcome this.

4. Tag sites related to your on Delicious

There is always the possibility that someone out there will see what fantastic taste you have in websites, follow the trail back to your company site, and link to you.

5. List your site on your local library’s website

Links are like an avalanche – build enough, and they start building themselves. This little SEO trick should be on every business’s list!

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5 More Innovative Ways to Use Twitter for Internet Marketing Success

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Lucy

At first glance, internet marketing with Twitter seems absolutely pointless. Once you start seeing the innovative things people can do with 140 characters, though, you appreciate how effective it can be to use fewer resources, to get more done. Here are 5 more strategies that companies have successfully implemented, to turn 140 characters into lots of dollars!

1. Customer service tool

You won’t solve tricky customer service problems only using Twitter as a platform, but it is an easy and quick way for people to get in touch with you. You can both receive questions at a specific account, and constantly search Twitter for complaints relating to your products.

2. Market research

Twitter is all about offering your opinion. People loooovve to say what they think on the web. Some clever companies have connected this fact, with the realisation that they used to actually pay people for their opinions. It was once called market research, and Twitter is a more cost effective platform for it than any outsourced firm.

3. Word of mouth by incentive

The Roger Smith Hotel in New York offers a 10% discount to customers who make a booking after a Twitter referral. This Twitter internet marketing strategy depends on you being absolutely dedicated to customer service, though.

4. Finding, ahem, interested customers

If you use a Twitter platform to search for instances where your competitors’ names have been mentioned in a negative context, you could have a direct avenue to people who would be very interested in your service.

5. As a newsfeed

Many companies do this nowadays … while it is less innovative now, it is just as effective! Twitter helps gets the word out about your new articles and other related publishing. You can tweet blog posts, press releases, articles, interviews, etc as part of your SEO.

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4 Ultra-Innovative Ways to Use Twitter for Internet Marketing Success

Posted on February 3, 2010 by Lucy

Twitter, like Facebook, is not an intuitively sales-oriented platform. Perhaps that is why businesses are so fascinated with figuring out how to use it for web marketing and to increase their profits … it’s just a challenge! Today we go over some very inventive examples of how to use Twitter as a marketing tool, beyond simple branding.

SEO

Twitter - Addictive

1. Coupon delivery

When it comes to coupons, people only want to know what they’re getting. They don’t need to be convinced of the worth of your product … they just want to know how cheap it is! Twitter’s 140 character limit is perfect for this sort of thing. Post a short description of your offer and a condensed link to your downloadable coupons. Don’t forget to tell people that you’ll be tweeting with discounts via your other web marketing methods.

2. Taking orders

While most Twitter marketing, and indeed most of social media marketing in general, is targeted at big firms, this is one that even the little guys can do. Tell your customers that they can now tweet their order direct to your store – it can be received on a mobile web device or a monitor can be set up near the checkout area. People don’t have to call to make a pickup or delivery request, then.

3. Contests

The best known example of this tactic is Moonfruit, a UK-based web design firm, that gave away Macbook Pros to people that tweeted with the hashtag  #moonfruit. They have done amazingly well out of the contest, though it did cost them the price of 11 Macbook Pros and 10 iPod Touches…

4. Replace email with Twitter

This takes your private work conversations into the public arena … and while many feel uncomfortable about this, it has been quite a sales driver for some companies. Appos shoes pioneered this concept, and it seems that people love the openness.

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What Matters in SEO in 2010?

Posted on January 27, 2010 by Lucy

People say that the landscape of their industry is changing all the time. Rarely is it as true as when SEO specialists are talking. The field of SEO is dominated by one company, Google, so whenever they change their mind, people have to re-learn what they used to know! Today we check out what will matter in SEO in 2010 … at least, what we think will matter …

Video Article Marketing

Video is the new black on the web. Research indicates that people absorb a heap (yes, that’s a scientific statistic! ;-) ) more information from video than they do from either audio or simple text. Almost half of the searches performed on Google return videos within the first ten results. It costs more money to make than written content and takes more time … but unfortunately, that’s why people love it! Video won’t be moving off the top of the content heap in 2010.

Better URLs

What makes one URL better than another URL? Here are a few guidelines:

There are plenty of URL shortening services, but people don’t instinctively trust them (unless they are on Twitter). It is much better to use your own URL, for both SEO and branding purposes.

Speed

Google feels the need for speed … and indications are that if they haven’t already incorporated page load speed into their algorithm, it is on the cards soon.

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Five Simple Steps to Social Media Marketing with Facebook

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Lucy

For most of us, Facebook is instinctively something that is personal … and definitely not an avenue you would use for business. If you’re finding it hard to wrap your head around the idea of using Facebook as an internet marketing tool, we’re here to show you that it is easier than you think. Get the actions right, and the attitude will follow.

Decide whether to post as yourself, or your business

The vehicle you use for internet marketing within Facebook will be completely different whether you are speaking as ‘Jane Doe’, or as ‘Jane’s Delicious Doe-nuts’. Use a personal page only if you expect that your customers will identify you with the brand – for example, if you’ve been blogging or podcasting for a while. Otherwise, set up a fan page for your business.

Connect with other people

If you’ve started a fan page, use your personal profile to invite people to become a fan of your page. If you are using a personal profile, send out friend requests to people that you know.

A note on friend requests – there are very few people on the site that deny them, no matter what they feel about you. Do you want your community to be apathetic about you, though? It is better only to connect with people you are certain you are friendly with.

Use the ‘Wall’ to communicate

Connect with either your fans or your Facebook friends by leaving posts on their walls. If you find something you know a friend would find interesting, post the link to their wall. You can also just say hello, or update them with news they might be interested in.

Update your status

Your status updates will vary in flavor depending on whether you are a person or a business (on Facebook!). These might be the most difficult thing to get right. If you have started a fan page, you will have to post on your own wall or to your description rather than actually updating your status. Be professional, be positive, and be unique.

SEO

Participate in groups

This is only applicable if you’ve chosen to use your personal profile. Read through the comments on a group’s wall, and post your own. These don’t have to be internet marketing or sales oriented … just be yourself!

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Getting the Right Web Marketing Solutions- webmarketingexperts.com.au

Posted on September 11, 2009 by webmarketingexperts.com.au

The internet is a booming industry that is undergoing continuous expansion. This made the rising numbers of web marketing competitors look for effective means on how to improve their product promotion. Online competition is getting tougher each day and in order to reach your online venture’s bottom line, you need to think of the right and suitable marketing techniques.

The various internet marketing strategies has greatly improved in the past few years. This paved the way for business establishments to access the internet and take the business to different levels. How then are you going to consider a good marketing solution? Here are some tips on how to get the right internet marketing solution that can cater to the demands and challenges of your online business.

First, a good marketing solution focuses on attracting more quality traffic. In order to generate income, your online business must generate a desirable amount of visitors that can be converted into sales.

Second, like SEO, it helps your website improve its page ranking in the major search engines. The higher your page rank, the greater possibility of increasing your online visitors. Also, high page ranking ensures your site with targeted group visitors rather than the usual random users.

And lastly, it must create means on how to neutralize online competition. In order for your online business to survive with other various tough competitors, you have to make the necessary adjustments in terms of services or fees. There is a need for you to know how other businesses in your field are doing in the competition before coming up with a desirable marketing campaign.

Some of the popular internet marketing solutions are search engine submissions, affiliate marketing, link building, competitor analysis, and the email marketing. These techniques can help you achieve your desired online visibility and increase profits in the long run. But like any other methods, it also takes time before things run smoothly.

In developing the right marketing strategies for your online business, make sure that every area in your venture is taken into consideration. Building successful online business is not just about the web design. It is getting the right online marketing solution.

For more information about effective web marketing solutions, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

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