The Importance of Link Building For Your Website

Hello again

While it’s usually very important to optimise your website for the key phrases your clients use, only part of that optimisation can take place on the website itself.

On site optimisation can also help to make PPC campaigns more cost-effective, but the most important part of search engine optimisation is incoming links from other websites. That means a link building campaign is crucially important for your website if you want people to find it on the first page or two of the search engine results.

Search engines like Google use the number and quality of inbound links to a site as an indication of the authority or value of that site. If lots of other sites link to a particular website, the theory goes, that site must be important or useful.

Also, the value of inbound links depends on the ‘authority’ of the website they come from and whether the links are ‘follow’ or ‘no follow’ links. A lot of websites that seem to offer good back-linking opportunities actually have ‘no follow’ links that don’t really add much ‘link juice’, as it’s known, to your website.

A ‘no follow’ link is one where the search engine spiders are actively instructed by the coding in the link not to follow the link (for example, to your site), so your site doesn’t gain the extra authority that inbound links would give it.

For example, links from YouTube are now mostly ‘no follow’, and most blogs and WordPress-based websites are ‘no follow’ by default.

Many people, even the website and blog owners themselves, aren’t aware of that and might offer to exchange links with you in all good faith. Others will have modified the coding of their website so that links from them are worth getting, and these are the ones you should consider getting links from.

Other good sites for linking are directories, news release and article sharing websites, some video sites, forums, and popular blogs where the links are of the ‘follow’ type. How you add your links will vary with each type of website.

Tracking down these worthwhile sites and building links from them all can be very time-consuming and even tedious, but it’s very important to the wellbeing of your own website.

Finally, remember that the search engines are trying to give human viewers the best possible experience, so to satisfy the search engines your link building strategy needs to look as natural as possible. That means you need to build links steadily and not all at once, and you need to keep building new backlinks to your site throughout its life.

Old links become ‘stale’ or even disappear as the other sites are updated, so an ongoing strategy of continuing link building and refreshment is also needed to keep your site as high in the search engine results as possible.

Roy

Are You Using Video Yet?

Hello again

While marketing principles are mostly unchanging for year after year and even decade after decade, the technology that we can use to deliver our messages to potential clients and customers is changing ever more quickly.

Right now, the medium that gets more attention from more potential clients than any other is video. Video both promotes your business and brings traffic to your website.

So are you using video yet?

There are lots of different ways to make a video for your business and getting started needn’t be as difficult as you might imagine. Companies are successfully using everything from slide shows to mini-dramas, and from interviews to how-to’s, and almost any combination of these can be used to get your marketing messages across to an audience that might otherwise be difficult to reach.

One of the strongest ways to use video is testimonials from happy customers. However well you promote your business, someone else’s words will always carry more weight. When people see video testimonials on your website they are already thinking of buying from you and wondering if they should, so a good testimonial video could well be what tips the balance in your favour.

You can also promote your good name through video by being helpful and passing on free information that might be difficult to get across in any other way.

Another type of video is the guided tour, or ‘meet the family’, where you show people your place of work and some of the happy staff. This helps people identify with your company and reassures them that you’re real human beings. People buy from people, after all.

Or you can just create slide shows, with either a voice-over or a music sound track. These can be pictures of your business premises, your products or your happy customers, or they can be instructional or educational, more like a PowerPoint presentation – or they can be a combination of these.

You can even inject a bit of humour into a potentially dull subject with a cartoon like this one:

Finally, your video could be the equivalent of a sales letter, and you could even use the sales letter for a product as your video script. This has been shown to be much more effective than a written sales letter in some instances.

Your videos only have to be a few minutes long at most, and often less than thirty seconds, and it’s better to have a number of short videos than one or two longer ones that people will be less likely to watch to the end.

But the key is to keep making new videos and adding them to video sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video, as well as to your own website and blog.

And to get started as soon as possible!

Roy

What Are They Saying About You?

Why Not Asking This Question Could Cost You Your Business

Imagine this scenario:

You run a completely honest and reputable business and you spend valuable time, effort and money promoting your business, its products and its services.

And yet, mysteriously, sales are not what you expect.

Even worse would be, while you’re doing everything you ever did, your sales are actually starting to fall and you sense that despite your best efforts, it’s your credibility that’s lacking.

In fact, when you finally ask some people why they don’t buy from you, they mutter something about ‘No smoke without fire’, or they talk about your reputation and how there is so much bad stuff written about you that some of it must be true.

Well, then you know you’re in trouble, because with all that bad publicity out there you’re suddenly fighting a rearguard action, trying to convince people you’re one of the good guys really.

But that can take months, even years, and that bad publicity might never truly go away.

Meanwhile, you’ve missed out on a load of business. You might even have gone under, and just because a few people started saying unfair things about you. When a few people start to talk about you, whatever they have to say can be all over the Internet in no time at all, especially if your name is already well known.

That’s why a reputation management strategy is so important for every business these days.

With a reputation management strategy in place you can see every time you or your business is mentioned anywhere and react accordingly. You can deal with complaints, correct errors of fact and put your side of any story. You can react to praise, too.

Without a strategy in place you’re basically gambling that no one, ever, will have a bad word to say about you or your business or even your products.

And however honest and ethical you may be, that’s a pretty unlikely scenario, isn’t it?

Reputation management doesn’t have to be about suing anyone who ever says a bad thing about you but it does pay to defend yourself against the unfair accusations that even the nicest people have levelled against them from time to time.

And sometimes you’ll even get to say ‘Thank you’.

Roy

PS. Naturally, Cinnamon Edge can help you with reputation management as well, because we do much more than just online marketing in Bury St Edmunds.

If You're Working So Hard, Why Aren't You Rich?

Dear Business Owner

If you're working hard at your business and still aren't getting rich, you need to ask yourself why.

Why are there people who work less than you but seem to make more money?

Why are there people less clever than you who seem to do better in life?

Why do you always seem to need more customers to make a living?

Why, in other words, are you working so hard and not getting the rewards you deserve?

There's a simple answer: it's because your business isn't working for you.

It could be marketing that's the problem. As a 'marketing company' you might expect us to point that out. But you could be working all hours of the day and night serving customers, in which case you really don't need any more of them!

In that case, your problems lie elsewhere. Nobody should have to work stupid, unhealthy hours unless they want to. Or unless the rewards are so great that it will be worth the sacrifice.

It's not necessary. But if you are working that hard and only just getting by (or maybe worse, not getting by) you really need to think about where your business is not working.

That's why we don't want to sell you marketing, or advertising. Or even a shiny new website or an email marketing service or search engine optimisation. All we want to do is help you find out what's wrong in your business that forces you to work so hard and not get rich.

Then maybe we'll help you implement changes and put into place systems and processes you need to put it right. Put it this way: whatever you think is wrong with your business, you're probably mistaken, or you would have put it right by now.

But you've invested emotionally in your business and it can be hard to let go of that investment, even when it makes sense to try a different approach.

You need an outsider's point of view, an objective opinion of your company. Someone who will take the emotion away from the analysis, look at the real facts behind your business and see what's really happening - or not happening as it should.

On the plus side, there's almost always at least one glaring opportunity for significant extra profits on top of the money your business should be making already, and we can often help you find that, too.

Nothing is for sale during our consultation process - not a system or a product or any of our services. Sometimes people offer to pay to secure exclusivity at this early consultation stage - we won't accept it.

Here's what we offer: we ask good questions, we listen well, we take notes, we consider all your options. We don't jump to conclusions. We consult with a mastermind group of fellow professionals who are daily adding millions of pounds to their clients' businesses. (That alone makes us worth ten times more than any 'local experts'.)

Then we get back to you to let you know if you qualify* for our help. Or we may offer you a blueprint for your business that you can implement without us. There will be a fee for this blueprint.

But we don't just sell websites.

Phone us on 01284 753912 or email roy@cinnamonedge.co.uk or jacqui@cinnamonedge.co.uk

Roy

*To qualify we like you to have been in business for a while, preferably five years. There are exceptions. You must have a viable business, a marketing budget and a willingness to make the changes we suggest.

There must be a potential for improvement. Our fees are based on the level of competition, the amount of work involved and the increased earning potential of your business.

We won't take on clients whose increased profits wouldn't easily cover our fees. We could even cut your marketing costs while making you more money, but we're not the cheapest, and for a good reason.

We ask for at least 3-6 months for our work to take effect and really help your business, although some results are likely to be much quicker.

We don't just sell websites.

Add Public Speaking to Your Marketing Mix?

The latest post on our Seminar Planning Secrets blog is another video from Dr Joanna Martin, in her series on the seven mistakes public speakers make that keep them broke.

But Joanna is a great proponent of the value of public speaking in the promotion of a business, especially for smaller businesses. It's something we use and intend to use even more in future as a way to get our expertise in front of a targeted audience and to build a relationship with potential clients.

It also offers great value to the attendees who get invaluable information at a great price.

Joanna is in London on 7th and 8th of May, teaching business owners like you the value of public speaking for their business.

There's a special discount on Joanna Martin's event, through this link.

But even if you can't make it to London this week, you can still learn a lot over on the blog and from Joanna's other video training.

Roy