Link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimisation (SEO). Building the number of high quality inbound links is something that all small businessess should be doing as it has a huge impact on the ranking of your web pages in the search engine result pages (SERPs).
The reason why links are so important, is because it helps to build up the ‘trust’ value of your website. In order to be ranked high, the search engines need to have trust in your site. Many factors affect this trust issue, such as domain age, site size, freshness of content, but most of all it is the number of good quality links pointing to it. Each of these links are like a vote – a vote from one website saying that they trust and value your site enough to mention it on their site.
So how can you increase the number of inbound links? Well like most things, there are many ways – here are a few summarised within three areas:
Link baiting: Generating such great content, that people can’t help but link to it
PR: Creating press releases that link to your site
Manual Link Building: Finding sites that are relevant to yours where you can submit your link to – such as directories, community organisations, as well as bloggers and industry sites.
Yahoo LinkDomain Search
To find out more about generating some links to your site, view the video below. This will show you a way in which you can not only generate some links to your site, but also keep an eye on what your competitors are doing using the Yahoo LinkDomain search query. It is also a good way of keeping track of who is linking to your small business website.
p>
If you want to know more about link building strategies, or about other ways in which you can increase your online presence, please get in touch with us at SMEketing. Call us, email us or complete our Contact Us form!
With the majority of people (approx 80%) searching the internet before they purchase a product or before they get in touch with a company they want to work with, it’s vital that all small business have an online presence that conveys a feeling of trust and creditability.
Everyone has had the experience of clicking onto a website, only to get the feeling that it hasn’t been updated since the mid 1990’s! What do you do when you get to a site like that? Click the back button and go to the next search result that Google gave you, that’s what! Have a think about your small business website – what do you think people feel when they first arrive? Do they immediately trust your company? Trust that you can deliver a good product or service? Do they feel it’s worth the investment of their time to spend ten minutes browsing through your site? Or do they get a worried feeling and decide to leave without even reading what you’ve got written on your homepage?
However, ensuring your website has a feeling of credibility isn’t just about good design. Granted, that does make up a lot of it. In the same way that we all judge books by their cover (even though we know we shouldn’t), we all judge websites on that initial split second view.
I’ve been reading a report by BJ Fogg from Stanford University. He carried out a huge research study into exactly what makes a website trustworthy. You can view the report here, or browse through a presentation on the subject on SlideShare.
However, if you’re short on time (which to be honest, most small business owners are), you can just read the main points below:
Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site
You can build web site credibility by providing third-party support (citations, references, source material) for information you present, especially if you link to this evidence. Even if people don’t follow these links, you’ve shown confidence in your material
Show that there’s a real organisation behind your site
Showing that your web site is for a legitimate organisation will boost the site’s credibility. The easiest way to do this is by listing a physical address. Other features can also help, such as posting a photo of your offices or listing a membership with the chamber of commerce
Highlight the expertise in your organisation and in the content and services you provide Do you have experts on your team? Are your contributors or service providers authorities? Be sure to give their credentials. Are you affiliated with a respected organisation? Make that clear. Conversely, don’t link to outside sites that are not credible. Your site becomes less credible by association
Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site
The first part of this guideline is to show there are real people behind the site and in the organisation. Next, find a way to convey their trustworthiness through images or text. For example, some sites post employee bios that tell about family or hobbies
Make it easy to contact you
A simple way to boost your site’s credibility is by making your contact information clear: phone number, physical address, and email address
Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose)
We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more. Of course, not all sites gain credibility by looking like IBM.com. The visual design should match the site’s purpose
Make your site easy to use – and useful
We’re squeezing two guidelines into one here. Our research shows that sites win credibility points by being both easy to use and useful. Some site operators forget about users when they cater to their own company’s ego or try to show the dazzling things they can do with web technology
Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been reviewed recently)
People assign more credibility to sites that show they have been recently updated or reviewed
Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers)
If possible, avoid having ads on your site. If you must have ads, clearly distinguish the sponsored content from your own. Avoid pop-up ads, unless you don’t mind annoying users and losing credibility. As for writing style, try to be clear, direct, and sincere
Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem
Typographical errors and broken links hurt a site’s credibility more than most people imagine. It’s also important to keep your site up and running.
If you want more information on creating a credible website, or if you want some help getting your website ranked well in the major search engines, come and talk to us. We’re a very friendly bunch and are passionate about helping small businesses succeed.
Once you’ve created your Twitter account and you’re using it to tweet regular updates, interacting with your followers and generally being a good source of information and conversation…then what? How do you move it on from being a fun and interesting tool, to something that benefits your small business?
It’s easy - measure, measure and measure again! But what do you measure and how, I hear you ask? You need to measure the response you get to each tweet. If you are using Twitter effectively, you will be linking to interesting articles, news reports and to pages on your own website. You should be using a tool that not only shortens those URLs, but also tracks the click through rate; such as bit.ly, zi.ma or cli.gs (among many, bit.ly is SMEketing’s tool of choice). By shortening the URLs you post in your Tweets through one of these services, you can also measure the success of that tweet. These services allow you to track:
The number of clicks
The time/date of clicks
Clicks split by country
Retweets
By tracking and measuring your tweets using one of these services, you can accurately see what subjects and topics are most popular. For example, a recent SMEketing Small Business Blog post titled Five Cost Effective Marketing Strategies for Your Small Business got a huge number of clicks and retweets from Twitter. This information tells me that people are interested in learning how they can market their small business using low cost marketing techniques (which given the state the economy right now, doesn’t surprise me!). I then use this knowledge to ensure my future marketing efforts reflect this demand; I can create new blog posts on a similar thread, expand that blog post into a white paper or in-depth article, put an offer on the SMEketing Email Marketing Tool etc. There are many ways I can use this information to further enhance my own marketing activities.
You can also learn what was not popular. You may have read an interesting piece of industry news that you thought would make a good subject of a future blog post. However, if you posted a tweet linking to that peice of news and it had a very low click through rate, you might want to reconsider writing that blog post.
Many people are using Twitter and now asking – where is the business benefit? Like a lot of new social media applications, it can be difficult to determine the exact ROI. But, by using it as a marketing research tool, it can help you direct your marketing efforts into activites that are most likely to pay off, and ensure you to avoid wasting your time on things that your stakeholders are not interested in.
UPDATE 24.07.09: Twitter today released a new ebook: Twitter 101 For Business. If you are new to Twitter, or just want to learn more about its application for your small business, I would recommend reading it.
You may think that you know enough about your business and the industry you work in, to not have a formal marketing plan or strategy. If you’re lucky enough to not be affected by the recession, and your small business is still performing well, you may take the stance of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ (or from my favourite childhood Disney film Beauty & The Beast ‘If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it’!!).
However, if I may present another (non Disney) chiasmus quote: Fail to plan and you plan to fail. Even if your small business is doing well right now, you never know what’s round the corner. Small business that are successful at marketing always have a marketing plan. Marketing practices are constantly changing and evolving, so it’s best not to plan too far ahead; a 12 month plan should do it. Who knew 12 months ago that Twitter would suddenly explode into a mainstream marketing tool? If you don’t plan and review your marketing activities and continue to only carry out the marketing activities that you’ve always done, you may end up missing out.
You should ensure that your marketing plan is clear and simple – you need to be able to refer back to it easily, and track your progress against your goals and projections.
Link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimisation (SEO). Building the number of high quality inbound links is something that all small businessess should be doing as it has a huge impact on the ranking of your web pages in the search engine result pages (SERPs).
With the majority of people (approx 80%) searching the internet before they purchase a product or before they get in touch with a company they want to work with, it’s vital that all small business have an online presence that conveys a feeling of trust and creditability.
Twitter has hit the mainstream, it’s official. It started 2009 with 6 million users, and has now grown to over 16 million users today.
You may think that you know enough about your business and the industry you work in, to not have a formal 
