Author: David

Categories
Web Marketing

On page and off page marketing

If you have been speaking to a marketing company recently about your website marketing strategy then you may have heard the terms on page and off page marketing or optimisation. This can often be confusing at first but our easy guide below gives you an over view of what you need to know for both.

On page optimisation is essentially that. It is changes that you make on a page within your site or by adding new content to your site. It may be that you add a blog or that you optimisation the content on a page in include more keywords. On page optimisation also includes adding internal links to other pages and improving or adding meta data, adding XML site maps and robots.txt files. This is just a few examples.

Off page or off site optimisation is marketing that you do off your website that is aimed at improving the traffic to your site and your rankings on the search engines. This may be building up external links to your site, creating blogs and comments on other sites, social media interaction, uploading videos to sites such as YouTube and PPC campaigns. These can all influenced your website success whist being controlled away from your website.

 

Categories
Web Marketing

Where to market your new brand/business

When you start a new business there are so many marketing options available to you that it’s easy to feel swamped by it all and confused about where to start.

First you’ll need to identify which marketing media is suitable for your brand/business as there is no point in wasting advertising in places that just aren’t relevant.

Next prioritise your marketing in order of cost and importance, you’ll need to weigh up the costing options as sometimes it’s not wise to just go with the lowest cost. It’s all about being cost effective and spending smart.

Next you’ll need to set a marketing budget to decide how much marketing you will use and how regularly.

Once you have established these thing you can then look around for a suitable marketing company to carry out your wishes and help to bring recognition and gravitas to your brand.

Always take your time to explain exactly what you want to your marketing team so that they can help you to achieve your desired outcome and you can get the most for your money.

There is also a lot of essentially free forms of marketing to explore, particularly on social media that can be just as effective as paid for marketing.

 

Categories
Web Marketing

What to consider when changing branding

If you are considering changing the branding of your company, you need to carefully consider how you are going to do this. It may be that you want to change you log and / or company name and therefor your colour ways may also change. Look at a rebranding as a positive move, allowing you to consider new developments that have happened since your brand was first established, and how you can incorporate them in to your new branding.

When changing a logo or company name, be sure to change this everywhere such as on your website, stationery, social media accounts and sign written vehicles etc. You need to consider the changes you make on your website to ensure that you do not miss anything and that your customers are not confused by the changes. The changing of a logo may mean you also need to change the colours of the website, it may be worth while keeping the layout the same for a while until customers have become familiar with your new branding. This will give them confidence that you are still the same business just with a new logo. Also ensure that you make the changes throughout the site including downloadable PDF’s etc. which are often missed.

 

 

Categories
Social Media Marketing

Using Twitter to gain followers

If using Twitter for your business, you will want to gain followers in order to interact with them. This can seem like a bit of a catch 22 as you initially will have no one to tweet to etc, but you can use hashtags and retweets to start to get your posts noticed. When using Twitter for business, there is no set rules as to what and when you should Tweet, but often the most successful businesses Tweet a few times a day. When creating your message it is important to get a mix between in formal tweets and business aimed tweets. If all your tweets are very business orientated then you may not keep peoples interests, where as if there is a good mix people will want to come back and see what you are reading. You should also make sure that you start to follow people that may be of interest to you as often they will then follow you back. Twitter isn’t usually a fast solution to getting direct work but it can help to build up brand awareness and also a way for you to build up a following or people that may require your services later down the line.

 

 

Categories
Social Media Marketing

Managing your social media accounts

If used correctly, social media ca have an extremely positive impact on your business and brand. It allows you access to millions of people, some of which you may not have been able to engage with. There are a number of different social media sites that you can use as part of your marketing strategy, but which ones or how may you should use depends a lot on your time and the type of business you are in.

If one of your employees is going to be managing the social media accounts then you need to ensure that they understand fully what you want to use the sites for such as showcasing previous work or allowing your customers another method of contact etc. They should also know how often they need to post information and how much to post on there. Some companies give a snippet of information on their social media sites but then link to full articles on their website in order to increase traffic.

It may be that you outsource the management of the social media marketing, this may allow you the expertise of someone that knows how these sites work and how best to share information but it will also mean you having to trust someone else with the task of connecting with your customers.

 

 

Categories
Web Design

Be careful when making changes to your website

If you are wanting to make changes to your website but are not a confident programmer then you need to take extra care. So many people believe that they know how to successfully change elements of their site and end up losing a lot of the structure or the content. They may also do something that causes the site to get penalised by the search engines.
When making changes to a website firstly you need to make sure that you take a full back up of not only the files that make up your website but also the database that stores all your information. Also make a note of any settings that you may need to re input should you have to reinstall a backup of your website.
Ideally always get a professional to make big changes to your website and even for smaller changes, check with your programmer if you are unsure as to what you need to do.
If you do make a mistake, then do not try and fix it yourself as you may end up making it worse, instead call your programmer as they may be able to sort it out quickly.