What is the future of website marketing?

That's a good question. The internet as we know it is now at the ripe old age of 25.

Since the emergence of Google as the dominant search engine, controlling more than 40% of internet searches, online marketing has never been more competitive or expensive.

So how can a small business hope to compete for a page#1 or even page#2 SER (search engine rank) without a good marketing budget?

Simple answer is you can't. Unless you've got some unique content to keyword ratio, ethical on-page SEO and good clean HTML pages, don't even try. It's widely debated but I believe that on-site SEO contributes to about 10% of a websites popularity. With more weighting towards your websites popularity (the sites linking into you).


So can't I just go out there and spend about a week swapping links with as many sites as possible?

No you shouldn't, mustn't, never do that!
It's a little more scientific than that (come on this is Google we're talking about) If it was that easy then search engine companies would be out of business overnight.

An ethical SEO company should use only ethical techniques. Avoiding any method that could violate Google’s Guidelines, Yahoo Guidelines or MSN’s Guidelines.


So how should I go about promoting my website?

For most small business' working to a tight budget, I'd recommend a combination of pay-per-click marketing and ethical SEO ahead of banner advertising and broadcast email marketing. Don't get me wrong; these are both very effective in driving incentivised traffic to your webpage, but it generally costs more in the long run and harder to quantify.

Fact is more money is spent on online marketing than ever before. In my experience the toughest business sectors to compete in are property, gambling, mortgages and insurance.

• Personalized Results of about 1,330,000,000 for property
• Personalized Results of about 247,000,000 for porn
• Personalized Results of about 143,000,000 for gambling
• Personalized Results of about 341,000,000 for mortgage
• Personalized of about 850,000,000 for insurance

It's highly unlikely your site will grab top spot on these generic single word search terms unless you're backed by a merchant bank or applying black-hat SEO marketing. So we recommend 3 keyword combinations and even regionalised keyword phrases to give you a better chance of being found.

This shouldn't be guess work either. A good SEO firm will be able to research the most popular search terms and tailor your campaign to target semi generic keywords. E.g. Personalized Results of about 19,600 for property to buy SW1

Following this principle we've managed to achieve a page#1 rank for waltonresidential.co.uk
It's not rocket science, but clients should acknowledge there is a science to ethical website marketing. It's a fluid situation as 1,000s of sites compete with yours for top spot on a daily basis.

It's a full time job, so appointing a SEO company to handle every aspect of your website marketing campaign from start to finish, allows you to concentrate on your principal activity or running your business.

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What's your New Year resolution for your business?

For most small businesses, highly effective marketing is make-or-break necessity. it's impossible for you to succeed without good marketing & sales techniques - they bring money in the door.

A marketing plan specially prepared by Signature Image Consultants Limited can help your business;

1. Reduce your marketing spend
2. Increase brand awareness
3. Drive targetted traffic to your website
4. Incentivise customers to make an enquiry
5. Win instructions & referrals from your competitors
   

Our marketing mix is blended to meet the needs of your business. There are no set prices. Simply call 0870-0205-805 or click signature.gb.com/services/marketing.htm to discuss your business objectives and kick start your marketing activity for 2008!

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A website is not just for Christmas!

A highly effective web site is essential, so why do so many business' neglect to keep their sites up to date?

There are so many sites out there with out of date content, contact details, spelling errors, broken links and web forms that don't work. One of them could be yours!

A simple content management system (CMS) will empower your firm to bring website management in-house; transferring control over your sites content to non technical staff. Saving you time and money.

As marketing consultants, we encourage website owners to challenge their web designers to produce websites with a content management system and make the best use of free social networking tools like blogging, social bookmarks, podcasting and rss feeds.

This will empower site owners like yourself to keep your customers educated and informed regularly with fresh case studies, product updates, price changes, news, success stories and anything else that takes your fancy!

It's not only about Google and search engine optimisation (SEO). Once they've landed on your site you have to hold that visitors attention and give them a reason to buy, bookmark your site and come back to your site time and time again (referred to as sticky marketing).

There's no point paying thousands to drive traffic to your site if your website fails to convert browsers into buyers :-(

So this Christmas why not invite us to review your website, over a glass of mulled wine?

We'll take a look at your competitors websites too and draw up a shortlist of your sites strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats absolutely free! You'll be glad you did :-)

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