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If you have a website then you should already be aware of how important fresh content is. Content is king and the more relevant, unique and fresh content you have on your site the better. Some people think that they can just copy and paste articles or blog posts from other sites to add to their own, but this is not the way to do it and is certainly a step in the direction of getting your site banned. Google says that any content added to your site must give the viewers benefit and offer them something over an above content that is already out there. So for example if you wanted to reference another article that is ok as long as you add your own input to it as well.

News sections are usually a good way to get new content on as this should be unique to your business. You don’t have to worry about writing a 2000 word essay, a few hundred words a few times a week may be enough to give you the bump you need. The news could be about things that are happening within your business or about industry changes and advances that your visitors may find interesting.

Many business owners assume that SEO is something that happens once a website has been created but integrating it into the site as it is being designed has been shown to be more effective. Web design is all about the visuals and function whereas SEO focuses on improving your viability on the search engines such as Google. However, SEO and web design should work together in any successful marketing strategy.

Being aware of SEO when designing a website means that you need to create a website that, while aesthetically pleasing, is also web crawler-friendly. An area where SEO and web design sometimes conflicts is with content. Content helps keyword strategies, and is needed for SEO but it can also have a negative effect if it’s not properly structured.

While SEO focuses on improving your search rank, it’s more than using the right tags and metadata. The inbound page links on a website are often ignored, but they can easily help the business rank higher if set up correctly. Linking or in fact all elements of SEO need to be done carefully to ensure that you don’t actually do more harm than good. It is vital that you seek the help and guidance of a marketing professional before undertaking any SEO for your website.

When you have a website built, it should be done using the latest code available to ensure that it is secure and functions correctly on the newest browsers. Over time this code will become dated and you will need to ensure that updates are carried out to keep it secure and to ensure that it works how it should. Depending on what content management system you sue, you may be able to get the updates to be done automatically. For example, WordPress roll out updates every month or so which you can choose to download. Along with being able to download the latest Wordpress updates you can also choose to update the various plugins that you use.

If the content management system you use is bespoke, then it will need to be updated manually. This can be harder work but is often required for more bespoke websites where an off the shelf content management system is not suffice. 

Make sure you always take a full back up of your website before doing any major updates and ideally test them in a staging area before doing them on the live site as this will allow you to find out if any issues may be caused by doing the invites.

Although it may be tempting to opt for an off the shelf website that has been created from a basic template, you may find this very limiting in the future. When it comes to template websites there are a many different sorts. Some are quite restrictive and will only allow you to change a very small number of specific sections, others may be loosely based on a template but then are adapted to suit each client. Often the free or cheap websites are based on these more constrained templates which may be ok to start with but over time you could find it frustrating that you simply cannot change or add to it the way you want to. Often it is also harder to get these sites to rank well on the search engines as a lot of the functionality behind the scenes that you may need for SEO has been removed. For example, you may find that it uses the page title as the H1 (heading one) tag and you may not want this to be the case. It is likely that you do not have access to change this.

Before agreeing to a basic template website be sure to find out what can be changed at a later date if needed as it may be worth you paying a bit extra to get the right site from the start.

When in business, it is vital that you know who your competitors are and also what they are doing. You can do this by carrying out some competitor research and this is often done when you create a business plan. If you need to apply for a loan from the bank or want investors to join you then they will want to see that you have done your research thoroughly.

You need to know what or who you are competing against, if they offer exactly the same products and services as you and also what prices they charge. Once you have all of this information you can start to analyse whether you are competitive and if you are at the right level to compete and hopefully get some of the market share.

If you are up against companies that you feel you simply cannot compete with such as Amazon etc, then try and give people a reason to choose you over them for example it may be that you can sell the point that you are local and therefore there is no hassle or that your customer service is second to none.

Without carrying out the correct research you won’t know if you have a chance of being successful before you start.

Marketing often consists of a number of different types such as paid for advertising or cost per click, on site marketing such as SEO and social media marketing. All of these different methods of marketing can work really well if they are designed in a way that is attractive to people and make them want to do what is being asked of them.

Often marketing and advertising on social media platforms works best when it is done alongside an image. The image may be an infographic explaining a process or showing a solution to a problem or it may be ad that is going to be shown in the paid for section. Regardless of what the reason for the image, it is important that you have good quality ones too. You may be tempted to try and create your own Images or banners to use along side them but that will probably not look very professional.

If you want decent images to use then you should ensure that you use a graphic designer who will be able to create a bank of images you can use across different social media platforms. This gives continuity to your brand and looks professional.

It may be that it took quite a while to get your website all up and running, so once it is you may be tempted to leave it for a while.

If you do not have any new services or products to list you probably think there is no reason to add new content to your site, but if you do not do this you run the risk of losing any rankings that you already have. Google and the other search engine giants like to see that your website is updated regularly. This shows them that you are proactive with the website and the information on there is current. If the web pages are not update or no new ones added then it will quite possible demote the website and push it down the search engine results. Over time there will be changes that come about in your industry and you may wish to add these to your website or at least refer to them to show your visitors that you are aware of any current industry changes or news.

Recovering from a loss in rankings can be tricky and can take a lot of time, mean while you could be missing out on a large amount of potential customers. You want to try and avoid this at all costs.

Research has shown that the subject line of an email is vitally important and plays a huge role in terms of the success of the marketing campaign. If the subject line is not appealing then people will not bother to open or read the email.

Many businesses still use email marketing as part of their online marketing strategy and it can work very well. Although it can be tempting at times, never buy in a list of email addresses to use as not only can the data be illegally obtained but your success rates are bound to be low. Emailing to your own existing database is often likely to get you a better response. Lots of companies that allow you to send mass emails through their servers stipulate that you can only use a list of opted in email addresses and not ones that you have obtained elsewhere.

The subject line is of massive importance on an email as it is often the first thing the viewer will read and can be the deciding factor between opening the email and deleting it. Try to do your research and trail different subjects to see which ones get the best open rate.

If you are a web programmer or developer or work in the online marketing industry, then you may need to assist or manage your client’s social media accounts and profiles.

Many social media profiles need to be linked to an administrator and this sometimes has to be a personal profile. This cause issues if you are asked to manage a companies Facebook account for example as they may not want their page linked to their personal profile. They will also not want to give you their personal log in details to allow you to manage it on their behalf.  Facebook have set up a site called Business manager which allows you to link multiple accounts under one platform. The admin of the Facebook business page will allow you access to manage it without having to give you their passwords details meaning you can log in with your business account and post, comment etc.

There are other software programs available that can make it easier to manage social media accounts especially if a company has accounts on multiple social media platforms. These software packages usually allow you to add the a number of social media accounts and then post content to multiple sites at the same time, drastically cutting down on admin time.

When it comes to online and offline marketing, knowing who your target audience is, is essential. So many businesses lose sight of who their target audience is and find themselves slowly becoming more generic in their marketing and therefore diluting the results they get. IF you have a limited budget then this is even more important as you only want to be marketing to the types of people that may be interested in your product. If for example you own a dog grooming salon then you only really want to be targeting people that own a dog. You might occasionally get someone who has seen your ad that doesn’t own a dog, recommending you to a friend but this is not something that will happen all the time and if budget is tight, then you should try and ensure it is spent as wisely as possible.

If you are not sure who your target audience is then it is time to do some market research. Sometimes it can be easier to figure out who your target audience isn’t if your product and service is aimed at lots of different groups of people. This way you can exclude them when doing your marketing.