You may have noticed that poop around the playground or are concerned with birds nesting in the rafters – that’s why the team at Bird Proofing Australia have come up with a safe, easy and long-lasting bird netting solution.

Simply tell Bird Proofing Australia – the Bird Control specialists where the problem is (and what your details are) and you’ll receive $50! (Read their terms and conditions).

We also hope you like the new Bird Proofing website, designed by Red Planet Design, with copyediting by Jennifer Lancaster.

Situated on the very end of Redcliffe Peninsula, near Scarborough’s marina, holiday village and open park, Reef Point Cafe has got a lovely al fresco outlook, quality food, and friendly staff, all points that we wanted to convey in their website design.

So many times I have wanted to know a restaurant/cafe’s hours, food type, and location (info most needed in a local restaurant website) and have had to hunt high and low for it. On Reef Point Cafe’s website, if you scroll past the lovely photos in the home page, you will see an explanation, Opening Hours and a Google Map – yeah, no more hunting!

This website was a low budget website that came in at under $750 and needed no real changes. But it is there for the long term to attract and guide all new visitors.

Be sure to visit the Reef Point Cafe one lunchtime and try their generous burgers, toasted paninis, quiche and salad, or soup – we’re sure you will be delighted.

For others, their online strategy is complex and we can put a keen eye to both attracting and converting visitors. Sometimes this means writing a blog, optimising all page titles, alt tags and descriptions, and also on-page copywriting to ensure there is persuasion/call to action and enough text to explain the concept.

But I digress! Happy customer #1 is Heather Dickinson from Parenting Styles. Parenting styles is a parent education and forum site, with some rare online courses for sale.

Heather wanted nice videos on her site so we recommended Vimeo for its high quality (together with her professional video creation). Because Heather planned her introductory video and got some advice, it has that nice personal touch… she really did a great job of explaining the reason for her parenting approach and what her site offers parents.

What’s more, the whole site is built on WordPress, integrates with MailChimp (sign-up email form) and offers social media sharing from the inside pages.

“I had the pleasure of working with both Gino and Jennifer at Red Planet Design to develop a web site for a new start up business. I already had a blog site, so was keen to continue working with the software I was familiar with (WordPress) to build a site I could afford. Gino and Jen delivered. I now have a flash new web site delivered on time and within budget with heaps of value add/extra features that Gino and Jennifer recommended along the way. Visitors to my site can now purchase, watch, buy, launch courses and interact with the online forum. You can find my site from places like Google thanks to Jennifer’s search engine optimisation. Best still, I’m in control of keeping the information up to date and making changes the site down the track. I would highly recommend Red Planet Design.”

- Heather Dickinson

Happy customer #2 is Jane Anderson from Inside Out Coaching and Training. Jane offers Brisbane Career Coaching, Corporate training, and interview skills training. Her new website (a rather large one) has grown to add its own store with ebooks, so it is now being optimised by RPD for Adwords purposes, and has already been optimised for search. In fact, this website gets 900 – 1000 visitors per month from many sources, particularly search engines.

Before working with Gino and Jennifer I was so frustrated with knowing what to do with my website. I was up to my third website and newsletter remodel and everyone I asked had a different opinion and I just needed some straight answers. I’m a coach and I just wanted to be a great coach, not an expert in content management, SEO, e-marketing and web design and development. I need to work with someone who would advise me on what do to, not just do what I ask (when I have no idea what to ask for) and someone who cares and can take some initiative in helping me. I was beginning to wonder if I’d made the right choice in going into business for myself! Then I met Gino and Jen. They have made the online world so much easier for me and all with a minimum of fuss- it just gets done and is value for money. They care about the quality of their work and have guided me and advised me on what I need to do to get more traffic and make it easy for a potential client to enquire about my services. As a facilitator I can often work strange hours and need to work with people who are a little more flexible in their approach. Jen and Gino have been great in working in with my schedule. They have also been great supporters and recommended clients to me which is great. It has also been easy working with a team who work so well together, for example when I write my content, Jen checks it and passes it on to Gino to move onto the site which means I get both function and form out of my website. I have recommended Red Planet Design to my friends and wouldn’t hesitate in recommending them to any future clients or friends.

- Jane Anderson, Inside Out Training and Coaching

Standing out by keying into your audience’s pain/problem is crucial. You cannot afford to be a copycat business online. Copywriters work hard to understand the target market’s challenges, and then put forward that your business offering is the only logical solution. Sometimes it is necessary to soft sell and rely on follow up systems to do some of the convincing. But never, never, forget the call to action.

Offering real value through content is useful for building up credibility and a database, some of which will become customers. Some do this through emails or a mix of email and other contact methods. These days you can get an email newsletter sent automatically from a blog feed.

Network Offline and Online
It will help to build a strong network of likeminded others around you. Have a working LinkedIn or Facebook account and participate in industry groups – it will build a presence. Use meetup.com to connect to others in your circle – peers or clients; they both have value.

Branding and Social Proof
Having a visible, consistent brand has always been a good start for all marketing. Also, leveraging word of mouth on the web will make your brand (or non-profit) more visible. You can see Variety, the Children’s Charity have done this, with a magazine, e-letter and active Facebook page. Remember the persuasion principle of Social proof.

Likeability
Another persuasion principle to consider is likeability. The more friendly and down-to-earth your words are, the more people will start to relate. With video being such a huge lead attraction vehicle now, use Vimeo or Youtube to showcase your charisma and your knowledge. One way this can work well is a ‘journalist style’ interview. Another way is to get out on the street and ask some people questions (hopefully gathering answers that mainly reflect your standpoint). This has a lot of credibility of course.

To Summarise
Whatever your personal style of marketing, ensure you let people know what you are currently working on, and try to understand how what you learn relates to what they want to learn. Pass it on – it works!

Get yourself a next generation website, with social media connectivity, blog, free report to build a prospect list (opt-in email box), and good looking branding…. all at Red Planet Design.

Using this plug-in is assuming that you want to use WordPress as a CMS, a handy choice for many who are interested in updating their website and having full control. So how much does a WordPress CMS (totally customised) website cost? A 5 to 15 page website with designed header (can be rotating), matching opt-in box, and Home page as a Home Page (not as a blog) costs around $1,000 – $1,250+ gst at Red Planet Design. Usually the addition of a shopping cart and 3D images/products will add a little, but it need not be thousands.

Warning: If you don’t do certain things to a WordPress website it can look clunky, not have optimised titles, and under-perform… there is a world of difference between customised WordPress websites and the ‘free theme’ type blogs you’ve seen. (RPD pay for a top-end theme and then work it in with your colours).

Having only spent one grand, and saving on Yellow Pages display ads that used to cost a few thousand, this leaves you a nice amount for the copywriting and marketing of your new site. We believe that the persuasive content of your site is as important as the design – it works together as a package. Good copy writing and attention to detail will repay you time and time again. Consider using a copywriter and consider having a headline for your website. Good headlines attract attention in a crowded market.

Marketing Your New Website

In our experience it’s prudent if the business owner allocates some budget for marketing of the site. Rather than pushing external SEO services, it’s merely an option after the internal optimisation on a clean site has been done. Again, a WordPress site with lots of pages is really effective… we have seen great results and instant Google ranking for long tail (niche) search terms. Gaining links is best over a fairly long period of time, so ensure that is in your budget — you might use a virtual admin assistant, or see our SEO Packages.

For other marketing, besides ensuring your new URL is on your corporate stationery, directory advertising and magazine ads, there are a variety of new ways to become more visible. A few ideas:

* Google Adwords gives instant results (ensure that Jen sets it up for you so you don’t get rorted).
* Google Places – ensure this free tool is listing your correct categories, but not keyword stuffed.
* FaceBook Ads offers a lower cost-per-click and is good for consumer business.
* Get busy with Facebook Groups and a Business Page as they work well together; ensure Facebook Place is added for a bricks & mortar business.
* LinkedIn groups and Inmail is great for reaching prospects who are executives and CEOs
* How about offering a free report on a new topic in your industry (such as “What do the new Tax Laws mean for your Business?”) and capturing keen prospects email and telephone number. Link this to an Email autoresponder and at a further stage in the sales cycle enter into your Customer Relationship Management system.

Remember that you’re in business to make a profit, not take a punt that a whizz-bang design is going to be the answer to all your prayers. We believe in giving maximum value for your dollars. These clients of Red Planet Design have happy tales of repaying their website costs a short time afterward:

* Northside Driver Training (still achieving good ranking with no external SEO)
* Greenscene Gardenscope (landscapers who write their own Blog/DIYers)
* InsideOut Coaching & Training (new design on WordPress getting about 600 Google visitors per month)

• Relevance
• Traffic
• Competition
• Commerciality

Besides knowing these basic rules, it pays to be quite well-versed in the subject you want to rank for. Even with all the wonderful tools, there’s no substitute for thinking about what kind of target market is best for you… and who (you’ve found) is willing to pay.

Because Market Samurai tools are designed for online commerce, they display Adwords CPC figures, $ SEO value, and the OCI rating – a measure of how commercial the keyword phrase is. The cost of the Adwords CPC can also indicate a highly sought after keyword.

Chosen Keyword Phrase Glitches

Ranking a top keyword phrase can have its problems.  Take for example, ‘Salesforce.com Developers’ – well, all the top spots are taken by Job adverts. At least there is enough Australian searches for Salesforce.com Consultants, and thus my client was able to hit number three spot after only on-page analysis and optimisation was done (even with constraints).

A little more social media and link building, and determination of who owns top spot, and an ongoing top three spot for SalesForce Consultant would be probable.

I know many of your websites are not all long-lived Aunties, with a reputation over many years, but we can make great progress with the aid of some keyword tools and commonsense. After all, we haven’t yet made the time machine (to go back to 1996 to buy domains).

How do you like the new look website, folks? It’s all now on WordPress, but old blog posts are all still available for viewing.

It’s polarity in action. With the real-time feedback from people on sites like facebook and twitter, companies both big and small will not be able to hide from poor service or a bad product. Nevertheless, clientele who are advocates of yours will give you massive leverage if they in turn use social media – and your content – to good effect.

In a recent Nett article, Mike Hill of a Digital Agency Holler Sydney, noted that rather than email newsletters, Facebook updates (to extend brand reach) took much less time and energy, and it gets a “far greater response”. They now have 1,200 Facebook fans.

Linking on LinkedIn

With a large presence of 1.3 million members on LinkedIn, perhaps Australians are suffering from social media denial…because they already use it! Around 100,000 Aussie professionals a MONTH add their profile to LinkedIn. You’re no doubt on it already, so why not use it to your good?

LinkedIn is said to be the most effective–and least costly–Business-to-Business channel for acquiring new prospects or partners.

Through topic-related groups, you will pick up on industry trends, what the influencers think, and even interest new clients by adding to the conversation. Try these general groups on for size:

• Australian Owners & Entrepreneurs (members)
• Australian Marketing Group (open)
• Brisbane Business Network (members) or
• Brisbane Professionals (members)

Like Me… Please
Facebook has more than 8 million Australian members, and many of these profiles are linked to Business (or Hobby Business) Pages. Widespread marketing campaigns to businesses call for a solid Facebook presence. It’s free to be on, remember.

Share Some Cool Video
While video sharing sites are not commonly defined as social media, they have their uses. YouTube is the second most searched website after Google…! Shouldn’t you be thinking about Optimising for YouTube then? At least input keywords in the title and subject.

It’s true that small businesses are already utilising YouTube in many and varied ways.  Savvy use of a YouTube channel helps gain traction for hard-to-rank search terms. This is because Google will pick up one or two related videos on long tail searches. So what else can you use YouTube for?

• Solo service providers can introduce/explain their services,
• Businesses can show snippets of seminar content,
• Leaders can give simple whiteboard explanations of complex systems, and
• You can engage viewers with edited rich media content (or ad campaigns).

SlideShare is also a great channel for sharing whole presentations (include the audio component by narrating your slides).

If you’re new to video, I recommend learning more with likeminded others… Join

http://www.meetup.com/Brisbane-Online-Videos-for-Marketing/

http://www.meetup.com/socialmediabrisbane/ (This one is for learning social media)

Some Interesting Social Media Use Stats:

White Horse surveyed 104 B2B marketers (March 2010), with these findings:

86% of B2B firms are using social media, compared to 82% of B2C firms. However, B2B firms were not as active in their social media activity with only 32% engaging on a daily basis compared with 52% of B2C firms. (This has probably risen over the past year).

40% of B2B companies devote one or more full time marketers to social media marketing, as compared to 54% of B2C companies. But then, B2B represent smaller organisations.

In terms of the tools B2B companies use, 77% used Facebook (compared to 83% for B2C) and 73% used Twitter in B2B companies (outranking B2C with just 45%).

Why Pay for a Research Tool?

Since I’ve been using Market Samurai tool for nearly a year now, I’ve realised the information that is missing from the free Google Keyword Tool (albeit Samurai still relies on this tool for some search data)… that is both handy and vital to have.

One is ‘OCI’ commerciality – this variable measures the likelihood that searchers could be buyers. (Don’t fret, we’ll cover this later). Two is the ability to see Competition levels, Trends, and Adwords prices all in one screen.

Learn How to Use Professional Keyword Research Tools

Click to see helpful videos about the 1st Golden Rule – How to Find Relevant Keywords with Market Samurai. It’s really good for beginners. I like how they compare it to panning for gold. So true!

After this, go straight onto: 2nd Golden Rule – How to Find High Traffic Keywords

You will then be able to distinguish what defines a high traffic keyword – so you can cherry pick the niche markets/words for you to work on. You won’t believe what you will find out about Google searches!

If you’re running an online business, you’ll need either the correct SEO copywriter or this Market Samurai tool to be in the top 2% of all websites.

Other Relevant Posts:

Building Links for Better SEO

Search Visibility 2: Building a Theme with Keywords

I loved this video on Yellow Pages versus Google from Luke & Tim of the Small Business Big Marketing podcast. They have a 44 minute audio (How To Be Found Online) that explains, simply, why local businesses should have an Effective Website.

They make some interesting points:

• The website should Presell your products and services, answering questions that customers have in their mind
• Ensure you have an editable website, the URL structure is indexable, and you can update your own website if at all possible.

For the business with grand plans online, it’s ideal to have a Content Management System (or CMS). That’s why our latest web design clients, all localised businesses, have chosen a custom CMS (WordPress) site. We are even changing our Red Planet Design website to reflect the clean look and easy user interface that WordPress and certain themes provide.

And as for Yellow Pages, the recent downpour wrecked some and others are very handy for propping up the laptop… With print and directory advertising, you have to pay megabucks for the kind of space you need to differentiate you from all the competition. Yellow Pages is a wall of ads, and often people like me access the internet to find some business websites so I can better compare service, prices, testimonials, and guarantees.

If you want to investigate the undergarments of your online competition, look no further than Yahoo Site Explorer. This handy wee tool shows you incoming links (inlinks) of ANY website.

Success leaves clues. Also bad back-linking leaves clues, so don’t get too confused.

Some blog comments with your signature are propagated through a site, leading to 20 links which only really count for one vote. On forums like meetup.com, you’ll find a similar occurrence. So don’t get too excited by the final number… quality counts.

If you want to recreate someone else’s inlinks, first ensure they know what they are doing, and then ensure that your target keywords are exactly the same. Probably you will want to have your own strategy and use a professional – for about $40 per hour, it could be well worth it.

Next – Gather SEO Competition Data

Anyhow, the next step is to gather your SEO competition data on the top five websites for your niche keyword searches. E.G. For ‘copywriter Brisbane’ results are: heart harmony #1, snappysentences #2, power of words #3  etc… ‘Copywriting Brisbane’ brings up entirely different results.

If I wanted to be absolutely sure of my own placement, I would use Market Samurai and the SEO Competition module. This is because your own computer gets to know your ‘most clicked’ results, so could be showing your website higher than it is to others.

Check Yourself Out – in Google’s SERP

Check how your website looks with “Instant Preview” on the Search Engine Results Page – hit the magnifying glass near the title. Compare your preview to others around it. Compare your title and bolded keywords to others above it. Like when we look in the mirror, we want our listing to appear attractive in every way!

I presume that you already know your top five keyword phrases with the most traffic. No?  Then use Market Samurai or Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find them. (I can also help you with this service if you’re needing to rewrite your website copy anyway).

Please note my upcoming presentation at B2B Brisbane meetup on the topic: Writing Your Way to a Distinctive Online Presence. February 9, at 6:15 pm. If you miss out on the last spot, I may be doing this presentation again in Redcliffe in March or April.