However, there is a sweet spot with SEO which Aaron calls “the thin wedge of profitability between apathy and spam” and this infographic will show you how to hit it.

In a nutshell, the keys to profitable SEO linkbuilding are:

Follow these simple rules and your SEO linkbuilding will pay handsome dividends, ensuring your website enjoys high authority and page rank and bringing you lots of targeted traffic.

If you need advice on SEO linkbuilding or any other aspect of SEO call us on 0208 252 0557 for a free, no obligation consultation with one of our SEO experts. We’re here to help!

Set some broad social media objectives

Having a clear social media strategy from the outset is vital if you want to get the most out of social media. Having a clear focal point is especially important. For example, is your main aim to generate leads or establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche? Are you going to use social media as a way of establishing connections with other thought leaders and key influencers or as an additional customer service channel? Or do you just want to keep your finger on the pulse and stay abreast of what’s going on in your industry? Thinking about what you’re trying to achieve before you get started will save you lots of time and frustration in the long run.

Do your homework

Find out where your ideal customers and high profile bloggers in your niche like to hang out online. This will almost certainly include Facebook, Twitter and forums so go check them out. Follow some people who look interesting and see how they’re using social media. Check out the communities on the social networking sites where you’ve decided you need a presence. LinkedIn and Facebook both have lots of specialist groups which are great places for connecting with people who are likely to be interested in what you offer so join some and listen in on the conversations that are taking place. Make a careful note of the sort of content and the topics that generate the most response as these will give you lots of ideas for engaging content you could create. Make a note also of behaviour and posts that attract a negative response. Every community has its own, often unwritten code of conduct and etiquette, so it pays to be aware of them.

Set up your social media profiles

It’s never a good idea to mix personal and business when it comes to social networking so if you already have a personal Twitter account or Facebook profile set up another one strictly for business. Try and keep your branding consistent by using the same social media username on all your accounts – you can check if your business name is already taken at namecheck.com.  Add a brief description of your business and your website URL to all your profiles and be sure to fill out all the information and upload some photos. Generally speaking it’s best to use a head and shoulders photo of you as people like to see a real person behind the company but this is not strictly necessary. Just make sure the photo is of good quality and appropriate in a business setting (no blurry holiday snaps of you in a swimsuit at Disney World!).

Dive in!

Once you’ve got the measure of the groups dive in and join the conversation. Don’t forget the 10 golden rules of social media engagement: keep it light, informal and friendly (in other words no hard selling), try to be helpful and above all, be consistent. You won’t see overnight results but stick with it and your business will benefit from having an active social media presence.

So there you have it:  how to get started with social media in 4 simple steps. Go on then, what are you waiting for?

If you need help deciding the right social media strategy for your small business or think you could benefit from one to one social media coaching on how to get started and build your confidence email or call us on 0208 252 0557.

Let’s face it. Traditional marketing which broadcasts your messages to all and sundry is inefficient, wasteful and expensive. That may be something you can live with if you’re selling a high priced product and can still turn a handsome profit with a conversion rate of 1% to 2%. But it’s not much use to the typical local business operating on much tighter margins.

Geo-location enabled local search

That’s where geolocation-based marketing comes into its own. Without it, over 90 percent of ad impressions are wasted on consumers who are outside your geographic area. Fortunately,  GPS technology is now allowing marketers to obtain location data from PCs and mobile phones and modern search engines, such as Google, use this data to help consumers find businesses and services in their vicinity. For example, if you searched for “pizza” Google would show you Google Places results for pizza parlours in your local area.  Google Places business listings are completely free and a great way of ensuring people looking for local service find your business but Google is also now offering a local version of its Adwords pay per click service.  Better targeting equals more footfall for you and better conversions.

Geo-location apps

A number of mobile phone geo-location apps have sprung up over the past year of which the best known are probably Gowalla and foursquare. These apps allow registered users to connect and remain updated with their friends based on their location.  Whenever they use their mobile phones to “check-in” their friends get updated about their recent location.   But this is only a part of it.  Foursquare, for example, has many more features:

Mayor: This status is awarded to customers who have checked in the most frequently to a particular venue over the last 60 days.

Badges: This reward is earned based on the ‘check-in’ habits of different venues. New badges are continuously earned from the different companies that foursquare partner with.

Special offers: Foursquare makes it super easy for you to bring your business to the attention of people in your area and promote your special offers directly to them. These offers could be one-off specials designed to tempt passing trade or on-going loyalty programmes that reward customers who “check-in” with your business on a regular basis. Examples include:

Mobile Phone Apps

Another form of geolocation marketing is to offer your own free mobile phone app to your local customers. Typically, these apps are used for loyalty programmes with customers being rewarded in the form of discount coupons and other benefits for checking-in to your business a certain number of times. Mobile phone apps are surprisingly inexpensive these days, functionally rich and allow you incorporate all sorts of interactive and viral sharing features. They are also a great way of branding your business and standing out from the competition.

How To Succeed With Geo-Location Marketing

Whichever form of geolocation marketing you decide to introduce to your marketing mix here are some tips on how to make it work for you:

1. Target your campaign as specifically as possible: First, make sure that your campaign is targeted specifically to the area you do business in. Search engines like Google,  allow you to target your marketing campaigns based on City, post codes, neighbourhoods, or even a specific street intersection. This way, when you advertise your business, you can be sure that the majority of consumers exposed to your campaign are within a range that would make sense for them to visit you.
2. Use your location to your advantage: You can use your location to your advantage in promotions by focusing on providing consumer incentives at a very local level. For example, you could provide a time-sensitive discount voucher to consumers within a mile radius of your business.
3. Provide directions: Provide maps and one-click directions to your location, so that customers who are interested in what your business offers do not need to bother looking up your address. That way they are more likely to pay you a visit.
4. Make it fun: Major retailers, such as Starbucks, are using programmes such as Foursquare and Facebook Locations to turn location into a game. Consumers can “check in” at your location, allowing you to provide incentives for consumers to visit a specific location more frequently by offering status (e.g. mayor status, badges), points, or incentives based on the number of visits (e.g. free starter or dessert on your fifth visit).

Local internet marketing is a key part of growing your business and brand, to attract local consumers. It’s no longer just about having a website, it includes being found in multiple places when local consumers are looking for your products or services and cementing long term customer relationships.   Incorporating geolocation into your marketing mix can help you do that more effectively, helping you grow your business profitably.

Are your ideal customers finding you online or your competitors?

Over 72% of consumers looking for services now go online first and half of all searches are for local businesses. If you don’t have a strong presence on all of the new digital marketing platforms chances are, they’re finding your competitors, not you. And if prospective customers can’t find you, they will not hear about you and they will not buy from you. Meanwhile your more internet savvy competitors are getting further and further ahead. You literally cannot afford to ignore what’s going on any longer.

The business world is changing and you have to change too

The business world is changing at an ever increasing rate and keeping up with the latest digital marketing technologies is a big headache for small businesses. It used to be the case that you could get your website on the first page of Google and generate healthy levels of traffic simply by focusing on popular search terms and building a few good quality links but that’s no longer enough. With the convergence of online search and social media you now need to have an active social media presence if you want to have high visibility in the search engines AND you have to provide engaging and fresh multi-media content that your website visitors will interact with and share.

Add mobile marketing into the mix and the picture becomes even more complex. We are now living in the mobile internet age.  In just two year’s time it’s predicted that more people will be accessing the internet via their smart phones and other mobile devices than via desktop PCs and we are already seeing a big upsurge in demand for online information and services on the move. Businesses who want to stay ahead of the game are being forced to respond this new demand by offering mobile websites and interactive mobile phone apps. It’s no wonder many small business owners find the whole subject of digital marketing confusing and overwhelming.

We can help!

We’re a London digital marketing company and our speciality is showing small businesses who think big and want to grow how to market smarter in the mobile internet age. We offer the full range of digital marketing services, from small business website design and SEO to social media marketing, mobile landing pages and mobile phone applications, all at a price that’s within reach of even the smallest business. Read on to find out more about why having an effective digital marketing strategy that integrates and leverages all the key digital technologies is so vital to your business success and how we can help you put them to work for your small business.

Don’t forget to enter your details in the box on the right to get your complimentary Digital marketing Strategy Guide. It’s packed with essential information and advice to help you get started online and ensure that people who are searching for the products and services you offer find YOU and not your competitors.

In this brief video I show you how to get your Google Analytics tracking code and demonstrate how to insert it in the back end of your WordPress website so that Google Analytics can begin reporting your website traffic data.

I came across a very interesting blog post about online self-service recently from the Harvard Business Review no less!

The basic premise of the research study summarised in the blog post was that businesses dramatically over-estimate the value customers put on live service. Whereas most businesses think customers value dealing with a human being, either face to face or over the phone, more than twice as highly as self-service the reality is that they really don’t care that much with just as many preferring online self-service.

Today less than a third of customers primarily use the phone for service interactions and the number is shrinking fast. This is true across all age groups, demographics and types of issue. Increasingly, customers are showing a definite preference for online self-service. This has profound implications for your website design and the nature of your customer interactions.

So why are customers seemingly so reluctant to talk to businesses?

Is it simply that the self-service process is so much more efficient or – shock horror! – could it be that customers don”t actually want to have a relationship with businesses? And if that’s true, where does that leave all the companies that have invested so much time and effort in social media strategies aimed at nurturing customer loyalty through customer relationship marketing?

My personal take on this is that the greater efficiency of self-service is undeniable for the vast majority of transactions (e.g. paying for your petrol at the pump or drawing out cash from a hole in the wall machine) although human interaction will always trump self-service for more complex transactions such as buying a new house.  But past bad customer experiences also play a crucial role in customer behaviour. Chances are if you keep giving them bad customer service they will eventually leave.

Let’s face it – you can’t pay in a cheque at a bank these days without being subjected to an inquisition on your personal finances by some bank clerk intent on meeting their sales target by upselling you to products you don’t need. Or buying a pair of shoes without being pressured by the sales assistant to take out a store card or sign up for a loyalty programme or to receive email or SMS offers.  And haven’t we have all been on the receiving end at some time or another of shoddy customer service from an offshore call centre? The fact is, we have learned from bitter experience that the effort involved in dealing with real people is just too great and so we take the line of least resistance and opt for self-service instead.

Fear of leaving ourselves open to pushy sales calls also plays a part in our increasing reluctance to hand over our phone number to companies who are likely to call us up in the middle of dinner or when we’re rushing to meet a deadline. Even if it’s a courtesy call to check we’re happy with the services we’re getting it’s still an irritant. I may have been happy with the services before your call, but not now you’ve invaded my personal space and needlessly taken up my valuable time!

What lessons can we learn from this research for website design from a user experience perspective?

Firstly, when designing your website you need to think about ways to make it easy for customers interact with you whatever their channel preference. If they want to primarily interact with you online give them online self-service options and don’t put obstacles in their way such as multi-step registration or check out processes that involve endless form-filling . If the research is to be believed a staggering 57% of inbound customer service calls come from customers who first attempted to resolve their issue on the company’s website. And over 30% of callers are on the company’s website at the same time that they are talking to a rep on the phone. As the study points out, that’s a lot of frustrated customers.

Secondly, recognise that channel switching is very common and that there will be occasions when even the most die-hard fan of self-service will encounter a problem or have a more complex query that requires human interaction and make it easy for them. Have a clear but flexible channel strategy that ensures a consistent standard of customer service however they interact with you. And don’t be  like BT and most of the mobile phone companies and make it impossible when a customer does need to pick up the phone and speak to you to find your customer service number!

Thirdly, segment your prospects and customers by channel preference and  tailor the way you communicate with them accordingly. If they say they want you to communicate with them by email don’t call or text them! It’s a simple extension of the principle of permission based marketing and a matter of respecting their wishes and not doing something which is bound to annoy. The problem of course is that even those customers who don’t want to interact with you in person still value the personal touch. You just need to be creative about how you weave this into your interactions with them. But that’s another problem for another day!

Finally, don’t overlook the importance of social media as a customer service channel. According to a recent report, 71% of people who used Twitter to complain about a product or service got no response, which is simply rubbing salt into their wounds.

The importance of good website design cannot be over-stressed. Your website is a key marketing tool with enormous potential to enhance your brand reputation and sales. However, a badly designed website can be off-putting to visitors, meaning lost opportunities to convert them to paying customers and potentially irreparable damage to your on-line image.

Faced with our of date content, pages that take forever to load or poor navigation many visitors will simply give up and take their business elsewhere. It is highly unlikely that they will recommend your website to other potential customers.

We frequently receive enquiries from business owners who already have a website but have had poor feedback from customers or are finding that visitor numbers are not translating into customer enquiries.

One of the most common reasons for this is that the website has been poorly designed using a cheap off the shelf package, often by a family member or a friend of a friend. This may seem like a good way to cut costs but it rarely pays in the long run. The end result is often far from professional and having to rely on the goodwill of others to keep content up to date can be a major headache.

For a website that is guaranteed to convey a professional image consistent with your business branding and improve your visit to enquiry conversion rate follow our top tips for good website design:

• Remember that your website is a key marketing tool which needs to be properly planned, designed and maintained. This is one of the most important business investments you will make so it’s worth doing properly.
• Take professional advice to ensure easy navigation and good website design and content that draws visitors in.
• Only employ designers who use technologies that comply with the latest W3C best practice standards to guarantee that your pages load quickly and display consistently on all modern browsers, content is accessible to users of mobile devices and search engines can easily index your site.
• Regularly refresh your content and check for broken links.
• If you’re not getting a full Content Management System that allows you to update your own content then insist on a complete after sales and hosting package from your web designer that includes unlimited minor updates so you can make changes quickly whenever they are needed.
• By all means shop around for a competitive deal but be realistic about what you are going to get for your money. If you’re only paying a couple of hundred pounds it’s unlikely your website will give you all the functionality you need to support a proactive online marketing strategy – for example, the ability to upload video, a blog,email opt-in box, social media integration. Plus a website that doesn’t comply with good website design principles will cost you dear in the long run by offering a poor user experience.