OTHER ARTICLES
Convert Website Visitors Into Customers
[…]Is Your Website Ever Finished?
A website is never truly complete. Your website is an asset to your business and it needs some care and looking after after just like any other aspect of your business. Your website provides a great platform to market yourself and your business. Think of your website as being done in stages. It is born, built, redesigned and updated. This means that your website is in a constant stage of being. Once one stage of your website is completed, it is time to think about and move on to the next stage of your website. Your website shows people where you are in your business, what you have to offer and what you stand for. Redesigning and maintaining your website are quite different. Changing the look and feel of your website is redesigning. Redesigning your website includes changing the theme or creating a new unique look for your business. This is an opportunity to show everyone how much you have grown. Making sure your content is up to date is part of maintaining your website. Maintenance also includes making sure links are still functional and that all updates of plugins, themes and WordPress Software are up to date. You may not have the skills or the time to redesign or update your website yourself even though software builders like WordPress give you the opportunity to make changes by yourself. When you don’t have the time or skills to make changes, it is advised to outsource the task to a web designer. Maintenance should be done regularly. Depending on the type of business you are running, maintenance can be done, weekly, monthly or quarterly. Your website should be redesigned every 12 – 24 months, however this does depend on the growth of your business. You need to be honest with yourself and decide whether or not you want to maintain your website or if you should outsource. Outsourcing your maintenance and redesigning frees up your time to concentrate on making your business work. Your website needs to be cared for so it can contribute to building a successful business.
[…]Facebook Marketing
These days many people are using Facebook as a marketing tool. Having a Facebook page for your business will make it: Discoverable – Many people make use of Facebook when looking for information on a business. Connected –You can connect with your customers and have one-to-one conversations with your them. Timely – Facebook can help you reach large groups of people frequently with messages tailored to their needs and interests. Insightful – The analytics or Page Insights on your page will give you a deeper understanding of your customers and your marketing activities. With Facebook, not only can you reach more people, but you can also reach a specific audience. To help you connect with customers, consider the following: What is the common factor among your ideal customers? How old are your customers and where do they live? In what way can your business help them? Would one group of your customers be more interested in a specific message, product or service? You need to encourage your current customers and supporters to like your Facebook page. Share your page with everyone and invite your friends and family to like your page. Invite your current business contact to also like your page. To keep your Facebook page interesting ad your customers captivated, you need to create compelling content. Think about what your customers will find interesting and inspiring. Be responsive – Reply to comments or messages that customers send. Be consistent – Post regularly to keep your customers coming back to your page. Do what works – Replicate your success on posts that get more engagement. Create posts and adverts that are interesting and valuable to your customers. Remember – Quality over quantity. Facebook is a great platform for advertising products, services or campaigns. Use Facebook ads to raise awareness about something or to promote sales of a product. Boost your advert so more people will see it. You can also create targeted adverts for different audiences based on their location. You can create the advert directly from the admin panel on Facebook or you can use other software to create the advert. To maximise the impact of every post and advert, find out what is working well for you. Your Page Insights will keep you up to date on the activity on your Facebook page. Use insights to understand who responds to your messages – pay attention to age, gender and location. Try out different images and headlines on your adverts to see what works the best. Ask people how they found out about you. Facebook is a great versatile way to market your business. If you do not yet have a Facebook page for your business, you should definitely consider creating a one.
[…]What is SEO?
What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the simple activity of ensuring a website can be found in search engines when, words or phrases relevant to what a site is offering, are typed into the search window. For a site to receive many visitors from a search engine’s users, it has to appear earlier or more frequently in the search results list. SEO takes into account how the search engine works, what people search for, the actual search keyword or phrase typed into the search engine and which search engines are preferred by the target audience. SEO may target different kinds of search. For example: an image search, a video search, a local search or a news search. Optimizing a website to achieve good SEO may involve editing its content, HTML and the associated coding to increase the relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Some tips and techniques to getting better search results: Write great, unique content that uses words or phrases used by people who search for your product or service. Make your content easy for people to share and link to it. Use your keywords as anchor text when you are linking internally. Links that say “Click here” do not do anything for your search engine visibility. Do some research on keywords at the beginning of the project. Use a unique and relevant title and meta description on each page. The tile is an extremely important on-page SEO factor. Commit yourself to the project. You have to keep doing it. SEO is not a one-time event. Things change all the time, so what worked last year might not work this year. Have web analytics in place. This will help you track what is working and what is not. Be patient! SEO is not about instant gratification. It may be months before you see any results, especially if you are a smaller company.
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