Your DIY Online Marketing Kickstart Guide

[WebshopMechanic]

Hi all,

Ray the @Tin Man and I were chatting a few weeks ago and decided to pool some of our digital marketing knowledge to see if we could help the UKBF community in some way. After all, recent events have been challenging and we’re here to help each other if we can.

Nobody likes hearing that businesses are struggling so if we can be of use to just one company, it’ll be 100% worth it.

2020 has thrown curveball after curveball and made running a business extremely unpredictable. Whether you’re online or off-line, the rules have changed. Like it or not, one thing is for certain: every business now needs an online plan.

Lockdown and health risks have sent people online more than ever before. What this means is that the website you previously neglected is now your most powerful sales tool. A massive untapped opportunity awaits. It has the potential to grow your business more than at any other time. But you must be committed to making it work.

Now is the time to learn how to truly market your business digitally so you can sell your products and services online. You need to learn how to get people to find you, how to engage prospects, how to convert them into customers and how to create long-term loyalty.

Yup, that sounds like a daunting task but just look at the upside.

• Websites require very minimal rent
• They are open to trade 24/7 (not when the physical doors close)
• They are hugely scalable
• They operate across borders
• They can bring you leads and convert sales on autopilot

All you need is a game plan.

OK, we get that you’re a business owner, not a seasoned marketer. And your tech knowledge may be limited. And maybe you don’t have any budget or are time limited.

Well, don’t panic. We’ve created this mini DIY Marketing Kickstart Guide to help you ‘up your game’ and revive your business for the rest of 2020 and beyond.

Apologies in advance as this is a long post, but we hope there are plenty of golden nuggets that you can put into action.


Disclaimer: Before we get started, please note. Neither Ray nor I want anything out of this and we’re not pitching for business either. We are simply sharing our knowledge with the UKBF community in the hope it’ll help you achieve more business growth through your website.

Also, we don’t cut corners and make no promises of overnight riches, Lamborghinis and early retirement on sunset beaches. A website, YOUR website, requires constant attention. Just like your home, it needs cleaning, fixing and looking after. Neglect it and it’ll bring you nothing. Invest time, hard work and plenty of attention and you’ll reap the rewards.


Your Kickstart Guide

This guide is quite long, but we hope it helps and adds value to you and your business. If you have any questions, just add them in the comments below. Ray, the UKBF community and I will gladly answer them.


1. Getting Your Business Mindset Straight (Stop trying so hard to sell)

Before we even get into the website side of things, we need to cover a few basics that cause many businesses to fail. Understanding these will help you approach things in the right way instead of wasting your time doing things that don’t add value or damage your business.


Nobody wants to be sold to!

Think about how much we dislike door-to-door salespeople? They’re intrusive, annoying and quite frankly, a bit shifty. Websites and the online world are just the same.

Any site that’s peppered with 58 ‘Buy’ messages on the homepage, constant discounts and lots of red flashes looks cheap and desperate. I know you want to sell but people will be put off if you try to ram offers down their throat.

The key to selling to people is to warm them to your company, brand, product or service. Rather like dating, you need to make them like you, want to spend time with you and then eventually they will commit to the purchase.

People will rarely buy anything on the first visit, so forget about trying to run a quick ad campaign that returns sales overnight. It ain’t gonna happen!


You need to build trust

Ok, here’s the cliché. “The best way to sell, is to try not to sell”. There, I said it. Yes, it sounds corny, like some American fist-pumping, sales guru. But it’s true.

The most established brands in the world have built trust with their customers. It’s this trust which enables them to sell their products at a higher price. It’s what keeps their customers returning and spreading the word, in effect doing their marketing for them.

You can build trust, and ultimately loyalty, in your brand, by doing simple tasks like:

• Going the extra mile with customer service
• Making sure your customers are happy (without trying to sell)
• Constantly educating them about your products and industry
• Demonstrating your expertise in your industry
• Solving their problems (possibly on social media)
• Being useful
• Involving them when evolving your business
• Rewarding them for their loyalty when they least expect it
• Investing in premium packaging
• Promoting environmental initiatives
• Supporting worthy causes

Building trust doesn’t need to cost money. It just needs thought behind it.

Most companies forget about their customers once they have their cash. This is your chance to do the small things that your competitors neglect.


Price: You don’t need to be the cheapest

It’s not about price. Being the cheapest is no longer important.

Yes, it might have worked for Mike Ashley and Sports Direct, but the guy owns the complete supply chain, so he was able to recoup profit at every stage.

Unless you have the same, bully-boy business model as Mike Ashley, you need to think smarter. There is no point competing on price because it is always a race to the bottom. For every £1 you reduce your price, you are effectively throwing a £1 in profit down the drain. It’s coming out of YOUR pocket!

Don’t get us wrong, price is important, but people don’t necessarily want the cheapest. They want value.

If the price was the deciding factor then people wouldn’t be buying Tesla cars, Apple iPhones, Nike Air trainers or Lululemon yoga clothing. They’d not enjoy eating at The Ivy Brasserie, buying organic coconut milk from the supermarket, booking an Uber or ordering Hello Fresh recipes to their doorstep.

The reason why people buy these products and services is because of convenience, trust and emotion. They are left with a good feeling inside. The products/services give them a sense of satisfaction. They feel like they’ve achieved value for money even though these items are perhaps twice the price of a low-end competitors.

Instead of being led on price, think about how you stand out with your potential customers, so you are seen as more valuable than your competitors.

That brings me on to the next point. Your target customer.

Know your target customer

It’s important to understand that not everybody is your target customer. I’ve lost count of the number of businesses who fail to have a grasp of who their target customer is. Do you?

Do you know what type of customer is most loyal? Do you know what type of customer is most profitable?

A good customer is not necessarily one who loves you and who is always on the phone asking for something. In fact, those customers who require extra care and attention are often the most unprofitable. I’m not saying don’t bother with them, but you need to understand who your target customer is and focus your efforts on them and them only.

If you don’t have a target customer defined, you need to create one. In the fluffy world of marketing, we call this a ‘customer avatar’ or ‘customer persona’. No, these are not the blue people from planet Pandora. They simply help bring an understanding of aspects like:

• Age
• Geographic location
• Where do they work?
• What are their beliefs?
• What are their interests?
• Where do they hang out online?
• Where do they hang out offline?
• What are their hobbies?
• What do they do in their spare time?
• What makes them feel good?
• What makes them feel bad?
• What are their frustrations?
• What do they want in a product or service like yours?
• What problems do they have that your business can solve?

You need to draw a picture of your ideal customer. Give them a name, picture what they look like and start to understand what makes them tick.

You can’t truly serve a customer unless you get under their skin to know what motivates them to buy. Once you know that, selling becomes an easier task.

 

[WebshopMechanic]

2. Getting your website straight

OK, now it’s time to move onto your most important sales tool - your website. Your website has the potential to transform your business if it is given the right care and attention.

We can’t list all the nitty-gritty in this post, or it would be the length of War & Peace. But we can highlight some key areas for you to focus on, like:


Making sure your website works on mobile

Every day I talk to businesses who have a website that isn’t mobile-friendly. When I ask them about it, they tell me it’s because their developer said it was.

#balderdash!

A ‘mobile-responsive’ website is usually mobile-friendly because it’s just your entire website crammed onto a smaller screen. Imagine trying to squeeze all seven Harry Potter books into ten pages. It would look a mess. It’s the same with websites.

A true mobile-friendly website is one that’s stripped back. It should have a fast loading time, be easy to navigate, super-simple to read and get the message across clearly.

If your website still has sliding banners that shrink to fit the page or text that can’t be read on a phone, you’re losing business. You need to fix it – immediately!

It could be worth your while speaking to some of the developers here on UKBF who’ll be able to help you sort it out. It’s worth the investment now thatphones are the UK’s most popular device for getting online.

Make your homepage punchy (but don’t go for the hard-sell)

Many websites fall at the first hurdle because they throw every single message, offer, colour, font and button possible at visitors, hoping something will stick. Doing that is a great way to lose valuable sales opportunities.

Your homepage is NOT a sales page. It is effectively your elevator pitch page that you should be using to hook your customers in. Rather like a shop window, it’s the job of your homepage to capture their attention and spark their intrigue into your offer so they walk through your front door (a.k.a click deeper into your site).

The thing to remember here is K.I.S.S - Keep It Simple Stupid. Don’t make visitors think. Make it as easy as possible, otherwise they’ll be confused or overwhelmed and will leave.


Be clear with your messaging (why are you different?)

Almost every industry is crammed with companies vying for market share. To stand out, you need to show why you are different. Fail to do that and you’re just another vanilla brand that people will overlook.

Your website homepage has just three seconds to communicate:

• Who you are
• What you do
• Why you are different (your unique selling proposition)

If you can’t communicate this then it’s unlikely people will stay on your site for long. Take some time to think about why customers should buy from you over the competition.

(TIP: The Purple Cow by Seth Godin has fantastic insight into how to stand out from your competitors.)

Tap into your customer’s emotion

If you’ve gone through the customer profiling exercise you should know what factors motivate your customers to buy. So rather than following the ‘buy one, get one free’ route, it might be more fruitful to tell them how your product or service can:

• Solve their problem
• Make their life easier
• Remove their discomfort
• Improve the way they work
• Make them feel better about themselves

Invest in good imagery

Most people buy with their eyes. Poor imagery makes your products and services look bad. Furthermore, they project a negative view of your entire business as a poor quality outfit.

Don’t panic. You won’t need an expensive photographer to fix this. You could hire a local photography student, hobbyist or even learn yourself. Plus, there are a ton of free stock photography websites out there, like Pixabay Unsplash, and PXHere.

You will also have a camera on your smartphone which will take good quality shots. Just remember to try and use bright, natural lighting.


Build trust

If people don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. It’s that simple.

If someone has never heard of your product, service or business, you’ll need to put in that extra effort to build trust. Fortunately, we can suggest a number of ways you can do this:

Customer reviews - Reviews and testimonials play an essential part in converting customers. Ideally, you want to show your Google or Trustpilot reviews because these carry more weight and tend to look more legit.

Press logos - If you’ve been featured on TV, radio or by another website, then shout about it. A familiar logo adds ‘brownie points’ in people’s minds and reinforces trust.

Awards - If you’ve won awards in your industry, do some boasting. Awards mean you have achieved something, and people always like to back winners!

Social media - Instagram feeds are all the rage at the moment on fashion websites because they show customers actually wearing their products. You should adopt this same principle by asking your customers for a photo of themselves wearing or using your product.

If you run a service, ask them for a quick video talking about your service. You’ll be surprised at the number of people who say yes.

Case studies - Customers want to see a positive transformation from their investment. Prove your product or service can improve their life in some way and you’ll be onto a winner. Case studies are an effective way to do this because they showcase your offering in the best light. Plus, you can throw in some imagery and a testimonial as well.

Show your contact details - As a customer, there’s nothing worse than having to hunt around a website to find a telephone number or email address. Your contact details should be made clear in your header or footer at all times. Being available is a sign of trust.

Show your delivery information - If you deliver goods and services then tell people when they will receive them. This is especially important if they are gift buying and are unsure whether the item will turn up in time. You will probably reduce your customer service call in the process.

Show your returns information returns - Transparency is key when trading online. Don’t hide stuff and be honest! By law, you must offer a returns policy so you should show that clearly. Hide it away and people won’t buy.

Your ‘About’ page - Believe it or not, the story behind your business and the people who run it (i.e you) is just as important as the product or service. Seeing real people behind a business adds immediate credibility and trust, ticking boxes in customers’ heads in the process.

Look at it this way. Who would you rather buy from? A large faceless organisation with corporate offices or the small family-run business with three generations running it and whose names you know? People like faces and a story that resonates.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business. You can still have a great story to share and can use your about page to let people into your world. Don’t waste the opportunity.

 

[Tin]

3. Getting your website found on Google with ZERO budget (SEO)

Disclaimer: First of all this is not an A to Z complete guide to everything SEO but simply a few suggestions of ways ANY website owner can improve their Google rankings right now with little to no budget.

What it won’t do is land you on page 1 for high volume keywords where you are competing with the big competition. Instead it will show you what you can do to improve your visitor numbers right now with just a few on page tweaks and best practices which should give you a kick start.

Why:

There’s no such thing as “build it and they will come” when it comes to the internet or to put it as bluntly as this quote currently doing the rounds “If you ever need to hide a dead body, you should place it on the second page of Google search results”. People say write for visitors, not for Google but in all reality, if you don’t write for Google then you’ll not have any visitors. The solution is to write for both because you need both to make an eCommerce site a success.

If you want your website to be found on the internet and you are looking to sell a product or service to potential customers then you need to optimise its content to target your potential customers. To do that you must convince Google that you have what the searcher is looking for and that simply means a web page on your website that is devoted to the topic of your chosen keywords.

However it is perfectly possible for you to gain rankings and sales with a minimal or zero budget as long as you are prepared to work at it and have realistic expectations of what you can achieve. It’s one of those ‘no pain… no gain’ scenarios.

Why Google?

Simply put, it is the number one search engine of choice for around 86% of the UK online population. In the UK Bing takes around 10% of the remaining 14% with Yahoo taking 2.5% and various others sharing the last 1.5%. These figures are as of April 2020. It’s so popular that people don’t “search” for something on the internet they “Google” it.

Keyword research - What, why, how?

What:

Keywords (and phrases) are the very foundation of any web page that intends to rank in order to bring relevant traffic and potentially new customers on-board. In order to give your website the most solid sales base possible, sensible yet thorough keyword research and analysis should be carried out before the web page is even created.

Of course, in reality, almost every business these days already has a website fully formed and functional. If this is you, fear not, you can still find new keywords to target, however it is important to ensure you take into account any rankings you already have – in other words, assessing the value of the keyword terms you already have before deciding to exchange them for new ones. It may be prudent to retain the current page that ranks whilst creating new pages to target the new keywords.

To carry out research into the keywords (and phrases) to use on your website you need to deep dive into what your potential customers are searching for in terms of what you are offering. This is an important point to remember; your chosen keyword(s) for a particular page must be relevant to what the searcher actually wants. Don’t be lured into targeting a juicy, high volume keyword (key phrase) if you don’t provide what the searcher is actually looking for. E.g. “How to build a brick wall” – this keyword search is clearly a question someone might use in Google and the answer they’d be looking for is an ‘informational answer’ so don’t try selling bricks to them. Provide a detailed and informed answer then give them a link to your bricks sales page.

Why:

Keyword research is the foundation to your SEO. Get your initial keyword research wrong or cut corners with it and you are setting yourself up to fail.

How:

The first thing you need before you can begin researching new keywords is what’s called your seed keywords. These will be a tight group of keywords/phrases that are highly relevant to your business. These first words/phrases are what you will use to expand and grow your list.

If you’ve already done your customer profiling, mentioned above in this guide, then you should already have the beginnings of an initial keyword list to help you start your research with. Once you’re underway with your list you’ll no doubt find inspiration with other keywords too, put them in your list and refine your keyword ideas when you’re finished.

Your aim is to find a set of keywords and phrases that are:

· highly relevant to your webpage or category theme
· have the right user intent ( ‘buy’ keywords have a lot less search volume)
· are tightly targeted to your customers
· when added up they give you a decent overall search volume
· last, but by no means least, are not overly competitive.

To do the above you’ll need to use a tool, there are plenty out there for researching your keywords, some free whilst others are paid for. The free tools are mostly time limited so to get the most from your research I suggest getting yourself organised, subscribing to one for a month and blasting all your keyword research in one go then exporting your keyword work into a few organised Excel files, https://www.semrush.com/signup/get-free-trial/ or for $7 for 7 days access https://ahrefs.com/start-trial both are good tools for doing this job.

All the tools available draw their information from Google’s API and will give you search results that are Exact, Phrase, Broad or a Related match for your list. I suggest you search initially for exact match as these will be a close match for what you are offering. Then try to open the box further with phrase and/or related match searches to try to find additional keywords that may be relevant to the same url.

Matching your expectation to your budget:

The important thing to keep in mind with your keyword research is your budget. Generally, high volume, primary, and even secondary, keywords will not be easy to rank for and the bigger the online search figures are (monthly search volume) the harder and longer it is going to take to rank for those keywords. As this is a kick start guide for site owners on a budget then you need to start off with the lower volume keywords that should be easier to rank for and your rankings will come in more quickly. In other words, try to rank for a range of low volume, closely related keywords to get ranking results quickly on a per page basis then, when the money is coming in you can set your sights higher if you want to.

Checking the competition:

The keyword tools also give you an estimation of your keyword difficulty however I recommend always doing a quick manual check using a couple of Google operators (more specific searches) to get a feel for your online competition.

Here are some examples –

https://www.freshbananas.co.uk/allintitle1.jpg

In the above example you can see that the 3 words in the key phrase 'art deco lights' are mentioned somewhere in the page title element of 20,000 competing web pages. By adding a “ to the beginning of the key phrase you’re asking Google to show you how many verbatim mentions there are of the same key phrase. As the image below shows, there are 770 verbatim instances of the key phrase – art deco lights.

https://www.freshbananas.co.uk/allintitle2.jpg

Obviously the lower this figure is the less your competition for the phrase is likely to be. But this is only part of the picture and remember that links are an important aspect of SEO, and links aren’t being factored into allintitle results. Don’t make any assumptions lightly that the massive drop between those numbers 20,000 – 770 indicates that the keyword is an easy one to rank for, the more hands-on you are with your own SEO, the more you’ll be in a better, more educated position to make your own mind up on factors like this.

Another operator to use that will help you to see how competitive a keyword may be is allinurl:”art deco lights. This time Google will tell you how many competing pages have the verbatim phrase in their URL. Any web page using SEO strategies will tend to have its URL named in association with the main keyword the page is targeting.

This is not a scientific measurement but you will find it’ll give you an initial feel for how many competitors are actively targeting the keyword phrase.

You also need to have a look at who your competition is on page 1. For instance if the page is dominated by the big boys such as Amazon, ebay, John Lewis, B & Q etc you may feel you need to go back to your keyword list or tool and look for another potential keyword avenue to go down.

How many keywords to target per page:

There’s no magic number but a rule of thumb is to try to target only 2-3 tightly related keywords. The secret is to keep them tightly focused to what your page is selling. Don’t try to target multiple but unrelated products within the same page.

Good e.g. flyers, flyer printing, a5 flyers, a4 flyers, personalised flyers,

Bad e.g. flyers, banner printing, personalised business cards, calendars,

Of course, it is absolutely possible to rank a page for many, many incidental keywords as long as they are all highly relevant to the focus of the page.

Just remember, you need to be aware when choosing your keywords of the user intent of the person searching at Google. There are 2 main search behaviours; browse mode and buy mode so make sure that you give your visitors the right content. There’s no point trying to sell a service or a product when a visitor is looking for a “how to” guide. Similarly, there’s no point in trying to rank for the keyword “jewellery” on a page that’s selling “silver trinkets”.

Continued on next post due to length

 

[Tin]

Testing:

Over the years I’ve found many times that the accuracy of the data I’ve got from a keyword tool can be very questionable so sometimes before I decide to commit to a particular keyword I’ll often run a short test Google Ads campaign to get some real time data. You can often get some excellent keyword volume data for extremely little spend. The secret here is to create a web page on the topic of your keyword, write the copy for your web page and write a Google ad.

If you’re unsure of doing this contact any of UKBF’s members who offer a Google Ads service, they’ll be glad to help.

How to implement on your site

Now that you’ve got your selection of keywords it’s time to decide where and how you are going to use them on your website.

Grouping and allocating

Before you allocate your keywords to your pages it’s important to cluster your keyword terms into closely related, relevant groups. All you'll need here is time, an eagle eye and several cups of your favourite brew.

Given that Google likes to see unique content on all web pages, you need to make sure that you get a decent separation between each group. There's no point having a page about 'pink spotted handkerchiefs' and then another page about 'purple spotted handkerchiefs', this would be difficult to differentiate sufficiently. Best practice here would be to have a product page targeting “spotted handkerchiefs” and other closely related keywords and then have a simple drop down box on the product page so you can feature individual product options such as colour, size etc that allows your visitor to select precisely what they want.

The page title element and meta descriptions are…

A very under-rated area of a web page and yet they’re arguably THE most important area too.

They’re the most important area because they’re…

· Your first sales pitch, the words you use in a title element and meta description are the first words that a member of the public will read if they find your web page ranking in Google on the topic of the keyword that they typed in.

They’re under-rated because…

· Most site owners I know or have worked with don’t spend much time writing engaging wording for title elements and meta descriptions, it’s just a routine they feel they can knock out really quickly without spending more than 60 seconds on things. But, if you have any half decent rankings, even for low volume keywords then you can significantly increase visitor levels by spending time creating attention grabbing title elements and meta descriptions, it is easy once you get into the mechanics of it but does take some effort from the start to develop a state of mind that then becomes a routine whenever it’s needed.

If you were given a free 30 second adverting slot on prime time TV you would make the most of ensuring that it had the best chance of getting the attention of your target audience. Your search result in Google MUST be treated with the same importance.

Page Title Elements

Looking at these two individually the Page Title element (often referred to as title, page title or meta title) has a direct bearing on page rankings. It is the first signal to Google of what your web page is about, its topic and it’s fair to say that the better you SEO your title for your keywords, the better your rankings for keywords related to your page will be.

When creating your title element it’s important to note that currently Sept 2020 Google allows all site owners 550 pixels of width to write and display title wording and depending upon the width of the individual characters you use this will allow you between 55-65 maximum characters for your title wording (roughly 10-12 words). Google is rigid on this but it does actually index words beyond the 550 pixel limit when it shows the three little dots, the ellipsis.

It's been accepted for a very long time now that Google puts different values (places more/less emphasis) on where words appear throughout a title. I use the right-hand side of my title element for CTAs (Call to Action) or marketing hooks and the left-hand side of my title for my keywords.

Do take the time to make your title elements as engaging as you can, and always try to have a strong hook in it. If you say something in your page title - a benefit, promise or offer - that encourages searchers on Google to click on your search listing to visit your site, make sure that you repeat that benefit, promise or offer on your web page somewhere prominent and easy for the visitor to see as soon as they land on the page. They need to be reminded what made them click your ranking result.

Meta Descriptions

Google tells us that meta descriptions stopped having a positive effect on rankings in 2009 but that does not mean it’s an unimportant part of your web page, it’s an essential area that should be used to engage interest with readers who are doing searches on Google, it’s your chance to increase visitors to your site by cleverly using the right wording in the right places.

As far as size goes Google is much more flexible on meta description lengths but the width is restricted to 600 pixels maximum for each line of wording directly below the title. If Google sees your search as an ‘informational based search’ then it will sometimes display roughly 50 words (300 characters maximum) and 3.5 lines of wording before it shows its ellipsis (…) If Google sees your search as a more specific, direct search it’ll allow and display between 150-170 maximum characters, again wider characters take up more pixel space so you’ll get fewer words displayed in your meta description length.

To give Google every chance to show your chosen meta description and not some random text from within your content always include your keyword phrase within the wording of a meta description. However, it’s important to break your keyword phrase up so that it’s not just a verbatim keyword repeat. Remember too that, just like your title elements, your meta descriptions should include hooks to help engage with potential customers seeing your ranking in Google.

Here’s a simple example of an average meta description;

Flying lessons at Midlands Aero Club with qualified pilot of 18 years who will show you the ropes. Lessons available most weekends.

And here’s another example here;

Hands-On Flying Lessons - Personalised Flying Vouchers, Family & Friends Welcome - Get 50% OFF This Week - Cafe on Site - Est 40 yrs.

The differences: The first example is only talking to someone who wants to try a flying lesson. The second example above sells the lesson in a much stronger way and to more audiences, for instance to those wanting to try a ‘hands-on’ flying lesson as well as to those that might be looking to buy a flying lesson for a family present. The 50% OFF is another incentive to book your lesson, there and then.

Quick boost for established websites

If you have an established website that’s been online for a few years you can give it an instant boost in visitors, and possibly rankings, simply by picking out pages of your site that are already ranking on pages 1 and 2 of Google and giving your titles and meta descriptions some ‘additional bite’ to them. Click the video links further down to see precisely what I mean.

For those that don’t know where or how to start this process, here’s what I suggest. Go to any one of the rank checker tools below that offer a free trial (some are listed below) create a new account and pop your domain name in to see which of your pages and keywords rank, and on what page of Google they rank on.

Here’s those links.

https://www.semrush.com/signup/get-free-trial/
https://mangools.com/users/sign_up?ref=header-mngls
https://moz.com/tools/rank-tracker
https://ahrefs.com/start-trial (not free but only $7 for 7 days access)

Then all you do is to cherry pick web pages of yours that rank well. First pick off pages that rank on page 1 even if it’s ranking for low volume keywords, create strongly worded titles and meta descriptions (see videos below for ideas) then move onto your pages that rank on page 2 of Google, then move onto pages that rank on page 3 of Google too. If you spend time and work at this thoroughly then you should see an increase in rankings too.

There is in all honesty quite a lot to get right about creating titles and meta descriptions so rather than do it long hand and write a few thousand words I created three videos, a 16 minute video which explains in depth how to approach this work which also includes information on heatmaps and eye tracking and two further videos, both shorter 5 minute videos just to show you examples in other marketing sectors of how to write strongly worded snippets in titles and meta descriptions.

Here’s links to those videos.

and a link to a free tool for help in creating them, https://www.freshbananas.co.uk/seo-serp-tool/

Continued on next post due to length

 

[Tin]

Meta Keywords

The meta keywords tag is no longer seen by Google as a ranking factor so when I’m creating a new URL I either just put my primary keyword in the keyword field in admin or don’t put it in at all.

Header Tags

In a nutshell header tags are section headings and should be used to headline the text directly beneath it. There are six different headers ranging from a H1 being the main summary of what the web page is about, down through H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6. In a single web page I personally only use H1, H2 and H3’s.

How to use them for SEO purposes

My advice to you is to use Headers as a framework for your page copy. They're generally useful for SEO purposes because search engines pay attention to the words used in them, and they’re a good, logical way to break up page copy into smaller, more compact blocks of reading.

Looking at it simply, imagine your page (not whole website) being a book. Your title and meta description describe the book, the H1 tag is the title of the first chapter and the other header tags on the same page are simply titles of the additional related chapters. The next page you want to SEO in your site is the next book.

Compartmentalising text under informative and relevant headings also makes it simpler for visitors to navigate through your website, and allows you to direct them quickly and easily towards a particular section that you feel is important for them to read.

It’s a widely-accepted view that having large chunks of copy on a page causes site visitors to quickly vacate web pages. Instead of scaring them away with impossibly long essays of text, offer them bite-sized morsels of information below each of your headers and do your best to create headers that retain their interest and above all, make it engaging for them.

Wording the H1 tag at the top of your page

I always try to not have exactly the same words in exactly the same order in my H1 as I do in the title of the page (the title in the head section). If I’ve got a three word keyword I’m targeting for a page then I will add additional words to the H1 in order to simply vary things around a little for example; if the keyword I’m targeting is ‘Pest Control Manchester’ and that’s the first three words in my title, I might have a H1 tag which uses these words…

Guaranteed Pest Control Service in Manchester (or)
5 Star Pest Control Experts in Manchester (or)
Rapid & Effective Pest Control Experts Manchester

Those examples above are introducing words that add confidence to my visitors, the words Guaranteed, 5 Star, Experts, Rapid, and Effective. I’m trying to give my site visitors the impression that I give a service they can rely upon, I’m a safe pair of hands and trustworthy to work with.

Your page is only going to be talking about one thing, that’s whatever it is that you’re selling.

Under the H1 create a small amount of copy (the amount depends on your creativity at the time, but 40 or 50 words or more is a good start) and make sure that this copy is related to your H1.

When the topic of the copy is beginning to change direction slightly, that’s when a H2 tag should appear. Then continue writing about this sub-topic under the H2. If the copy becomes yet more specific in direction, that’s when I’d use a H3

Each time a Header tag is used it's reflecting the fact that the copy is subtly changing direction, becoming more specific yet still highly related to the page topic. Here’s an example of how I might use words that involve SEO yet sticking quite rigidly to the primary topic of the page.

Guaranteed Pest Control Service in Manchester (H1)
Main summary of the page.

Why Our Customers Give us 5 Star Pest Related Reviews? (H2)
First change in direction of the copy which talks about customer satisfaction and reviews.

Interested in a Pest Service Discount Code? (H2 or H3)
Second change in direction of the copy. Could entice a desired action from the visitor by offering a one-off discount that might be time limited.

The copy underneath each of those headers above would still be very highly related to the overall topic of the page and its targeted keywords but the copy becomes more specific as you add a header.

Content SEO Strategy:

Search engine optimisation can be summed up in a very short paragraph. It all boils down to words having relationships with other words. And those words involve both what you say on your web page about the topic of the page (content SEO) and what other websites are saying about your web page (links).


The success of on-page SEO and ultimate rankings depend entirely on which words you choose to use on your web page about the chosen topic (keyword or key phrases) of your page and this does in general require quite a bit of time and creativity on your part, particularly if you are targeting reasonably competitive keywords.


Page titles, meta descriptions and header tags I have already mentioned above so this section only deals with the text content on a web page and is meant to give you an overview of how to approach this work.


First thing to do is to sit, think and then write a bunch of words that are related to the keyword topic with a pad and pen. Be as creative as you can.


At the start of this section I summed up SEO as words having relationships with other words and for me, that is true. Here are three typical examples of poor word relationships that you’ll see on many web pages; guess the missing words below, it’s the same words missing every time,

1: This month’s latest deal focuses on one of our most popular products and we're really glad to be bringing you this superb selection of xxxxxx xxxxxxx.

2: Welcome to our website, we are currently offering a selection xxxxxx xxxxxxx that will make this day, the most memorable day of your life.

3: Book your seat now and get 40% discount off our selection of popular xxxxxx xxxxxxx from a range of reliable suppliers throughout the UK.

And here’s a sentence around exactly the same two word keyword but this time using word relationships, it’s much easier to guess the missing words now.

4: If you've ever dreamt of flight then this selection of xxxxxx xxxxxxx will tempt you into the cockpit of your own plane and have you airborne in no time at all.

So, in the 4th example above it was much easier to guess the missing words (flying lessons) because the other words had strong relationships and gave you the notion but, it only involved a sentence on a web page. To sum this up, both your visitors and Google will benefit if you can make it clear to them the topic of a page and the best way to do that is to give your keywords copy that is absolutely in context.

Two widely different ways to write page copy

Below are two examples of complete web page copy, both on the same keyword topic of ‘gliding in kent’. Both examples are circa 400 words.

Download an image of Copy A here

Summary of Copy ‘A’

A well written and creative piece of copy on the topic of gliding in Kent. I put this page ‘live’ as a test a few years ago, it sat online for a month and ranked on page 2 of Google for the following keywords…

gliding kent
gliding in kent

Only two keywords ranked.

Download an image of Copy B here

Summary of Copy ‘B’:

Again a well written and creative piece of copy on the topic of gliding in Kent. When this page went ‘live’ it ranked on page 1 of Google for several key phrases such as;

gliding kent
gliding in kent
gliding experience kent
gliding experience in kent
gliding challock
gliding ashford
gliding lessons kent
gliding lessons challock
gliding lessons ashford
gliding lessons in challock
gliding lessons in ashford
gliding experience challock
gliding experience ashford.

The essential difference between those two pieces of copy is that I told the writer of the second copy to include the words below in the opening part of her copy only and use them in close proximity to the words glide or gliding.

Challock
Ashford
experience
experiences
lessons

That brought in those additional rankings. Simply including them in the copy was enough.

Continued on next post due to length

 

[Tin]

Keyword density, is there such a thing?

It seems like every SEO has a different opinion on this one. Some say there is and there’s just as many who say don’t bother about keyword density, their opinion is that you don’t need to bother about putting any emphasis in your copy for keywords for Google’s sake, it’ll just figure out what your page is about all by itself.

But here’s the thing – having a page of copy with absolutely no mention of your keyword will make the page struggle to rank well and if you let Google decide what the page is about you might not like its choice of keywords.

On the other hand, going over the top with your keywords isn’t the right way of doing things either but there’s plenty of SEO’s who’ve got very high ranking pages through excessively spamming the keyword density by using a very large number of verbatim repeats of the keyword over, and over and over. Heavy spam techniques like this still work well unfortunately but are certainly not naturally written.

Whenever you see someone say “just mention your keywords naturally”, what does that mean? Nobody explains ‘naturally’. Getting the keyword density right certainly helps to make the inclusion of keywords read naturally.

There are a couple more things that you need to consider when writing copy and I’ll go into them briefly here, again using the gliding kent example above.

You’ll need this file here Download an image of Copy B again but some words have been colour coded to help explain things better.

Let’s take the use of the main keyword/phrase (coloured green) first of all and the frequency will be purely down to how many words on the page. In this gliding kent example there are 400 words so I have 2 verbatim instances of the keyword/phrase and 2 instances with the phrase broken apart. Don’t get too caught up in figures but if you’re looking for some idea of density try having a mention of your keyword once in 100 or so words of copy to bring a small focus in the copy. If you have longer copy then try to maintain that same small focus throughout your copy. A helpful tool that will give you factual information on the overall topic of your page is here https://www.ranks.nl/ - some of you might be surprised to find that what you thought your page of copy was about, is not at all what it’s about.

It’s a good idea to get your first instance of the complete keyword/phrase as close to the beginning of the copy as possible, ideally before the first full stop. I also suggest that you finish the copy off with another verbatim instance of your keyword/phrase. This just re-enforces the theme and pulls it all together. If you’re first paragraph is large, as in the gliding example, try to incorporate your key phrase again but break it up with other words. Here’s that 2nd sentence in the gliding example to show you what I mean:

“Your destination for these glider lessons is the long-established club in Challock, just north of Ashford in Kent which was established back in 1930.”

OK, I used ‘glider’ in place of ‘gliding’ in this example as I was trying to pull in that keyword too but it should be close enough to give Google the right idea.

Here’s a brief overview of the other words I’ve highlighted in the colour coded example:

· Red – These are just some additional keywords I’m trying to pull in, as you’ll see they are all closely related to the main phrase.
· Orange – Permutations of the main keyword, as you can see from the example above permutations can help to make copy more natural whilst still using your keyword.
· Blue – Semantic words that help to boost the theme of the whole page.

Taking care not to dilute your page copy

One final thought about the use of keywords/phrases within your copy is to make sure that you pay attention to all the other words on the page too. By that I mean, it’s no good making sure you have just the right keyword density for your keyword/phrase only to find that it is competing with another word/phrase that you don’t want to rank for. Here, Ranks.nl can help you by showing you what the frequency is for all the words on your page. I’ve seen many a page topic be sabotaged by careless overuse of the wrong words not only within the copy but also hidden in areas such as an image alt tag or image title.

And, whilst doing all of the above you must keep in mind your visitor and make sure that your page talks to them too in order to have the best chance of converting them into a customer. My gliding example reads naturally and is informative yet still manages to target my main keyword plus several others without being awkward to read should a reader choose to do so.

And that is an important point to note in this debate about writing for visitors and not for search engines. You can (and should) make sure that you put all the necessary information right in front of your visitors. However there’s just as much need to have text on a page to help search engines understand what the page is about and this can be strategically placed so it does not deter from the visitor experience.

Page loading speeds

From a user’s point of view it’s a good idea to make sure that your webpages load quickly and you don’t keep them waiting between pages. Google too likes to ensure that visitors are not kept waiting and has stated that page loading times is something they pay attention to when they are considering a websites ranking position. So it makes sense that you make sure that your pages load as quickly as they can.

In all honesty I don’t know how much (if any) a slow loading page affects rankings. But, if there is an effect it won’t be a positive one and nobody wants site visitors to struggle waiting for your page to load when it’s so easy for them to go straight back to Google.

Best Practice

There are a few things you can do to help speed up your page loading time.

Keep all your image file sizes as small as possible without ruining the quality of them. Lots of product pages seem to have 5,6, or 7 meg images on them that must have come straight out of a smart phone.

Keep redirects to a minimum.

Try to minimise the code used on the page. If you have a Wordpress site then there’s loads of plugins free and paid that’ll automatically rationalise your source code without you needing to do anything.

There are plenty of tools out there to help you to keep an eye on your page loading speeds, here’s a few:

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
https://tools.pingdom.com/
https://www.fastorslow.com/
https://gtmetrix.com/

Contextual linking

Another way to give a boost to the rankings of a page, ideally a category page, is to create a handful of contextual links from relevant product pages that link up to the relevant main category page you want to boost. Example;

Category Page (the page being linked to)
Product Pages (pages under that category page that have the contextual link within their copy pointing up to the category page

For those that don’t know, a contextual link is a link within relevant copy of a web page that links to another relevant page of the same website or another website. These links can be a simple URL or consist of anchor text (visible, clickable text in an HTML hyperlink). Just like an external link, these internal links can help increase the rankings of a category or other related page.

When linking between pages of your website, here are some sensible suggestions:

· keep your contextual linking to pages that share a related theme
· the wording used in your link (anchor text) wants to be related to the topic of both pages (the page it's on and the landing page)
· Don’t simply cram in your keyword/phrase, if you have multiple contextual links pointing to the same page vary the anchor text
· the wording surrounding the anchor text link should reinforce the link topic
· the benefit is given to the page that you link to, not the page where the link resides

Here’s three examples of anchor text links going off to another page that are unthemed.

Linking like the examples above are found everywhere online and if the page of copy is a lengthy read then it’s common to see a number of such links going off to other pages that are related to a similar or corresponding topic.

Theming Contextual Links

Here’s a better way of creating contextual links using the same anchor text as the three above but using highly related words which are used before, or after or on both sides of the actual link wording. This technique increases both the topic of the page the link is on and the topic of the page that is linked to. Google is commonly suspected to award different values to links depending on a variety of factors for example, where within the page copy a link is placed but common sense suggests that theming contextual links like in the examples below may be the better way of creating in copy links despite it taking more creative time.

Summing Up on the SEO side of things

As I said at the start of this section on SEO this is just a few suggestions of what you can do for yourself, on your own web pages, to quickly improve your rankings with zero budget. As such I have not delved too deeply into anything too technical, anything that is code related or anything that is external link related.

I have also stuck pretty much to what you can do at page (product) level as this is where you can make quick wins by picking off the easy, low hanging fruit.

 

[WebshopMechanic]

4. Boost your local business opportunities (Local SEO)

If your business is based in a specific location or you serve multiple locations, it makes sense to pay attention to your local SEO activity.

At risk of sounding too technical, local SEO is slightly different to standard SEO. With local SEO, Google is searching for local businesses that promote relevancy and authority for people searching. Google finds these two elements through location-focused content on your website, local social media and inbound links from local sites.


How do I improve my local SEO?

The key to local SEO is to be active in the community you want to target. You should:

• Make sure your website works brilliantly on mobile! (If it doesn’t, you’re screwed from the start)
• Set-up and continually update Google My Business (more explained below)
• Ask for customer reviews on your Google My Business (more explained below)
• Create a town landing page for your website that targets people in that area with your product or service
• Write relevant blog posts on your site about local issues using specific keywords relevant to your audience (also Google ‘Newsjacking’)
• Try to get featured in the local press (maybe as an expert or local tradesperson column)
• Work with a local charity and try to get featured on their blog
• Link up with other local businesses and create joint content on your blogs
• Set up a company Facebook page and push localised updates
• Take part in local Facebook groups and share your helpful content and blog posts (but don’t spam with sales messages)
• Add your business to local directories (yes, it’s still a thing and helps send SEO signals to your website)
• Actively market your services on local classified sites.

Google My Business (A FREE Tool)

Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool that Google gives you to help boost your local profile and capture more local customers. You may have noticed that any local Google search brings up a map along with three local businesses who can provide the product or service you are looking for. This is called the 3-pack.

To get into the 3-pack and be seen, you need a GMB page. If you don’t already have one, go to Google My Business and register your business. Make sure your address and contact details are exactly the same as on your website or vice versa. Consistency of information is important.

After you’ve done that, the next steps are to:

• Update all your company information (services, opening hours, etc)
• Add photos and videos to show more about your business
• Regularly promote offers to your audience
• Create blog posts on the GMB platform to inform your customers about the latest goings-on at your business

The key here is to be active. Google has given you a free tool, so you need to use it. You will be rewarded because you will appear in more searches, you’ll attract more eyeballs on your business, get more visits to your website and generate more phone calls and emails.


Collect customer reviews on GMB

Google has massive clout when it comes to your online reputation so you should be focusing all your efforts on trying to build it.

Google My Business has an in-built reviews engine that enables you to record reviews from your customers. You will need to give them a nudge in the right direction (i.e a link to your page) but it is worth it because it will boost you up the rankings.

Customer reviews also make you stand out from the rest of your competition in the search results. If your business appears in the 3-pack and you have more reviews than the others, you’ll pick up the business. Customers will always gravitate towards the company with the best reviews because it’s a safer pair of hands.

 

[WebshopMechanic]

5. Collect email addresses

Whatever anyone says, email has the best return on investment of any marketing activity (4400% according to Optin Monster and 42:1 according to Litmus). It’s quick, cheap, you can reach your customers whenever you want. Plus, you own the relationship with them.

Compared with social media, it’s a no-brainer because social makes you pay to reach your own audience and there’s more noise than a kids’ creche at Christmas. The results on social media are hit-and-miss at best. Email is proven and consistent.


Collecting emails

To use email effectively, you need to start collecting email addresses in the first place. Without an email list, you can’t even start.

First off, it’s important to say that people don’t want spam. It’s annoying. And nobody needs another newsletter either. But give them something of value (see below) and people will happily sign up.

The key thing to remember is that you don’t want everybody to sign up to your email list. You only want people who are genuinely interested in your product or service, so you’ll need to offer them something in return. In my experience, a discount or free download works wonders.

Some examples of free downloads offering something of value might include:

• Free brochure, catalogue or price list
• Access to exclusive content (like videos and online magazines)
• VIP clubs with priority access to product launches
• Expert tips around your product or service (e.g recipes, health, fashion, DIY, etc)
• Free audits
• Free reports

There are many other ways you can draw people in but ask yourself. What would make me sign up to a company mailing list? Why should they care about my business?

You will soon know what works and what doesn’t.


Sending emails to prospects and customers

None of us mind being contacted by a company if we are genuinely interested in the product or service. For example, I don’t mind being emailed by my car company to tell me about features I haven’t used yet or to help me get the best performance out of my vehicle. What I don’t like is them trying to sell me stuff without giving me value in the process (take note car companies! Grrr…)

The key to email is to be helpful and build a relationship with your prospects and customers. This is especially important in the first 60 days of them signing up. You have that window to prove to them that you are worth listening to.

Rather than do everything manually, you can set up emails to fire off every few days on autopilot. Simply create the emails once, then set it up and away you go. It’s an effective way to generate website visits, brand awareness and sales whilst you sleep (or do something else).

It’s important that you don’t overtly try to sell because people will switch off. Just be helpful and add a few lightweight sales messages along the way. After a while, you’ll gain more clicks and more visits to your website as a result (and it’s pretty much free).

A final point to re-emphasise again here is that you are trying to build a relationship with your prospects and customers. Yes, selling is ultimately what you are trying to do but people won’t buy from companies that go out all-guns blazing. They will switch off.

Take the time to get closer to them. Try to involve them in your business. Ask them for feedback and how you can serve them better. You’ll find your customers are more receptive and show more loyalty in the process. It will also help you to generate more sales.

 

[WebshopMechanic]

6. EXTRA Tips & tools

Before we finish off, we thought we would give you a list of tips and tools to help you to get your business on the front foot. Many of you won’t be able to afford a marketing agency or design consultants, but there is free and affordable help out there.

Outsource expertise (virtual assistants)

A key reason why businesses fail to reach their potential is down to lack of action. Ideas are great but if you don’t execute any of them, they’re pointless.

You’ve probably also heard the phrase, ‘work on the business, not in it’. This simply means that you should stop being busy doing the day-to-day stuff, free yourself up and start working to grow the business. Don’t get bogged down.

Whether you need help with bookkeeping, marketing, picking and packing, payroll, web design, graphic design, copywriting, admin, sales cold calling, customer service or pretty much anything, help is everywhere. You just need to take the action to outsource it to somebody else.

There are plenty of websites like People Per Hour and various virtual assistant companies who have some great talent available. With my business, I have teams of people in the UK, India, The Philippines and Eastern Europe. It took me a while to get the system in place but now they are all invaluable.

On a personal note, I’ve burnt myself out twice trying to do everything myself. It was unpleasant and took a long time to recover. Outsourcing is one of the best ways to grow your business and maintain your health in the process.


Canva (FREE Online Design Tool)

If you are graphically-challenged then you either need to outsource a graphic designer or you could try Canva. Canva is an easy-to-use online tool that enables you to create images for your website, social media, email, presentations, business cards, posters, menus, signage and more. It’s free-to-use, so what are you waiting for?


Free stock photography

As we mentioned earlier, great imagery is important in keeping people interested when on your website. However, it’s also necessary that you don’t break the bank. Some of the best sites for free royalty-free stock photography are;

· Unsplash.com

· Pexels.com

· Pixabay.com

· Freeimages.com

· Stocksnap.io


SWAG bombs

This is not so much a tool but a strategy. It requires you sending gifts or goodies (SWAG) with a short note to your best customers just to say thank you. You don’t need to ask them for anything, and they won’t expect it.

Just the surprise and delight factor will cause them to place your business front-of-mind when the time comes to use your products and services again. This strategy reinforces brand awareness and works wonders because it shows thought, unlike a simple email.

 

[WebshopMechanic]

That’s all folks! (Summary)

We hope you’ve found this post helpful and possibly a bit of an eye-opener. You may have even found it a little daunting to read.

If so, don’t panic. You can do this.Just remember that your website should be a useful resource for your customers, not an all-guns-blazing sales engine. You need to use it to capture attention first, then engage and finally build a relationship with them so they’ll want to buy from you.

Relationships and trust are not built overnight but a continued effort over a couple of months can reap the rewards and completely transform your business.

You don’t need to do it all yourself either. There are plenty of people in the UKBF community who can help and there are virtual assistants with excellent skills everywhere. If you need help or advice, simply pop a question in the comments below and we’d be glad to help.

Ray and I hope this guide has been helpful. There is much more we could cover but we wanted to make it actionable. If you found it useful then we would really appreciate a little thumbs up or lightbulb.

Of course, feel free to chip in below with any extra advice for people.

We will do our best to follow this up with more regular posts to help you guys with your businesses.

Stay safe and keep plugging away people! Regardless of the current situation, there are opportunities out there and the good times just around the corner.

Matt (Webshop Mechanic) & Ray (The Tin Man)

 

[Phil Sproson Photography]

Thanks for the extensive guide, I will take time to read through properly and thoroughly, Google my Business stands out as something that I want to return to as well as local SEO too. Thanks both for this.

 

[WebshopMechanic]

Thanks for the extensive guide, I will take time to read through properly and thoroughly, Google my Business stands out as something that I want to return to as well as local SEO too. Thanks both for this.

No problem Phil. Glad it was useful.

The key to GoogleMyBusiness is to collect reviews. If you have a ton of reviews and you start appearing in 'the 3-pack' near the maps, you can literally clean up against your local competition.

Ask everybody you've every worked with to leave you a review. It will be worth it.

Then just make sure your profile is kept up-to-date.

On your own site, start creating locally-focused content. Partner up with local artists, venues, historians, tourist boards, etc to see if you can write or shoot for them.

I'm sure they'd love to have somebody with your expertise to provide stunning photography. What you can provide to them is highly valuable from a content perspective.

Good luck sir!

 

[Phil Sproson Photography]

No problem Phil. Glad it was useful.

The key to GoogleMyBusiness is to collect reviews. If you have a ton of reviews and you start appearing in 'the 3-pack' near the maps, you can literally clean up against your local competition.

Ask everybody you've every worked with to leave you a review. It will be worth it.

Then just make sure your profile is kept up-to-date.

On your own site, start creating locally-focused content. Partner up with local artists, venues, historians, tourist boards, etc to see if you can write or shoot for them.

I'm sure they'd love to have somebody with your expertise to provide stunning photography. What you can provide to them is highly valuable from a content perspective.

Good luck sir!

I already work with many of those referenced above, just never brought the real World stuff into Google SERPs - so will action this and start to encourage those that I work with to help me create that type of presence.

 

[tsutton]

SWAG bombs

This... THIS!!

I do this and it works great. People take photo of it and post on social media. Free publicity.

Thanks for making this post, it's very handy.

 

[Thomas Schneider]

Canva is a great tool but still, I think that in 2021 outsourcing is a better option as subscription services like Awesomic offer great value for the money. This way, the end result is better because experienced designers work on all the visuals and you have more time to focus on the more important stuff and not trying to come up with a decent banner or logo with Canva. It's still legit for those who are on a really tight budget but if you have money to invest in your design, outsourcing will be a much better way to go IMO.

 

[fisicx]

...like Awesomic...

What an awful website. The sites in their portfolio aren't much better.

 

[Blacklaw]

Its hard to diy if you do not have the technical skills.
I built my own website using wix, but it looked like crap and i knew it. I generally think the same about most wix sites that people have built themselves when they have no design skills.
Then i found kopage which is so much easier to use and you can actually produce a site that looks good on desktop and mobile, with very little effort
It even had good seo support as well.

I have now used this to build a few websites for other people as well and make a few hundred quid out of it ??

For seo I went with seranking, which is a cheaper alternative to semrush or ahrefs but does everything i could ever need.
Still had a massive learning curve first me though, but they have free training courses which are good, plus lots of good stuff on youtube.

 

[ScaleFinal]

Speaking about Kickstarter backlinks does it still make any value?

The script of getting a nice backlink from this trustful platform was in cooperation with the projects related to your website. e.g. ****** media website may have a referral link from indexed Kickstarter page about coin tracker. But does it still somehow influence on SEO? Asking to provide maximum honest PR service for my clients.

 

[Deleted member 367548]

• Age
• Geographic location
• Where do they work?
• What are their beliefs?
• What are their interests?
• Where do they hang out online?
• Where do they hang out offline?
• What are their hobbies?
• What do they do in their spare time?
• What makes them feel good?
• What makes them feel bad?
• What are their frustrations?
• What do they want in a product or service like yours?
• What problems do they have that your business can solve?

You need to draw a picture of your ideal customer. Give them a name, picture what they look like and start to understand what makes them tick.

You can’t truly serve a customer unless you get under their skin to know what motivates them to buy. Once you know that, selling becomes an easier task.

I agree with most of this. However sometimes price is the most important thing, particularly on commodity products that can be easily compared online. That's why Amazon are so popular and why they have infiltrated every market they saw as a strategic play (with the exception of fashion).

The most important thing in the OP is the fact you must understand your customer. Customer is everything. It doesn't mean you have to ask them everything, as a lot of research fails as the customer doesn't know what they want. So truly understanding them is key.

The original post was time ago, so this isn't meant to be challenging, more a complimentary addition as time has elapsed. Now you really should attempt to find out who or what influences them, how the research and how they buy. There are ways to get in to social and AI search if you know these things.

Average repeat order rates are key as well, meaning you can create bespoke CRM programs and it will help you ascertain if you have the potential to create a community around your brand and as a consequence increase loyalty, drive ambassador adoption and ultimately increase LTV