There has been a lot of talk recently about the effects of Web 2.0 on online marketing and it has been estimated that there is considerable opportunity here for companies to get their messages across. Examples such as companies designing YouTube videos and planting them so that their products get across are aplenty, but on the whole, it does not seem that much has been done with the technology yet.
Second Life was a good example of a potential opportunity for advertising that has never really materialised although there are still companies with offices and buildings on there. It would seem that most of the opportunities related to selling graphics and computer programmes that specifically linked to Second Life and were not anything to do with the traditional products that the companies were selling.
It was used for an online careers fair on a number of occasions, but I’m not sure that this had any effect at all.
The same sort of thing applies with Facebook. I am not sure how Facebook will have any effect for marketing purposes apart from the opportunity to network at very low cost. Facebook is a medium for publishing photos and getting in touch with other people and staying in touch, but I’m not sure it’s really helped very much at all through any marketing for a conventional company not selling products linked to Facebook. Advertising on Facebook will be quite phenomenal in terms of income for the company, but I am not sure of the accuracy of advertising in this way unless you are a large company with a generic product.
In a similar way, Twitter is an online chat programme that enables users to talk together in live time. There have been such programmes for many years with the Windows Messenger programme perhaps being the most popular of these and others before this. Whilst I am sure they are very beneficial programmes to use, I am not sure they give very many marketing opportunities to an SME with a specific product to sell.
There has been a lot of talk about them, and the opportunities that are there but to be frank, I cannot see how most of them will have much effect on actual sales for companies, although there is plenty of scope for marketing companies to make money out of pushing advertising on the sites.
It is certainly something to keep an eye on though for future times, as it may be that advertising possibilities start to open up in the same way that Google opened up its pay per click and has generated vast amounts of potential advertising for small companies at low cost.
For further information or advice on web marketing, please visit www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk.
Sunday 7 December 2008
Wednesday 26 November 2008
Where do I find the meta tags on a website?
Meta tags are the hidden codes on a website that gives instruction to search engine spider robots on the contents of the page and various bits of information, for example, the language, the title, the important key words, a description, whether the robots should visit the page or not and a whole range of other matters.
How do you see the meta tags on the page posted on the internet by another company or website?
Firstly, if you are in Internet Explorer, click View on the toolbar, select Source.
A text box will open and in the text box you will see lots of code.
Have a look for a piece of coding with the word head in it, and below that you ought to see the word meta.
Usually there are three to six meta tags, and each one will have a different name, so next to the word meta, you will see words such as refresh, keyword, description, title and robots. All of these indicate to you that firstly the website has had some search engine optimisation done to it, and secondly that the site contains instructions for robots as to what to do when they visit the site.
Some search engines still pick up meta tags, but Google stopped placing a lot of emphasis on them quite a while ago as they started to get fairly well abused by websites that contained more spam than actual use.
These days it appears Google places more emphasis on in bound links as opposed to actual descriptions on the website.
However, they are still very important, and other search engines use them for a whole host of reasons.
For further information and search engine optimisation and online and offline marketing, please visit www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk
How do you see the meta tags on the page posted on the internet by another company or website?
Firstly, if you are in Internet Explorer, click View on the toolbar, select Source.
A text box will open and in the text box you will see lots of code.
Have a look for a piece of coding with the word head in it, and below that you ought to see the word meta.
Usually there are three to six meta tags, and each one will have a different name, so next to the word meta, you will see words such as refresh, keyword, description, title and robots. All of these indicate to you that firstly the website has had some search engine optimisation done to it, and secondly that the site contains instructions for robots as to what to do when they visit the site.
Some search engines still pick up meta tags, but Google stopped placing a lot of emphasis on them quite a while ago as they started to get fairly well abused by websites that contained more spam than actual use.
These days it appears Google places more emphasis on in bound links as opposed to actual descriptions on the website.
However, they are still very important, and other search engines use them for a whole host of reasons.
For further information and search engine optimisation and online and offline marketing, please visit www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk
Monday 17 November 2008
Website Design – paid for & completed – what next?
We see lots of websites on the internet that have been created professionally and competently by a website design company who also do a bit of technical search engine optimisation (SEO) work.
The site is built, put together, posted onto the internet, fully optimised and ready to go and then everyone concerned sits back and waits for the traffic to flow in.
Usually such sites end up with a Google page ranking of some sort, but for most of their key words will never be seen again by anyone except somebody searching for their particular company site.
This is essentially why you need to consider using search engine optimisation services on an ongoing basis over at least 12 months.
Here at Chester Web Marketing, we offer a service that does not just start and stop in a matter of weeks. We offer an ongoing service, which goes on for a considerable time if you want it to.
We charge a monthly fee which means that your website is continually looked at, and we add to your web presence. It is the web presence that will launch you up the charts and get you traffic, not the search engine optimisation and the web design on its own unless you are very, very lucky. There is so much competition for most key words on the internet now that if is important to be constantly looking at the ‘net, assessing traffic levels and also seeing what your competitors are doing.
If we take the example of a delicatessen in a market town in north Wales. They have a website built, which looks very good, and also includes an online shop. Some of the website does not actually work but overall, if you visited the website, you would be fairly impressed by the service they offer and think them to be of very good quality and offering a high standard of product.
However, their site has obviously been optimised by the web designer and then just left, because even if you type in local key words it does not come up on Google. The company has no internet presence at all hardly and does not even compete in the market for the terms “online deli” or “online delicatessen” or “fine food ordering” or “speciality meats”, etcetera, etcetera.
When you look at their competitors at the top of the market, they have optimised sites, but more importantly, they have internet presence. This is why they are at the top and I would imagine that they are generating business off the back of it.
The way Chester Web Marketing would work with the deli would be to offer them an ongoing service for a minimum of 12 months. This would enable them to establish an internet presence, build up their links across the web and start getting the website noticed and generating traffic. We would do this by constantly communicating with other sites and directories and making sure that the website is there to be seen.
Unlike other SEOs online, we do not use automatic services, and everything is done by hand. Although automatic services can play a very minor part in promoting a website, on the whole they simply cause no effect at all to the website as they are not adding any benefit to either the search engine spiders (the robots that come and check your site out) or to human visitors.
We source places to locate your links with other sites and we promote your site across the web. Not only that, but we can also tie in with offline campaigns like mail shots and journals etcetera. The deli needs to establish itself as an expert online, and also as a known brand amongst internet users. The only way to do this is to get out there and do some hard work at promoting the site across lots of sites and sources.
Chester Web Marketing can do this. The prices start at £50 a month for a very small start up enterprise, going up to £9,000 a month for a large company wanting to dominate a market. We are happy to help. Visit www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk for further details.
The site is built, put together, posted onto the internet, fully optimised and ready to go and then everyone concerned sits back and waits for the traffic to flow in.
Usually such sites end up with a Google page ranking of some sort, but for most of their key words will never be seen again by anyone except somebody searching for their particular company site.
This is essentially why you need to consider using search engine optimisation services on an ongoing basis over at least 12 months.
Here at Chester Web Marketing, we offer a service that does not just start and stop in a matter of weeks. We offer an ongoing service, which goes on for a considerable time if you want it to.
We charge a monthly fee which means that your website is continually looked at, and we add to your web presence. It is the web presence that will launch you up the charts and get you traffic, not the search engine optimisation and the web design on its own unless you are very, very lucky. There is so much competition for most key words on the internet now that if is important to be constantly looking at the ‘net, assessing traffic levels and also seeing what your competitors are doing.
If we take the example of a delicatessen in a market town in north Wales. They have a website built, which looks very good, and also includes an online shop. Some of the website does not actually work but overall, if you visited the website, you would be fairly impressed by the service they offer and think them to be of very good quality and offering a high standard of product.
However, their site has obviously been optimised by the web designer and then just left, because even if you type in local key words it does not come up on Google. The company has no internet presence at all hardly and does not even compete in the market for the terms “online deli” or “online delicatessen” or “fine food ordering” or “speciality meats”, etcetera, etcetera.
When you look at their competitors at the top of the market, they have optimised sites, but more importantly, they have internet presence. This is why they are at the top and I would imagine that they are generating business off the back of it.
The way Chester Web Marketing would work with the deli would be to offer them an ongoing service for a minimum of 12 months. This would enable them to establish an internet presence, build up their links across the web and start getting the website noticed and generating traffic. We would do this by constantly communicating with other sites and directories and making sure that the website is there to be seen.
Unlike other SEOs online, we do not use automatic services, and everything is done by hand. Although automatic services can play a very minor part in promoting a website, on the whole they simply cause no effect at all to the website as they are not adding any benefit to either the search engine spiders (the robots that come and check your site out) or to human visitors.
We source places to locate your links with other sites and we promote your site across the web. Not only that, but we can also tie in with offline campaigns like mail shots and journals etcetera. The deli needs to establish itself as an expert online, and also as a known brand amongst internet users. The only way to do this is to get out there and do some hard work at promoting the site across lots of sites and sources.
Chester Web Marketing can do this. The prices start at £50 a month for a very small start up enterprise, going up to £9,000 a month for a large company wanting to dominate a market. We are happy to help. Visit www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk for further details.
Friday 14 November 2008
Establishing a website presence
This article is aimed at anyone who has no website or any previous IT experience and is a quick explanation about what you need to do in order to get a website or internet presence.
Everyone who looks on the internet is looking at web pages, and the first port of call for anyone wanting to establish a web presence is to get a web page. This is a lot easier than you would think, as there are now companies out there who will set you up on the web for as little as £200, with your own web pages and email systems in place.
If you want to do it yourself, the best way of doing it is to purchase a domain name, having found one that you like the look of, and either use free web space or purchase a package which enables you to put pages onto the internet.
The cost of a domain name is about £13 per year, with a reputable domain name supplier like names.co.uk. The cost of a hosting package is about £55 per year, and this again is with http://www.names.co.uk/ (I have no link to names.co.uk and do not profit from this referral).
You go online, purchase your domain name and some web space and within four to five days you will be ready to start creating your web presence.
Creating web pages
This is where things get slightly technical, and as far as I know there are still no real beginner basic ways of producing a web site without knowing a little bit about technical procedures.
There are plenty of free packages that will automatically install themselves in your web space, but in order to get there you need to know how to use the web space.
But this means in that you either have to spend a bit of time learning about something called FTP or you have to look at getting someone to do it for you.
It goes beyond the scope of this article to discuss FTP’ing, but in a nutshell it’s the programmes used to get web pages from your computer onto the internet. It requires a little bit of knowledge about web site addresses, and also a little bit of programming, although not very much at all. There are very good guides on the internet as to how to do this, and also with the software I am about to discuss quite a lot of the FTP is made very simple for you.
For basic web sites and to start off with anything like Microsoft FrontPage 2003 or Expressions or Adobe, Dreamweaver would be absolutely fine to create a web site. You could also use Adobe Photoshop if you have a very graphical based web site, and this is the preferred option of a lot of web site designers.
All of these programmes have FTP built in, so as long as you know the various technical details such as your FTP address, it will be fairly easy to set up. If you use a supplier like names.co.uk then they have telephone lines you can call to talk you through the process, and I have always found them very helpful when I’ve used them.
We’ve also had packages in the past with http://www.1and1.co.uk/ and http://www.uk2.net/, but both of these really require you to do the work yourself, and I’ve found their customer service departments to be extremely unhelpful.
At the same time, because you have a domain name and some web space you will also have email addresses that you can use for your web site, with the ending of your domain name. If you use names.co.uk they have a very simple web mail programme, and also have an easy to divert email system where you can enter your usual email address and have all the emails from the domain name sent to your email address.
The next thing you’ll need to start looking at is designing web pages.
Designing web pages
In days gone by, people had to design web pages from scratch, starting with a blank canvas and putting things onto the page. This is no longer the case. There are so many programmes out there that you can rely on and edit your web pages but there is no longer any need to worry about programming.
There are large numbers of template companies out there who will enable you to choose a web package, pay about £30-£40 and download a template onto your computer to use as your site.
These are usually very efficient, and a very quick way of setting up a 10-20 page site.
However, if you are planning to have a web site with lots of content, the usual recommendation is for what is called a CMS system which is content management and is basically a very large database that hosts all your web pages and makes them very connected together and saves a lot of work.
The best known of these is one called Joomla. Joomla is very simple to use, once it is installed on your system, but again you will require some technical assistance to get this up and running. There are numerous tutorials online which explain all about the use of it, and make it fairly easy to do once it is in place.
When you start off with a web site it is a lot of trial and error as to see what works and to see that of your competitors.
The key to having a web site is to accept that you can have the worst looking web site or the best looking web site on the web, but if nobody can see it it is a complete waste of time. So once you have your web site it is then you have to look at marketing it.
The Chester web marketing company can do this for you, and save you a considerable amount of time. Not only can we set up your web site for you and lines, we can also make sure that people can see it. We have experience ourselves of promoting our own web sites, not linked to marketing, and we can safely say that it’s really time and effort that gets any web site into the top part of the listings and without this, web sites simply fail or cost a lot of money to do anything with.
If you would like further information please visit http://www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk/ or email enquiries@chesterwebmarketing.com
Everyone who looks on the internet is looking at web pages, and the first port of call for anyone wanting to establish a web presence is to get a web page. This is a lot easier than you would think, as there are now companies out there who will set you up on the web for as little as £200, with your own web pages and email systems in place.
If you want to do it yourself, the best way of doing it is to purchase a domain name, having found one that you like the look of, and either use free web space or purchase a package which enables you to put pages onto the internet.
The cost of a domain name is about £13 per year, with a reputable domain name supplier like names.co.uk. The cost of a hosting package is about £55 per year, and this again is with http://www.names.co.uk/ (I have no link to names.co.uk and do not profit from this referral).
You go online, purchase your domain name and some web space and within four to five days you will be ready to start creating your web presence.
Creating web pages
This is where things get slightly technical, and as far as I know there are still no real beginner basic ways of producing a web site without knowing a little bit about technical procedures.
There are plenty of free packages that will automatically install themselves in your web space, but in order to get there you need to know how to use the web space.
But this means in that you either have to spend a bit of time learning about something called FTP or you have to look at getting someone to do it for you.
It goes beyond the scope of this article to discuss FTP’ing, but in a nutshell it’s the programmes used to get web pages from your computer onto the internet. It requires a little bit of knowledge about web site addresses, and also a little bit of programming, although not very much at all. There are very good guides on the internet as to how to do this, and also with the software I am about to discuss quite a lot of the FTP is made very simple for you.
For basic web sites and to start off with anything like Microsoft FrontPage 2003 or Expressions or Adobe, Dreamweaver would be absolutely fine to create a web site. You could also use Adobe Photoshop if you have a very graphical based web site, and this is the preferred option of a lot of web site designers.
All of these programmes have FTP built in, so as long as you know the various technical details such as your FTP address, it will be fairly easy to set up. If you use a supplier like names.co.uk then they have telephone lines you can call to talk you through the process, and I have always found them very helpful when I’ve used them.
We’ve also had packages in the past with http://www.1and1.co.uk/ and http://www.uk2.net/, but both of these really require you to do the work yourself, and I’ve found their customer service departments to be extremely unhelpful.
At the same time, because you have a domain name and some web space you will also have email addresses that you can use for your web site, with the ending of your domain name. If you use names.co.uk they have a very simple web mail programme, and also have an easy to divert email system where you can enter your usual email address and have all the emails from the domain name sent to your email address.
The next thing you’ll need to start looking at is designing web pages.
Designing web pages
In days gone by, people had to design web pages from scratch, starting with a blank canvas and putting things onto the page. This is no longer the case. There are so many programmes out there that you can rely on and edit your web pages but there is no longer any need to worry about programming.
There are large numbers of template companies out there who will enable you to choose a web package, pay about £30-£40 and download a template onto your computer to use as your site.
These are usually very efficient, and a very quick way of setting up a 10-20 page site.
However, if you are planning to have a web site with lots of content, the usual recommendation is for what is called a CMS system which is content management and is basically a very large database that hosts all your web pages and makes them very connected together and saves a lot of work.
The best known of these is one called Joomla. Joomla is very simple to use, once it is installed on your system, but again you will require some technical assistance to get this up and running. There are numerous tutorials online which explain all about the use of it, and make it fairly easy to do once it is in place.
When you start off with a web site it is a lot of trial and error as to see what works and to see that of your competitors.
The key to having a web site is to accept that you can have the worst looking web site or the best looking web site on the web, but if nobody can see it it is a complete waste of time. So once you have your web site it is then you have to look at marketing it.
The Chester web marketing company can do this for you, and save you a considerable amount of time. Not only can we set up your web site for you and lines, we can also make sure that people can see it. We have experience ourselves of promoting our own web sites, not linked to marketing, and we can safely say that it’s really time and effort that gets any web site into the top part of the listings and without this, web sites simply fail or cost a lot of money to do anything with.
If you would like further information please visit http://www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk/ or email enquiries@chesterwebmarketing.com
Thursday 6 November 2008
Google devalues DMOZ and Yahoo Directory
It has been reported today that Google has removed the emphasis on the Yahoo and DMOZ directories from the webmasters guidelines, stating that it was beneficial to be in directories and there was no longer any particular emphasis on any directory. So is the end of the DMOZ directory in particular?
DMOZ is an open source directory managed by humans who are volunteers and list sites themselves for free, writing personal reviews.
It can take many months to get a site into DMOZ and furthermore, once a site is in DMOZ it can be very hard to get it amended.
Sometimes the reviews can be incorrect, and then you need to try and get hold of the relevant editor to get them amended.
It has certainly had quite an effect over the years on listings as Google traditionally used the DMOZ directory as an indicator of a site’s favourites, and also given DMOZ a rating page ranking of eight, similar to the Yahoo directory. This means that marketers have traditionally concentrated on making sure that sites are listed on DMOZ in order to get a good page ranking.
Brad Callen of SEOelite.com, in his book about how to get a listing on Google within 24 hours and basically relates to having a link from a high page ranking site. Entry in DMOZ almost guaranteed a site a page ranking of four, even if the content hasn’t changed, bearing in mind the recent announcement, the traditional emphasis of being in DMOZ is probably still very important for every site wanting to do SEO work to be listed on it.
So how do I get my site listed on DMOZ? The answer is quite simple. You visit the site and find the category in which you want your site to appear. You then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the add my site URL button and enter a description. Make sure that your site is not already listed, as this can annoy the human editors and do not bombard the directory with repeated requests. Make sure you check back in a couple of months to see if the site has been listed back on your site and the content added by the human editor. There are a lot of anecdotal pieces of evidence that the site has no effect on visitor traffic at all, because no-one visits DMOZ.org to search for websites.
The only traffic you do get is the other search engines using the DMOZ directory as their own search engine, hence the need to be listed within it, particularly, traditionally, for Google, Yahoo and a host of other directories.
In summary, make sure your site is listed on DMOZ and Yahoo, but it does appear that Google is taking the emphasis of both directories over time. This may be good news for bank balances as Yahoo want £200 a year to be in their directory and this is somewhat expensive if there is no effect on search engine rankings.
Chester Web Marketing can help you with your own search engine work and web marketing online. Visit www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk or email info@chesterwebmarketing.com for further details.
DMOZ is an open source directory managed by humans who are volunteers and list sites themselves for free, writing personal reviews.
It can take many months to get a site into DMOZ and furthermore, once a site is in DMOZ it can be very hard to get it amended.
Sometimes the reviews can be incorrect, and then you need to try and get hold of the relevant editor to get them amended.
It has certainly had quite an effect over the years on listings as Google traditionally used the DMOZ directory as an indicator of a site’s favourites, and also given DMOZ a rating page ranking of eight, similar to the Yahoo directory. This means that marketers have traditionally concentrated on making sure that sites are listed on DMOZ in order to get a good page ranking.
Brad Callen of SEOelite.com, in his book about how to get a listing on Google within 24 hours and basically relates to having a link from a high page ranking site. Entry in DMOZ almost guaranteed a site a page ranking of four, even if the content hasn’t changed, bearing in mind the recent announcement, the traditional emphasis of being in DMOZ is probably still very important for every site wanting to do SEO work to be listed on it.
So how do I get my site listed on DMOZ? The answer is quite simple. You visit the site and find the category in which you want your site to appear. You then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the add my site URL button and enter a description. Make sure that your site is not already listed, as this can annoy the human editors and do not bombard the directory with repeated requests. Make sure you check back in a couple of months to see if the site has been listed back on your site and the content added by the human editor. There are a lot of anecdotal pieces of evidence that the site has no effect on visitor traffic at all, because no-one visits DMOZ.org to search for websites.
The only traffic you do get is the other search engines using the DMOZ directory as their own search engine, hence the need to be listed within it, particularly, traditionally, for Google, Yahoo and a host of other directories.
In summary, make sure your site is listed on DMOZ and Yahoo, but it does appear that Google is taking the emphasis of both directories over time. This may be good news for bank balances as Yahoo want £200 a year to be in their directory and this is somewhat expensive if there is no effect on search engine rankings.
Chester Web Marketing can help you with your own search engine work and web marketing online. Visit www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk or email info@chesterwebmarketing.com for further details.
Monday 3 November 2008
How important is the web to small businesses in North Wales?
The internet is a massive place, and this statement is ridiculous in itself, as everybody knows this and recognises that it has lots of potential. However, there are a lot of companies and businesses out there who do not make any use at all of the internet, or have their internet presence restricted by their own fears of the technological aspects of the work or the lack of money to invest in sorting out a fully functioning web site and making sure it is noticed.
If you have a service to sell, for example a small shop in Prestatyn selling fancy dress, there is nothing to stop you from developing a web site that competes on the internet, trades via eBay and sells via Google, Checkout or PayPal across the UK. If you are a holiday home in Gwynedd there is no reason why you cannot set up your own web site ranked highly on the search engines, search your own trade without needing to resort to paying agents significant fees.
There are so many different sets of articles out there giving advice. There are so many different sources of information on the web for providing advice to companies and businesses on how to set up and run a web site and varying costs that it is hard for small businesses or medium to large businesses to know how much they ought to be paying.
Recently I was talking to a company in Ruthin who had been given quotes for work on their web site ranging from £1,200 up to £25,000 for the same work. The ways that this work was presented would have been varying extremely widely, as I suspect the two extremes were the top and the bottom ends of the market and that a middle range quote would probably have been the one that gave the best return, quality and value for money.
The web is a mysterious place, but to sum up exactly what you need to do in order to have a web presence, a couple of words it is to make sure that you have lots of information. People do not visit the web sites of companies to look at pictures or graphics flying across the screen, unless they are looking at a holiday home or a catalogue of products.
If you are a company providing a service, there is nothing better than pages of information linked to or related to the service you are looking to provide.
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment near Mold is a good example of this. The site was written and developed by an amateur web designer back in 2000, and has enjoyed a strong web presence ever since, simply because of the amount of content the web site has. It is a well known brand in the specialist circles it operates, and has spent hardly anything on advertising over the years, apart from a few well chosen online adverts and some trade magazine adverts at a very low price.
The remainder of the marketing has simply been to work through search engine optimisation and by providing lots of information for its users.
This approach can work for any company, whether they are a farm in Bangor, an aluminium works in Anglesey or a restaurant in Llandudno. North Wales companies can benefit significantly from proving their web site presence is larger than their actual company, and there is nothing to stop a small business in a back room in Llanrwst becoming number one for a search item competing with a multinational.
For a free web site report or to discuss marketing opportunities, please email enquiries@chesterwebmarketing.co.uk or visit our web site www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk.
If you have a service to sell, for example a small shop in Prestatyn selling fancy dress, there is nothing to stop you from developing a web site that competes on the internet, trades via eBay and sells via Google, Checkout or PayPal across the UK. If you are a holiday home in Gwynedd there is no reason why you cannot set up your own web site ranked highly on the search engines, search your own trade without needing to resort to paying agents significant fees.
There are so many different sets of articles out there giving advice. There are so many different sources of information on the web for providing advice to companies and businesses on how to set up and run a web site and varying costs that it is hard for small businesses or medium to large businesses to know how much they ought to be paying.
Recently I was talking to a company in Ruthin who had been given quotes for work on their web site ranging from £1,200 up to £25,000 for the same work. The ways that this work was presented would have been varying extremely widely, as I suspect the two extremes were the top and the bottom ends of the market and that a middle range quote would probably have been the one that gave the best return, quality and value for money.
The web is a mysterious place, but to sum up exactly what you need to do in order to have a web presence, a couple of words it is to make sure that you have lots of information. People do not visit the web sites of companies to look at pictures or graphics flying across the screen, unless they are looking at a holiday home or a catalogue of products.
If you are a company providing a service, there is nothing better than pages of information linked to or related to the service you are looking to provide.
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment near Mold is a good example of this. The site was written and developed by an amateur web designer back in 2000, and has enjoyed a strong web presence ever since, simply because of the amount of content the web site has. It is a well known brand in the specialist circles it operates, and has spent hardly anything on advertising over the years, apart from a few well chosen online adverts and some trade magazine adverts at a very low price.
The remainder of the marketing has simply been to work through search engine optimisation and by providing lots of information for its users.
This approach can work for any company, whether they are a farm in Bangor, an aluminium works in Anglesey or a restaurant in Llandudno. North Wales companies can benefit significantly from proving their web site presence is larger than their actual company, and there is nothing to stop a small business in a back room in Llanrwst becoming number one for a search item competing with a multinational.
For a free web site report or to discuss marketing opportunities, please email enquiries@chesterwebmarketing.co.uk or visit our web site www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk.
Wednesday 22 October 2008
Planning a web marketing strategy
This article discusses web marketing and how to do it without costing the earth. Web marketing is a fairly recent phenomenon, as businesses finally latch onto the idea that rather a lot of future business will be done via the internet. Companies have noticed that if you get into the first two pages of Google they’ll send traffic to your website without having to pay for it. This has generated a whole industry for companies like ours who spend their time trying to get their clients into the organic listings as they produce customers for no cost.
It is an ongoing process, because the Google rankings change all the time and you can be very high up one week and nowhere to be seen the following week.
Partly because of the complete uncertainty as to how the Google calculations take place, there was little known about the actual definite structure that goes into deciding who goes to the top of the chart and who stays at the bottom.
One thing is clear, that websites with webmasters who work constantly at trying to promote their site and their business will almost always see returns, and those websites that are just produced and then left to their own devices will rarely get anywhere unless very lucky.
There are two main features of web marketing which can either be very expensive or low cost. It is these two features that I want to discuss today. The first is press releases & blog writing and the second is ensuring there are lots of links and referrals and references to your website on the internet.
It is an ongoing process, because the Google rankings change all the time and you can be very high up one week and nowhere to be seen the following week.
Partly because of the complete uncertainty as to how the Google calculations take place, there was little known about the actual definite structure that goes into deciding who goes to the top of the chart and who stays at the bottom.
One thing is clear, that websites with webmasters who work constantly at trying to promote their site and their business will almost always see returns, and those websites that are just produced and then left to their own devices will rarely get anywhere unless very lucky.
There are two main features of web marketing which can either be very expensive or low cost. It is these two features that I want to discuss today. The first is press releases & blog writing and the second is ensuring there are lots of links and referrals and references to your website on the internet.
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