Friday 28 September 2007

Why Link To Other Sites?

Well, I promised an idea that was a little more daring. Maybe a bit controversial.

And I don't want to disappoint you!

OK, so you have fantastic prices and you want to prove this to your potential customers. But checking every price on every item for all major competitors is a nightmare. So how do you show them how brilliant your prices are so that they buy from you.

Simple - you link to your competitor's website! What! (I hear you cry). This means that I'm sending traffic to my competitors and improving their page rank.

Yes, partially. But do you really think that potential customers are so loyal that they aren't going to look at other people's sites? Do you think that if they do they will certainly open a new browser window before looking at another site.

Here's the truth. Visitors will look at other sites. In doing so, they will probably just use the one window, which means they have left your site. Some will forget they saw your prices on your site and buy elsewhere.

Therefore, take control of the situation. Give links from your pages directly to the same item page on your competitor's site. Open the link in a new window and use the rel="nofollow" tag in the link if you want to prevent your site giving your competitor any PR. If you are really bothered, use javascript to open the page without the address bar, but I don't think that's required.

What does this give your site? Well, not only do you show your products, but you also show that you are happy for your prices to be compared. The visitor can quickly compare prices and leave the other sites whilst your site stays open.

Best of all, some will find the experience enjoyable and easier than normal. These people will come back to your site next time they are shopping knowing that it is easy to navigate to the other sites from your site than working it out for themselves.

Not only are these people customers for the initial purchase - but they have become loyal visitors for the future.

Now, does linking to your competitors sound quite so daft?

Thursday 27 September 2007

Converting More Customers

How carefully does your website portray your major selling points? Have a look at your site now and think about it?

What is your major selling point - why should customers shop with you, not the next seller? If you sell a unique product or service, then it's likely that the answer is that no-one else sells it, else you really need to think about this question.

You might offer a superb customer service, or prices that beat everyone else. Maybe you offer free deliver and fancy packaging. Is this obvious when the potential customer opens up the website?

If you offer gift packaging then show a well packaged item on every page of your site. If it's exceptional customer service then on every page show the phone number, tell them when the lines are manned and spell out your operators are there and have the time to talk.

But what if you offer fantastic prices? Well why not take a leaf out of the supermarket's books and research for key products what your competitors are selling them for and display this information on the pages. This saves them hunting around on other sites to compare prices and maybe forgetting where they saw your fantastic prices. Just make sure that the prices are regularly checked by you!

Tomorrow, we take this though one step further. Very daring, very cheeky. But worth a read!

Wednesday 26 September 2007

Link Exchanges

Have you ever spent ages link exchanging for your site and wondered if you really are doing any good? Are those hours, days, weeks or whatever of sending requests, putting up links and removing non-responding sites really worth the effort? Everyone tells us it is, but how can we prove it?

If you are hoping for an answer to the above, then I'm afraid I don't think there is a straight forward answer. I know that sites I've put loads of effort into link exchanging generally get a better PR than those left there to do nothing, but I've also had sites ticking over just on requests received do far better than those I'm actually recruiting for. Then there's the sites that are very similar, but the lower PR site gets more traffic.

Trying to investigate why someone's blog just won't appear in the search engines (read this post for more details) I noticed that all of the links shared a common, apparently harmless, piece of code. It's so common that I bet 99% of the link exchanges about use it - all of my links out do. No-one seems to think that this would prevent Google recognising the link - or is that just denial because it's easier to think that way?

I had a look at links into my own site on Google and not one of them include this potential horror. Therfore, and the reason I'm not saying exactly what piece of code I'm looking at (so that you come back here soon), I've removed it from some links to Kevin's blog. If that now gets listed then I might be onto something.

And that will tell me that 99% of the hard worked for link exchanges weren't worth bothering with.

Tuesday 25 September 2007

It's Never As Easy As It Seems...

Recently I was asked to produce a simple site for a painter. He provided a font to use for the titles and everything seemed very straight forward.

As the materials arrived the site soon took shape and it was almost time to publish the site. That's when it suddenly went much harder...

The client provided a link to a simple animation. 'Instead of the logo on the top of the screen, can you use the first half of this animation and then fade in the current logo?' Seemed a very simple and reasonable question...

I paid for & downloaded the 41mb file for the animation. And that was the first surprise - it wasn't a swf file. And frequently when it played it hung after 7 seconds. This suddenly wasn't going to be easy.

Not having the software to edit it a local graphic designer stepped in to help. He too struggled to edit it, but eventually a 50kb file was produced containing the animation. And I must admit, it's a good finished effect. See for yourself at StarzCeilings.

Saturday 22 September 2007

Search Engines - They Are Driving Me Mad!!!

Have you ever noticed how unpredictable search engines can be? Have you ever struggled just to get a certain site listed?

Sometimes, regardless of everything that you try, a site just won't list in a search engine. Others you publish at the same time that are very similar are fine, just some don't. Then suddenly you find that sample websites published in private folders are appearing on the net! This has happaned to a customer recently. His own site is ranking quite far down the listings yet the sample we produced prior to publication is towards the top - and we've no idea how any search engines came across the sample site to begin with...

Recently I've taken part in 2 other new blogs (excluding this one!). The first was started 3 weeks ago and the owner is desperate to be found on the search engines. We've linked to the blog from his 3 websites (that's 10s of thousands of links in total) but still no search engine listing.

Then, earlier this week I started a new blog and didn't submit it anywhere whilst I built up the entries. I happened to notice last night that 20 pages are listed in Google. For some reason though, this morning that's down to just 11.

How search engines work is anyone's guess. But they can be infuriating! Maybe one day we'll understand them!

Thursday 20 September 2007

Adwords - Does it Work?

Many customers come to me asking for more traffic and more importantly, more traffic that will buytheir products. Quite often, especially for new businesses, I suggest Adwords. But then they start on the horror stories they have heard:

- your competitors can click on your adverts
- anyone can display your adverts and click on them to earn money
- the people clicking don't turn into customer
- it's highly expensive

And many more reasons. But what other advertising allows you to be in full control and set up for only a small amount?

I try to reassure my customers that yes, the first 2 points can happen, but I've seen plenty of times when I've had refunds for those very reasons. And if the last 2 excuses are true - is it the system, or your advert?

An important point to note here is affiliate selling. And here I'm not talking about the bulk of affiliates earning small amounts, I'm referring to the super affiliates who are selling their ideas. Have you ever read their stories to find out how they are making the money? Quite often they are running massive Google Adwords campaigns. These campaigns can run into thousands of hits per day generating loads of commissions.

So if they can get it to work - shouldn't we all be able to?

A new customer took up my advice and created an adwords advert. A week later he came back asking what I though of a conversion rate of under 1% (less than 1 in 100 people clicking on the advert bought from him). I told him the truth - it was poor.

So I looked through the server logs to see what keywords he was getting most traffic from and the answer was clear. He was buying expensive generic keywords. Yet his catalogue was tiny. Most of the items people were probably searching for weren't available from him. Over the next few weeks I coached him into using some more specific keywords. These were cheaper to buy and led to a reduction in traffic. But at the same time his conversion rate increased to over 3% (and he was still using some generic keywords). Hopefully these generic keywords will soon be removed as he relies more on those that generate his income.

And that, I think, is the essential element of adwords. Don't go for as much traffic as possible - pick carefully the traffic you want and buy just that. If your products carefully match the advert and the keywords the person is searching for, you will quickly be paying less for your marketing whilst getting more sales. Wouldn't that be wonderful!

Tuesday 18 September 2007

Giving Search Engines What They Want

What does a search engine want your site to contain? What do you have to do to get your site high in the search engine rankings?

Much has been written about link spamming, optimising pages etc, but how often do you then need to be changing the pages to keep up with the ever changing search engines?

Maybe, instead of fighting search engines we should look at what they are trying to achieve and work with them.

For a start, they earn their income by displaying relevant adds. Fine if you want to advertise, but what else can we conclude? Simple - surfers are only clicking on the adverts if they are searching on that search engine (let's ignore for now contectual advertising on websites). If the surfer tries a search engine, gets poor results and then goes elsewhere, the first search engine has lost a customer.

Therefore, a search engine has to provide the best possible results for its visitors. Whether that site has the most links in, the most occurrences of the keywords or whatever doesn't matter to the person browsing the site - it's just whether the results are relevant.

And that's what ever search engine tries to achieve - matching as near as perfectly what the person types to the results shown and then providing an interesting an informative site on that subject.

Long term this is what we, as web designers, need to strive for. Over time search engines will refine their algorithms and penalise certain sites. But if your site is a well written site that is informative and relevant to the keywords then it should be hoped that eventually the search engines will pick up on it and list it well.

Working with the search engines, not against them. Reduce spam link building and help them to give people the best possible results. Long term, it should help us all.

Friday 14 September 2007

Increasing Website Traffic With Pictures

I've already spoken about how useful picture galleries are for increasing website traffic, but how could you use them?

If you can get pictures of your customers - a bar, holiday site, function, club etc - then you can easily take pictures and let your customers know that the pictures will be appearing on your website. Once the pictures appear there they see them and if they like them they tell their friends.

This is excellent marketing. You are keeping existing customers happy and returning to your website whilst they in turn are telling their friends about you. The friends then become customers and their pictures appear on the site.

It's free, easy and fun.

But how do you manage the pictures? The easiest way can be a gallery. Simple, straight forward and easy to manage. Link to it from your home page, maybe even put one or two recent pictures on the home page, and you have your traffic.

A better way can be a blog. Using a reputable blogging system you load text about what happened and also describe the pictures. A sort of diary for your business. The advantage of a blog over a gallery is that it is well organised even when you have lots of pictures and there is also the ability to add a load of text.

To get the best out of a blog, especially if not actually hosted on your site, make sure that you use the blog feed to put text from the 2 or 3 (at least) most recent entries onto the home page. This keeps the home pages updated and fresh, whilst making the pictures easy to find.

You should also always include an email link, whether it is a gallery or a blog. If someone see their picture then you want them to tell people. If there's an 'email a friend' feature, they can just enter the email, hit send and the friend is sent a link to the page.

Lastly, it's also a good idea to add your site name to the picture in some way. This means that if the customer prints out the picture then they also print out the site name. This is then shown to friends and family and a reminder to themselves.

Enjoy!

Wednesday 12 September 2007

Increasing Website Traffic

Customer sometimes ask me the question 'What can I do to get more traffic?'? A lot think that as I update their websites for them there's probably little that they can do. But they are very much wrong. I'd like to touch on what can be done today, and maybe give more ideas tomorrow.

One customer, a very early customer in fact, has a nice little site about his Spanish Catfishing Holidays. Right from the start he wanted me to run and maintain a photo gallery and throughout the fishing season he sends me regular updates with new pictures. It doesn't take me long to resize these and add them to his gallery page, something that I do as part of his annual maintenance.

This means that his site has maintained a page rank 3 not just for it's home page but across all main pages. And John has told me that he receives plenty of search engine traffic. In fact, when his friend (and competitor) wanted their site updated a few weeks ago, he recommended that they speak to us.

With this site we didn't make any changes to the style, just to code and tweaked it for search engine optimisation. We then added their own Spanish Catfishing Pictures page, which I hope he'll be providing me plenty of pictures for.

To add new pictures, you don't need to be adding them all individually. Another customer sent us a huge batch of pictures 2 weeks ago for her site so we created a Dog Walker Gallery for her. Rather than include all of the pictures at once, I resized all of them ready for use but the code limits how many it actually displays. This limit increases so that 2 new pictures are included on the page each month. Along with the photograph's description, it means that the dog owners and search engines alike can return to see what is new.

And finally a third way I handled this on a website was with a Picture Framer site that I published not too long ago. He produces frames for anything you can imagine and also sells various postcards of local views that he wanted to show off. So in a similar way to the dog walker website I scanned and prepared all of the pictures, but this time we only show the 'postcard of the month'. The idea was mainly to attract people to return to the website, but it also means that page is regularily updated with a new picture, which should keep the search engines interested as well.

Using pictures is a great way of keeping content fresh. The search engines cannot see the actual picture, but I'm sure that they notice the file names changing. If you include a brief description of the picture then they will definitely notice that.

This means that visitors have something to come back for (holiday makers return to see their picture on the website and to show it to their friends) creating traffic and people emailing links for your website. And this is really what you want. The search engine benefit follows because what you are doing is great for your visitors.

Tuesday 11 September 2007

New Websites

September seems to be the month of illnesses - sick people and sick computers. It seems that quite a few sites have suddenly gone on hold because the contact or someone near to them is ill, or their computer has gone down...

Still managed to get a couple in to talk about. First, Locharwoods is a local residential care home. Not a particularly fancy site with hundreds of graphics, but it does what the customer needs and there's space to show off their main selling point - their regular day trips (although I hesitate to use the word trip for this site...).

Another new site, and quite a big one, is Specialist Lingerie. Again, a local business branching out onto the internet. They had a few good ideas about how they wanted their site to work and it's finally gone live. I'm sure it should prove quite popular.

Plenty more sites are waiting for the final OK to publish, from a guy who paints stars on ceilings to a company who nearly reach the stars as they clean, paint and whatever you need on top of very tall buildings. Another Baby Shoes site and a Barber's shop are also just waiting for the final OK then they can go live.

Monday 10 September 2007

Free Professional Hosting!

Here's an offer I thought would be worth someone's time. If you host your own website and are thinking of moving it, maybe because you are on a free host and have been reading about the disadvantages, or if you are just about to publish a new site, then this could be for you.

UK Domains are starting an offer later this week of buy one year's hosting, receive a 2nd year absolutely free. The offer only runs for 2 weeks - so you need to be quick.

Their packages start from £29 a year for home use with 250mb web space - big enough for most home users! For small business they charge £69 a year, which incredibly also includes PHP, CGI and MySQL support as well as 750mb of space and multiple websites.

And if you are a webdesigner and need to host unlimited domains, their £129 annual package (which remember is buy one year, get second year free) allows for up to 5GB of space.

If you are just about to publish a new website, or want to move across to professional hosting then take a look at UK Domains and see what you can get for your money!

Monday 3 September 2007

Contextual Popunders???

Just over a week ago we started a test to see whether Contextual Popunders could deliver results for one of our customers.

Last Year

The customer had previously used old style popunders (over a year ago) and with 10,000 hits, no enquiries were produced from normal pounders. This time around we've gone for a small campaign of just 5,000 hits and about half way through that and 1 enquiry has been received. Better results, but as yet not great results to shout about. I suspect though that 1 enquiry is enough to warrent a bigger test - the profit on just 1 sale will cover 20,000 hits, plus leave some of the profit in the bank!

The Difference

The great advantage of the Contextual Popunders is that like adsense and other PPC systems, you select specific keywords that will trigger the advert. For the test we were very specific about what we wanted and just take UK traffic, so I expected the campaign to run for months. But it looks like it will be complete very soon.

This means your popunder only delivered when the site is relevant (popunder categories can be quite vague). For example, the site is using Travel and Tourism, which covers package holidays, car hire, insurance, travel guides etc. By using keywords, our advert is only delivering for sites mentioning "Villas Orlando" and similar.

Such specific targeting also means that the visitors are sent to a page showing only relevant properties, thus cutting out a step in the process of finding what they want.

A bigger campaign is needed to prove the results, but so far the test is showing that there just might be a chance of success.