SEO advice

[moo-tique]

Hi all,

We launched our company 'Moo-tique' about 6 months ago and since then we have been using Google Adwords as our main marketing method. This has worked well and has served us with a steady stream of unique visitors spending around £85/month with around 30 new hits a day.

We have thought about venturing into Social Media but with a business like ours we are not sure that it's right for us.

Should we stick to Google as we have the added advantage of being in a niche market?

Do you think Social Media is worthwhile?

Also, is there any thing we can do whether it be website related or not to improve out SEO credibility?

Thanks for reading, interested to hear your comments.

 

[alanc]

I'm guessing that you have customers with a strong band tie-in. A Facebook page that keeps them informed of the latest figures would be popular with them. it would also help with SEO as social media is a part of SEO.

 

[neil@CamisOnline]

If your cows are in public places and parades, isn't this a good opportunity to take pictures of them for facebook and videos for youtube? If they in public places you might be able to encourage people to tag themselves with them in Facebook (maybe even run a small competition). This proved popular in liverpool with the superlambbanana.

Twitter might be useful to so you can publish news on events where your products are featured.

I'd be tempted to improve on your feedback page to include pictures and maybe even a story inside a case study or two.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Quirky stuff is perfect for social media.

 

[moo-tique]

If your cows are in public places and parades, isn't this a good opportunity to take pictures of them for facebook and videos for youtube? If they in public places you might be able to encourage people to tag themselves with them in Facebook (maybe even run a small competition).

Great idea, perhaps FB can work for us afterall!
Once we have created a page, how would we market this effectively?

 

[UKSBD]

Who owns the copyright to the images.

They would make good avatars for forums and you could even have a bit of fun with them on Google+

 

[tomkent45]

I think social media can be beneficial to you but not as beneficial as google ad words. You need to keep in mind that if you want to start working with social media you need to spend a lot of time on it. Be ready to commit to it at least half an hour every day. You need to start posting regularly and you'll need to find followers because if you don't have too many people who follow you, this looks unprofessional. So I'd say that social media can work for you but you'll need to commit to it and spend a lot of time on it.

Good luck,
Tom

 

[neil@CamisOnline]

I'd start by telling your friends and any companies that you do business with about your new facebook page. Also if you have any existing advertising material you can always add "follow us on facebook". You could certainly add this as a link from your website or Twitter.

Have you tried the local press yet? as your business is unusual they might be interested in a story.

It can take a while to build up a following, we follow companies on Twitter that we might like to do business with and frequently they follow us back.

 

[Ninja Commerce]

Hi Dan.

Firstly, as has been said above, there is no reason why Social media can't work for you. Try not to overstretch yourself, but you should certainly test it... That's the critical part though;

Set up some tracking (if you haven't already) so that you know where your traffic is coming from and how well each traffic source converts into sales/profit. A new social media campaign probably won't make a lot right away, but tracking the stats from day one is a good idea so that you can tell whether it is going to be successful long term (compared to say; how much time you are spending on it).

In terms of credibility, to be honest, your website gives a pretty good impression already, the design is fairly clean and the header gets across your brand image well...

Personally I would consider adding at least one image of your product on the home page though, as it is not immediately obvious what you are selling (unless you read the text).

I would also try making the heading on the home page more descriptive (rather than just saying welcome) and if you need to use an image for the heading, add an alt tag to help your SEO.

In general, any changes you make, try to think from a conversions point of view. So think about what the user's first questions are going to be when they land on any given page (this may well depend on the traffic source).

You could also consider looking into conversion rate optimization... If you have the time/resources to do so.

Regards, Mark.

 

[leesr]

Personally I think you would be much more wiser to invest your money into ongoing SEO rather than PPC (Google Adwords). Yes PPC brings some good results but what happens when you stop bidding? The traffic stops. I'm just saying that organic results are better and easier to maintain, plus you receive over 90% of all click throughs on a results page, so you’ll get far more people clicking through to your website than you would with paid listings. Just my opinion but hope that helps. Social media is good for loads of companies, you just have to make it work for you and be that little bit different

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

Personally I think you would be much more wiser to invest your money into ongoing SEO rather than PPC (Google Adwords). Yes PPC brings some good results but what happens when you stop bidding? The traffic stops. I'm just saying that organic results are better and easier to maintain, plus you receive over 90% of all click throughs on a results page, so you'll get far more people clicking through to your website than you would with paid listings. Just my opinion but hope that helps. Social media is good for loads of companies, you just have to make it work for you and be that little bit different

It's simply naive to advise someone to stop doing a form of advertising that is generating a return on investment. Why not advise to continue to run the Adwords campaign whilst beginning organic SEO and test, test, test.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[webgeek]

Given the (relatively speaking) low conversion rates of social media campaigns, I'd be thinking about:
1) Refining and expanding the PPC - if it's turning a profit, then it needs cranked up. If not, then it needs refined or shrunk.
2) Working on enhancing the on-site lead capture, followed by email marketing to those prospects - you're getting traffic, via PPC, so convert first, capture+email second
3) Implement an SEO program - moderate budget with a view to net positive ROI within 6-12 months. There's a reason organic search powers a higher percentage of conversions than any other channel.
4) Allocate a small budget for social - use it for validation, confirmation, SEO social mentions, and basically sending everyone the signals that this business is indeed for real.
5) Look at text/banner advertising opportunities on sites where prospects frequent. On some occasions, pay per annum can outperform pay per click (if you're savvy about the traffic volumes and costs of each)

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

Given the (relatively speaking) low conversion rates of social media campaigns, I'd be thinking about:
1) Refining and expanding the PPC - if it's turning a profit, then it needs cranked up. If not, then it needs refined or shrunk.
2) Working on enhancing the on-site lead capture, followed by email marketing to those prospects - you're getting traffic, via PPC, so convert first, capture+email second
3) Implement an SEO program - moderate budget with a view to net positive ROI within 6-12 months. There's a reason organic search powers a higher percentage of conversions than any other channel.
4) Allocate a small budget for social - use it for validation, confirmation, SEO social mentions, and basically sending everyone the signals that this business is indeed for real.
5) Look at text/banner advertising opportunities on sites where prospects frequent. On some occasions, pay per annum can outperform pay per click (if you're savvy about the traffic volumes and costs of each)

Good stuff. Also, setup some virtual numbers for call tracking and tracking conversions, also differrent landing pages with separate tracking code on forms, etc.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[moo-tique]

Thanks for all the feedback people, it's certainly gives us alot to think about. I think we are going to tapple into Social Media, test the water and see how effective it will be.

Can someone define 'Organic' SEO?

 

[webgeek]

Organic = organic search = search results found in the free section.

...not to be confused with pay per click / sponsored at the top, right, bottom of the free section.

----

SEO = search engine optimisation = efforts used to improve rankings in the free section

 

[SimonAntonySEO]

Hi Dan,

I definitely recommend getting involved in Social Media. Each company and industry is different so what works for one business, may not work for another, here are my initial thoughts.

Given the products you sell, I definitely think they will translate well to social media ... any collectables usually have a fan base, how might you tap into this? I recommend setting up a Facebook profile page for this company and site (if you haven't already added one!) Be sure to add new pictures of any products you have in - give updates whenever you have new or particularly rare collectables in stock. I think the trick with this will be getting people openly discussing of their own accord. Twitter would be worth trying too, similarly use it to announce any new products, share pictures and updates.

As already mentioned, videos can be a great way to showcase these awesome collectables (enthusiast will search places like YouTube to find particular things they are looking for) - some minor tactics like making sure to include a link to the product page of your website from the video description are essential to make sure you get the most from Youtube.

It might actually be worth thinking about promotions too. For instance - if everyone likes your Facebook page they might get entered into a raffle or something for a small prize. Everyone who 'liked' your page will get further updates you post in their own feed, making sure your message gets to the right people.

 

[moo-tique]

Great advice, thanks!

How would we market the FB page? We do already have one made up but not done alot with it because we have become confused with how to market it effectively?

 

[GeoMal]

On a slight tangent but related to any form of online sales route you follow, do you also own the non-hypenated version of your domain name? It was registered a few months before yours which seems a coincidence as it is an unusual name.

If it is yours you should set a redirect to the hyphenated version.

 

[KrystianSzastok]

Agreed with what think traffic said.

If you'd like me to take a closer look please get in touch (ill look for free or help you set up some tracking etc)

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

Great advice, thanks!

How would we market the FB page? We do already have one made up but not done alot with it because we have become confused with how to market it effectively?

20 ways to market your FB page here http://internetmarketingplatinum.com/20-ways-to-promote-a-facebook-page/

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[wilson230]

Social networks are not worthy. 60% percent of visitors are coming from social networks like facebook, twitter etc.

 

[neil@CamisOnline]

we weren't originally fussed on a FB page, but we've seen customers that we'd like to target are using it so we ended up creating one. Every little helps and we have got refers from it.

I spent some time checking backlinks of some of our competitors on the likes of Alexa and they seemed to be on a number of business directories, some of which they are actively advertising on and on others they may just have a free simple profile page about their company.

We check the site ranking ourselves before putting our company on these; I was wondering if anyone else uses this approach for ideas of where to backlink and/or to market?

I didn't think that customers (end users in my case) would bother much with directories now that Google has become so good at search.

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

Not to find directories (we have a list of good one as well as niche ones) but yes SEO companies use tools and databases to gather information on competitors' backlinks

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[moo-tique]

Thanks for all your comments - the information is extremely useful.