Now you could take us on, or some of the other good optimisation companies in the area to do a "proper job" on your web site, however for the smaller businesses around even these quite realistic charges are out of the question.
But as you may know by now, the premise of our Internet Marketing Course is that much of what is involved in web marketing is non-technical, and its quite easy to get great results yourself. What you will find out however is that if you do want to build traffic to your site and not someone else to do it, it takes a bit of work, so do expect to consistently spend a few evenings building towards a successful on-line business.
Many of the businesses we talk to do not even rank first for their own name. Now if your name happens to be "Britney Spears" then it will take a long time to rank first however good your web optimisation is, but for most of us ranking top in Google when people search for our company name is the first rung on the ladder of web success.
Later on you'll be wanting to rank highly for other moer generic terms - terms which "People might use in search engines who don't know you yet, but are looking for what you provide".
So step 1 is to rank No. 1 for "Fred Bloggs Window Cleaner Truro", then step 2 might be to get onto Page 1 for "Window Cleaner Truro".
Do you see from the above how it may be mre difficult to rank highly for shorter phrases? This is important - the longer phrases that we want to rank for are highly relevtn to our business, and are called "Long Tail Keywords".
So to the steps:
1. Get your site Listed in Directories. Genreating links to your site is the most important step to take...... Directories are a good start, and there are plenty of free ones. Google these:
- DMOZ.org - takes a long time to get listed, but its the best one to be listed on. Follow the guidelines carefully.
- Freeindex - a UK directory
- Applegate - a UK directory
- Google Local
- business-directory-uk.co.uk
- redcog.net
- aboutus.org
- doweb.co.uk
2. Build links from Forums.
High Quality links come from sites which are relevant to yours, have a high "Google Pageank" (we'll get to that in a minute), and ideally don't link to too many other sites They may also link to an individual page right inside your site, rather than just the home page. They may also have anchor text like this one: "Your Keyphrase here", which emphasises the importance of the words in the link. High Quality links say - "this site is important - look at it". And search engines do.
To post in a forum you must find a relevant one, so you might search for "Your Business KeyPhrase" and "Forum". Join up, read the posts, answer one in a useful and informative manner (don't be salesy, that will just put people off). The important thing is to include a link back to your site. Often this can be in your signature; Which mich be something like this:
"Fred Bloggs Cleans Windows in Truro
To learn anything you ever wanted to know about windows, try Fred's blog."
Do you see what we did there? We put the link on the Key phrase rather than "click here" or some such phrase.
One good foum to join for most businesses is eCademy. Its free, you can join the Cornwall or South West groups, and if you get your links wrong I'll probably notice, and give you a pointer in the right direction. The best way to start is to join the Cornwall group, and post a "New Member" message. Then we'll all say welcome, that's how it works.
3. Build Links from Article sites.
These links are really good!
Some of the best are "ezine articles" or "isnare". Join up. Write an article of at least 400 words that you feel will be useful to your target audience. Catchy titles like "Ten things you really wanted to know about windows" often work well. It must be informative and useful, not salesy. Salesy articles will be rejected by some site, and don't reflect as well on you as good advice or interesting content. You could even go for humour: "The ten wierdest things I've seen while cleaning Windows in Truro". So you write the article, spell check it for god's sake, post it on the site, and remember to include a link back to your site! Ideally to a relevant page inside your site - not just the home page.
After you have done that you can search for "article marketing sites" and do as many more as you like.
4. Changing parts of your own web site.
OK This is enough link building for a while. There are some more fundamental issues to take a look at. Your web site. Now the restriction here is that you have to have access to your web site, using a good CMS system (where you manage the content of your own site) or the ability to edit HTML, or you have to pay the developer to do it. We do come across a lot of CMS sites where you can't change much apart from the text no a few pages, however if you use a good CMS such as Joomla then you will be able to change anything you need.
So lets look at the home page: What is your main title - is it "Welcome"? By using this word as title you are telling the search engines it is very important. Now the trouble with optimising your site for "Welcome" is that everyone else has already done that so you wan't rank well for it. Also its completely irrelevant to your business. What you should be using for your page title, heading, and in at least the first and last sentences of the page are your keywords: "Truro Window Cleaner". You must not repeat these key phrases lots of time, but you should use it in various orders on your page, 3-5 times.
Here is a page that is reasonably well optimised for the phrase: "Internet marketing Course Cornwall". It could be better but its not too bad either. Notice the phrase used quite abit while still trying to read well and not overdo it. Its also slightly optimised for "Web Marketing Training Cornwall", though if I was keen I would focus on just one.
