Thank you all for having me along for the evening as promised on the night, here is a recap of the main thoughts from the presentation. The full link list has been emailed to all those giving permission to send with their company contact details.

1.Design – you get around 3 to 10 seconds to convince a visitor coming from a search engine that your site is what they are looking for. The most powerful tool that you can use to achieve this is design, getting the right look and feel, with good images are important to engage the visitor.

Tip – look at your competitors, what are they doing? what are their sites like?

2.Benchmark – you need to know if you site is effective, otherwise how will you know if you need to change anything or the changes you do make are positive or negative. Look at your site statistics or get them installed if you don’t have them.

Tip – have a look at Google Analytics, your designer may have to install that for you

3. Research – your site needs to be optimised on the right terms for your business if you are to pull in your ideal target customer. Talk to them, ask them what they used to find you, look at your analytics and use the different tools available to research which search terms are being used by other searchers.

Tip – look at your competitors sites, what are they optimising on?

4. Optimisation – now you know what you’re going to optimise on its time to include it in all of the site elements. Here are a couple of guides that help. Tip Sheet for SEO Onsite and also Google’s guide to SEO Google Search Engine Optimization Guide

Tip – use the summitmedia spider link in the sheet to check your site

5. Content – ensure your content is engaging that it demonstrates the benefit of your services not just the feature. People don’t buy features they want to know what’s in it for them, how will it make them feel, why is this better for them. Give them a route to contact you, include your phone number or email address, don’t leave them guessing.

Tip – have a look at my previous article on page design

6. Inbound links – these are a vote for your website so look at non competing but relevant websites who might link to you, directories and using social bookmarking sites.

Tip – perhaps look a creating a joint blog for the group

7. Talk to a Business Link Adviser – Sara Charlesworth who was unable to make the session on the night, has been working with Cathy Ewbank for sometime. Sara will be able to help you put in some thinking around identifying those important target customers. Sara’s training in the field of reflexology gives her a unique insight into the issues and marketplace.

Tip – Call Sara! If nothing else I would encourage you to give her a call to see how her service can help you improve your business and attract more clients. Sara can be contacted through the Slough office on 0845 600 9 006

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