Business Websites – Do you want a Business Website? Do you need a Business Website? What you want your Business Website to do? What is a Business Website for?

• Ever thought websites are not for you or your business?

• You may think its only large online retailers or big companies who need one?

• Maybe you think that you have to be clever on a computer to have one?

• You may think ‘what the heck do I need a website for, as I advertise elsewhere?’

Whatever you think and whatever else you are doing to promote your business, if you don’t have an online presence, then you are not ever going to reach the full marketing potential of your business.

You know as well as I do, no business leaves marketing and advertising to chance. I bet you also know that no smart business owner keeps to one method of marketing. Like me you understand the need for what we call in the marketing world, the ‘pillars of marketing’ approach.

These pillars are made up of a variety of ways to market and advertise your business. All the top successful companies do this. They leave nothing to chance and maximise all opportunities. As they know that if they don't they are limiting their chance to maximise their on-going potential to attract new customers. 

Consider this. Did Woolworths know that after a hundred years of trading it would disappear from the high street overnight? Did Habitat realise, that after growing so successfully and with a loyal customer base, it would have to close up its high street outlets and move into a small convenient corner of Homebase? Did we expect some of the big banks to crash and leave customers stranded? The answer to all these is no.

 



Regardless of their ability to market or advertise their business, when push came to shove these giants of the business world were vulnerable. As all businesses are.

And that's why if you have decided that your continual flow of self referrals, word of mouth recommendations or responses from that one and only paper directory you advertise in is all your going to do, think again. 

Don't take your business or your personal future for granted. You may well have had a nice steady flow of customers conning to you on the back of your current advertising. But whose to say how it will be next month, next year or in the years to come. One day you could be another business which succumbs to the unknown consumer market which will be with us as we proceed toward 2014 and beyond.

Businesses close down for a number of reasons. The main reason is cash flow. That cash flow needs consumers. Consumers need to know you are there. They then need to be made aware that what you have on offer matches what they need. They then need reassurance that you can deliver on what you say you can offer.

So if you want to ensure you attract the people who are going to supply you with the money to keep that cash flow ticking over, you will need to take a serious look at your marketing strategy. And if you haven't yet got a good number of different ways to market your business, then get cracking and get some ideas of what you can do.

Because by having these different pillars of marketing in place. These different ways to advertise and promote your business. You are much more likely to maximise your chance to hook in new customers. Because potential customers don’t just read one newspaper. They don’t just respond to  a direct letter or flyer.

Out there in that big wide world of potential customers are people like yourself. People who respond to different things, in different ways, at different times. Some of these potential customers will hear about you from a previous customer. That’s great because people will then trust in you and if it fits with what they need, they will more likely contact you than anyone else.

 

But what about those potential customers who don’t hear about you ‘word of mouth’, how will they hear about you? Well maybe they won’t. Maybe they will see you. See your van or an advert in the local paper. Happen to come across an article in a magazine.

 

Then there are those potential customers who know what they want and will go searching for it. We all are the same in this way and this is sure the way we shop for things the most. After all, word of mouth and just coming across an advert are marketing approaches that are kind of left to chance. It would only be by chance that whoever your customers talk to are looking for your particular service or product at that very given moment. And of course they may well keep hold of your contact details until such time they do need your service.

 

So if you agree with me that most people, most of the time, will have an idea in mind of what they need. Whether they need new shoes, new windows, a new hair style, new central heating, an extension to the house or a back massage to relieve stress. Generally people do know what they need at any given time and therefore most people will go searching for the people who can supply them with what they need. Makes perfect and logical sense to me. Therefore, the next bit is easy. Where do they look for the people who will supply them with what they need?

 

You may be a new business or an established business with or without a website. It is quite surprising how many businesses do not have any web presence whatsoever. One would imagine with the dramatic and swift rise of the Internet and the ever growing use of mobile phones and with the expansion of tablets that those businesses without a website would have caught on by now. I wonder what it will take for the penny to drop. 

 

I can imagine that there are types of business who may not think that a website is going to do them much good. A business that has established a good flow of customers who return or word of mouth referrals. I could see certain retail pout lets and shops thinking that their presence on the high street is all the advertising they need.

 

No doubt that certain trades such as hairdressers, beauty salons, osteopaths, beauticians etc. may wonder how or why their customers would go searching on the Internet when they have adverts in local newspapers or magazines. Do scaffolders, roofers or bricklayers see a benefit to a website when they spend all their time outside in all weathers and are as far from the webisphere as you can get.

 

Well what can I say? Plenty really as Mrs Bingham will verify. It all boils down to how can a website benefit your business. And what do you want your website to do for your business. Do you want it to advertise the fact you are there? Do you want it to act as a brochure or online shop? Do you want it to be informative regarding the services you offer and the experience and qualifications you have to do the work? Do you want it to show off the projects which you have already completed or show examples of recent work? Well a website can do any one of these things or all of these things for you and your business.

Maybe you already have an idea of what you want and not sure how to go about it. So how about giving the professionals a call who can take you through step by step what you can do and how it can help.

 

Bath Business Web Ltd - Bringing your Business to Life

 

Call for a free consultation and find out more about how you can help your business grow

 

01225 920 503

Wishing you and your business every success for a future unknown.

Bingham

Blogger for Bath Business Web Ltd
Your local Internet Marketing Specialist, Business Directory and Website Design Company

Bath Business and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

This is for all you businessmen and businesswomen in Bath, Bristol and beyond who have a website or are intending to have a website for your company or business. This is a brief, uncomplicated explanation of what SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is all about.

It is simply how to manoeuvre your website as near to the top of the first page of a search engine, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. as possible. And for it to remain as constant as you can to keep it, in that position, or near to that position.

 

Google's Search Engine

Imagine you're a pop group and you release a new single. Your aim is to have a number one selling record and that is reflected by where you get to in the pop charts. You may go in at number 29 or number 10, to then creep further and further up the charts to a higher ranking position.

Often people will see it there and on that alone assume it is a great song. So more people go buy it and push it up still further.

A search engine performs in a similar way. If people see your website on the first two pages and particularly on the first page, then they assume you must be better than the competition. In reality it does'nt mean anything of the sort of course.

 

Where a website sits on a search engine says nothing about how good a plumber or electrician can do their work. What it does say however, is that your marketing techniques of optimising your website for the best possible position on a search engine are better than the competition. Get it?

Wikipedia defines search engine optimisation as follows:

Web definitions

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. ...

We all know that Google is the biggest of the search engines. Like the others Google has rules and follows certain practices which determine how websites perform or are ranked on their search engine. These rules and practices change from time to time, so it’s vital to keep up or your website can go down the rankings as quick as it went up. That’s where sound professional advice can help to assist this process.
  

Google ranks websites which are relevant and commanding the appropriate layout. That layout includes number and quality of pages, the amount and type of wording, the relevance of photos, images or video, links to other websites, how your website interacts with other mediums on the web such as Twitter or Facebook etc. All these things and more can help Google measure the relevance by analysing all this information.

  

If you already have a website or have been looking into the idea of having one you will come across the term…… 'keywords'. Keywords are simply the words which people use to search for particular things on the internet. So if you were looking for a plumber and you live in Bath the most likely words you write into Google are ‘Plumber Bath’ or Plumber in Bath’ (these then constitute as the ‘Keywords’).

You may also write ‘Central Heating Installation Bath’, knowing that Plumbers do that type of work. So the Plumbers website needs to ensure all these words are placed into the text of the website to cover all the ways people will search for the services or products they supply. So depending on the nature of your business, there could be a whole range of keywords or combinations of keywords which will be used by people searching for whatever it is you offer.

Another term you will hear when constructing your website is 'links' or ‘backlinks’. Basically it is how  you link to another site or how another site links back  to your site. This can be done in a number of ways. Your site may well link up with the professional body to which you belong. They too may then link back to you. It may well be that other websites link to you, but you don’t to them.

Either way, what Google does is measure these through what is known as Google’s algorithm. This is the software it uses to rank website pages and decide which one it deems relevant and important to then increase its visibility. Visibility in this case means to go up the rankings of its pages, as a website is more visible the closer to the top page it gets. This is because people will rarely go searching beyond the third or fourth page of any search engine.
 
Another way to look at it is that a link from you to another website page is like casting a vote at the polling station. It suggests that you are offering a vote of confidence in that website and that the website you link to is a good one to follow. Google will see that and respond accordingly, as it likes to measure what we like to see. However, there are links which are better than others or links which are not useful or can decrease the visibility of a website. A bit like voting for the bad guy, Google will recognise the bad guy and penalise you if you have links to him. Links are a necessary part of your online marketing strategy to get your website up those search engine rankings. So again this is where good sound professional advice and support comes in.

What the link ultimately should do is:

1. Send valuable traffic (visitors) to your website

2. Inform the search engines that your website is one that is commanding

Google promotes pages to the top positions which it deems to be commanding or authoritative.



The Basics of Search Engine Optimisation

This means you need to write the relevant content and build links which will support this.

This is about quality not quantity. As 15 or 20 links from relevant websites to your website will have a better impact than 100 poor valued links, which can lower your ranking.

And don’t just let it sit still. Keep doing it, improve on it, update it.  Add new text or refresh what was already there. Google responds well to this.
  


SEO is also about the internal workings of your website and how it is constructed. The construction of a website is as complex as constructing the inside of a computer. If we could see inside a computer then we would see an array of electronics that would baffle and bemuse us. If we were given all the internal parts separately and told to put them together, joined at the right places to the right pieces and then programme it accordingly we would be at  a loss. Well the construction of a fully functional website is no different. Below are just a handful of the things you need to consider if you were going to construct your own website from scratch:

• Make sure your title element (tag) describes the page and uses keywords. Every page needs its own title tag. The text in the title tag is used by search engines for indexing your page. It’s also used in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) as the text in the link that links to your page.
• Make your URL’s Search Engine Friendly. They can help to describe the page and use keywords. Keywords in URL’s can help you rank for a keyword or phrase.
• Describe your page in the meta description element (tag). These elements should be unique for each page.  If you write good meta descriptions Google will highlight keywords that match the search and this could mean the difference between getting a click and not getting a click.
• Use the me keywords element (tag) for important keywords. Only add keywords that describe the page, don’t add unrelated keywords.
• Use a CSS based design and adopt web design best practices for styling your page. Search engine spiders don’t see what users see. They have to parse all the code that makes up a page including all your HTML.
• Make sure your page content is correctly tagged. For example if you have a main header make it an H1. By tagging your content you are providing the search engine spiders with a clue about what’s important on the page and what isn’t so important.
• Use Google Analytics to measure what is working and what is not.

Hmm! Thinking that there may be a need for a professional website designer now?

 

Professional Web Designers in Bath

 

So go out there and create a great website. Provide a website with the services or products that you know people are looking for and in a way that they will search for. Share (link) your great website to other great websites and then watch how many more visitors go to your site. That in itself will improve your search engine rankings for starters. That’s what we call optimising your website. That’s search engine optimisation (SEO).

 

So make sure you are up to speed with the latest goings on with Google, Bing, Yahoo and the other search engines out there to get the very best from your website. Get good professional help and support from those who are keeping their eye on the game and know the ins and outs of the various algorithms and practices that these search engines are using.

Bingham

Blogger for Bath Business Web Ltd

Making a Good Impression in Business

Shop owner, architect, web designer, hypnotherapist, plumber  or one of hundreds of businesses throughout Bath & the South West - you need to promote the right impression for your business.
 
The impression you set for your business, your offices, vehicle, how you advertise, talk or how you dress, really does matter.

Where does that impression start?

Your attitude to business is the starting point. Setting the right first impression is where it starts. Keeping that positive, professional impression of you and your business has to be maintained.

What you need to consider.

It doesn't actually matter what kind of business you own. It doesn't matter if your business is working at home, from a computer, digging a garden, selling from a retail outlet, driving a lorry or deliveries in a van. Whatever your trade, setting the right impression matters.

It matters because others will judge you, whether you like it or not. People will judge you and your business on how you present yourself. How you present yourself over the phone or face to face. Potential customers will notice if your van is clean or dirty, if the work clothes you wear are smart, how tidy and organised your shop is or the cleanliness of your office.

People notice these things and will make very swift judgements as to whether they think your business fits with their expectations of your trade or industry.

Now for those Eddie Stobart fans out there, of which there seem to be many. This iconic business started delivering fertilizer and the like, way back in the 1940’s. They still deliver smelly loads and an array of consumables and retail products today. Their founder decided way back then, that there was a need to make the right impression.

So what makes Stobart stand out from other haulage contractors?

Well Stobart are very successful at keeping to the agreed time for their deliveries and doing so with due care and attention for the products they carry. Their drivers are courteous and polite and trained to a high standard. Their lorries stand out from the crowd and are recognised instantly. Their vehicles are well maintained and kept clean inside and out. The pride the staff have for the business shows itself in bucket loads, or should I say lorry loads.

Where to make an impression?

Well it all starts with you. How you present yourself, whether face to face or over the phone is the start. You also need to be thinking positively about your customers. After all, without them you have no business.

So it’s vitally important that you think well of customers, want to do the best job you can for them and give them the right impression of you and your business.

Consider what you would expect from someone in your trade, if they were there to offer you a service. How you would want to be treated? How would you expect them to speak to you? How will they present in what they wear, or what vehicle they use? 

The right impression makes you credible

Use the same thinking to decide how to organise and maintain your offices, shop or vehicle. If your office is messy and in disarray, the customer may well think that applies to the way you do business.

If you arrive in a tatty old van with a poorly sign-written business name, then they may wonder if they have Del Boys dodgy dealership, rather than a reputable business person.

Consider the job at hand. Have you estimated it at the right price or given a realistic time frame to get the job done?

Are you considering that this customer will tell people about you when you have done a good job? Because whether they do or don’t, if you get it wrong they definitely will tell people about it. Bad news travels a lot quicker and louder than good news.

Do you want customers to be pleased with your efforts and for you to be proud of your achievements? Because if you do and you can make it happen, then that impression will stick and each and every time you impress a customer with all these things you will surely see the positive results. 
 
Always have in mind the impression you want to share in all you do.

Ensure your business advertises the right impression. Make sure your website is up to date. Make sure it promotes your business in the best light and it is professionally built and correctly coded for search engine optimisation. Ensure it is compatible with mobiles, tablets and computers.  If you advertise in magazines, on billboards or posters have your adverts are professional and send the right message. Whatever you do, however you do it, always bear in mind the impression your business is making to the world around you.

Bingham

Blogger for Bath Business Web Ltd