TVS Internet Marketing, LLC.

Websites, SEO, and PPC for Small Business Websites

small business websites

Small Business Website Redesign and SEO: Don’t Get Burned

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website-redesign-and-seoThe link between a website redesign and SEO is pretty clear and easy to understand. It’s this: unless you take some specific steps you’re going to lose traffic.

But before we get into why this happens and what you can do about it, let’s talk about what actually counts as a website redesign. I’m talking about completely changing your URLs, overhauling your entire site structure, or migrating all of your content to a new content management system.

For example, perhaps your original web designer put you on Perch. You discover it’s too clunky and difficult to deal with, so you decide to go with WordPress instead. You’re about to engage in a website redesign.

Overhauling or updating the content on your site does not count as a website redesign unless you’re performing a slash-and-burn on a whole bunch of pages on your site. If the URLs remain the same you’re in good shape.

In short, an actual redesign is a major undertaking.

What Happens?

A site that’s been around for awhile has typically built up a pretty complicated structure.

Internally, you might have blog posts linking to other blog posts, for example. This really helps your SEO, but this internal structure can become damaged or disrupted when you try to do the relaunch.

Why? Because if you don’t catch the URL changes on every single blog post you’re going to have internal links that are pointing to places that don’t exist anymore instead of strengthening and supporting your site the way they used to.

Externally, you’ve probably built up a series of backlinks if you’re ranking at all. If you launch the new site in a haphazard way those backlinks will also point to a bunch of places that no longer exist, and not to your site where they can do you some good. This means both the robots and the people who try the links will end up disappointed.

Finally, there’s the trust Google invested into your old site. If Google doesn’t recognize the new site as either the old site or as an extension of the old site then all of that trust simply goes away. You’ll have to build it all back up from scratch, which is hardly a pleasant thought. Remember how long it took you the first time?

What to Do About It

You can simply prevent the problem. Launch a good website from day one, put it on WordPress to begin with, and keep it properly maintained. If you do this you will almost never need this kind of an overhaul, even if you want to change your URL.

Why won’t changing the URL matter? Because you can use a redirect domain to give yourself a different URL without touching the old website at all. The two URLs will exist simultaneously, but they’ll both point to the same place.

If this ship has sailed then you simply need to be aware that a website redesign is one of those tasks that absolutely requires the help of a SEO professional.

Don’t believe me? Then prepare to go wading in the weeds for a bit. Take a look at Search Engine Journal’s take on the process: How to Avoid SEO Disaster During a Redesign – Top Marketer Concerns.

If any part of that post is Greek to you, then just get help. You’ll thank yourself later.

Does SEO Matter to Small Business Owners?

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does-seo-matterSearch Engine Land recently ran an article called Confessions of an $100/month SEO Client. It was an interview with a small business owner who had invested very little into his internet marketing profile.

I spend a lot of time talking about building your web presence and making use of SEO. But as a business owner it’s certainly worth asking the question: does SEO matter and does it actually help your business?

The experience of the SMB featured in the interview is somewhat unique since he got a lot of leads from a local service that’s only available in California. It was still a service that placed him online, however, and which contributed to his overall web presence.

He also did a lot of PPC advertising, and it looks like he did well enough with it that he credited it for a large portion of his business. Imagine what he could do with organic traffic, which receives the bulk of the clicks!

Inforza.com recently put together some stats about SEO that SMBs should pay attention to as they evaluate this question for their own businesses.

Emphasis mine.

“8 SEO Stats that are Hard to Ignore when you’re trying to justify whether or not you should be investing in search engine optimization.

  • 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
  • Google owns 65-70% of the search engine market share.
  • 70% of the links search users click are organic.
  • 70-80% of users ignore paid ads focusing on organic results.
  • Search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%.
  • SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate.
  • For Google, 18% of organic clicks go to the #1 position, 10% of organic clicks go to the #2 position, and 7% of organic clicks go to the #3 position.

In short, SEO beats just about everything else. (Though social media is important for other reasons).

The 14.6% close rate struck me as particularly relevant. It’s yet another reason why small business owners need to think about diverting a lot of their old-school advertising budgets into SEO.

And it’s a great reason why you need to think about investing enough into your internet marketing efforts to actually make a difference.

What about blogging? How does that help you and why should you invest any efforts into the exercise?

Here are some statistics that The Inbound Writer blog compiled from several other sources.

  • Because 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content, they are more likely to buy from that company.
  • Interesting content is a top 3 reason people follow brands on social media.
  • Social media sites and blogs reach 8 out of 10 of all US Internet users and account for 23% of all time spent online.
  • 90% of consumers find custom content useful and 78% believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them.
  • Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links.
  • The average cost to generate a lead through inbound marketing ($143) is about half the average for outbound marketing ($373).

434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links is a stat worth paying attention to. It demonstrates one of the reasons that blogging is so important.

Simply put, every blog post increases your chances of being found. It lets you rank for 130 keywords, as an example, instead of 3 keywords.

After awhile, all of these efforts reach critical mass and you start seeing an explosion of business that you never would have had if you hadn’t invested in SEO, blogging and social media alike.

So does SEO matter? Yes! And it will continue to matter well into the foreseeable future.

How a Contractor Can Use A Web Contact Form to Make More Sales

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In a previous post we talked about how your web contact form can chase customers away if it isn’t set up correctly. But there are other ways to lose these leads.

This is a slide show presentation from B2B Lead Roundtable. The numbers are just as applicable to selling to homeowners as they are to commercial sales.

So what are the takeaways of this presentation, and how do they relate to web contact forms?

Call Your Leads Fast

According to the presentation it takes about 5 minutes for a contact form lead to go stale. You need a way to put in a call the moment someone hits “submit.”

Your office staff can tackle the task if you want, as could an inside sales rep. Or you could use your mobile phone.

This was a technique that was recently outlined on a Screenwerk.com post called “Plumber: 95% of My Leads Come from Yelp.”

“He [the plumber] spoke about his reliance on his smartphone as a tool in the field and how he uses it to take payments (Square) and quickly respond to emails and make callbacks.”

This is a huge area of opportunity. Slide 9 indicates that it takes most people 44 minutes to put in a call back. If you’re competing with anyone at all you’re likely to become the winner simply by being the first person to pick up the phone.

Slide 11 makes this even more clear. 78% of the sales are going to the first caller, according to the report.

Now of course, if your prospect uses the form at 3 in the morning it’s more than acceptable to give them a call at a more reasonable hour. You don’t have to monitor your web form 24/7. Just make sure it’s covered during normal business hours.

Be Persistent

So you didn’t get the homeowner the first time. Do you drop a voicemail and go on to other things?

Not if you want to make the sale. Note slide 14. You need to try calling at least 6 times before you giveup.

Slide 41 specifically suggests 8 calls.

However, do leave a solid voice mail when you do call. Otherwise, how will the caller know that you were the first and fastest to respond? If they didn’t pick up the phone, they wouldn’t.

Keep in Touch

The slide show talks about capturing permissions in order to make contact again sometime in the future. It may be more efficient to just offer the option to subscribe to your blog so that potential customers can receive an update every time you update your blog.

According to massively popular blogger Jon Morrow, this represents the wave of the future.

I’ve talked about email marketing before. Even then I was talking about simply sending out blog updates as a time-saver. Let’s face it, your blog is the place where you’re working to create content that is specifically useful to the reader, and that’s pretty much the only kind of e-mail that the customer is that interested in receiving.

However, it’s not the only way to get the job done. Some people use their e-mail lists to go beyond the basics and to get “deeper into the weeds,” moving beyond the content they post online.

One way or the other though, you have to provide some method to hold onto people who visit your website and express an interest. Otherwise they’re just going to forget about you.

Using Calendars and Reminder Calls

I was quite intrigued by Slide 31, which mentions how Google or Outlook calendar invites can decrease no-shows. You could do this for estimate appointments and for service appointments, but you should definitely ask the customer’s permission to do this while you’ve got them on the phone.

Asking permission also gives you the chance to ask customers which of the two services they prefer to use.

However, the reminder call idea on Slide 32 does not require any special permissions.

Closing Thoughts

If you’ve done what it takes to turn your website into a big lead generation machine you’re already doing more than your competition probably is. Now you just need to tighten up your response so you can make the most of this advantage.

How to Develop Content Customers Care About

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how-to-develop-contentBy now, it’s pretty clear that knowing how to develop content is pretty vital for just about any business. But how can a small business owner develop content that really matters to customers?

After all, there isn’t a lot of profit in taking shots in the dark. You really need a way to tap into that “wow” factor.

Fortunately, there are several easy ways to accomplish this goal.

Do a Little Digging

In a previous post I talked about using Yahoo! Answers and LinkedIn Answers to find out what your target market is thinking about.

Some things have changed since that post. LinkedIn Answers went away, for example (though LinkedIn Groups now serves the same basic function).

You can dig elsewhere, too. Forums that cater to your target niche are a great place to see what people are asking about. So are blogs. You can just look right in the blog comments to determine what people are struggling with.

Listen While They’re There

Every business has a group of about 20 questions that customers ask again and again. 18 of those questions probably have both a “long answer” and a “short answer.”

Deliver the short answers in person (that’s probably what’s already happening). Turn the long answers into blog posts.

You might even save your staff a little bit of time, which never hurts.

See What’s Trending

Sometimes, it’s all about the latest and greatest. You can also build relationships by pointing people towards other people’s blog content.

But it’s pretty easy to lose yourself in a content sea.

I recommend following blogs and Google alerts through Feedly. You can separate content by category or search term and get a look at the current state of your industry in a matter of minutes.

This is nice, because it lets you come up with content that’s a bit more insightful and in-depth. “What is a Widget?” posts have their place, but “My Analysis of the Latest Widget Development Featured in Widget Crunch” is actually capable of driving a conversation.

Watch Your Analytics

Search terms that constantly appear in your Google analytics tells you something about the kinds of problems that people are trying to solve by coming to your business.

Sometimes, the queries will be vague or strange. Other times, you’ll get long tail keywords that are nothing more than a question begging for an answer.

It’s Still a Guessing Game

All of these methods really only produce educated guesses about content development. It’s important to realize that any post you create is going to be something of a guess.

And that’s okay. Because a website should never be all about a single piece of content.

A website is a total content package, built up slowly over time.

The 9 Keys to Good Small Business Website Development

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small-business-website-developmentWe get a lot of questions from business owners about what makes a good small business website. Development of a small business website is a pretty important thing to pay attention to since these days your website pretty much rests at the center of any good modern day marketing effort.

Every website is a little bit different. However, I can give you 9 design elements that will help you succeed.

1. WordPress Integration

WordPress is so SEO and user friendly that it barely makes sense not to use it. There are other content management platforms, but many of them are needlessly complicated and few are as easy to customize.

Ease of use and customization are important. Frankly, you’re already pressed for time. There’s no good reason to create a website that’s going to be a headache for you to update.

If you’re doing it yourself, most hosting services will let you install WordPress simply by clicking the appropriate link.

2. A Custom, Branded Theme

Free themes just aren’t going to cut it. You want a clean, attractive, personalized WordPrss theme that helps you communicate your business brand.

When you do this, you’ll get a real edge over the competition that helps you grow your business simply by making you look more interesting, professional, and credible.

Your website is the one place that customers will go to find you and evaluate your products or services. Spend the money.

3. A Unique Selling Proposition

You can add this on an “About Us” page or a “Why Us” page, but it needs to be there. And 91% of the words on that page need to be all about the customer’s needs and problems, not how great you are.

See my previous post about writing a good About Page if you’re not sure how to do this.

4. A Clean, Navigable Menu

Make your site easy to get around. Put a drop-down menu right at the top.

Make good use of sub-menus so that you’re not crowding up the page. Make sure that the menu includes the following items:

  • Your Home Page
  • Your Major Products or Services
  • Your Service Area (If Applicable)
  • Your Contact Information
  • Your Blog

What about testimonials? Some people put them on a separate tab, others feature them right on their home page so that people can see them right away.

5. A Blog

You need one.

It needs to be updated with relevant content at least twice a week. If you’re not sure what to put on your blog, see the following articles:

Each blog post should contain at least 250 words of relevant, readable, useful information that’s interesting to your customers. Think about what your customers ask you all the time – that stuff is a goldmine for potential blog post topics.

Photos and videos are a big plus whenever and wherever appropriate.

6. Social Sharing Buttons

Google is using all sorts of social indicators to determine how and where to rank content. That means you need to encourage your visitors to share your content.

You can do this by adding share buttons to your site. They don’t have to display the share count if you don’t want them to – there are plenty of buttons that are just sharing icons.

7. Local Keywords Whenever Appropriate

If you do business in a specific place (and most small businesses do) then you need to take every appropriate opportunity to work the names of that place into your website. This will help you draw visitors who are actually equipped to do business with you.

8. A Contact Form

A contact form will let you reach out to people who visit your website. It builds the bridge between passive readers and new customers.

Just make sure that you don’t overdo it with your contact form. If you do, you could lose sales.

9. A Footer with your Address On It

Make sure the address matches the one in Google+ Local exactly. That way you will naturally build citations with each and every web page you create, which will help you rank higher in local search results.

Get Help if You’re Overwhelmed

Reading this list might have given you an idea of just how much goes into professional internet marketing. If you’re still not sure what to do, we can help.