One of the most asked questions when it comes to websites is:

“How do I get more website traffic?’

Here are 6 ways (there are loads more too!):

1) Promote your website address offline. Use it on business cards, vehicle signs, mailings, brochures and in articles.

2) Always quote your website address in email and forum signatures eg:

David Lowe
Managing Director
Maximum Web Profits Limited
http://www.maximumwebprofits.co.uk/
“Helping Small Businesses To Win On The Web”

3) Add a blog to your website. Blogs provide a way of getting web pages listed faster into search engines. A carefully worded and focused blog could be indexed in under 48 hours. A standard web page could take several weeks.

4) Add keyword focused pages to your website. Each page contains interesting content that is focused around a single keyword phrase. You should aim to have 100+ keyword pages on your site. The more pages you have, the more change you will have of the pages being listed, being searched on and being visited.

5) Add a sitemap to your site. Search engines will use a sitemap to drill down into the rest of the pages on your site. Without one, you rely on the search engine following page links etc which is less reliable. With one, you’ll find that all your website pages are indexed and potentially listed. Much better.

6) Use a good (no, a great) website analytics system. By knowing who is visiting your website and where they came from, you can refine and improve the way you attract traffic.

Hope these help.
D.

A blog on a website is a powerful asset for fresh content and search engine listings.

Your blog should be focused and relevant to your product or service and give valuable information to your audience.

By carefully selecting the blog topic, you can choose keywords that will be picked up by the search engines and used to drive traffic to your site.

Our previous blog posting (here) was posted on the 24th June 2008 and was listed in the search results of Google today (26th June). It shows that Google loves fresh content and will list it quickly.

This is great news as it means targetted traffic is being driven to your site super quick.

There are several blog packages available although our preferred blog is Wordpress (www.wordpress.org). This can be easily installed on your site and will be up and running within minutes.

Have fun!
D.

Search engine optimisation is one of the services that we enjoy delivering for clients. Mainly for two reasons:

1) We enjoy the challenge!

2) We enjoy it when the client sees success through the work we have done.

We have spent alot of time working on how we create the keyword optimised pages and how we get them listed in Google (and other search engines).

Sometimes Google does it’s own thing and lists a page in a different keyword search to the one we were aiming for. Because of the complexity of the way Google analyses and indexs pages, it is impossible to get it right everytime.

However, here’s an example of when it does go right:

washing machines parts evesham
How To Correctly Indentify Your Washing Machines Parts For Replacement.
www.lenchservice.co.uk/washing_machines_parts_evesham.php - 9k -

This is an extract directly from the Google search results page. This entry is in position number 1 for the keyword phrase ‘washing machines parts evesham’.

There are three parts to the results displayed above:

1) The keyword phrase - ‘washing machines parts evesham’

This simply displays the keyword phrase. This is taken from the keyword meta tag inside the html page code:

meta name="keywords" content="washing machines parts evesham"

2) The page description - ‘How To Correctly Indentify Your Washing Machines Parts For Replacement.’

This is the description of the page. It is vital that it contains the keyword phrase and reads as an enticement to encourage a click through to the web page. It is taken directly from the description meta tag inside the html page code:

meta name="description" content="How To Correctly Indentify Your Washing Machines Parts For Replacement"

3) The web page name - ‘www.lenchservice.co.uk/washing_machines_parts_evesham.php’

This is the actual name of the web page. It contains the keyword phrase spaced using an underscore (_). The underscore is important because it allows the search engine to ‘read’ the individual words within the web page name.

The way Google has picked up the various elements of the meta tags and web page name shows how important it is to make sure these elements are always within your web pages.

Without them, Google will make a best guess of what the page is about - and it could be way off!

D.

How important is customer service?

Do you really need to be ‘nice’ to your customers?

Can you just give them an average level of service (just like your competitors) and still continue to get business from them?

It amazes me how many companies still give lousy customer service. Even big, well known brands are being hammered in the press for their lack of customer service.

It shouldn’t be like this. Every company should understand and focus on customer service.

Why? Because it cements the relationship with your customer and provides a ’sub-concious’ barrier to moving their business away.

So what is great customer service?

To answer this, it is probably easier to give you an example of bad customer service.

Following on from this blog entry, I contacted the company concerned and received an email reply.

First tick in the box - they replied to my email.

The person replying apologised for the problem and stated that someone, specifically the Product Manager for this service, would call me back. Three days later and they have not called.

Additionally, in my email I specifically asked for a refund of the money I had paid. This has not been done either.

This is bad customer service. I won’t name the company, but they are a multi-national multi-million pound organisation in the parcel delivery and post business (no, it’s not Royal Mail - guess again!).

They should know better. They may be sitting back thinking that their size and brand presence will carry their business forward.

To a point this is probably true - but sooner or later, bad customer service will play a part and they will feel the financial impact.

What can we learn from this?

Well the most valuable lesson is drive customer service through your business and make sure every employee knows that you are a customer focused business.

You should be ‘wowing’ your customers and using this euphoria to gather positive testimonials (like these).

And here’s one you should try…

Don’t just aim for great customer service - go for legendary customer service.

D.

Is the UK in a recession?

Certainly the media would have you think so. Personally I think there are two critical factors that create a recession:

1) Consumers ‘believing’ they are in a recession.

2) Ecomonic conditions supporting the belief that there is a recession.

These two factors create a sprial which forms a recession.

I’m not saying that we can ‘believe’ our way out of a recession, but we can limit the recessionary effect.

Let me give you an example.

A friend of mine manages a local jewellers. It’s a well respected company with shops all over the Midlands.

Four weeks ago, she mentioned that sales were very low and her shops performance in the group was amongst the bottom few.

Today, her shop is the best performing shop (by some way) and sales are growing week on week.

How has this change come about? Two reasons:

1) She has changed her belief to be positive. She is finding ways to promote the business and grab sales. Other shops are sat back believing there is a recession so why should they bother. She is not letting the recession get her down.

2) Many consumers are still spending money. The trick is to realise this and to set out to find these consumers and sell to them - which she is doing.

And here’s the good news. Your website could be a great sales tool for you - especially during recessionary times.

It’s a 24/7 sales machine that could be bringing in sales and profits for you. Take a look at your site and ask yourself these three questions:

1) Is the site getting good, targeted traffic?

2) Does the site have a ’sales trail’ that encourages visitors to move to the ‘call to action’?

3) Does the site have a ‘call to action’ that converts visitors into prospects?

If the answer is NO to any of these questions, please give me a call on freephone 0800 311 2135 - I’d love to help.

D.

I spotted this quote on a site today:

“Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards–and living up to them–is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it.”

Seth Godin

Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change.

He is certainly fanatical about customer service and delivering the highest standard possible to customers.

Steve Hackney, a friend of mine, used to call it the ‘WOW Factor’. Making your customers positively gasp at the service you deliver. Only by doing this can you ever begin to build a business to be proud of.

Tom Peters, the best selling author, called it ‘in search of excellence’. Taking customer service to a level beyond what is expected by your customer.

Take our business as an example.

One of the common criticisms of a web design company is the turn around times. Even small changes seem to take ages. Building a new site could take weeks - even months.

We try to do things differently. We have the systems in place to make changes to sites quickly - hours sometimes minutes and whole sites take as little as seven working days.

We do not compromise accuracy or quality, but have refined the processes to enable us to deliver a fantastic service.

Here’s a client testimonial to prove the point:

“The initial template design was done in a day or so and the site finished, with all content added, within a week. The design is fresh and gives a professional feel. I would recommend Maximum Web Profits Limited and would certainly use them again myself.”

Ben Buitendag
Mr Club Cleaner
http://www.mrclubcleaner.co.uk/

We will continue to improve and ‘wow’ our clients. It makes us feel good.

D.