Impact Media's SEO Blog

Without doubt, the Internet is a great place to be for anyone looking to sell products or services online.

Buying online is now very firmly in the mainstream and there are many businesses operating profitably online. Some of these have taken care of their own search engine marketing, whilst others have elected to use a specialist agency such as Impact Media.

Whichever direction a business takes, it is vital that they recognise the marketing of their website is just one part of a complex model. With Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), you can improve your online visibility in the natural search results and using Pay per Click (PPC), you can complement SEO by having your adverts shown when users perform a search.

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Across Europe the dark cloak of the recession is being lifted as France and Germany are now officially out of the recession.

This news gives new hope to the British economy and elsewhere across the world, however the French and German economies have not been hit quite as hard as the UK during the global crisis.

Britain was more heavily exposed when the downturn struck and consumers in the UK are more in debt than those in mainland Europe, the huge levels of credit were what supported the economy for so long.
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Social media is an instrument that businesses in the United Kingdom can benefit from. The Internet is a powerful tool for marketing your business and more companies than ever throughout the UK are turning to social media to make a connection with their potential and established clients/customers.

What do we mean by social media? It’s an overarching term to describe websites and web tools that allow user communication and interaction. A social media site or tool allows all to participate in the creation of content. Great examples are YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Digg and Twitter. It offers users the ability to connect, communicate and feedback on topics. Social media has many applications and benefits for business.

One of the simplest and largest benefits to any UK-based business using social media is what you get for your money. It’s a very low risk enterprise and the outlay is often minimal and much more effective than traditional advertising methods. You get more for your money.

Another strong benefit is the ability of your customers to provide you with immediate feedback. There’s never been such an immediate and effective way to receive feedback from your client base. Now you can know immediately what they think of your latest update, your newest product or a change in your policies. Whenever Facebook changes a feature, its users immediately begin to discuss it and it makes the International news. Social media is a source of publicity good and bad, but it all creates a buzz around your business.

A further benefit is that you can choose which social media site or tool works best for your business. If you want to update your customers about your latest range of products without much effort, you can use Twitter, a micro blogging tool. However, if you want to speak directly to a large amount of the general public, you can use YouTube to get your message out across the entire world, simply and at low or no cost at all.

A very possible benefit offered by social media is the opportunity to allow your potential customers and clients to get to know and trust you long before they purchase from you. They come to think of you as part of their sphere, they look to you for knowledge, advice, they may even attempt to connect directly with you and this offers them a greater sense that you are a credible and trustworthy source. Then, when it’s time to buy a product/service that you offer, they’ll think of you.

Are you unsure about something in your business? Do you need to know what your customers think before you make a decision? Bingo! Just ask them directly and they’ll give you their honest opinion. You no longer need to make decisions based on luck, you can connect with the people who already buy what you sell and they’ll offer you their truthful opinion. Businesses never had this level of connection to their customers before.

Take advantage of social media marketing, it’s low cost and highly effective, businesses can no longer afford to ignore it!

Further Reading:

Marketers Moving to Social Media (eMarketer)

Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows short messages (called Tweets) of up to 140 characters to be instantly shared with others via the Internet or mobile phones.  Like updating your status on FaceBook, it allows everyone within your network (known as Followers) to immediately catch your latest messages and read, reply or comment upon them.  It’s a free service that allows anyone to publish their thoughts, ideas or messages to anyone wishing to ‘follow’.

Twitter’s potential for use as a business marketing tool is only just being tapped.  But Internet marketers and online business owners are already using it as a valuable device in their overall marketing mix.  Clearly, the simplicity of this free service offers business tremendous opportunities.  Companies in the US such as Southwest Airlines have used Twitter to build loyalty and increase their high quality of customer service.

Potential Uses of Twitter for Business Marketing:

• Offer customers/clients an intimate insight into the workings of your company
• Offer incredible promotional opportunities, an instant FREE PR tool
• Target the specific customers/clients you wish to reach
• Provide instantly updated product/service information
• Gives potential for future Pay-to-Follow Services
• Perfect for influencing Online Reputation Management
• Build brand loyalty by offering exclusive news and offers via Twitter
• Instantly inform ‘Followers’ of the latest offers, sales and other promotions
• Create mass and immediate buzz around a Product/Service launch
• Clickable tiny URL links can be added to Tweets
• Allow Followers to provide immediate feedback on Product/Services

Many high profile users are on Twitter.  Both Barack Obama and John McCain used Twitter in the run up to the US Presidential Election.  It worked for one of them!

Concerns About Using Twitter for Business Marketing:

• The casual nature of the Tweets can be deceptive; people can reveal more than they would normally be willing to do in any other medium
• Twitter presents things a distinct way, it’s aesthetically ugly
• It’s easy to pretend to be someone else on Twitter; anyone could set up a Twitter pretending to be your company (e.g. Fake Steve Jobs’)
• People need to log in to Twitter in order to use it, if users aren’t regular followers
• High volume of Tweets can be very irritating for customers/clients
• Twitter is not always a reliable service and has crashed in the past, wiping all of its data.   There are new third party tools to prevent this though
• Twitter is still relatively new and has not been properly evaluated as a marketing tool.  Insufficient data exists with regards to its effectiveness
• Misuse of Twitter could seriously damage your company’s online reputation
• Pay to Follow Services are not yet available

Twitter may be the latest zeitgeist Internet based marketing tool, but it cannot succeed alone.  If you’re planning on using Twitter for Business, it needs to be another useful tool in the Marketing arsenal of your company.  Combined with the other elements of your marketing mix, Twitter can be a powerful promotional tool.

The Internet presents limitless opportunities for mid-sized businesses that want to compete in the larger market.  Thanks to affordable online marketing options, it’s possible for a medium-sized business to carve a place in their sector and contend with the bigger companies.  The problem is finding or choosing the most suitable way to market your product or service online.

There are a number of options for businesses to choose from when considering cost-effective or affordable Internet marketing solutions, although the combined method or blended mix of marketing might better serve as the best approach.  This blended approach is made up of the five most effective and affordable ways to market your business website online.

SEO

Although SEO, or search engine optimisation, appears to be a rather simple way to increase your share of online traffic, the Natural Search results that it yields are powerfully impressive. SEO is the process of engineering your website so that it most effectively responds to the way that potential customers search for your business online.

Many people believe that SEO is something that can be done by just about anyone, but it takes a professional SEO expert to glean dynamic results without causing some of the very damaging errors that amateurs easily make.

Always choose to work with a professional SEO in order to get the best out of your website’s SEO potential.  The cost of an SEO expert is nothing compared to the potential increase in revenue from having your website optimised.

Articles

The Internet is a word-based medium and very much search driven.  Including articles on your website has a multiplicity of benefits, not least of all providing your customers with up to date expert advice.  Other benefits include:

• Increased credibility
• Improved SEO results from keywords in the articles
• Expanded web presence

You don’t need to be an expert author, there are lots of highly competent and affordable writers that can provide any number of quality articles for your website on any topic.

PPC

PPC, or pay per click, is one of the best methods of bringing traffic to your website and converting it to sales.

Imagine advertising that is read directly by people who are already interested in your product or service.  That’s exactly what PPC offers!  When a potential customer is interested in your ad, they click to find out more.  You only pay for the number of clicks that your ad receives and you can set your budget accordingly.

PPC represents a highly customisable and a truly affordable method of advertising.  Unfortunately, this has been one of the reasons why so many people have attempted DIY PPC, resulting in some quite catastrophic wasted opportunities.

Online PR

Your reputation online matters because it’s easily raised and easily damaged in the same measure.  Online PR can be used to fire fight problems but can also be used to announce important product news, service changes, sales, launches and make the best use of all profile raising opportunities.

Video Marketing

Still relatively in its infancy but drawing increased interest and attention, online video marketing can offer a stunningly effective alternative to television advertising. Many people have found that they can obtain dramatic results from very simple videos.  In the increasingly competitive online market, this is one approach that cannot be ignored.

By using these five methods together, you will create a powerful yet affordable website marketing campaign for your business.

If you feel you need help with any of these areas and would like to work with a professional UK based search marketing agency, please refer to our search engine marketing services page.

At Impact Media, we’re a Google Qualified company and everyone in the team who work on client accounts are Qualified Individuals.

So what? How could that make a difference to your AdWords campaign and, perhaps more importantly, your company profits?

Well, we’re independent of Google and work solely for our clients. Equally, our clients are never tied in to a long term contract so if we don’t add value, they are free to walk away.

Our process is very simple. Once we receive your induction form and have a thorough understanding of your priorities, we review your site and, if applicable, existing campaigns. We then perform comprehensive keyword research to identify both new opportunities and also irrelevant phrases to ensure your online marketing budget isn’t blown on wasted clicks.

We then set about constructing a highly effective campaign with multiple Ad Groups. We make sure that each Ad Group is tightly themed and targeted towards the most appropriate area of your site.

If conversion tracking isn’t in place, we will work with you to implement this so that you’ll be able to see which keywords are delivering sales.

Month by month, we will perform reviews of your site, running reports, performing new research and optimising adverts.

Our entire focus is all about driving your conversions up without simply resorting to throwing more money at waste of time clicks. Refinement is the key!

Hopefully, this has given you an insight into why we believe using a UK Google AdWords Professional could be one of the best investments you could make for your business. If you’d like to know more, request our free Pay per Click report.

When it comes to tracking and recording business website statistics, you will find that most web hosts will provide some kind of statistical package as part of your hosting arrangement.

However, these vary in quality and very often only give a superficial level of detail. If you’re a small business and serious with your Internet marketing efforts, be it search engine optimisation or pay per click, then you will want (need) to have a professional analytics package. There are many solutions out there, such as the brilliant Clicktracks Analyzer, but these solutions are often out of the reach for many small business owners.

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