I know how proud you are of your website from 2005, but just like marriage proposals on reality TV shows, some things are not meant to last. Websites today are what business cards were 30 years ago. You can either hand your customers a bland, bent-up mess that looks like it has been sitting in your wallet for the past 8 years, or provide a fresh, eye-catching representation of your business.

While visual appeal is an obvious reason for updating your website, the benefits are more widespread. For example, Google has recently announced a “freshness update” to its omnipotent search engine algorithm that rewards websites for fresher content with higher search engine rankings. Also, integrating your website with certain social media tools can vastly increase your website traffic and brand awareness.

Tip #1

Dates and Links

Update or remove old references on your homepage. In particular watch out for old dates, outdated events, and broken links that no longer point to their original source. Another commonly overlooked example is the copyright date usually displayed at the bottom of websites. Using the same copyright date from 2008 will make website visitors question the “freshness” of all other website content. Here is an example of a professional format for the copyright date on websites:

Copyright © 1998-2012 Example Corporation. All rights reserved.

If you have not taken the time to do this for 2012, now is as good a time as any.

Tip #2

Old School Visitor Counters/Website Analytics

Whenever I find a rectangular box on a website informing me I’m the 11,658^th visitor, I look outside my window to make sure I didn’t accidentally step through a crack in time on my way to the office and get transported back to 1999. What’s worse than the tacky, completely inaccurate counter is knowing that behind the scenes of this website there is a hamster wheel powering the analytics where there should be a modern day V8. Good website analytics have become so crucial to the modern business I can’t imagine trying to use a website without them. In fact, most of the major business decisions we make are based on data collected from our website analytics. Even free tools such as Google Analytics can provide comprehensive insights such as how and where people are finding your company online, what marketing methods results in actual sales, and the list goes on. While I admit there is a small learning curve to using these tools, many of them are free to use and the investment in time/money to learn how is always worth it.

Tip #3

Overly Flashy/Unrecognizable Content

As much as I appreciate a good episode of “Wheel of Fortune”, flash and mystery have little place on a modern website. Today’s consumers want information clearly laid out and easily accessible online. If customers have to scroll down and/or click through multiple pages to find what they are looking for, they will drop like flies. My pet peeve for industries breaking this rule is restaurants. As much as I appreciate the decadent slideshows of featured cuisines and pages regarding unique philosophies for seeking out only the best ingredients, I do not want to feel like I’m looking at a Where’s Waldo book while simply trying to find the menu. As a business owner, you need to identify what your customers want most from your website, and give it to them in as simple a format as possible while retaining a professional appearance.

Tip #4

Website SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Many recent studies have found that while pay-per-click advertising can still be effective at driving website traffic, SEO is the leading vehicle of choice for growing online traffic as consumers become more adept at discerning ads from natural search engine results. Many older website designs lack SEO rich features that search engines like Google look for today. The first step of SEO is to include local and specific keyword phrases into you web pages. If your website is heavily designed with images instead of text, search engines are likely skipping over important content. A good way to determine what is being read by search engines is to click and drag your mouse to highlight all the text on a web page. If the text is part of an image (bad), the entire image will be highlighted or you won’t be able to highlight the text at all. If you have additional questions regarding SEO for your website, we are happy to provide a free consultation and quote.

Tip #5

Social Media Buttons

Simply put, they are free to use and allow your satisfied customers to instantly connect with your social media sites which can create social buzz about your company and promote branding. Rather than get into a lengthy How-To here, I’ll direct you to a host of other sources dedicated to this topic:

http://mashable.com/2011/03/11/add-social-sharing-buttons/

http://www.addthis.com/

If you want more ideas, just google “how to add social media buttons to website” and you will find several detailed guides.

Tip #6

Online Reviews Tools

In typical format, I have saved the best for last. One of the fasting growing trends in social media regards how customers interact with businesses via online reviews on social websites. Gone are the days when customers patronize a company because of a glossy brochure or fast talking salesman. Customers today have especially grown a distrust of testimonial web pages (for good reason) in favor of social review sites like Yelp, Insiderpages, Google Places, and so forth. This has led to an explosion in online review website usage which is not always advantageous to business owners. As consumers turn to outside sources to evaluate businesses, owners can be crippled by negative reviews (true or not), constantly needing to monitor the plethora of review websites, and long drawn-out processes for addressing harmful content. Rather than accept this as fact, there is another option. Several companies now offer very inexpensive online review tools that allow business owners complete control over 3rd-party, verified reviews.

For example, our tool, SurveyLocal, lets businesses automatically invite customers to review them, while directing positive reviews to social websites and negative reviews to be addressed offline (over the phone or in person). Once collected, the entire report can be made available for the owner to post on their website (optional of course) in place of an outdated and mistrusted testimonials page. While your complete report may include a few minor blemishes among all the positives from your real customers, if you choose to display it on your website you will gain significant trust from potential customers while reducing the need for people to turn to outside review websites that you have little control over. Also, most companies that offer this kind of tool give you the option to have positive reviews shared on your Facebook page which is a great way to populate your page’s feed.

Summary:

In case you are still thinking: “Well that sounds great and all, but I still prefer our website from 2005,” let me conclude with one last statement. The tips from above are not merely suggestions for future experimentation, they are all tried and tested methods that have produced real results for our clients. I purposely singled out the simplest and most cost effective ideas in hopes that 2012 will be an improved year for your company as we all endure the tighter economic climate together.

73.1% of North America is using the internet.   Can they find you?

Source: Internet World Stats, rates based on full year 2008.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a process that enables prospects to find your site using organic, or free search. SEO is one of the most cost effective ways to promote a website, increase traffic & improve conversion results. Search engine optimization involves the selection and use of key words and key phrases, combined with numerous other factors, that if successful, result in achieving a higher place in the results returned on a search engine page.

Paid Search or PPC

Unlike SEO, which is free, PPC or pay per click campaigns may be purchased to drive website traffic through advertisements placed on search engine advertising networks.

The two primary methods include:

• Paying a fee for an actual page ranking. In some cases, the more you pay, the higher you will rank. Examples include Shopping.com, NexTag, Pricegrabber and Shopzilla.
• Bidding on keywords or phrases that appear in, or are associated with, text advertisements. Example:  Google AdWords

With careful attention to PPC keywords, ad copy, price, headlines, geo-targeting, dayparting, landing pages & other ROI factors, PPC campaigns can deliver significant results.

Landing Pages

A landing page is a type of greeting page – pages that is an extension of the PPC or direct mail advertisement in look, feel and message and helps bridge the advertisement to the website by greeting the visitor.

Landing pages should let the visitor immediately know they have arrived at the right place and alleviate any concerns that would cause the visitor to hit the back button. Well-designed landing pages increase conversion rates, such as completing a form, completing a purchase, etc. and improve the ability to track ROI for marketing campaigns.

Social media marketing

Social media sites, when used correctly, can provide an environment for creating business relationships and building awareness with a group of users that can, and probably already are, influencing your market.

According to a September 2008 study conducted by Opinion Research Corporation for Cone, nearly six out of 10 Americans who use social media interact with companies on social media websites. The researchers found 85% of social media users thought companies should interact with their consumers through social media, at least when needed.

Blog Advertising

One popular method of advertising is on blogs and websites through affiliate programs.  Affiliate networks are intermediaries that connect advertisers with websites and manage the payment process.

Affiliate advertising differs from pay per click advertising in that fees are generally paid as a % of sale rather than for the click. The blogger or website owner applies to be accepted into the advertiser’s affiliate program and, if accepted, selects from an inventory of ads to placed on their site. The most common ad is a 125 pixel by 125 pixel size ad format.

When someone clicks the ad, goes to the site and purchases a product, the website owner earns a commission based on an amount that was previously established according to the program.

Blog advertising is increasingly becoming an important part of the online marketing mix. A 2008 Jupiter Research study found that more than a quarter of people that read more than one blog per month trust blog advertising. Additional demographic findings from this study were that multi-blog readers tended to be in their thirties with incomes over $75,000 per year – a demographic sought after by most all online retailers.

Many major blogs offer advertising directly on their websites. Major blogs will have a “how to advertise page” while others can be contacted directly requesting rates.  Rates can range from $10 per month to $10,000 per month.

Considerations prior to advertising include blog content, traffic, impressions and the tactics used to achieve traffic. Alexa ranking, number of comments and page rank should also be taken into consideration, with an understanding that some factors can be manipulated.

Webinars

Webinars are simply seminars conducted over the web using webinar technology that allows everyone to see the same thing, at the same time, while you talk.

Webinars are a very effective marketing tool that can be used in a variety of ways:

Host a webinar on a scheduled basis for prospects, such as once a week, for an online product overview (sign up is via an online form on your website)

Conduct training seminars and product updates for existing customers

Partner with other industry organizations that offer webinars to their user base on current topics and industry education.

Next-> Marketing Budgets

Free Link Building: Finding Do Follow Blogs

Easily gain inbound links for your blog or website by leaving comments on Do Follow blogs.  How do you find Do Follow Blogs?

Top Do Follow directories include:  Do Follow Diver, the Do Follow Blogs Directory and Blogs That Follow.

Still want to find more Do Follow blogs?   Google “U Comment, I Follow” – many blogs that have joined the movement display the badge, most likely with the associated alt tags.

Links from blogs with a Page Rank (PR) rating of 3 or greater that are from a related subject matter provide the greatest benefit.   In other words, if your blog is a business blog, links from a PR3 business blog (like Dallas Marketing Services) are more beneficial than links from a PR0 travel blog.

Next, download the Firefox NoDoFollow Add-on – Do Follow links on any site are highlighted in blue, No Follow links are highlighted in red/pink.  It doesn’t show Do Follow links within images (like all the ones in the sidebar on this blog), but it gives you a quick assessment of the Do Follow lay of the land.

Free Blog Traffic: The Do Follow Way

If you have a blog, a great way to increase traffic is to convert your blog to a Do Follow blog and get listed with the directories listed above.   By rewarding readers who leave comments, blogs become more popular, discussions occur and traffic increases.

Free Blog Policy Tools

Do Follow blog owners generally implement moderated comments – the abusers will find you.   We have recently published a Comment Policy to clarify which comments will be published and which will not.  We found Blog Herald’s Comments Policy post to be very helpful in developing ours.

At the same time, we published a Disclosure Policy.  In creating it, we used the nifty tool at DisclosurePolicy.org, which generates a blog disclosure policy based on answers to a series of questions.   We then further customized the policy to fit our style and needs.

As with any tools, we recommend you consult legal or other appropriate experts prior to implementing these tools.

Have a great weekend!

Tips can be submitted anonymously or by registered users, but registration provides the ability to edit tips and comments, bookmark tips and categories, and to create a home page to track your tipstr activities.

When adding a tip, the following information is supplied:

♦ Title

♦ Description (up to 10,000 characters)

♦ URL link to your website

♦ Categories where the tip should be listed (up to 5)

Here’s an example of what is listed when complete:

Tipstrs is fairly new, having been launched in 2007 and there are about 2800 tips on the site as of this post.

Business use:  Use to inform the tipstr community of information and updates regarding products and services offered.  Be sure to include in the article the specific website page where more information (including the http://) can be found.

There’s the tip of the day – we’ll be sure to put it on tipstr!

Getting found utilizes search engine optimization tactics to enable prospects to find your site through organic search (free) and/or using paid marketing, such as PPC campaigns like AdWords.

Keeping visitors requires designing an interesting, well-maintained website with relevant, informative content that is easy to find and easy to use.

Converting prospects involves mapping website flow and content from arrival to conversion in order to facilitate the desired behavior.

While all three areas are complex topics, over the next series of posts, we will provide high-level information that will provide a starter tool kit for those do-it-yourselfers that want to roll up their sleeves and learn the basics for website success.

Getting found through SEO

To begin, pull up your website.

♦ Look at the top blue bar – the title bar. Does it have a descriptive title using your keywords?  Does each page have a unique title? If not, unique titles should be added to each page.

♦ On your browser, go to View – Source (for Firefox, View-Page Source, for Safari it’s View,-View Source). Look down the source code for- <META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=. Is there a description following the =? If not, a well-written, relevant meta description for each page should be added.

♦ Again looking at the source code, look for <META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=. Are there keywords associated with the page’s content? If not, relevant keywords need to be added, but don’t overdo it.

♦ Using the find function, look for <h1>. Header tags H1 through H6 can be used to emphasize the main sections of the page.

Website content

♦ Optimize multiple pages on the site, each with different key phrases – not just your home page

♦ Keep content updated and fresh – try to add 1 or 2 pages each week

♦ Use anchor text – text that contains hyperlinks within the body text

♦ Use graphic & image alt tags

♦ Use <strong> instead of bold and <emphasis> instead of italics

Website optimization tools

♦ Use Google’s Webmaster Tools, Google AdWords Tools for identifying keywords and Google Analytics to track site statistics. They are free.

♦ Post an XML sitemap in your root directory and notify Google via Google Webmaster Tools.  Be sure to keep your XML sitemap updated.

♦ Make sure you have an accurate robots.txt file

Domains

♦ Display site permanence by extending the expiration date of your domain/URL.

♦ Use redirects correctly

Inbound link building

♦ Links are very important for Google rankings. Create a link building strategy and set aside a few hours every week to work on building links.

♦ Apply to get listed in DMOZ and perhaps become an editor of a category

♦ Get links from PR4-PR7 sites. Try Directory Critic for ideas.

♦ Never buy a link.

♦ Don’t participate in reciprocal links with sites you don’t know.

♦ Don’t use automated link building services

♦ Get listed in local directories like Merchant Circle

♦ Put an Add This button on your site to promote social networking

♦ Sign up with social media sites and begin social networking

External ideas

♦ Consider buying descriptive URLs that people may type that are relevant to your keywords.  The URLs can be redirected to your main site (be sure & set them up as 301 redirects without masking)

♦ Consider starting a blog and occasionally link back to your site to drive traffic. Get free blog hosting in less than 5 minutes at WordPress.com or from Blogger.

The NEVER DO THESE THINGS list

♦ Never use hidden or tiny text

♦ Never use punctuation links

♦ Never participate in link farms

♦ Don’t overstuff pages with keywords

♦ Never use doorway pages

♦ Never use duplicate content