This is the fourth article in the Supercharge Your Website series. Most of us have written something about what we do at some point in our careers. This may have been in the form of a brochure, fact sheet or even in an email or letter to a client. It shouldn’t be a great deal of work to put this into an article format of around 400 to 1000 words.

The reason behind this is that there are numerous sites on the internet that offer free articles for people post on their site. The only stipulations are that they are not allowed to remove the credit, remove the link to your website or change the article in any way. By submitting an article you will generate a significant volume of links to your site (remember a link from another site is considered by Google to be a recommendation) as well as immediately becoming a ‘published author’ which could help potential clients view you a leader in your industry.

There are 2 ways to get your site published, you can use automated software to submit your site, there are many of these available. One of these is Article Submitter which can be found here:- http://articlesubmitter.imwishlist.com/. If you want the ‘Platinum’ edition, feel free otherwise just bypass all the heavy american marketing and get the free one (which is absolutely sufficient for most peoples needs).

The other way to get your article published is to type the words “free articles” in to Google. This will produce the main article sites. Just go into these and follow the on-screen instructions.

NB Don’t think for a minute that your industry or specialism is too boring to be published – if you’re in doubt just take a look at some of the stuff on the free article sites!

Once your article has been submitted you will find that the internet will soon be awash with your article! Well maybe that’s a bit optimistic, but you should certainly have some more links back to your site than you had before.

This is the third post in the Supercharge Your Website series which is focussed on increasing traffic to your website. I’m still a little surprised at how many people still aren’t putting their contact details at the foot of their emails. For those that do, many of us have our web addresses subtly placed at the foot of our address – why not use this as an advertising opportunity and turn it into a ‘call to action’? Here’s one from one of my favorite clients:-

We have just launched a wonderful new website – www.icon-interiors.co.uk – do take a look at the Emporium section for our new range of bespoke furniture.

Far more compelling than a simple link.

This is the second post in the Supercharge Your Website series. There are numerous directories on line and many of them are free. To start with, understand that if someone links to your web site, a search engine will consider it a recommendation and will award your web site points accordingly. These points will help you rise up through the ranks so fire up Google and type in Free Directories. You will be rewarded with pages and pages of free directories.

This method is great, you’ll get loads of links to your site, but what we’re really after (if we can get it) is people who are actually in the market for our product or service, so let’s get a bit clever about it.

The word Vertical Portal is a bit of jargon that basically means a doorway (or in this instance a web site) that is dedicated to your market (in our case web design) or even to your area. The most powerful links will come from vertical portals so let’s start here. Type your industry into google followed by the word directory –  so for us it would be “web design directory” – this should produce a plethora of vertical portals in which you can list.

Next let’s look at your area, for many products and services potential clients prefer to use local companies so by listing in local directories you not only improve your standing in the search engine rankings but you’ll also stand a good chance of generating a stream of genuine enquiries. The method is the same, type in your region followed by the word Directory e.g. Hampshire directory.

There are 2 parts to supercharging any web site.

First, your web site needs to be found by your target market. Whether this is via the search engines, through email shots or via other marketing activities is going to be a strategic decision based on your individual circumstances, but even the best looking web site is rendered impotent if it’s never been visited. This may sound obvious but it’s surprising how many people I’ve met who have spent large sums of money on a web site that has never been advertised in any way.

The second element to supercharging your web site is all about conversion. Your web site could be right at the top of Google, you may have a pay per click campaign and send regular e-marketing emails but if your website looks tired and dated, if it looks unprofessional because when you started you got your neighbours son to knock it up for £5 and a packet of smarties or  if it no longer accurately represents what you do, then much of your marketing effort has been wasted. 

We’ve written a series of posts that focus on the first issue, how to get found – if you feel that you’re struggling with conversion via your website then we really need to speak, call us on 0845 6121199 and we’ll discuss what we can do for you.

 So…down to business. There are a variety of ways to get your web site found, some are easy some require a bit of time investment. In this post, I’m simply going to point you in the direction of one of our articles.

Search Engine Optimisation 

If you have a system that allows you edit the various elements of your website then you are in a happy a place indeed. With the help of our article on understanding how search engines work, you can set your website up to be found and recognised for important key words. 

Trawling the internet, as one does, for industry related stuff I came across this little nugget from the FSB – and I have to say…it’s true! 

Nearly half of small businesses that use the internet to advertise their firm increase turnover by one fifth, according to new figures released by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).

The FSB”s biennial survey of 8,700 members found that 43 per cent of respondents improved their sales after linking to suppliers and using their website to advertise their firm, showing the ever-increasing value of the internet to business transactions, particularly during an economic downturn.

The survey also revealed that the number of small businesses who have their own website has leapt by a quarter to around 70 per cent since the last survey.
Dr Gary Packham, Head of Enterprise at the University of Glamorgan, where the report was compiled, said:

“These figures show the very clear link between new technologies and business growth. If the country”s 4.7million small businesses are to take advantage of the internet to grow their businesses and the economy, they will need good quality services to be in place, as well as good information and education about how to use them.”
John Walker, FSB National Policy Chairman, said:

“The number of small businesses who have their own website has grown over the past two years, which indicates that small firms are becoming increasingly internet-savvy. Despite the onset of an economic downturn, all small firms should look to the internet to maximise their sales and increase efficiency.”

As a web design firm, we often come up against recurring objections, one of the most common is “Why should we pay a web designer to create our site when I can do it myself?”

It is totally understandable that the uninitiated would think this, after all there is a plethora of cheap web design software out there, some comes free, some comes bundled with Office and for the more unscrupulous, the Internet provides many opportunities to illegally download top of the range web design software that we pay hundreds for.

So with all this in mind – why bother using a web design company at all?

First – You get what you pay for.

The first and perhaps most fundamental point that the self builder is missing is that their time has a value, let’s say a nominal £30 per hour.  

With many web design firms, the price you are quoted reflects the amount of time spent in consultation, design and build. Obviously, self-builders don’t need to consult with themselves - they already know their own business – but they are not web designers. Therefore, without support, they will need to:-

• Source and install appropriate web design software
• Source and install appropriate graphic software
• Learn  to use the web design and graphic design packages (with limited or no understanding of the nuts and bolts of websites)
• Design an make up their first web page and then build the subsequent pages
• Select reliable web hosting (good luck on this one!)
• Set up their web address and hosting; and
• Figure out how to get the website live

I’m not sure how this list reads, but if you have limited experience this is one hell of a journey! When contending with running or setting up a business, the last thing you need is to focus on a peripheral.

Second -  Search Engine Visibility

So, the first hurdle has been jumped, a little greyer and wiser but what a fantastic site! And it’s there for all to see – well, those that know it’s there anyway.

The amount of times I’ve heard the proud proclamation ”I rank top in Google if you type in my company name!!” – This is a great start, but the real money is in finding NEW clients that don’t know your company name. If you are nowhere to be seen when someone is looking for your service then you could be losing millions in potential revenue.

Now many web design firms don’t offer search engine optimisation as a stand alone product (we certainly don’t) but they should know what words should go where to grab the attention of the search engines. It is for this reason that if you are looking for a dune buggy safari (Arabia Horizons), Osmo Products (Winchester Joinery) or an APW Cabinet (CommNetworks Ltd) you will find our clients right at the top of the first page in Google (NB: True at the time of writing).

Again, if you want to learn how to optimise your website for search engines, the answers are all out there. There are numerous forums frequented by friendly, helpful people who are only too happy to answer questions – but if you’re starting from scratch – it’s a fairly steep learning curve.

Finally – You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

There are numerous pitfalls to web design that are practically invisible if you don’t know where to look.

For example, we cross-check our work in numerous different browsers (Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari etc.) against numerous different platforms (Windows, Mac etc.) because different variations of these understand web code slightly differently – so you’re beautiful design that looks great on your computer could well look awful when someone else looks at it on their computer. This is just one of the many issues web design companies are aware of and just deal with as a matter of course.

In summary, I have a great deal of admiration for those people who self-teach themselves web design, I know what it takes to become good at this! I have always said that in web design as in life, everything is a trade-off. If you have lots of time on your hands but little money,then by all means DIY is a great way to go, but if you have limited time and a reasonable cash flow then let the professionals do what they do best and focus your efforts on the things that really matter.

The more time I spend at networking events in Winchester and Hampshire, the more the topic of recession is raised and discussed.

In truth, although it is a topic that is hot on everyones lips, I have seen little evidence of the credit crunch effecting Hampshire companies within the circles I move in – if you talk to people and read local press such the Hampshire Chronicle there are many positive stories and examples of new businesses launching in and around Hampshire, those that should be worst hit such as construction companies and mortgage companies appear to be taking affirmative action and being just a little bit more focussed and intelligent with their marketing and their approach to new business generation.

I guess this anomoly could be down to the fact that those companies that I’m speaking of haven’t hidden behind their desks bemoaning the incoming ‘times of doom’, instead they are out and about making new contacts, actively seeking business and making an even bigger effort than usual.

These guys appear to be looking at the recession as a massive opportunity, a time that forces them to take stock of processes, cashflow and new business generation. Also a time in which competition may be decreasing and the opportunity for inexpensive acquisition is ripe.

 I’ve always loved Duncan Banatynes attitude when it comes to business – in a nutshell, anyone can do it, they just need to get off their posteriors, get out there and put the effort in.

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When we started our Winchester based business, we really had no idea where to look for potential clients and partners, so I felt that it might be helpful to

Most of our business is gained through word of mouth or networking primarily in Winchester, but also other areas in Hampshire. We belong to three primary networking groups.

1) BNI

BNI is a weekly breakfast meeting held in Winchester at the Winchester Royal hotel. We pay an annual fee and £10 per meeting which includes a very generous buffet breakfast. BNI is totally focussed on giving and recieving business and is quite rigid in terms of attendance and contribution. Not everyones cup of tea, but it’s been going for over 20 years and really does work for us. It tends to attract smaller businesses, but it’s more about who those people know so it can pan out quite nicely.

2) The Chamber of Commerce

We’ve only attended one lunch so far, but we will be attending a speed networking event in the Winchester hotel very soon. The Chamber is well known locally and tends to attract a more professional, larger business than groups like BNI. Despite our ‘toe in the water’ experience, we’ve already picked up one very good partner who has already started to feed work to us.

3) The Wow Network

This isn’t Winchester based, but seems to float around locally. It’s different from the other events in that its focus is on business owners and running a business as opposed to simply getting business. Definitely worth a look.

If anyone is reading this and would like an introduction to any of these networks, don’t hesitate to get in touch, I’d be more than happy to arrange an invite.

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Amid the hustle and bustle of January sales, Adira felt we should do our bit. So for 1 month only, we’re offering a fantastic £500 off of web design to any Hampshire based company. Check out our January Sales page for more information.

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When we first started Adira, we thought we’d discovered a niche in the UK market. The US, and parts of Europe were going bonkers over ensuring that websites were coded to allow blind and disabled access, they had even legislated to this effect. We found that the UK had also produced legislation under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) but very few UK web designers were adhering to this.

What we didn’t realise at the time was that businesses weren’t interested and now, 3 years on the legislation is still ignored by the authorities.

However, our efforts to produce clean accessible code did not go unrewarded. Blind people use ‘assistive software’ to view a website – this is like a little robot that reads the page to them. Interestingly search engines also use a little robot to read the page.

The end result of this was that all of the websites we developed were not only accessible to blind people, but were also prime fodder for search engines – and this was bourne out in the results we were achieving for our clients time and again – without even having to try! Once we figured this out, it wasn’t much of a leap to turn good search engine results into great search engine results – and a new direction for the company was born!

I guess the moral of the story is if we try to do the right thing, the rewards can sometimes be abundant.

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