If you are a business owner out there and you were thinking about building a website for your business most likely you will start to look online for an agency. Once you find the appropriate agency, you will ask them for a quote explaining what you need and then accept a quote and this agency will build your website. Your website will be delivered and you will be happy owner.

Please do not follow this path above!!!

I do not have any problems with big web design agencies as long as they do the job in client’s interest. In the last month I have seen two CMS websites built without considering the correct keywords for the client. Both clients have been told that their website is on the first page of Google for the particular keyword.
After 5 minutes of investigation it turned out that there are no searches whatsoever for that keyword and the number of competing pages is unsignificant. Of course you are going to be on the first page of Google. You get the picture….

Before you decide and hand over thousands of pounds for your website to be built, please do following:

1. Do your kewyord research. Find several keywords that people are searching when looking for your product or service, don’t guess them. Find keywords for each individual product or service you offer. If you do not know how to do this then ask agency to do it before they start to build your website. If they tell you that they are design agency and not seo company, move on. Why? Because they should be both design and seo agency. Beautiful website that is not optimized correctly is like having a Ferrari without an engine….

2. Once your agency provide you with some keywords ask them to provide you with the number of monthly searches
and the number of competing pages. If they can’t do that then ask me and I’ll tell you how to do it.

3. Ask them to show you the example of how urls will be structured within CMS. Whole url (folder(s) and the final html page) should be structured around your keywords. No numbers in urls or words like “page” or something that has nothing to do with your products or services. If you don’t do this before building process starts and once you realise your website pages are built in unsatisfactory way,  you will have to pay again for the work that should have been done in the first place.

4. Ask the agency whether they can include RSS feed within your website (There are add-ons out there).

5. Once you clear all this out, write down what you expect at the end of the relationship and present it to the agency.

If you do all this your life will be much easier once your website is out there.

If you need any help with any of this above, write me an e-mail or call me.

Do you think that the local business website promotion in the Manchester area is carried out succesfully?

Is it easy to get leads from yellow pages or newspaper ads?

I am always interested in the answers to these questions and in actually participating in the healthy debate.

As per getting easy leads from yellow pages I believe that these days are gone. How many times I have heard following: “Next year I will not advertise in newspapers or with Yellow pages as I have not received a single call”

Normally people give you funny look if you ask them when the last time they used Yellow Pages to find a local business. They just can’t remember.

Today, if your business is not available online, you are missing lots of potential customers. They will go to your competitor who is located just down the street.

And even if you have decided to promote your business online, the free time to do the actual website promotion work will be very limited. Running you local business requires 50+ hours a week.

That’s where we come in. We keep up with the latest strategies that will generate traffic for local businesses and improve their conversion ratio so that the visitors you do get to your website are more likely to buy from you resulting in growing your business.

Free Evaluation

Call me for a free evaluation of your website. I will review your site, look at potential ways to increase traffic and advise you how to improve the effectiveness of getting visitors to take action. We will then present our finding plus ask a few more questions about growing your business. Can your business handle two or three times as much business as you currently experience?

Then if it all makes sense, we will present you with a no obligation website promotion proposal identifying ways we can help you achieve your business growth.