How Do I Get More Sales Online From My Website?

 Firstly, take a moment to imagine the following: you have a sales rep who works for you every day, 24 hours a day, never gets sick or asks for time off or a pay increase, who will garner and qualify sales prospects and in some cases actually make the sale for you without them ever having met or spoken to the customer, and does all of this automatically for you? Keep that image in your mind for just a moment longer, and ask yourself this question, does my website actually work like this for me?

If the answer is no, then consider that this is  what your website can and should be doing for you right now as you read these words.

If your website isn’t currently doing this for you, then you are losing valuable business to your competitors who do know how to market their services or products online

Tell Me More About This Online Market?

This is the market available to you because you have a website. It is growing rapidly with more and more people using it to buy goods and services every day. Over 1.6m people daily in Ireland (according to JNIR Joint National Internet Research report for Ireland, April 2008) are using the internet to search for products and services and this group is growing fast.

I Have a Great Looking Website, Why do I need it Optimised?

1. Very simply, having a great looking website is very important but it is only part of the task in garnering new online-customers for your business.  You also need to get your website recognised as an important player in your area of your business by the major SE’s (Search Engines) such as Google and Yahoo
   
   
2. If your website isn’t optimised then you are not reaching a rapidly growing Online Market of prospective customers who search for your product or service through the World Wide Web using generic keywords (words that describe what you do or sell). An optimised site ensures that your site is using these keywords in a powerful and efficient way that Search Engines such as Google will display your site not only on the first page but high up the page in response to a search.
   
   
3. You are losing this business to your competitors who have completed optimisation on their websites.

If no 2 above doesn’t bother you and your sales are doing fine, well then thank you for reading thus far. However, if you want to increase sales without undertaking a really expensive marketing programme, then please do read on to find out more.

What is SEO - Website Optimisation?

This is a number of procedures carried out on your website including:

1. Making your website Search Engine friendly so that the SE’s (search engines) such as Google know that your website exists and exactly what it is that your company offers and improving the chance of being placed at the top of the page in the search results. Without this procedure, your website will not be shown in the results of an online “Keyword” search carried out by a prospective client.
   
   
2. Making your website customer friendly. This involves an analysis of your existing site and where necessary a redesign so as to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to purchase your products or at the very least capture their contact details for follow-up.

If you have read this far then great.  If you want more technical information on the procedure, then continue on. However, if you want to quickly find out how we can help you achieve more sales then go straight to page x of this document

Some Technical Stuff
Okay, we did say that we would keep this non-technical but there are some terms with which you will need to be familiar with to get the best results for your website.

• Search Engines
• How SE’s evaluate your website.
• Keywords
• Meta Tags
• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
• External links

What is a search engine?

How do Search Engines actually evaluate your site?

Google Rules the World!
Firstly they consider the quality of the site including the number of keywords used and more importantly the number and quality of external links to the site. These are the core essentials to SEO. Google developed a mathematical formula (Algorithm) to do this and also include many other factors in assessing websites some of which are kept confidential and which frequently change.

Some factors which influence the SE ranking of your website are as follows:

• Age of the site, the longer your site has been registered the better. So if you have a new site the sooner you start SEO the better.
• Content – Google loves copy, lots of words.
• The Keyword density – the number of Keywords included in each web page related to the total number of words
• Meta Tags – what you say about yourself in the various Tags (written code of website) Keywords are used both in the content of the website copy and also the Meta Tags.
•  Meta Tags are Keywords that are written in to the unseen code into the website, The URL (web address) – if your web site address actually contains the Keywords, it will have an impact on your ranking.
• Links to your site – the more other websites which have links directed back to your site the better. The quality of the external link sites will also impact on the ranking. We will provide registered links to paid directories
• Size of the site – the more pages the better

What are Keywords?

Keywords tell the search engine what your site is about, that is exactly what it is that you do.

It will be helpful to be familiar with the subject of Keywords. When your prospective client does a search on the internet, they use one or more words to describe what it is they are looking for – these are called Keywords. It will be an important part of the SEO and your marketing that you know what these words are and the many possible combinations of them, sometimes running into hundreds.

Now, we are going to make this really easy for you, because after an initial discussion with you and familiarisation of your company we can use some pretty nifty software to get these Keywords for you. It will tell us what kind of Keywords prospective clients are using to search for the products or services you offer. Frequently, it is a surprise to our clients that these Keywords are not what they expected them to be.

So, the SEO will include Keyword optimisation for each page of the website, which will mean re-writing some of the content copy to ensure optimum “Keyword Density” (the number of keywords used in proportion to the number of words used on the web page)

Keywords are used both in the content of the website copy and also the Meta Tags.

Try it for yourself if you haven’t already done so – enter some keywords about your services in Google and see if your company shows on the first page. If not, you need to do something about that. If your company shows up in the top five, then take a bow. Even if you drive traffic to your site through conventional marketing, it will still be essential to have your website optimised so that visitors are more likely to buy!

Meta Tags

Meta Tags are the normally unseen words written into the website’s code. Meta Tags contain Keywords that are written in to the unseen code into the website, usually by an SEO individual or web master. Of vital importance to SEO are the keywords you use especially in the Title Tag (seen at the top of every web page)

What are Inbound Links?

Inbound links (often seen as “click here for X)” are links on other websites which direct a person on that website back to your site.

Google considers your site must be very important if a lot of other sites have links back to yours. Simply then, the higher the number of quality external links the better the page ranking in the search results. The quality of the external site is taken into account in this calculation; the external links should ideally originate on a website that is related to the industry that you operate in. There are many high-quality directories which one offer either free or paid for listing which will get you the required external links. Finally, the links should include your important keywords for maximum effect.

WEBSITE OPTIMISATION - WHAT WE DO FOR YOU!

WE WILL GET YOUR WEBSITE A TOP RANKING POSITION ON THE FIRST PAGE OF THE
SERP’S (SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS PAGE)

Part 1
Getting You There
Consists of the SEO and a 3 x months of Test and Review

Part 1 – Getting You There
We will use SEO techniques on your website so as to enhance the ability to get your site placed into the top 10 rankings of both Google and Yahoo search engine results and ensure that your website is fully optimised so as to enhance the conversion of visitors to your site into a sale. Including;

• Existing Sites:
• Complete the SEO procedures.
• New or Redesign Sites.
• Liase with your webmaster in the design of the site so as to ensure peak optimisation at this important stage of your website.
• Research and collect the search words Keywords that customer will be using to find your products and then incorporate those words into every page of your website.
• Get important websites similar in topic to your own, to link to yours. So that search engines know that your site is important.

Here’s How We Do It
Conduct a complete appraisal of your website and comparisons with your competitors and submit a proposal on what you need to do to rank higher than them and also to get into the top ten rankings. In a very competitive business area where there is a lot of online marketing in place, this may require a considerable effort in optimisation.

However in other areas you may find that very little is needed to get you in the high page rankings. Many simply aren’t aware of this relatively new growth in marketing, and the good news for you is that if they haven’t introduced even simple SEO practices, it means that your website will rocket up the Google rankings ahead of theirs once the changes have been on your site and have been Spidered by Google.

Complete the SEO (search engine optimisation) process and register your site with the relevant directories for External Links.

Test and Review
We will use Web Analytics to evaluate your website progress during the months after SEO because it will be necessary to fine-tune the SEO and any marketing campaigns so as to maintain or increase your ranking. This is usually conducted on a monthly basis with reports on the progress of the site being issued to the client. A minimum of three months is required.

Part 2 Keeping You There (Optional)
Regular analysis of your sites performance and ranking in the SERPS’s (Search Engine Results Pages) It will be essential that regular reviews and fine-tuning of the site  are considered based on Analytics available on your site. Reports will be made available to show you this progress every 4 – 6 weeks. This service is optional after the initial three months.