Directing Traffic To Website

[Pnp23]

Hello Everyone,
I am after some advice regarding directing traffic to my website. I am in Financial Services and have a website build. I have looked at many different options (pay per click, one way links et). I have tried to find some affiliate programme but all of them seem to be for people who want to earn money from web site,.I would really appreciate any advice regarding a good and cost effective way to get visitors to the site. I know there are thousands of Brokers who are trying to attract customers. I am looking to attract customers from the South East and the aim is for them to fill in the enquiry form.
The website is not up and running yet (hopefully next week as the forms need tweaking) but I would appreciate any feed back on the content and layout of the website. (as the system will not let me type the full website address, I have typed it with spaces etc)
mortgagebrokers 4london .co .uk/site

[iboxsecurity]

from first glance i like the site very clean and good layout. The buttons that you hover over you might want to change the text to text rather than image and the text blurb at the top of the page make text too.

Meta keywords and description too obviously needed.

PPC for mortgages and similar keywords are going to be VERY expensive if you go through Google adwords.

[gibby]

a friend of mine does the same sort of thing & is very successful

he has s series of webpages offering free advice on loans, mortgages etc but offers other free info by using an autoresponder. This allows him to collect the names & email addresses of potential customers and keep emailing them every 2 weeks.

To get visitors to his site in the 1st place he uses PPC but for the free guides & other freebies
as this is cheaper than doing what everyone else does.

he also runs competitions, have a free mortgage check & win something - both online & he gets into large companies & offered this in the canteen etc.

Its worth checking out different marketing techniques & different ways of getting leads to drive traffic to you site.
Have a look at what the competition are doing too

hope that helps

G

[SteveGibson]

I would really appreciate any advice regarding a good and cost effective way to get visitors to the site. I know there are thousands of Brokers who are trying to attract customers.

If you understand that, you should forget about finding some cheap or easy way to get targeted visitors.

People selling (good) advertising space online know what that space is worth as the market will have bid it up to a fair price.

Therefore, "cost effective" is going to be down to you and your ability to convert website visitors.

To give you an idea of how compeitive these things tend to be, I do PPC for a client in the financial services industry and our conversion (getting people to complete the form) is in the region of 40%.

I had a look at your site and there are lot of things you're doing that will probably hurt your conversion rate.

For example, having a big graphic taking up almost the entire first fold of your homepage can be expected to increase your site's bounce rate.

Normally, you should be putting info in there that's benefit driven.

Hope this helps,

Steve

[quikshop]

Hi,

We've got a few ideas in our article on improving your business - how to sell more online (http://www.internetretailer.biz/partner/improving_your_business__how_to_sell_more_with_you r_own_online_shop.aspx?qsaid=474), its geared towards online shops but some of the points can be applied to any website.

[new2bus]

For example, having a big graphic taking up almost the entire first fold of your homepage can be expected to increase your site's bounce rate.


I would second that, just take a look at your biggest competitors and see how they are getting the message across.

If i came to your site I would want information in front of me.

Looking at the page code there isn't a great deal of SEO on your site neither, for instance your title says "MK Financial".

It is not a good idea to have a direct email link on your site, there are plenty of ways to encrypt, or use a contact form, because if you leave it as it is, once you have had a few bots on your site your email box will start to fill up.

You will be amazed at how Cheap a fake Rolex is and how you can add to your libido etc. Then you have to find that genuine email amongst all that junk, or worsestill you go into a panic that your spam filter got it (even when it didm't).

[MikeBzr]

If you're considering using PPC, don't be too disuaded by the fact that the term 'mortage' itself is oversaturated - instead consider using 'long tail keywords' - which are lengthy and specific search terms, which tend to be much less saturated and, honestly, better then using generic ones.

I don't know about you, but living in Newcastle, if I were wanting to find houses I wouldn't go to google and just search for 'houses' -I'd search for something like 'houses to buy in newcastle', 'north east estate agents', or being more specific, 'property for sale in gosforth newcastle'.

[OldWelshGuy]

My advice to you is to shop around get help (free or paid) and do it S L O W L Y...

Most of the advice here is balls on accurate ESPECIALLY the 'give information away free' section! ;)

[TheHorse]

I totally agree with SteveGibson. Keep your pages informative - fancy illustrations might sell ipods but they dont sell mortgages. Information and tactful placing of some of your keyphrases around your site will also benefit your natural listings but dont go overboard. SEO is a means of traffic not a means of sale - always remember that - dont optimise to the detriment of a users experience once they reach the page.

Also agree with MikeBzr - target more specific local search phrases that will naturally have less competition. 3,4 & 5 word search phrases are your 'long tail keywords'

**incoming plug**
If you really don't have the time, knowledge or inclination to attack SEO or PPC then you're more than welcome to visit us at (www) internetsalesconsultants.co.uk - we are Google Adwords professionals
**plug over**

[Pnp23]

Hello Everyone,
I am gratefull to all who took the time and effort to look at the website and gave extremely usefull and practical feedback. I will now go back to the people building the website with much more knowledge and get the changes made.