Following on from many previous articles about how to win more customers through internet marketing, let me offer you more insider tips to make your website work for you. To understand and apply these tips takes no great technical skill on your part and most of them don’t take up too much of your precious time and resources either. Get these things right and it will help you in your search for better qualified leads and new customers.
Make your Website a Source of New Information in your Industry
We all know that knowledge is power but what does that really mean for internet marketers? If you read your trade journals and magazines or you keep up to date with the latest trends on-line why are you not using that knowledge on your own website? Take a peak at the blog posts on SixtyMarketing website as a great source of SEO tips. I am sure you have seen countless websites that have a “news” tab only to find that when you click through the news is that the owners of the website don’t update it more than every six months! Not exactly news is it when the BBC updates every second. I understand that you are not in competition with the BBC but you can put up a story from the BBC that is relevant to your industry. It is free because that’s how the BBC spreads their news items.
Another simple tactic is to use your recent visit to a trade fair to write about the latest trends that will affect your business and that of your customers. The idea of trade fairs is to inform you not to allow you to walk away with free merchandise in a gaudy plastic bag.
You will, after a few months effort, start to see a return on this investment. People in your sector will take notice if you are an authority figure and they will help build your network for you. At the very least you and your staff will become far more knowledgeable which is never a bad thing for any company that wishes to grow its market share.
Avoid Stock Images and Optimize Your Images for Search
The correct and optimal use of images on your website will drive traffic to you in ways that you wouldn’t believe. Stock images have never been a great idea worth pursuing. Everyone has stock images so what purpose does that serve? Are you really saying that your company is just like all the other companies out there and your products are exactly the same as theirs? That’s ok then. However, one way of differentiating yourselves from all the other average guys in any crowded market is by the use of unique, original images.
I can now hear you all cry that we can’t afford anything more than stock photographs. I will strongly disagree. There are many free, or nearly free images, out there that will work better for you. You just need a little time to find them, and a little imagination. You must also be aware that a series of high quality photographs of your staff happily smiling at work does not cost the earth because you can use them for years in your marketing, even when staff move on to new challenges. Once optimized correctly these images will be found very quickly by the bots, spiders and crawlers and will be indexed very efficiently for your customers to find them on your website. A picture is worth many keywords on-line. Think about it.