Year: 2007

To .COM or .COM.AU?

One of the first decisions you’ll need to make when deciding to get a website is what your domain name will be. There’s lots of good advice on ensuring your domain is easy to spell, quick to type, memorable and brandable. But what about the domain extension? If you are outside of the US do you go with the ubiquitous .COM extension or do you add your country code – which in Australia is .AU?

In this instance I strongly recommend you go for a domain with the country code you are in. You should only go for a .COM domain if your website is focusing on an international market.

Why? There’s a number of reasons:

  • You will appeal to the community you are marketing too. If I’m looking for a local business I am far more likely to gravitate towards websites that are obviously within my locale. A .COM.AU in the domain name tells me they are Australian and therefore relevant to me.
  • People will often assume that your website address ends in a .COM.AU or equivalent country code. In these instances they will automatically type that in and wonder why your site isn’t where it should be. They also may not think to try the .COM version.
  • If you want traffic from the search engines, and who doesn’t, a domain within your country code will help you rank for search terms in local versions of the search engines, such as google.com.au. It can also be a lot less competitive than trying to rank against multitudes of .COM websites.
  • There is also a much better chance you’ll be able to snap up a great domain. There aint a lot of choice left in the .COM space.

If you’re able to pick up the .COM version of your domain I’d recommend it (I have thinkprospect.com) to make sure no one else gets it. But when it comes to marketing and promotion I’d use the one with the country code. Every time.

Keeping Your Target Audience In Mind

When designing a website one of the most fundamental rules is ensuring that you’re designing with your target audience in mind. If the site doesn’t appeal to them it’s less than useless. The most obvious example of this is the Bunurong Memorial Park. As someone who has recently lost a loved one I can assure you: “NEW GRAVES SITES AVAILABLE PHONE 9788 9488 NOW!” in huge letters ain’t gonna get my business.

If I Build It Will They Come?

I’ve been building websites for a long time. Over 12 years in fact. In the early days it was relatively easy to put up a site, let a few search engines know about it and voila – success! This was at a time when the web was new and the competition was lacking. It was a great time but not one I expected to last. And it didn’t.

These days having a website is no guarantee of success. It takes blood, sweat and… yep you guess it marketing to make your online venture a success. Unfortunately too many people still think if they put a site online the masses will flock to them. And then wonder why they don’t. It’s also a myth that people like to perpetuate. Put a site online and you’ll be making millions within days.

In reality your website needs to be carefully planned, built and marketed just like any other business venture. Start by defining your strategy and determining how you want to make money from your website. Make sure you choose a web designer who understands good design principles, usability, SEO and internet marketing. And last but not least develop your marketing strategy.

I’ll go over some of these strategies in future posts but for now at least consider:

  • Web Design – build a website that focuses on calls to action and conversions. Pretty ain’t enough.
  • SEO – make sure you build a search engine friendly website from the get go.
  • Pay Per Click Advertising – look at PPC advertising. It is a great way to drive traffic while you are waiting for your SEO results to kick in and long term can be a useful way to drive additional, targeted traffic to your website.
  • Online Newsletter – send out a regular newsletter.
  • Blog – start a blog.
  • Network.
  • Write articles for both online and offline publications.
  • Get links to your website.
  • Join online forums.
  • Write e-books.

This list is by no means exhaustive but it’s a good start. By creating a marketing strategy and working on it steadily you’ll achieve the online success you’ve been searching for. Good luck!

Miriam Tackles the isms of SM

Social Media Marketing is currently the BIG thing in search marketing. I’ve heard both positives and negatives for it but until now now have not delved into it too deeply. Luckily
Miriam Ellis-Loraditch of Solas Web Design has taken the plunge with a great article talking to a number of search marketers, including me, about their experiences with Social Media Marketing.

There’s some great stuff in it and it’s well worth a read.

The Essential Guide to Business Blogging

Unless you’ve been on Planet Mars for the last 18 or so months you’ve no doubt heard of blogging. Whilst they’ve been around for a number of years their popularity has grown enormously in recent times and have become popular with individuals and businesses alike.

For businesses blogging can offer many benefits:

  • It’s a great way to communicate with your clients, customers and prospects. Whether it be talking about new products or services, company news or resolving an issue, you can communicate on a level not seen before.
  • It allows your customers and prospects to have a conversation with you.
  • A blog give you a voice, which in turn gives readers an idea of who you and your business are. Your goal is to then engage them enough to want to do business with you.
  • Blogging can help position you as an expert in your industry.
  • Blogs attracts links and can help you in your search engine rankings.

Done right a blog can bring your business enormous success. Done wrong and you risk your credibility. The following guide will help you set up and manage a successful online blog.

What is a Blog?

A blog, short for “web log”, is a website arranged in chronological order with the most recent information posted at the top of the main page. A blog is made up of “posts” which can include text and images. Blogs can be written by one person or a group. They tend to be focused on a particular topic be that politics, fashion or something business related.

Blogs are built using blog software – which users can download and install on their own systems. Some blog applications are open-source software which means it can be used, modified and distributed freely. There are also proprietary software applications which are available to licence. Blogs can be stand alone websites or they can be integrated into your existing business website. There are many blog templates you can choose, both free and paid, or you can customise the look and feel of your blog to suit your requirements.

Bogs can be set-up to allow readers to make comments or provide feedback. By doing this you are allowing the readers of your blog have a conversation with you, as opposed to you providing a monologue.

You can learn more about blogs by checking out the resources at the end of this article.

Integrate Your Blog into your Website Design

When considering adding a blog to your business website you need to decide whether you will integrate it into your existing website or offer it as a separate site with it’s own unique web address. In 99% of occasions I would suggest making it a part of your website. Integrating your blog into your existing website design ensures that it provides a consistency of your brand and identity. It also enables readers who enjoy your blog to wander into other parts of your website such as your services and how to contact you. 😉
Place Your Blog on Your Business Domain

Once you’ve decided to integrate your blog into your website you need to consider how it will be placed under your domain name. You have two options:

  • blog.yourwebsite.com.au
  • yourwebsite.com.au/blog

I recommend the second option: yourwebsite.com.au/blog. As well as providing a consistency in website structure it will help your website rank well in the search engines. Search engines love links and the more links to your website the more likely you are to rank well in those search engines. Blogs are a great way to attract links to your site. Done well your blog should attract attention and you’ll find other blogs and websites link to you. So when writing posts think of creating content that attracts attention and is “link worthy” and you’ll get those links.

Allow Comments

Blogs can be set-up to allow people to comment on what you write. It is optional and not all blogs choose to do this. Comments allow your readers to interact with your blog which in my opinion is a good thing. It shows that your business is open and honest in it’s communication. If you are concerned about what this means or what sort of comments you’ll receive you can set comments to be moderated. This means you approve the comments before they are posted publicly to your blog.

Comments are a way of showing readers, or potential readers, how popular your blog is. The more comments you receive the more popular you can be deemed to be. Here are some tips to help you encourage readers to make comments on your blog:

  • Ask for comments. Sometimes people don’t realise you welcome comments on your blog.
  • Ask questions. Specific questions encourages your readers to respond.
  • Respond to comments. If people realise you’re reading and responding to their comments they’ll be more likely to make a comment.
  • Make it easy for people to leave comments. It’ best to get people to register before commenting but make the registration process simple.

Comments are a great way to communicate with your clients, prospective clients, suppliers and the public. Open them up and start a conversation.

Speak With An Authentic Voice

On the whole business communications seem to be written in some kind of “corporate speak” blandly tossing out big words without ever really saying anything. And certainly not giving you much of an idea about the person and company behind the words. One revolution that has happened online is the rise of the authentic voice. An authentic voice is a human voice, it’s a voice that speaks to you in language you can understand and relate to. An authentic voice cannot be faked and if you try it online don’t be surprised to find you are called out on it.

So how do you write in au authentic voice? An authentic voice is one that sounds like it’s coming from you. It incorporates your personality, insights and opinions. Consider writing in a more conversational and personal manner. Of course being a business you still need to be professional, just work on making it more natural and engaging. You may also want to try reading what you write out loud to check that it sounds conversational. For more information on authentic voice and how to achieve it please check out the resources section at the end of this article.

Promote Your Blog

Ok so you’ve created a blog but no one knows about it. It’s now time to start promoting it. Here’s a list of ideas to help get you started:

  • Make your blog visible to the search engines. You can submit your blog address to the main search engines, or simply get some links to it and let the search engines find it naturally.
  • Link to other blogs you like in the hope they will return the favour.
  • Swap links with other bloggers.
  • Create an RSS feed. (More info on this in the resources section.)
  • Let your clients and customers know about your blog.
  • Submit your blog to blog directories. Try Googling “blog directory” to find relevant sites.

Again for more promotion ideas see the Resources section at the end of the article.

Like most things in life there’s no magic bullet but if you take the time to set your blog up properly, create interesting and engaging posts and actively promote it you’ll find a steady increase in people reading and engaging with your blog, people linking to your blog and an increase in enquiries and sales.

If You’re Reading This Thank You

As some of you know I was a little reluctant, initially, to enter the blogosphere. As it goes I’ve come to really enjoy blogging and have been surprised and touched by all the readers who take the time to make comments on my posts. In fact I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of you, it means a lot.

Things are a bit hectic right now and I will most likely not be blogging for the next week or two. I will be back so I’d love it if you’d stick around.

Seven Sins of Website Design

Your website is one of your most important marketing tools. Unfortunately what many people don’t realise is that a badly executed website can let you down and cost you sales if it’s not built properly. I consult to a lot of people who approach me when they realise their website is not performing as they expected. When analysing these sites I find the following 7 website mistakes crop up time and time again.

1. Inconsistent Brand Image

This is perhaps more common with websites that were built over 3 years ago but so many websites have no connection with their company’s brand image. When building a website you need to make sure that your web designer has a good understanding of you business’s goals, brand and current marketing materials and can reflect them into the design of your website.

When starting work with a new client I always ensure they send me copies of their current logo and any marketing material they use. This includes, business cards, letterhead, brochures and any advertisements they run. I then use these to help ensure that the design we come up with is an accurate reflection of their company’s image and brand.

2. Not Including an About Us Page

People like to deal with other people not anonymous corporations. If I’m looking to buy a product or hire a company online one of the first things I do when I land on a website is check out their About Us page. I want to know who I am dealing with. If I can’t find one I wonder what that business has to hide. Worse is the boring bland About Us that makes me wonder whether the business is run by humans.

Use your About Us page to engage your prospects, tell them about your company and to encourage them to want to do business with you.

3. Not Including Contact Details

Many websites avoid including their contact details. A big no no in my book. Contact details can reassure your visitors that your business does exist and they are able to get in contact with you if they need to.

This is especially important to websites that are selling products online. If you’re wanting people to hand over their credit card details you need to let people know how they can get in touch with you. This is how you establish trust between your site and your prospects.

In the very least I would suggest including a phone number and postal address. A company with no physical contact details is generally not one you’d want to do business with.

4. Ignoring the KISS Principle

In the words of the renowned usability expert Steve Krug “Don’t Make Me Think”. You have about 3 seconds to capture a visitor’s attention. In that time you have to tell them who you are, what you do and what’s in it for them. If you don’t do this they’re out of there – hitting the back button to try their luck, and spend their dollars, elsewhere. Here are some simple ways to help your visitor’s experience:

  • Design each page to have one main objective. Tell your visits what the page is about and what you want them to do next.
  • Keep your navigation labels (Services, Contact Us etc) simple and self explanatory. It should also be consistent throughout your website. This is probably a little outdated these days (well I hope so) but don’t use obscure images in place of text. We call that mystery meat navigation.
  • Make it easy for your prospects by making sure clickable links look like clickable links. Online, an underlined word signifies a link. If it’s not a link don’t underline it.

5. Not Making Your Website Search Engine Friendly

I’m horrified at the number of websites I see that have not taken search engines into consideration at all. Search engines are one of the most common and popular ways for people to find your website. If your website has been designed and built in a way that is not search engine friendly you will have no chance of ranking in the search engines from the get go. Unfortunately there are many web design companies with no knowledge of how to build a search engine friendly website.

At the very least consider:

  • Incorporating targeted keywords into each page of your website. To do this you need to perform keyword research to select the most appropriate keywords related to your business and then assign one or two to each page of your site.
  • Make sure each page has a unique Page Title that incorporates your keywords and is compelling to encourage prospects to click on the link to your website.
  • Including unique Meta Description and Keywords on each page of your website. Again your meta description should be compelling and your keywords should be the same as those in your page title and body text.
  • Make sure your website includes a Site Map. A Site Map is a hierarchical tree linking to every page on your website. It is useful for visitors trying to find a particular page on your site and also helps the search engines crawl and index all of the pages on your website. You can see an example of a Site Map on our website.

See my list of resources at the end of the article for more information about search engine optimisation (SEO) and building a search engine friendly website.

6. Having Splash Pages

The vast majority of people visiting your website have a task in mind. They want to land on your website do what they need to do and then go. So why stop them with some fancy animation page before they can view your site. In a bricks and mortar store would you stop everyone at the entrance and make them view your commercial first? I thought not. So why put them through that on your website? I can’t think of a better, or quicker way to encourage someone to go elsewhere.

7. Websites That Lack Information

Website visitors are generally goal driven. Prospects visit your website with a goal in mind – whether that be purchasing a product, requesting more information or researching a future purchase. If your website does not provide them with the information they are seeking they will no doubt go elsewhere. Unlike many other mediums cost is not relative to space so you have much more opportunity to provide detailed information about your offerings. Use it. Or risk losing a sale.

I’ll give you an example. A while ago I was looking for a barbeque. I went to the website one of the most popular Australian barbeque brands. They listed everything about the barbeques except their prices. Being in a helpful mood I rang their customer number and explained how annoying it was to research their products but not to find prices. I was told they left off prices to stop their competitors seeing them. I kid you not. They figured they’d rather inconvenience their prospective customers than risk their competitors seeing their prices. Something a quick visit to a store or a phone call would fix. Not surprisingly I bought my barbeque elsewhere.

So there you have it, 7 of the most common website mistakes. If you already have a website it may be time to review the site and it’s performance and make changes where necessary. If you’re about to start a website design talk to your web designer about the points made in this article and be sure to address them. Online success is not guaranteed but with careful thought and planning you’ll go a long way in ensuring your website provides your visitors with a positive experience and performs as you expect.

Referrals. Are All Your Eggs in One Basket?

The local Yellow Pages is running a radio campaign to promote advertising in the Yellow Pages. In one spot they use a business owner to talk about how successful his Yellow Pages ad is. In it he states that over 80% of his traffic comes from his Yellow Pages ad. 80%! Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

I’m sure the Yellow Pages loves this figure but as a business owner I’d be worried if such a large percentage of my enquiries came from the one source. It’s the same argument you’ll read online about relying on Google for all your traffic.

When marketing your business you should be focusing on promoting your business in a variety of ways both online and off. This will ensure that your referrals come from many sources including search engines, word of mouth, newsletter promotions, Yellow Pages and so forth. Apart from widening your net this ensures that should you receive a drop in traffic from one source you’ll take comfort knowing you have plenty of others to keep those referrals coming in. If you don’t you’ll like that Yellow Pages campaign from a while ago “Not Happy Jan“.

Goodbye Bill, Hello Steve!

I did it, I finally did it. I switched from PC to Mac. Whoo hoo!

It was my husband, Raoul, who actually made it happen. He surprised me last Thursday with a 20″ iMac. What a husband, and no he’s definitely not available. 😉

Besides looking funky as it’s such a sweet machine to use. There is a learning curve and some basic tasks take a bit to figure but then Windows was my OS for 12+ years. Give me another week and I’ll be a Mac native I reckon.

If you’ve considered making the switch this may help you decide.

So thanks Raoul, you’re the best…after my iMac of course. 😉

John Scott on Link Building in 2007

John Scott over at V7N is one of the smartest internet marketers I know. He has just written an excellent post, John Scott on Link Building, which is a must read for anyone interested in driving targeted traffic to their website.

There’s a ton of gems but here’s a few:

You see, Google is still running link based algorithms. Google, however, wants to count links which were meant to be legitimate “votes” for a web page. Google does not want to count links as votes if those links were placed on a web page for monetary reward, or as spam.

Links remain the most important part of any search engine marketing campaign. Links are SEO. The difference between link building in 2002 and link building in 2007 is that the search engines are better equipped to evaluate those links, and this forces website owners to up their game.

Nice post John!