The Internet
When I give business advice to a new client the first question I am asked is ‘How do I increase sales?’ My first consideration is to look at the competitors to a business. The usual first point of research for this is to undertake a search on Google and Yahoo. Not only looking at the organic listings, (these are the ones that appear on the left hand side) but also to look at the advertising businesses. I can gain a lot of useful information about the potential market place for a business very quickly through this.
Using freely available SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tools allow me to view very quickly the basics of why a website ranks in search engines. After considering which of those appearing in the top pages of search engines are the main competitors, my next study is my client’s own marketing. Online marketing can be very quickly evaluated. Is my client’s website getting visitors? If so what is the conversion rate of visitors to customers. If there are low visits and low conversion, it’s then about looking for the reasons why. If you would like to know more about SEO tools and how to use them please email me through my website.
So what are the reasons for low visitor numbers? Quite often these are easy to spot. Low visits can be due to poor ranking. A key cause of this is poor use of content. What I mean by this is – think about a newspaper, some stories you will read some you won’t, what makes the difference? It is the same for a website it needs to be interesting and engage your visitor. As well as this the content needs to include words that your potential customers will be searching for. Quite a few websites have content that sometimes reads like an in house company magazine. Great for those in the know but could be totally negative for the searches that potential customers are inputting into search engines.
So how do you choose appropriate content? Again look at your competitor’s websites, with a few clicks of your mouse you can reveal what keywords your competitors see as important for them and then look to include these in your content. Although you need to make sure that these keywords are relevant today for your business.
So will you see a quick benefit?
You should do, although there is a bit more to SEO and content writing and website design. After completing these you are then at the mercy of search engines getting around to cache the website, but the quickest that I have had a website from completion to front page Google has been 6 days - so it can be done if you know what you are doing.
If you would like to know more about how my business advice can make that all important difference to your sales line, please do email me through my website.
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