Category: Small Business

Is Yellow Pages and Other Paper Directory Advertising Dead

Posted by admin – 10/03/2010

Yellow pages is synonymous with business advertising and has been for many years, but are its days numbered. Ten years ago you may have got some return fo

If you have ever advertised with Yellow pages, the process starts with a sales person coming to visit you to book your money making advert. For more and more of the advertisers the book is a money loosing proposition.

Normally the sales person tells you to expect lots of enquiries a week, that you will be rushed off your feet and the small monthly payments of 3 – 4 hundred pounds will be easy to meet as you will have so much business that this amount will be small change.

The reality is normally a lot different. I first advertised many years ago, fresh faced out of university after completing my degree in Media production, specialising in multimedia design.

I was eager to join the world of small business, selling my newly acquired skills to a hungry local business community. My advert in Yellow pages was going get me business the likes of I had never known. That year went slowly, I didn’t receive one call from that advert; not one single little enquiry.

I cant blame the directory completely, my advert was small but it was the only paid advert in the section. The web was all new and shiny,many businesses didn’t know about websites or thought them just a passing fad.

I even went and did it again a few years later and thought it was the size of my advert that was the problem the first time, so I splashed out on a full colour half page ad. I did get responses to that ad but twenty times less then the directory sales people were telling me the average response rate was for an advert of that size and in that section. I covered the cost of the advertising but not much else.

The thing was I didn’t know what I know now. Paper directory advertising is dieing, then it was just in decline now it’s on its way to the retirement home.

For some; paper directories like Yellow pages can be great but for these it’s normally out of hours services like emergency plumbers or services aimed at the older generation who don’t use a computer let alone the internet. For most

Advertising is changing for the first time online marketing spend is going to over take traditional paper advertising

If you want a business or service nine times out of ten the web is the place you look first not last. I, being a person who makes a living online one way or another do everything online from shopping to research to entertainment it’s all there. I suspect I may be a little extream because of my comfort level online but I don’t think average Joe is far behind me .

If you run any sort of business you need to be found online so you need to establish a web presence now if you haven’t already got one. If you main form of marketing is paper directory’s then you need to be moving at least some of your marketing spend to online marketing now , not tomorrow.

We can use Google trends to see how the interest in Yellow pages and Thomson Local had declined since 2004

Yellow Pages

Thomson Local

As we can see the Yellow pages interest has dropped dramatically over the last six years to approximately 25% of the 2004 search volume.

Where is the interest going

Online marketing is growing with the biggest gains in search volume being in SEM an acronym for Search engine marketing

SEO

SEM

PPC

online marketing trends

So as we can plainly see the interest in online marketing is growing.  I can see the growth slowing as we see with SEO (search engine optimisation) PPC (pay per click) is in a slight decline but I put that down to businesses trying to reduce costs.

Social Media vs Search Engine Marketing

Posted by admin – 05/03/2010

Social media iconsTo start with this post started off as a comment in response to MOGmartins post about Social Media, PR vs Traffic. Where the argument is,

whether social media sites, like facebook and twitter are of use to large corporations as traffic sources, or are they just vehicles for public relations and one to one, or one to many communications.

Now I both agree and disagree at the same time, let me explain. Social Media is about making connections with people which it does for individuals, but I don’t think it does for most businesses at this moment in time to make a marked increase in the profitability of a company.

Quality of Traffic

Social media like Facebook and Twitter do produce traffic. When someone clicks through what is the users intention. Is it to buy from or use the company’s services, for the most part , no. I myself see a link posted and click on it to be nosey.

With SEM or search engine marketing when a user clicks through from Google ,Yahoo or Bing you can be sure that they are actively looking for what you have to offer. The user has been qualified by the search engine. Of course some customers are more qualified then others but for the most part a user coming from a search engine will convert to a paying customer click for click a lot better then a user from Facebook or twitter.

The Flip Side

There is a flip side to this argument in that fan pages and twitter is like an segmented email list , it’s full of people who are interested in one way or another in what you have to offer. So per head, these interested people are going to convert quite well. when the right offer is presented.  These people are waiting to see the next big thing and simply have to be told about it . A well segmented email list can be a gold mine allowing you to sell to the same person over and over again. social media I see working in a similar way.

The Future

Nobody can be certain of what the future of social media and search marketing is going to be. My view is that we are going to see a total merging of the two, we see the beginning with Google and Bing showing tweets in search results. We will to have to wait and see.

Conclusion

Yes social media does have an ever increasing part to play in traffic generation for businesses we will just have to be creative in how we use these channels.

SEO Web Design Secrets: Search Engine Optimization Tips For Beginners – Web Design Tips – Web Development

Posted by admin – 28/02/2010

web design SEO Web Design Secrets: Search Engine Optimization Tips For Beginners

SEO web design is a skill that can be learned, though most search engine optimization for beginners courses dwell too much on linking strategy as opposed to web site design per se. There are many ways for most normal people to get an improved search engine ranking, and secure a high search engine listing, and while linking is important, good on-site SEO is also necessary.

Although it might not seem like it, getting a good listing on Google or any of the other search engines is not as difficult as many like to claim. There are rules to follow, and if you play the game properly then the outcome should be in your favour. The tips provided in this article are not really secrets as such; although many people offer to divulge marvelous secrets to you, all they are giving you is stuff that people have been using for years.

So you won't get any secrets here. I have nothing hidden away that I don't want anybody to know, and if I had I wouldn't tell you about it! Would you? If you had some secrets that were so valuable that they were making you money, would you give them away free in an article like this one? Of course you wouldn't!

So here are my not-so-secret tips on getting a good listing in Google and improving your search engine ranking. You likely know a fair bit about meta tags, and have been informed that most are not used by search engines. Well let me tell you something. If you Google' Article Services you will finds my website right at the top in the #1 position for that keyword. Check the description that Google provides right under the title: that is exactly as it is in the Description' tag that I have on the site. So don't let anybody tell you that Google don't use the Description tag, because they do. So do Ask and MSN (now Live Search), and Yahoo also uses it, but not the whole thing exactly as written.

The Keyword tag is another matter. Google aren't interested in what you tell them the keywords are: they decide the relevance of the page themselves from the text and Alt tags on the page. Google no longer need keyword repetition to understand what you are writing about: they have the LSI algorithm now, that will determine the meaning of your page from the character strings it contains. The algorithm is programmed to calculate a relevance factor from the vocabulary you use in relation to the rest of the vocabulary on the page. However, back to SEO web design, and some search engine optimization tips for beginners.

In addition to the Description meta tag, the HTML tags you should use are:

1. The Keywords meta tag. Although little used it only takes a second to put in, and does no harm. There is evidence that some search engines might use it. The rest of the meta tags are pointless.

2. The TITLE tag. This is the title of your web page, and should contain the primary keyword for the page. Each page should be written round one primary keyword that relates to the subject of your website or niche.

For example, if your niche is costume jewelry, the primary keyword for your home page would be costume jewelry'. You could then have a number of 'silos' with a main page title each. The title of one main silo page could be 'simulated diamonds' and the first page title of that silo could be garnets'. All of these are the primary keywords for their respective pages. Another silo could be colored gem stones', with that as the primary keyword for the main silo page, and that for your first sub-page in that silo could be citrine'. And so on.

Each page must have one primary keyword, and it should be included in the Title tag for that page. The Title tag does not appear in the body of the article, but in the HTML between the two HEAD tags in your html.

3. The H tag. These are heading tags, with H1 being the most important. The heading for each main section in your page should be contained within H1 tags, and many pages have only the one set of such tags. Subheadings, containing secondary keywords, should be contained within H2 tags, and so on. Thus, in the example above, the heading or your garnets silo could be could be Garnets in Costume Jewelry' in H1 tags.

After an introduction to garnets, you could then have an H2 heading containing The Source of Garnets: Where Garnets Come From', then another passage of text headed How Garnets are Cut for Costume Jewelry', again held in H2 tags.
4. The ALT attribute. Use Alt = within the Img tags of your images and graphics. This lets the search engines know what the graphic is about: search engines do not read graphics, and the Alt attribute offers you the chance to use your graphics meaningfully with respect to SEO web design.

TEXT FORMATTING

That's all you have to worry about regarding the HTML tags. You text formatting can be used to emphasize to search engines what the important text on your page is. Thus, if you use bold text, underscoring or italics, they indicate the important words and phrases. Thus, use the STRONG and U html tags in your heading.

WRITE NATURALLY

Don't worry too much about your keyword density (KD), other than having to much. Too high a KD could harm you if Google thinks you are making unnecessary use of them. Write naturally for human readers, and not robots. If your text reads well and makes it clear what the subject of the passage is about, then you will be fine. In my writing I ignore the concept of KD altogether. I use my keywords as indicated above, and also in the first and last 100 characters on the page (or at least in the last paragraph somewhere).

Good SEO web design is not keyword fixated, but contains good contextually related vocabulary that the LSI algorithm can use to target the relevance of the page to the search term being used by somebody using the search engine to find information. That's all a keyword is: a term used by somebody looking for information. If you cannot work without a target KD, then I would go for a max of 1% with plenty associated vocabulary, synonyms. Related terms, etc.

Thus, if you are writing a 400 word article on the keyword losing weight', use these words four times, not twelve (1% not 3%)

None of these are web design secrets, and I doubt if there are any such secrets left any more. I suppose the only thing even approaching a secret here is that my description meta tag is copied exactly by Google in the listing for my #1 placed website. That allows you to determine how Google users see the description of your site in the listing.

I have several more SEO web design tips to offer, but these will be the subject of another article. In the meantime if you implement these search engine optimization tips for beginners, then you should soon see an improvement in your website's search engine ranking.

If you want more SEO web design tips, you will find Part 2 of this article with more search engine optimization tips for beginners on Seocious Tips 2 along with a free gift for everybody from me, Pete Nisbet of SEOcious.

New project 4officecleaning.co.uk

Posted by admin – 18/11/2009

New website focused on providing office cleaning services nationwide http://4officecleaning.co.uk

We are now targeting SEO customers in Sheffield

Posted by admin – 14/11/2009

We are now targeting SEO customers in Sheffield. We are now actively taking on new SEO customers based in Sheffield

SEO Sheffield

We are now targeting SEO in Retford

Posted by admin – 14/11/2009

Webmojo is now actively targeting company’s in Retford who need to market their business online

SEO Retford

We are now targeting SEO in Worksop

Posted by admin – 13/11/2009

Webmojo is now actively targeting company’s in Worksop who need to market their business on the web

SEO Worksop

A Blog Or a Regular Website – Which is Best?

Posted by admin – 10/11/2009

I receive many questions about which are better: a blog or a regular static website. Often times, they have heard that blogs are more Google-friendly than a regular website. Everyone has probably read that Google loves blogs. Well, that is true, but there is nothing inherent about blogs that Google loves.

The truth about blogs is that they usually get updated more often and they usually have more content than a regular static website. It’s that content, and the updating of the content, that Google appreciates. They like lots of content and fresh content. If one were to create a static website and a blog on the same topic and write fresh content on a regular basis for the blog and fresh content on a regular basis for the website, they would be on absolutely equal footings. In other words, there is nothing about the structure of a blog site that makes it more SEO friendly to Google than a regular static website. It’s just that adding content is far easier and far quicker; therefore, more content is usually placed on the blog compared to a static website.

Now, for smaller niches, it’s not necessary to constantly update your content in order to stay ranking well. I have many sites that have been indexed by Google for three or four years and I have made absolutely no changes to those websites and they still rank on the first pages from the keywords that I optimized for back then. However, if you’re in a very highly competitive area, such as weight loss, home mortgages, insurance, or dating, then more work is required to maintain your rankings. This is because there are countless other sites constantly using SEO and trying to rank on that first page also.

Since Google does appreciate fresh content, when you’re in competition with all the other sites, if your content is fresh and optimized on a regular basis, then you have an advantage over those other sites. It’s very important to remember. And there is something else where beginners often times find themselves in trouble. They do hear that updating the content is important; however, let’s say you have a small niche website in a small area, and it’s ranking very well. You believe that it’s important to go in and change the content on a regular basis. This can actually hurt your site. You may be ranking very high in Google. Changing the content may inadvertently change the way Google sees your site, therefore, dropping you off of the first page. That happens all the time. If your niche is small, and your page is ranking well, do not modify the page.

If your page is ranking, say, on position number eight or nine, and you wish to move up, the safest way to do that is to get more original content and add more pages to your site. Then you can have multiple pages ranking well for the same keywords.

Steve Weber

10 Rules of Starting a Small Business on a Budget

Posted by admin – 30/08/2009

Self employed business worman

  1. Leave your ego at home.

    2. I mention this because a long time ago I had a friend who announced that he had gone into business and was going to be the next big web entrepreneur. He borrowed 50k off of his parents which he promptly blew on hosting parties and hiring out night clubs under the guise of PR and marketing , the business folded quite promptly leaving his parents with a second mortgage on there home and him with no way of repaying them

  2. Spend on what you need, not on what you would like.

    3. I would like an Aston Martin but all I need is a car. I tend to look at the business process as assets and liabilities. A small economical second hand car will cost me around 1,200 a year to run , a flash new car will cost me considerably more without providing any more benefit and will in-fact become a liability to my fledgling business.

    When starting a small business there is a tendency to want a plush office with state of the art technology even if its a spare room you want it to be top notch (see point 1) you don’t need fancy tools or super fast computers to write letters or do your accounts, get real, buy sensibly or borrow if you can.

  3. Work from home as long as you can

    4. Don’t go and buy or rent office space unless there is no other low cost / free alternative I myself only use a small corner of a bedroom to run a web design business and this is more then enough. If you run a trade business where you need to keep tools, secure storage will be more then adequate.

  4. Spend wisely on advertising.

    5. I know this sounds like a sweeping statement but most advertising does not make a return in investment . You may need to advertise in Yellow pages and the Thomson local directories ( the major directories in the UK) but a word of warning when buying directory advertising, I have never met anyone who has had the number of enquirers that the directory sales people suggest that they would get. Work out how many job’s / sales you will need to make your advertising payments a month if it is not at least one tenth of the predicted amount of enquirers don’t do it.

  5. Get networking

    6. When I talk networking I’m not talking TCIP or computers, I’m talking business relationship building there are many business networking organizations the major one in the UK being the British Chamber of Commerce but you have a good many other’s such as BNI BRE this may be an expense but good networking can increase business many fold, the better you get at networking the more business you will get.

  6. Tell everybody you meet what you do

    7. I once read a book called the luck factor by Dr. Richard Wiseman and one of the contributing factors to lucky people was being out going. My take on this is that without getting out and meeting people your not going to see or hear of opportunities. I for one, if I hear of someone needing a service that one of my business colleges can supply I will put there name forward as a personal recommendation.

  7. Help other people succeed in business

    8. Offer free advice to start up businesses like yourself. When you first start up you may need to prove how credible you are and nothing makes you look like an expert in your field then a few bit’s of freely given expert advice. Look at it as free marketing, once your tips help someone they could be spreading your name like flu

  8. Get yourself a website

    9. No company that wants to trade with any form of credibility can do without a website. Even if it is not used for marketing, prospective clients need reassurance that you are a permanent reliable company. Nothing gives that reassurance then a website. Websites can start from as little as one hundred pounds.

  9. protect your reputation

    10. Giving good service is a golden rule in most businesses what really causes problems is if you ignore genuine complaints. If you screwed up make it right if you can a sorry can go a long way.

    On the other hand in this sue you, sue me climate make sure,if you are in any trade where you can be sued for something, you have insurance

  10. get advice


    11. How often do you see a business start up spend loads of money on this and that and within six months there closed. Be prepared to ask for help in this current economic climate the government wants you to succeed so there are lots of free business advice and training available. Business link have very experienced advisor’s that will advise you as well as allowing you to bounce ideas around .

What Form of Online Marketing is Best for You

Posted by admin – 17/04/2009

marketing1On-line marketing seems to be creating buzz, lots of it. Marketing directors seem to be scratching their heads, they know how powerful a tool it is, but, don’t know just how it can be implemented to there current projects.

What I’m going to do today is layout the benefits and disadvantages of using particular on-line marketing methods. the two main SEM also known as search engine marketing solutions are SEO and PPC. I am also going to throw Email marketing into the mix as it has its place in any marketing plan.

SEO Marketing

SEO or search engine optimisation is my favourite form of on-line marketing, mainly because of its cost and conversion factor. A website at number one position, in a quality search engine can expect to attract approximately 50% of the clicks for a search term that they are ranking for. So if a term is searched for 1000 times a month, a good estimate is that, your page ranked number one will get approximately 500 clicks a month. With a good conversion rate of 3% (depending on how well your site converts)you could expect 15 new customers per month. Not bad eh!, what would 15 new customers per month, every month how could this improve your  business.

SEO Benefits

  • Once implemented correctly is cost effective
  • Improves with time
  • Highly targeted & qualified leads

SEO Disadvantages

  • Takes time to get to its full potential
  • Needs consistent input to be successful
  • Can only target a few phrases per page

Pay Per Click Marketing

Pay Per Click is the best way to gain traffic quickly, you can launch a website on Monday morning and have targeted traffic on your site by Monday afternoon. With a little research PPC can be very lucrative way of gaining visitors. The downside of PPC is that you have to pay a small (sometimes large) amount of money each and every time someone clicks on your advert. The rule of thumb is, you need to spend less on the clicks then the profit you can make.

PPC Benefits

  • Fast, very fast way of gaining traffic
  • You can target a larger set of keywords or phrases
  • Detailed click through statistics enabling you to fine tune your campaign

PPC disadvantages

  • Cost
  • PPC, click through rates are around 6 times less then organic search results

Email marketing

Email marketing, in the past, got a lot of bad press. With its affiliation with spam and people receiving a lot of unsolicited emails.

Email marketing can be an extremely powerful tool when implemented correctly. Email marketing has to be permission based ( at least have a way of un-subscribing if you’re working from a brokered list). People do not like receiving email that presumes that they are interested in your product.

The correct way to start an email marketing campaign

Build an opt in list, you do this by getting people to subscribe to your newsletter via your website. As a hook you could offer them something for free.

Do not just email your list with sales copy give them something of value, like information to help there business. If you are going to include marketing for your service make sure it is relevant to your target audience.

If they do not want to continue receiving your newsletter give them a clear way of un-subscribing


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