Skip to main content

e-Marketing 4

There’s a sense of urgency about getting people to your website in these cash-strapped times. Once you’ve got them there – a tactical and detailed exercise in itself – you have to keep them there, make them buy something, anything.

The innocent browser will have little idea of the almost-science behind getting any website to sit at the top of the search engine list. If it’s not there, looking as though it’s the biggest shop in the street, browsers won’t bother to search far for it, will get bored and amble off through cyberspace. Opportunity lost.

So how do you get to the top? Like any shop, it’s not enough just to be there, however great your products, your prices, or however smartly you’ve dressed your metaphorical shop window. Reputation counts, having a recognized name, a trusted history.

Beyond that it’s necessary to get yourself noticed by the search engines before the customers can find you. There are things the search engines like, such as links from your website to other top-ranking sites. This gives your site some ‘reflected glory,’ whether or not you are worthy of it. You just need to know the right people. Ask them to place a link back to your site. If they won’t, it’s never going to be much of a romantic partnership, so delete them and move on, find another cyberpartner to boost your ranking.

You can advertise on other people’s sites, on GoogleAds, facebook ads but these will cost. So, if you need to achieve that desirable top-of-the-list celeb glow, you’re going to have to get yourself a web-savvy copy writer. Keywords, that’s the thing.

Forget reams of text, pages of waffle, fluffy descriptions of your stuff. If you want to shift the gear, select a few well chosen words, put them in the right place, and you’re away. (Discovering the weird and random words web browsers type into the Google search box can lead you to a strange world but you’ll never have to meet them.)

Remember that search engines have some old fashioned values, such as preferring honesty, clarity, simplicity, and ethics. Tell it like it is. State what you’re selling, build your website so visitors can nip round it in a trice, find exactly what they want, hit the BUY NOW button, and be off - result. Every visit and every click monitored, recorded and analysed for your statistical satisfaction.

Oh, and another thing, the buzz word these days is ‘interactivity,’ so connect your site up to facebook and twitter and let your customers tweet away to each other about you, and your products. Sweet talk or scandal, get a dialogue going, entice them back to your cyberlovenest, seduce them with your special offers, and clinch the deal.

Comments

Unknown said…
thanks for mentioning us Amanda.

There are some errors in your document unfortunately, mainly the fact that links "from" other sites are more important than outbound links.

Also, Niddocks is based in The Lizard

cheers

Rob

Popular posts from this blog

Running ‘till your nipples bleed

An email from a friend of mine arrives; she complains that, at work, she is routinely subjected to gruesome accounts of female colleagues’ intimate medical procedures and gynaecological problems. I am all commiseration because I, too, have had years of listening to workplace chats about periods, childbirth and sex lives. Oh please. Later, I wander off for a walk in the early evening sunshine and it is so silent and so beautiful that I flop down on the grass and lay awhile gazing out over the rolling fields, and the mouth of the river, and fall into a reverie. Two men pass by. A few minutes later sounds of women’s talk float nearer and, by the time the two females of the species draw level with me, I have risen up from my deliciously recumbent position in the meadow, alert and tense, something like a meerkat. “I do feel for her. Going down that IVF route is such an emotional roller coaster. I was never prepared for how terrible it was going to be.” I remain frozen in my meerkat position...

Ian McEwan. Amsterdam. London: QPD, 1998

McEwan’s novel about ambition, personal betrayal and revenge features Clive, a modern composer trying to complete a major orchestral work, his friend Vernon, an editor trying to save his ailing newspaper, and Garmony, an unscrupulous right-wing politician on the rise. In common, all three have, in previous years, been lovers of recently dead Molly. They meet at her funeral and the story follows the next few weeks of the men’s lives. Vernon and Clive act as one another’s conscience, each infuriating the other. Which is more important, honesty, friendship and trust or Vernon’s newspaper and Clive’s symphony? The novel presents the difficulties of balancing personal and public morality, the importance of private shame and public reputation, the conflict between taking a moral decision for the greater good, or putting first ones own desires. Not just a simple exposé of a politician with a vulnerable side, Amsterdam is full of double standards and surprises, and takes a long, cynical look a...

Ralph McTell, Truro, 19 April 2007

Ralph's mates from Pentewan have all turned up in a mini bus to hear him sing and play, and he walks onto the stage looking comfortable; he's amongst friends. He's a big man; very charismatic, with a warm smile and a beguiling aura of powerful gentleness. He's relaxed, we're relaxed, and he sits with his guitar, chatting easily between songs, and playing with an easy familiarity with us, and with his material. His guitar playing is intricate and playful; going from ragtime to blues to folk, and his voice is deep and rich. He comments that he's put together quite a serious programme for the two hours he's on stage; it's true that the lyrics are thoughtful and the subjects serious, but there is light material too; a tune about Laurel and Hardy, and one or two covers of old blues numbers. When he sings Streets of London there are happy sighs and the audience sing along very softly; as softly as a whisper. It feels as intimate as if we were just a few people...