The 7 Second Test

Too many websites give visitors such a bad impression or user experience. Statistics show you have 7 seconds to persuade a website visitor to stay. In truth I’m sure we’ve all visited websites where after just one look we’ve clicked and moved on. The question you need to ask is, ‘Does my website give such a poor impression?’

Make sure you are measuring your website’s performance effectively. So many businesses have no idea how many potential customers visit their website, or what they do when they’re actually on their website. If you lack that vital online marketing information it’s impossible to know how to start improving your website marketing. So it’s essential that you use website analytics software to help you understand who your visitors are, where they are coming from, and how they are using your site.

The good news is that many tools, including the popular Google Analytics, are absolutely free. You can then use the vital marketing information provided to improve the visitor experience and drive more and better quality traffic to your site.

Learn the search engine optimisation (SEO) basics

Having your website rank as high as possible on search engines should be one of your top online marketing goals. So it’s no surprise that I’m often asked, “what’s the one thing that will help my website improve its ranking on search engines?” In truth there isn't one 'magic bullet', but there are several important factors that really cannot be ignored. One of these is the text content of your website.

Content is King
Search engines love content, especially up to date, relevant content. Adding new content and keeping it up to date is really important, so having a Content Management System (CMS) on your website is a must. Use newsletters, blogs, forums and articles to help you keep the content of your site fresh.

Make it relevant and key word rich

Make sure the content of your website is relevant to your audience and reflects the key words or phrases you want to promote through your search engine optimisation campaign. The key words need to be used in context rather than needless repetition, known as 'keyword stuffing' which will end up getting you penalised by search engines. How often the key words are used (keyword density) is another factor. You can have too little or too much; it's reckoned that between 3-8% is about right.

But writing key word rich relevant content is time consuming and often harder than you think. Finding an experienced website content copywriter will save you time and money in the long run.

Think social media for marketing

Social media marketing is a really important tool for businesses of every size. It provides you with the opportunity to interact directly and personally with a huge number of potential customers, and increase awareness of your company, products, services and brand very quickly.

The best known tools for social media marketing include LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Take the time to find out how these can benefit your business and how to link them to your website. Deciding which ones to use will depend on whether you are in the business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C) markets and the type of customers you want to attract.

A Balanced Solution

However, it’s vital to remember that online marketing is just one of the tools you should be using for your marketing activities. You need to integrate the different marketing solutions you use to produce a balanced and powerful marketing strategy to build your business.