What Do I Do With My New Website?
What should I do with my new website?
You have a new site, it’s listed in Google but it’s not drawing in as much business as you’d hoped. Well this is where Search Engine Optimisation comes into play. When I designed / created your site, I tried to optimise your site as much as possible for your most relevant keywords, so Google and the other search engine know what your site is about. I also added a few links to your site enough to get you listed in Google, but to improve you place in the search results you need more links. Google sees a link to a site as a vote. However not all votes are equal.
Good Links / votes
One way (no reciprocal link back to them on your site)
Dofollow (if the link is set as a nofollow site then the link doesn’t allow the search engines to follow the link or share the page rank.
Page rank (google ranks pages 0-10) depending on the number links, hits and other things. This is only updated a few times a year, the higher the page rank of the page your link is on the more sway it has with Google
Google keeps it’s formula very secret so NO-ONE knows for certain how to get to the number 1# slot every time, however there are a lot of companies out there that will tell you they can.
There are white hat techniques and black hat techniques (frowned on upon by Google), each company will have different approach depending on what they have found that works and the resources that they can throw at it.
SEO is something that anyone can do, but does take a little time to read about and learn different skills. If you have time to do it yourself then great, but if you would like some help then allow me to offer my services.
Have You Got The X-Factor
Have you been following stories about Cheryl Cole being sacked from the US X factor. Well to be honest I don’t know all the ins and outs but having read some of the articles on themirror.co.uk and there are several reasons being bandied around as to why she was sacked,
1) The Americans couldn’t understand her accent – (how ridiculous, the range of accents in America, and they can’t cope with her Geordie accent)
2) She wasn’t pushing herself forward enough, letting the other judges dominate the discussion.
Whatever happens I’m sure Cheryl will bounce back, and go on to many more exciting new projects.
So why am I writing about this? How does it relate to you?, your business? and more importantly your website?.
Firstly the WHY?
I’m trying to be topical. Relating things you do to recent events can help to drive traffic to your blog / site / business. You can be inspired from pretty much anywhere but some good sources check out Twitter trends see what people are searching for the most on there, news sites, as well as other blog posts might spark an idea.
So how does this relate?
Does your business / site / blog have the X-factor do you stand out from the crowd? Do you make a noise or let everyone else talk over you.
Don’t let your accent or the way you write, put people off. Although we’re working online, we still have an accent, not an audible one, but our writing style.
When you write you might want to avoid using local words like Scran=food, dual-track = dual carriageway. Keep your writing clear and simple, look at your target audience and write for them. If your target is officer worker in the city, talking about the sheep being dipped on the farms will mean very little to them . However if you are writing for a local community, then use some local language, will give your writing some character, just be aware that not everyone may understand or appreciate it.
Don’t sit back in the shadows, voice your opinion.
You are (or should be) an expert in your field, you have your OWN personal experience on which to draw. When you network either in person or online, or write for a site or blog, don’t be afraid to say your piece. You opinion is just as valuable as anyone else’s. Join forums in your niche area and offer help with issues or your opinion. Join in discussions, listen to others ideas you might just learn something but they can also learn form you. You’ll get a lot more out of these activities if you participate than if you’re a lurker.
By participating on forums blogs etc. you can get links to your site or blog, always useful to the search engines, but by drawing attention to yourself people will be interested in finding out more (so make sure your profile and signatures includes web addresses where possible).
Conclusion:
So it’s decision time, do you have the X-factor, or should you be sacked? Are you after the limelight or happy to let others take the glory while you lurk.
Go tell someone new about your business. But don’t forget to leave a comment on here and tell us how it went.
Pippas Web design websites for start up companies and small business, check us out.
Happy Customer – Pink Personal Training
Let me introduce you to Pink Personal training run by Yvonne Grayson.
Pink Personal Training operates around the Hampshire / Surrey borders. 1-2-1 personal training, pilates classes and a Fitness Boot Camp are all on offer to get the people of Headley, Grayshott, Bordon and beyond up and on their feet.
Pippas Web was brought in originally to get this new site onto Google. Then together we have been making changes to the site and Pippas Web is now working on some SEO to help with its rankings.
This is what Yvonne has to say.
“Thank you so much Pippas Web – you saved my life! Pippas Web helped me with SEO – AND tweaked my website into something I can now be proud of.
Efficient, friendly, and sympathetic to untechnical sorts like me. An affordable service for small businesses just starting up.
Pippas Webb – Pink Personal Training will be back – so look forward to doing business again”.
Customer: Yvonne- Pink Personal Training.
Service: SEO and site review.
Site: http://www.pinkpersonaltraining.co.uk/
Pippas Web website design for start up companies and small business, check us out.
Who Are You Writing For?
As an avid fan if “The Apprentice” and watching the marketing tasks, where they have to work out their target audience. Is the product for the yummy mummy, or the business woman. But this still isn’t personal enough. The top marketing and advertising companies will create a full persona to describe who the are aiming their product and their campaign at.
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| Who you writing for? |
For example a new range of babies bibs could be aimed at Phillipa Jaynes, she is a 24yr old, new Mum, living in London, she does yoga and baby yoga with baby Matt. They’d work out her daily routine, what she does, where she shops. Why ? So they know how to interact with her, how to get their products in front of her, but mostly so that the information about the product is promoted as a product that she will like.
What’s this got to do with me and my site?
Have you noticed how if you write a letter your writing style differs if you’re writing to someone you know, rather than some nameless, faceless person.
Whenever you write something, stop and think who are you writing it for. If it’s content for a site then, who do you want to be reading this, are you writing for the ‘head CEO of some company’ or are you writing for a ‘busy new Mum’.
When I write this blog, I write for my Mum. (ahhhh how sweet, I hear you sigh), well yes and no. So why my Mum? Simple she doesn’t know or understand jargon. If I don’t explain myself clearly she’ll only be on the phone or email saying I don’t understand this, so for the easier life, I focus on straight talking for everyone to understand.
By understanding who you are writing for you can:
- Write using the appropriate level of terminology. For example, for beginners, if you use jargon you need to explain what it means. However if you’re writing about the design of a new car, or piece of machinery, you are likely to want to use jargon to demonstrate your knowledge.
- Understand where to look for links : if your target person for the blog post or site is a yummy Mummy, into yoga, and babies, then this is where you need to start looking for links. Parenting sites, yoga sites, baby blogs, etc. These links will help direct your targeted traffic to you site or blog.
So who do you have in mind when you start writing? Why not share your thoughts on it.
From Blank Page to Content – Where to Start?
Whether you are planning on creating your own website or hiring someone else to design your site at some point you’re going to have to start adding some content to your website, but where to start?
I find it very difficult to write about someone else’s business without quizzing them thoroughly, at the end of the day, you know your business best so either writing your own content or providing lots of information on what you do can only help.
I was talking to a client yesterday who was going to go away and start working on his content, but didn’t know where to start, I said I’d try and send some suggestions through this is what I came up with, bare in mind it’s not exhaustive but just designed to get you to think about your business and your site and give you a place to start.
• Who are you aiming your service at businesses, individuals?
• Are you going to serve a specific area or a larger more general area UK / world wide?
• What is your unique selling point (what makes your service different to the competition)
• If you were looking for your business in Google what would you type in to find it? (These are called keywords)
• Do you know the address of any of your competitors, have you checked out their sites? What do you / don’t you like about them?
• What services do you provide?
• What contact details are you going to use.
• How do you want to be paid?
• Do you have any ideas of the kind of colour scheme you’d be looking for?
• Do you have any images that can be used or do you want to find some on one of the many image sites.
Here are some ideas for basic pages you might want to include.
Home – This page should give over view of what you do, direct people to other area of the site to find more detail
About us, – explain who is involved in the company, how you got started what skills you bring to it etc.
Services – what do you offer, do you want to add prices?,
Contact – includes your contact details, giving a physical address and phone number gives customers more confidence in you than leaving them out. Contact form do you need any specific information to be able to help them best? Or will standard name, email address and message do for initial contact.
I hope this gets you started.
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” Walt Disney
Pippas Web design websites for start up companies and small business, check us out.
Don’t Sell Yourself Short – You ARE Clever.
Last night, I was making some changes to the Cricket Club website ready for the new season, when my husband turned and said what to him was a heartfelt comment,
I took it almost as a throw away comment because to me, I don’t feel clever, I think what I do, everyone could do, so what make me special.
Yet I still don’t think of myself as clever????? Time for a change of mind set I think.
Then I got thinking about it and I realised that I and probably many others are just selling ourselves short. Our interests and skills are OURS, we learned them, we put the effort in, something’s are easier than others to learn or do. However something’s are harder for other people but they still do it.
As part of learning, developing and your SEO campaign you’ll be busy reading blogs, articles and websites from people in your area of expertise. This can have a two-fold effect
It can help you learn new things, give you new ideas,
or
it can make you think all these people know so much more than me.
Don’t let yourself worry about or get upset about the second one. Remember that chances are the person behind the blog your reading has been working in this area a lot longer than you. But behind the blog, the article is a real person, just like you.
For your own blog, it’s your personality as well as your knowledge that people are interested in, try to put something of you into everything you do, it’ll give you more personal satisfaction, and make it more interesting for you readers.
Value Your own judgement, Your knowledge. Use others as a source of knowledge, a source of authority for your link building, but Not Gods, they’re real people using their knowledge and experience to their advantage so go forth and do the same.
I’ve told you why I’m clever, so now it’s over to you. Please leave a comment below to tell me and everyone else, what you do that is clever too.
To see how Pippasweb could help your start up or small business, check us out.
How to Tell Google About Your New Site?
In order to get your site to appear in the main search engines you need to tell them that the site is out there.
You could use www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl after all you enter your url / web address enter the “prove you’re real” code, job done. But then all you can do is sit and wait. In my experience this is the slowest way to get your site listed on Google.
So how should I add my site to Google?
The quickest and most efficient way I’ve found of getting a site listed in Google is to follow these steps.
1) Make sure it’s ready -is your site is finished or at least presentable, for people to see. Google may find you quickly, but may take a few weeks for the spiders that crawl websites to get back to check. So by having all your info, your keywords, your descriptions, the site all set for visitors, it means that if the do take a little while to get back they already have the right information. Nothing worse that seeing your new site on Google with glaring spelling mistake for all to see.
2) Add your sitemap – Create and add a sitemap to Google and Bing Webmaster tools, this means when the spiders arrive at your site they’ll be able to find their way round and hopefully explore as much of the site as is possible as quickly as possible.
3) Get Links – Google’s little spiders search back through all it’s known sites, the more often a site is updated the more often it’s likely to be crawled. So good places to get some early links would be active forums and blogs. Also if you got a web designer to create your site, they might add a link to your site (especially if good if they have good pr (page rank) on the page you’re listed on.
3) Social Bookmarking - Submit to bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, etc. there are lots out there. Bookmarking sites are a way of saving links of sites, blogs etc of interest, and sharing them with others, it’s way of showing you liked something on the web and you can then share it with friends and followers. The more votes a link has, the more popular it was. But even if you just add it once for the purpose of getting Google listed it all helps, and ideally in time you’ll get more votes.
4) Social Networking – Adding links on sites like Twitter and Facebook, will hopefully help direct traffic, but they also help to get the search engines attention. These links should not be your only links though as they don’t appear to give much juice.
The bonus of getting listed using links rather than submitting it directly, is the links will also count in your SEO efforts for to get a better ranking. Using the right combination you could get listed in just days, rather than weeks, be aware though that although you’re indexed on the search engine it will take time for your rank to emerge and settle, so keep going with the link building and reap the rewards when it does.
Do you use any other methods? want to share?
To see how Pippasweb could help your start up or small business, check us out.
How to End Your Domain Name And does It Matter?
So you’ve picked your company name, decided on your domain name, and gone to buy your domain name, through a company like 123-reg or godaddy. Then you realise you’ve got lots of options to choose from. All domain names end with a (dot)and a series of letter i.e. .com, .co.uk or .biz.
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| Domain name endings. |
.com Commercial is by the the most common option although is traditionally for American based businesses.
.co.uk this is the UK’s own commercial
.edu for education sites
.mil military.
.net networks
.me personal sites
.tv was originally the extension for Tuvalu but now can be used for entertainment and fansite.
.co the Columbian code is .co but now .co can be used by anyone,
.info information websites
.biz an alternative ending for businesses.
Each country also has it’s own letters which can be offered by providers, added to a number of the above, i.e. .co.uk, org.uk or uk.net
So which one should you choose?
From an SEO point of view it really makes no difference. It’s your on page optimisation and back links that really make or break a site.
However that said in the UK, there is an expectation that UK based companies will use .co.uk domain name.
Do you need to buy all the domain variations?
Well buying them all will stop anyone else using that name, but will also set you back a lot of money. Personally I would advise if you’re UK based and serve the UK stick with a .co.uk if you’re a global company, you might want to go for .com However if someone the other end of the country to you has the .co.uk version of your preferred domain but the .biz or .net or even .me version is still available there is nothing to stop you choosing that.
So if you have your own domain, what extension / ending did you go with, and what made you choose that?
To see how Pippasweb could help your business, check us out.
Google PR Dead or Not?
This morning I found this post about Googles official standing on this issue.
The post was based on a discussion on the Google forums about the pr issue. In amongst all the usual speculation a google employee John Mu piped up. He confirmed
“The PageRank which we use internally is continuously updated, so even if you’re not seeing a PageRank in your Toolbar, rest assured that we’ll be treating your site accordingly regardless, and will crawl, index and rank your websites appropriately. “
and for those us wanting to see the updates reflected on the toolbar he had this to say.
“We do update the Toolbar PageRank regularly, even if that’s not as regularly as some of you wish. I agree that it would be nice to have it updated more frequently. Given the time since the last update, I imagine you’ll start seeing another one in the near future.”
To see how Pippasweb could help your business, check us out.
3 ways to pick your domain name.
You’ve made that decision that your company wants a web site. So your next task is what to call it. It needs a domain name or url.
1) Use your company name. The simplest idea is to buy a domain name using your company name. This is great if you’re an existing established company. After all how will people know to look for your company, if they don’t already know it’s name? Of course that’s where SEO would come in, you’d arrange your site so it could be found using the keywords
2)What do you do? Describe a service that your site offers, using a keyword you would expect people to use to find you in Google for example. Window cleaning and select a domain name using the term somewhere within. This will give a bit of extra juice for search engine ranking for that term.
3)Place names, if you serve a specific area, a town, city, county, then it may be in your interest to chose a domain name with it in the name.
Of course, you’re not just limited to one domain name either. If you are entering into a field with a lot of competition you may want to approach it from several different ways.
You could buy as many domains as you need on for services, one for name, one for location and then use a domain re-direction point them to your site. However think about this before you do it, the more you buy the more links you’ll need to build for each name. Also do you want to be in competition with yourself? If you do buy extra domain names, then you will need to create 301 redirection to direct them to you site so that only one version of your site is visible to search engines, or you’ll end up with duplicate content which is another SEO NO-No.
So if this has given you some inspiration then check your short list of suggestions on www.123-reg.co.uk/domain-names and make sure that no-one else has your combination.
In the next post I want to look at the domain name endings and does it make a difference.
So how did you select your domain name? Leave me a comment and share.
To see how Pippasweb could help your business, check us out.
