What do I do and how do I do it?
One of my most fundamental and closely-held tenets is relatively simple to understand yet sometimes very difficult to implement:
Have a great website. People will find it.
I start with that idea in mind, and then proceed with the overall principles that follow through the entire process.
Research and Analysis includes:
- The Client – Who are you on the web? If your website is going to market you, I need to know what you already look like to the web world.
- The Industry – What does your company’s industry look like? What do you do, why and how? It’s good to get to know what you’re all about.
- The Market – What’s hot right now? Who’s selling what and for how much? It’s important to see what the offerings are, and how yours fit into them.
- The Competition – Who’s out there competing for your customers? Who’s at the top, and how did they get there? There is much to learn from those who’ve proven their success.
- The Customers – Who are they? What can you offer them? If you’ve got what they need, it’s just a matter of getting them to find you.
Once the research is done, we’ll work together to get a plan that is best suited to your individual needs and has one important goal, the success of your website.
Most plans are widely-flavoured and custom-tailored, but an example of a fairly typical Web Marketing Plan would look a little like this:
Keyword Research – Run some numbers and compile a report outlining which keywords will work best for you and why. I recommend some and then let you choose which ones you think your users will be typing into Google.
Competition Analysis – As part of the research outlined above, it’s important to find out who you consider the major players are for the keywords you’ve chosen, or even your industry in general. Then, you’ll get a report on why they’re at the top and how we can learn from what they’ve done.
Web Analytics – Your current web site statistics add even more detail to the overall picture.
Unique Visitors, Conversion Rates, Most Visited Pages, and Most Used Search Terms are some of the data that gives a rough idea of how successful your site currently is.
On-site Optimisation – Building new pages based on the keywords you’ve chosen or changing up some of your current pages to focus on these keywords. Then, going through your site and making sure that the copy fits with your overall “message” and branding.
After that, linking to these optimised pages throughout your site.
Off-site Optimisation – Quite simply, promoting your site on other sites. I find the most relevant websites and tell as many people as possible that they should be visiting your site and why.
Whether you’re selling Shoes, Ideas, or Idea Shoes, we’ll find where on the web people are looking for sites like yours and we’ll tell them all about you by either submitting your site to them or even simply asking them for a link.
Monitoring and Tracking – This ongoing part of the process is one of the most important.
If we don’t pay extremely close attention to the effects of what’s been done, we may never know what’s working and what isn’t. I’ll set up automated reporting to periodically keep you up-to-date with where your site is ranking and I’m happy to explain any significant changes.
Experiment. Analyse. Adjust.
That’s it in a nutshell really. Sure, there are more details and specifics in each step than you can shake a stick at, but this is the basic overview of the process.
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you need to know more.