News & Reviews

Website Optimisation Part II Nov 09

Continuing on my online theme, the Marketing tip I wrote for the Lavish (www.lavish.co.uk) November Newsletter was:

We've looked writing effective web copy and the technical side of indexing and tagging the pages and images on your web site. Let's move away from the content of your actual web site now and look at the opportunities for driving traffic to your site using other sites, namely link building.

Reciprocal links
Just as you have searched for businesses in your area to have a reciprocal relationship with or to organise joint promotional activity, be it the local hotel or florist, you can do the same online. Except, this time, there are no geographical restrictions. By finding like-minded companies who would agree to set up a link to your site and vice versa, you will not only enhance your customers' experience of your brand but also offer their target customer something of benefit and have the potential to grow your own customer base.

An affiliate scheme goes one step further by earning you a % referral fee when visitors click from your site to the offer website and purchase items. See www.yogamatters.com  

Listings
See if there are any local or visitor information sites or locally run sites that offer a free listing for your business. Directory listings like Thomson Local and Hot Frog are free to join and have high google search stats.

There are some listing sites that will also offer you a subscription in return for greater visibility on their site and a consistently high google ranking across a bundle of sister sites e.g. www.thebodyguide.co.uk  

There are sites like www.belaqua.co.uk where you have to "earn" your status by being vetted by one of their team. Similarly www.thegoodspaguide.co.uk gives a "bubble rating" for the spas listed and invites those to have visited to leave a review, not always a complimentary one.

And then, of course, there are member sites like www.lavish.co.uk which will promote your business online in return for a commission on the sales of their product, in this case, beautiful gift vouchers!

Reviews - user generated content
On sites like www.tripadvisor.com and www.hotels.com the table is turned and the site visitor becomes the influencer because they are actively encouraged to leave comments and write reviews of their experiences. Reviews written by real visitors to your spa are considered more trustworthy than your own website or any standard advertising. Clearly you could run the risk of receiving a less than perfect review but don't under estimate the power of an online "word of mouth" referral. It travels far more quickly and extensively than the traditional variety, spreading far and wide to blogs and through social media (of which more next month).

www.wahanda.com is a web site that brings all of the above together. You can get listed for free, become a voucher partner or receive an enhanced listing with links and promotional space for a fee. Added to that both therapists, spa owners and clients can get listed for free and are rewarded for being active on the site - leaving reviews, being reviewed, blogging etc. so there is a real sense of community and user generated content is positively encouraged for the good of all. We could all do well to join the dialogue as we are sharing important, decision making information that will eventually leads to sales.

Paid for activity
A more direct and more costly approach to achieving quality traffic to your website is to pay for it. The best example of this is google Adwords. You create your text ad and choose keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business and the search engine. When people search using your keyword, your ad will appear and if they click on your link, then you pay for the privilege. The amount you pay for AdWords is up to you. You can, for instance, set a daily budget and a maximum cost for each click on your ad.

Then there's straight banner advertising on a magazine or e-commerce site, for example. A click on the banner will take the visitor directly to your site. My advice would be to check out the stats very carefully. You not only need to know how many visits the site receives a day but what kind of people are visiting and as much about their demographic profile as you can glean. I would try to be as targeted as possible. For example, I once approached Saga about some online advertising for a client. The age group was right but they had to live within the M25 to benefit from my client's business. The answer was to advertise on their social networking site sagazone.co.uk which was divided geographically into TV areas. I chose the London ITV region.


My thanks go to Duncan Thomas at www.pomegranatemedia.co.uk for helping me put together this month's Marketing tip.

 

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