Local SEO can benefit your business because it targets your local market without the hassle and expense of things like letterbox drops or advertising in the local paper. By using local SEO you will reach customers who are not only looking for the service you offer but are ready to buy. Local online listings not only promote your website but promote your business location and address. You can have more customers walking through your doors simply by using local SEO. Here are some tips to help you get started:

• If you don’t already have one, consider setting up a website which you can use as a marketing tool to promote your business. Include blogs and articles which are regularly updated.
• Create a Google Local account by entering your company name, address, telephone number and other company details. This will create a Google places listing for you including a map and link to your website.
• Do the same with Yahoo Local, a directory arranged by category and geographic location.
• Although you may not be getting as many referrals from your hard copy of Yellow Pages, you may well get good results from YellowPages.com. With their strong brand name, they are still popular with online searchers.
• Ensure that all the pages of your website include your address, because Google local is linked to Google maps and Google places. Make sure you have listed all the correct information with them, to give your business the best chance of being picked up in local searches.

Because most searchers do not want to be loaded down with irrelevant information when they search, they will use as much specific information to get them what they want. For example, someone living in Bondi trying to find a solicitor is more likely to search for “Solicitors Bondi” than simply “solicitors Sydney” or just “solicitors”. With this in mind, using key words appropriate to your business and location within your blogs and articles will help with Google rankings. By implementing these few actions you can have more local customers heading for your doors.

For more information on local SEO or to speak to someone regarding SEO management contact PlanetDomain on 1300 36 64 05. For a managed SEO solution take a look at our Site Energiser Pro service.

The reality of marketing a business online is not unlike marketing the business in real time. If you were to simply place a sign advertising your business on a random street somewhere in the world, and expect business to flow to you, that would be unrealistic. You would get a far better response from that sign, if you knew that the people you were targeting, were definitely going to see it. This applies online too.

Once you know where your target market is already hanging out, then you can create content on your site, that links with other websites that are already being frequented. There is no need to do this in a competitive way, simply in a way that informs potential customers of your presence and your services.

There are many tools available to websites that can help you get your message out. To begin with, one of the best ways to increase traffic to your site, is to set up some profiles on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. These sites offer you an opportunity to provide free information to potential clients. Try to avoid simple sales blurbs about your business and instead focus on offering valuable information. Blogs and articles on your website are a great way to offer information that will present you as an authority in your field. You can link these articles to your social pages by ‘liking’ and ‘tweeting’. This will take traffic from Facebook and Twitter to your site.

Once you have an idea of how to get people to your site, it is important that when they get there, they find what they want in an easy, interactive way. Remember that people have different ways of taking in information. Those who enjoy visual stimulus will be happy to read and see images; those who prefer to hear information will benefit from an audio presentation and there are those who prefer some kind of interactive experience.

Videos through sites such as YouTube have proven to be an excellent way of driving traffic to other sites. Videos placed directly on to your website also provide visitors with a way of getting to know you or your business.

If you are short on a marketing budget but have time to spare, then all these things are relatively simple to do yourself. If on the other hand, your marketing budget allows it, then hiring an internet marketer will be a good investment. Internet marketers can offer you professionally written articles and content as well as providing all your social network links. They understand the importance of keywords and search engine optimisation and are at the forefront of any changes to internet strategies.

For further information on internet marketing contact PlanetDomain or call us on 1300 36 64 05 to speak to a consultant.

]]> http://blog.planetdomain.com/2012/01/19/what-to-do-when-you-have-the-set-up-but-need-a-kick-start/feed/ http://blog.planetdomain.com/2012/01/03/8-ways-to-grow-your-email-database/ http://blog.planetdomain.com/2012/01/03/8-ways-to-grow-your-email-database/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:04:52 +0000 Clancy Clarke http://blog.planetdomain.com/?p=191 With the amount of spam filling inboxes on a daily basis, it’s no wonder that people are hesitant to share their online contact details. This presents a challenge for savvy business owners who understand the importance of an online presence and the need to convert visitors to customers. Here are some ideas on how you can you build your email database and increase sales conversion.

1. Be aware of email etiquette and ethics. Don’t assume that because someone exchanged business cards with you that they are giving you permission to contact them regarding your products or services. Ensure that only those emails you have received from a permission based invitations are included on your database.
2. Ensure that your website has opt-in forms. There are numerous companies online that can provide form building as well as database management.
3. Opt-in forms are only helpful if you have traffic going to your site and a reason for people to opt in. Build traffic through regular blogging and social media interaction. As people visit your site, make them an irresistible offer. There email and contact information in return for knowledge or a free gift from your site. E-books, white papers and newsletters are a popular choice.
4. Consider asking website visitors for advice and feedback in return for their contact information. It’s amazing how many people enjoy assisting you and will gladly share their email address in return.
5. Offer subscriber only specials. As you send out newsletters include a special offer to those who already subscribe. When your offer is a good one, news will spread via word of mouth or via social networking.
6. Offer a trial period for you product or service. This can be a particularly useful way of promoting a product or service that is difficult to describe or market. Once you have a few satisfied customers, news of your service will extend beyond your current database.
7. Ask your subscribers to share your newsletters or emails with others. One effective way of doing this is to hold a competition. With the right incentive you can create your own viral marketing scheme. Use the forward to a friend link in your email.
8. If your business has an office or showroom, ensure that visitors are asked to complete a form including email contact details.

Remember that online marketing is all about building trusting relationships. Your online presence is all-important and if you want to build a network of followers who can be converted to customers it is essential that you present the most professional image. With this in mind, think about everything you send out in emails and your online web content. Nothing is more off putting than emails peppered with spelling mistakes or grammatically incorrect content.

For more information about email marketing and ways in which you can build your email database, contact PlanetDomain here or call us to speak to a consultant on 1300 36 64 05.

1. Detailed product descriptions – as your online shopper is doing research, you need to ensure you include detailed descriptions with features and benefits. Keep it succinct and easy to read with bullet points to highlight pertinent points. Include good quality images with multiple views.
2. Build and establish your credibility – keep your website clean, easy to read with key information in plain view and current at all times. Contact methods need to be prominent and demonstrate that you have good customer service. Having several ways to contact you builds trust in the mind of the customer. Include information about you and your business, include customer testimonials and use real images.
3. Secure payment options – offer multiple ways in which to pay to ensure you capture as many customers as possible. These need to be trusted, secure methods that customers feel comfortable using. Let them know you use these and their details will not be passed onto third parties.
4. Include opt in to capture emails – these are important for continued marketing. Aim to keep in touch with your database on a regular basis and keep it consistent and relevant. For even better results, segment your list into different categories based on previous purchases. To keep the number of emails down, you may wish to do a weekly or bi-weekly update.
5. Keep it current – update your website and store frequently. Allocate time each week to featuring key products, adding new images, refining descriptions or adding customer testimonials. If you don’t have time, outsource it to someone else to take care of it for you.

Online customers have lots of options when making a buying decision. If you’re not sure what your customers think of your site – ask them! Find out what they like and what could be improved.

The key to successful advertising is keeping your business front of your consumer’s mind and an app helps to do this whenever a consumer uses their phone. As well as improving brand recognition, there are a number of other pros for developing an app for your business:

• Easy to use and accessible anywhere, anytime
• Helps attract new customers and make them aware of your products/services
• Instant gratification by being in there when the customer is ready
• Increase revenue by generating profits from new offerings
• Enhance customer service and experience
• Build credibility as forward thinking and innovative business

But what about the cons? Here’s what you need to consider:

• Finding the right developer to build your app
• Your app has be made separately for each platform – ie: iPhone, Androids, Blackberry which you would need to do to reach most users
• It is costly – according to Mashable Business, it can cost at least $30,000 to design, implement and deploy a brand-quality iPhone app
• There are literally millions of apps on the market – you need to do your research to build an app that consumers want and are willing to pay for.

The important thing to consider is what you want your app to do. Is it to generate income or as a marketing tool to help build awareness and improve the customer experience? You need to check there aren’t other apps available that do the same thing and if there are, how will yours be different? What will make yours stand out? What are you going to charge?

There are as many pros as there are cons when developing an app for your business. It is well worth the investment to do the research before committing to the project and speaking to both developers and consumers about your idea.

Google are introducing the new Pages as ‘A leap forward in building relationships between businesses and people’. And with over 40 million people using Google+, perhaps you need to direct your marketing attention to setting up your Page as a priority!

As a foundation to Google+ Pages, a very cool feature called Direct Connect lets people to go directly to your Google+ page if they type the ‘+’ in front of their Google Search. The search results also include your last few Google+ posts below the entries for your website. Google also has an “add to circles” option so they can easily follow you directly from the search results.

If you’re wondering why you need another social media account to manage (and that’s a very good consideration) you might be hesitant to give Google+ Pages a look in. However getting in early, even if you don’t fully understand why yet, is a very good strategy. By getting in early and using the platform to set up a solid foundation, you’ll get a competitive edge over your slower-adopting competitors.

If you’re still wondering why you need a Page, here are the top 5 reasons:

1. There are obvious SEO benefits with Google using their leverage. According to Search Engine Land: “[Google+ pages] will be indexed, ‘followable’ and individual updates or posts can be +1′d — much or all of which will be fed back into search results and rankings.”
2. Creating a page brings you closer to your customers, fans and followers so you can have real conversations with the Hangouts function.
3. You can create Circles to share the right messages with the right people. Target messages to specific demographics and locations – the possibilities are exciting.
4. People can easily recommend you on Google Search and advertisements with the +1 button.
5. You’ll be able to see who’s interacting with your Page, the demographics and how they are using the information with soon to be launched analysis tools.

If you have already set up a Google+ Business Page, we would like to hear about your experience.  Or give PlanetDomain a call on 1300 366 405 to discuss how we can help drive more traffic to your website.

It’s not only important that your website loads quickly from a user-friendliness perspective, but also from a search engine optimisation point of view.  In April 2009 Google officially stated that they are including page load speed in their website ranking algorithm. This means you now have two very important reasons to ensure your website loads as quickly as possible.

So, how can you ensure that your page load speed is optimal? There are two aspects of page load speed that every website owner should be aware of, server speed and onsite page load speed.

Server speed refers to how quickly the server that is hosting your website can respond to requests for pages. The more quickly a server can deliver these responses the more quickly your website will load.  Different web hosting providers provide different hosting infrastructures; these infrastructures are in essence what govern the server speeds.  A report in early 2011 showed that PlanetDomain’s web hosting, as part of Netregistry Group) and its underlying infrastructure outperformed the major competitors in all aspects of server speed.

Onsite page load speed refers to how efficiently and quickly a web browser can download the page content and display this to the website visitor.  Our friends at Google released page speed online to help website owners diagnose and fix issues that may be slowing their website down.  The tool covers both standard browser and mobile web browsers.

By following the guidelines outlined in Google’s online page speed tool and ensuring that your website is hosted on reliable, fast servers you will be go far in pleasing both your invaluable website visitors and the search engines.

Netregistry looks closely at your website page speed as part of our search engine optimisation program – Site Energiser Pro. PlanetDomain’s hosting, as part of Netregistry Group, is also independently tested as Australia’s fastest web hosting provider.

Coming to the Sydney Convention Centre on the 27th – 28th October, the internet show is the only event that brings together small, medium and big businesses, all eager to find new ways of doing internet business.  The show is designed to educate and inspire business owners, influencers and decision makers to a profitable business by harnessing the power of the Internet.

The Internet Show comprises of a free tradeshow, where you can meet and talk to a range of different suppliers and buyers; free educational seminars on the exhibition floor; and a jam-packed conference program that consists of five seminar theatres focusing on different internet streams – Social Media, E-commerce, Applications, Digital Advertising and Connectivity & Hosting.

The Internet Show Australia is supported by over 50 industry-leading sponsors and exhibitors who will be demonstrating how you can benefit and make money from the next generation of the internet.

Register online for your free seminar and exhibition pass.  Come and listen to our very own CEO, Larry Bloch, present ‘What is cloud hosting and how does it work?’ on Friday 28^th October in seminar theatre 5, Connectivity & Hosting.

Search engine optimisation is the process of working on a website to increase its ranking when it appears in search engine results. This is done via general site improvements to make the site more “appealing” to search engine indexing software and optimisation around specific keywords.  Optimising a website involves in its most basic form:

• Onsite coding changes (website structure and accessibility)
• Onsite content changes (keyword use and useful copy)
• Off-site link building (to increase inbound links to your site)
• Off-site social sharing, blog posting and forum activity

SEO is a long term process; results do not happen overnight, but also have the advantage of longevity. The effects of site optimisation typically remain even after an optimisation process has ended. SEO is about improving the natural, “organic” ranking in search engine results, and these are generally seen as trustworthy links, producing higher click-through rates. Site optimisation is almost always beneficial to a website regardless of how it fares in the search engine results; a large portion of search engine optimisation is making sure a website has been built properly and is attractive to both human and software visitors, which is important in of itself.

Pay-Per-Click marketing has different advantages. Typically set up via Google or Yahoo, PPC campaigns have a vast selection of potential keywords which can number in the dozens or hundreds or thousands, which when searched for in the search engine will display advertisements. You will recognise these as the ads present to the top and the side of the results given in a Google or Yahoo search. If someone searches for one of your keywords, your advert will be displayed, and should a visitor click on your advert you’ll then be charged. One of the primary advantages of PPC is that once a campaign is set up, it will begin displaying your advertisements immediately – there is no wait time to begin seeing potential return on investment (ROI). Also, the links can be tailored to direct visitors to specific pages of your website, such as a contact form or a product page. Advertisements can be geographically restricted; should you wish to only target people in specific countries, cities, or other locations, you customise your campaigns to do so. Price scalability is another advantage, where the amount you wish to bid for a keywords and your daily budget is set by you. Campaigns can be set up and ended at will; combined with the fact that campaigns can start displaying adverts immediate means that PPC campaigns are ideal for seasonal or promotional advertisements – Christmas sales being a great example.

PlanetDomain has a dedicated Online Marketing department which specialises in Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click campaigns. If you would like PlanetDomain to manage your online marketing campaign, you can learn more by clicking here or call 1300 366 405 to speak to one of our Account Managers.

Want to learn more? Attend Business Bite FREE one hour webinar on Online Marketing next Tuesday the 20th of September by registering now.

Don’t be one of those businesses.

It is important for business owners to learn the basic principles of online business, that’s why Nett School is here to help you understand how your business can use various online techniques to achieve some phenomenal outcomes.  Register for our next Sydney class on September 15th here.

What will I learn?

• Learn the basic rules and principles of starting an online business
• How to economically create a great looking site easily whilst freeing yourself from expensive developer fees
• Understanding essential e-commerce principles and elements
• The Science of Search Engines and Search Engine Optimisation – Why you can’t ignore them
• How to use email marketing effectively
• Bringing user interaction into your brand through social media tools

How can Nett School help me?

Creating a successful online business can seem a complex and a time consuming process. Yet, it is possible for all businesses to achieve online success.  Nett School is for business owners who are ready to get online or are in need of help to improve an existing site, but not knowing where to start.

If you’re like most people, being forced to read a list of technical specifications and jargon is a better cure for insomnia than a mallet to the skull. But sometimes, choosing the right online services can involve making important business decisions based on concepts and technology outside your comfort zone.

Nett School will introduce to you the concepts, ideas and tools behind all websites – big and small.  We will break down everything you need to know in a visual presentation, answer your questions and demonstrate the potential available to everyone in a few simple steps.

You’ll leave the classroom feeling confident and empowered and bursting with ideas.

Attend our next Sydney September class

As part of NSW Small Business September 2011, we are holding a free Nett School class in Sydney, on 15^th September 2011.  The class will be held at the following venue:

Level 47, MLC Centre
19 Martin Place
Sydney 2000

There are limited seats so register your attendance today, just click here.