Improving Your Website - 9 Tips for Making it Effective for Your Business

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Improving Your Website:

Make it Effective for Your

Business

Empowering You to Harness the

Power of the Web!

Rebecca KotzWeb Marketing Consultant

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What we’ll cover …

• Outbound Marketing

• Inbound Marketing

• 9 Ways to Improve Your Website

Empowering You to Harness the

Power of the Web!

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Traditional Outbound Marketing

Empowering You to Harness the

Power of the Web!

Tradeshows

Telemarketing

Paid Advertising

Direct Mail

TV / Radio Ads

Company

Prospects

Interruption

•Spam blockers

• Sirius radio

• Tivo

• Do-Not-Call List

• Caller ID

• Trash can!

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Online Statistics

97% Research products and services online before they

purchase.

55% Of all local searches are done with an intent to buy.

80% Of all local searches result in a phone call or visit a

store and 60% of those result in a purchase.

Empowering You to Harness the

Power of the Web!

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Why use Inbound Marketing?

0

20

40

60

80

Social Marketing Programs

Direct Marketing Programs

Media Advertising Programs

ROI Comparison by Marketing Program

ROI

60:1

11:12:1

Outbound marketing: $1 Investment = $11 Return

Inbound marketing: $1 Investment = $60 Return

Source: Next Century Media. (Jan. 2009). 2008 Social Marketing ROI Report and Benchmark Guide. Powered.com

[Online] Available: http://poweredcorp.dc.powered.com/download/p/courseId/24

43/White_Paper_2008_Soc.htm?courseSessionId=2201 [Nov. 4, 2009].

Empowering You to Harness the

Power of the Web!

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Inbound Marketing Components

Empowering You to Harness the

Power of the Web!

Keywords

• Bridge the Internet to your website through search engine optimization and online advertising.

Web Design & Structure

• Keyword optimization.

• Easily add/edit content.

• Web 2.0 and social media integration.

• Well organized design.

Post Content

• Keyword-based content.

• Start conversations, educate, be an expert .

• Blogs, videos, white papers, e-books, RSS, free tools/trials.

Participate & Build

• Where is your target market congregating?

• Join or create social media communities, participate regularly.

• Build links to website.

Measure & Track

• Benchmarking,statistics and analysis.

• Continual evaluation to keep up with an ever changing environment.

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Why is a Bad website… BAD?

• Lost opportunity!

– Little to no traffic.

– Visitors bounce and never return.

– Lack of lead capture.

– Too little or too much information.

– Difficult or confusing to navigate.

Empowering You to Harness the

Power of the Web!

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What does a Good Website do?

• Pulls in traffic from search engines.

• Captures leads.

• Provides competitive differentiation.

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Power of the Web!

A quality website is your 24/7 sales team!

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Power of the Web!

9 Tips to Improve

Your Website

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Tip 1: Calls to Action

• Capture lead info with an offering:

– Webinar

– Whitepaper or ebook

– Trial or product sample

– Contest

– Coupon / discount

– Special tool

– Proposal / quote

– eNewsletter

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Power of the Web!

Include at least 1 call to action on

your website to increase visitor

interactions.

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Tip 2: Create Content

• Create 1,000s of pages!

– Small business websites have approx. 10-20 pages

(home, about us, product, contact us…)

– Add photos, blog posts, videos, podcasts, webinars,

presentations, kits, whitepapers, ebooks, online tools,

games, quizzes, press releases, etc.

Empowering You to Harness the

Power of the Web!

The more content on your website, the better your

chances of being found by your target audience.

Create 1-2 pages a week!

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Tip 3: Blog

• Want to be at the top of page 1?

– One of the best ways is to blog.

• Add a blog to your website to increase your

search engine rankings:

– Adds keyword-rich pages.

– Increases the potential for incoming links.

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Power of the Web!

Create a plan for content and post to your blog

once a week about topics important in your

industry. Use good keywords!

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Tip 4: Social Media

• Facebook – A Business Party After Work

• Twitter – The Old Water Cooler

• LinkedIn – A Networking Event

• YouTube – Open Mic Night

Empowering You to Harness the

Power of the Web!

Join social media sites and post tips with links to

your blog posts, special content and offerings to

help increase leads.

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Tip 5: Monitor

• Install traffic analytics into your website.

– Google analytics

• Utilize monitoring tools to find mentions of your

company, products, services, etc.

– Google alerts

– TweetBeep

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Power of the Web!

Analyze your website monthly for

the amount of traffic, # of new

visitors and length of time a visitor

stays on your site.

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Tip 6: Increase Links

• Directories

• Blogs

• Social media sites: digg, delicious, twitter, …

• Partners

• Customers

• Membership organizations

• Charities

• Vendors

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Power of the Web!

You want lots of links to your

website to increase your rankings

and help attract more visitors.

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Tip 7: Optimize for Keywords

• Update your page content and page titles to be

keyword-rich.

– Keywords = the words your customers type into

Google search to find your company, products and

services

• To find good keywords, try:

– seokeywordanalysis.com

– google.com/sktool

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Power of the Web!

A website without keywords is like a

car without gas… it’s going

nowhere!

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Websites with Keywords

• 75% of clicks are to natural search results.

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Power of the Web!

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Advertising with Keywords

• 25% of clicks are with ads…

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Power of the Web!

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Tip 8: Usability

• Make sure your website is easy to use:

– Navigation

– Search

– Site map

– White space

– Images

– Consistency of font, design, voice

– Quick load time

Empowering You to Harness the

Power of the Web!

Analyze your homepage and every

page on your website to make sure

it is easy for visitors to use.

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Tip 9: Business Processes

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Power of the Web!

• Google Map Integration

• Comment System

• Weather

• Event Calendar

• Photo Gallery

• Document Manager

• Message Board

• Forms System

• Live Chat

• E-News System

• Quiz / Survey System

• Online Donations

• Product Catalogue

• E-Commerce Shopping System

• Employment System

• Event Registration

Try to incorporate some sort of

business processes to streamline

your sales process.

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Virtual Coaching

• Go to www.gems-solutions.com/virtual-coaching

to sign-up for FREE 9 Lessons to help you

improve your website.

• Simply add your name and email address.

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Power of the Web!

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Thank you!

GEMS Solutions, LLC

• Website Design

• Website Marketing

• Website Training

• Website Seminars

www.gems-solutions.com

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