An Introduction to marketing your website (Top 10 Tips) By Ann Stanley

Anicca Digital Solutions Anicca Digital Solutions was formed as a web development company in 2004 and became a full digital agency in 2007 We are an East Midlands accredited supplier and carryout work on behalf of Business Link. We are also members of the Leicester Chamber of Commerce and a Google AdWords Certified Partner In addition to working directly with clients; we have collaborative partnerships with other agencies and technology companies and carryout work for them on a sub-contract basis

Top 10 Tips Customers and competitors Web Design and “Calls for action” Search engine optimisation (SEO) Google Maps Google Merchant Centre for ecommerce sites Using Google AdWords or pay per click (PPC) Social marketing - blogs, Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn etc Email marketing Integrating your offline and online marketing? Measuring website performance with Google Analytics?

Customers, competitors and objectives

Understanding your customers? Your website look and feel should be designed for your target customers (especially age and demographics) All customers are consumers at heart – and they will judge you against the sites they like and use - rather than your competitors (the “John Lewis” effect) If you have more than one type of customer (eg consumers vs trade) make it easy for them to know where they need to go and what they can do on your site If you don’t meet your customers needs then your competitors will!

Target audience - site aimed at parents and kids This reflects a different design approach. How does it compare to the traditional views? Which aspects are relevant to your business?

Target audience - site aimed at techies

Branding – lifestyle & aspirations

Branding – lifestyle & aspirations

Branding – design & imagery

Who are your competitors? Your competitors are not only the companies that offer similar services to you, they include: Other companies that compete for your customers’ pounds Other companies that might appear for the same keyphrases in the search engines If you are redesigning your website make sure it has a better design and functionality than your competitors - as they may be building a new improved site right now!

Indirect competitors are after the “pound in the pocket”!

The “Magic Triangle” for getting the best website Design – first impressions counts We need to get a balance between these elements Content – what the site says to the user and search engines Functionality – what the site does for the user and your business

Why is the design and first impression of your website so important?

Instant impression of your website! 8 SECONDS

Example Komodo – effect of design on web results

Analytics results

Example Britain’s Best Breaks – effect of design on web results

Analytics results

Examples of “calls for action”

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Search engine results Display options Organic or natural results Universal results – news, shopping etc Sponsored links - paid

How Search Engines Work A search engine is made of three basic components: A Spider or Robot An automated browser, it searches the web for new websites and changes to websites then views the web pages and strips out the text content A Storage System or Database A record of all the pages viewed by the Spider A Matching Process or Relevancy Algorithm The rules that tell the search engine how to determine what would be relevant to your search

Check your site is indexed? Do you have keyphrases in your url, title and description?

Is my content listed in Google? – No! These sites have been constructed in Frames and Flash, technologies which can't be indexed (or spidered) by the search engines

On-Page Factors The optimisation process is then a two-stage activity – first, certain elements of the page and its content must be optimised to contain the phrases being targeted (preferably with an accepted “keyword density”). Important page elements are: Title tag Meta tags Use of heading tags, bold and italics to highlight keywords Alt tags for images Anchor text of links to other pages URL of the page

Keyphrase density

Off-page factors - Linking An ongoing process of gaining inbound links from other websites must be undertaken, preferably using the chosen phrases in their anchor text (the link text on the page) and from pages/domains with good PageRank and authority (the two are not always directly correlated). This example shows how a page that doesn’t even have the word “failure” in it can still rank first for a search using that term. Good inbound links: Come from pages in the search engines’ index Use your keywords in the anchor text Are from topically-relevant pages Are moderated/human-edited Come from pages with good PageRank

Off-page factors - Linking An ongoing process of gaining inbound links from other websites must be undertaken, preferably using the chosen phrases in their anchor text (the link text on the page) and from pages/domains with good PageRank and authority (the two are not always directly correlated). This example shows how a page that doesn’t even have the word “failure” in it can still rank first for a search using that term. Good inbound links: Come from pages in the search engines’ index Use your keywords in the anchor text Are from topically-relevant pages Are moderated/human-edited Come from pages with good PageRank

How to get a local business listing - so you appear next to the map?

Local listings – old way the map listings were displayed Organic results

New integrated display of map results

Getting Listed in Local Search (Google Place or Maps)

Google Maps listing

Google Merchant Centre for ecommerce sites

Shopping results in main listings

Increase in daily traffic due to Merchant Centre Merchant Centre set-up

Using Google AdWords or pay per click (PPC)

Pay Per Click in Action 1 2 3 User submits search Listings dynamically ordered by bid price & relevancy 3 User clicks on paid link, triggering payment to Google Pay Per Click (PPC) is a search marketing technique that requires you to pay a fee every time someone clicks to your website from an advert displayed in the search engine results. You only pay when someone clicks to visit your site.

PPC Account Hierarchy Timber Timber Company Timber Merchant timber companies Timber Merchant timber merchants builders merchants timber Timber Supplies timber supplies timber supplier Campaigns (<20) (set a budget and targeting) Ad Groups 20-100 per campaign (each has its own ad copy and landing page) Keywords 3-30 per ad group

Choosing keyphrases (similar phrases grouped in ad groups) Campaign Brand Company/Supplier Products Ad Group Timber Building Wood Wood Doors Wood Windows BRAND timber merchant builders merchants wood merchants wood door wood windows BRAND timber timber suppliers building materials wood suppliers wood french doors replacement wood windows BRAND decking timber buildings building supplier wood yard wood interior doors wooden windows BRAND engineering timber yard building supplies wood supplies wooden doors Wooden window BRAND building merchant timber importers building merchants hardwood importers wood exterior doors wood sash windows BRAND supplies timber seller hardwood merchants hardwood doors hardwood window BRAND windows Timber company hardwood suppliers hardwood supplies

Ad Copy Testing By testing ad copy we can get the most relevant ad Selecting target market by price Variety of Features Selling the deal Brand Qualities Based Ad Copy By testing ad copy we can get the most relevant ad with the highest click through rate – then Google rewards us with a higher quality score

Typical PPC results Glossary Impressions = number of times your ad is seen Clicks = number of times searcher clicked on your ad CTR = click through rate clicks divided by impressions (>2% indicates a more relevant keyphrase and ad combination) Avg CPC = average cost per click (amount paid when users click on your ad) Cost = total spent in period (clicks times average cost per click) Avg Position = Average position achieved in results Conversions = completed sales or completed registrations Conversion rate = conversions divided by clicks Cost per conversion = total cost divided by number of conversions

Targeting a specific area (geo-targetting)

Social marketing - Blogs, Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn etc

Building Communities Why? How? Marketing to a specific target market that uses the platform Loyalty and referrals – viral marketing Link building benefits for SEO How? Recommendations and Social book marking eg Delicious, Digg Social Networking for promoting discount codes, events & competitions LinkedIn, Facebook Group, Twitter profiles PPC on these platforms (paid social)

Social networking for businesses

Blog about an event

Twitter account

Set-up and create panels to follow subjects (Tweet search engine) Last 100 mentions of “Adwords”

Email marketing

Online forms to collect data

HTML Email marketing

Email marketing results

“MailChimp” email marketing tool

Integrating your offline and online marketing?

Website

Blogging and social marketing to advertise events

Flyers

Google Analytics

Using Google Analytics

Traffic sources

Ecommerce – differences in conversion rate by traffic source

Top 10 Tips Customers and competitors Web Design and “Calls for action” Search engine optimisation (SEO) Google Maps Google Merchant Centre for ecommerce sites Using Google AdWords or pay per click (PPC) Social marketing - blogs, Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn etc Email marketing Integrating your offline and online marketing? Measuring website performance with Google Analytics?

www.anicca-solutions.com ann@anicca-solutions.com 01162 986 460 Any Questions? www.anicca-solutions.com ann@anicca-solutions.com 01162  986 460