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DerekMoy

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So I think I've found a reputable web design guy that will design a website to good SEO standards and give me something punchy, clean with good usability. I've done the keyword research, examined the competitors and included as much of it in my project as possible, I've taken care to select good Meta Tags and descriptions.... now for the online marketing strategy.

So there's a world of possibilities ...
– Press Releases
– Article Writing
– Link Directories (reputable)
– Social Media / News Sites
– Blogs and Forums
– RSS
– Submissions to Google and Yahoo

I'm a novice! How do you combine all this into a comprehensive strategy to top google rankings and drive business to an Irish e-commence site from Irish and particularly UK Markets?

Any good training courses in Dublin?
Any good SEO guys at a reasonable rate?
Any automated software for submission purposes?
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
What is the target market / niche?
 

DerekMoy

New Member
Patience Required

Yep I know that.......but got the time, just ain't got the knowledge! I'm sure if that's the target market, that I should take that into consideration at the beginning of build and marketing though??
 

link8r

New Member
If it isn't visible on the page, don't expect Google to take note.

Press release sites are rife with spam

Advertise on Social Media and it could backfire.

There are some people who use twitter and facebook fan pages to advertise. If you scratch the surface of the underlying online marketing strategy, you'll see that the same friends on twitter are the same fans on Facebook. Friends aren't a big enough target audience.

Like BK said - Rome wasn't built in a day - stuff too much in and you won't put in enough time into one of the things that could work for your sector.
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
There are some people who use twitter and facebook fan pages to advertise. If you scratch the surface of the underlying online marketing strategy, you'll see that the same friends on twitter are the same fans on Facebook. Friends aren't a big enough target audience.

That's a gross generalisation.

Sure, there are some people using Twitter and Facebook very very badly, but others are driving traffic AND sales very successfully

Of course some are totally useless

One of the members of this site setup a fan page for his cat - it's getting more views and interactions than some of the Irish business pages ..
 

Michaela

New Member
Re:

You'll need to take an integrated approach and ensure you have a solid strategy behind it as a whole - this will ensure consistency.

Michaela
 

DerekMoy

New Member
Suggested Reading: The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott. Excellent for any novice social media beginner.
 

Satanta

New Member
One of the members of this site setup a fan page for his cat - it's getting more views and interactions than some of the Irish business pages ..
Superb! I love it.

Having said that, given the sad state of a huge number of Irish business pages, it's less than surprising.

Facebook, twitter, etc. (or can easily be applied to any form of advertising to be honest) are all full of great potential, but only when used properly. If used badly, they simply sap time and resources with no positive return.

If you're looking at something like Facebook as simply a tool to get backlinks and aid your SEO efforts, there's a fair chance it won't work well. A successful FB page is all about giving your clients/customers/potential customers an additional means to find you, interact with you, build trust in your brand and convert the 'mebbe' guys into clients. This means you give good advice, provide value, give them something interesting and interact with them (and get them interacting with you and each other). If you simply set it up, don't provide value with it and fill it with family and friends, as link8r mentioned, it's simply a waste of time.

Taking blacknight as an example, the effort that has been made providing information (and troubleshooting, basic advice, customer service, etc.) via various methods (numerous forums, blog posts, etc. etc.) means that any potential customer can not only see an active company that put the work in, but know that if or when they have problems they will be resolved quickly (as they've seen it happen). That's a major selling point to turn someone from "they have a good price" to a "they're defiantly the one I'll use".

If a Facebook page, or any method, can provide that kind of 'testimonial' from the interactions, it has huge benefits (outside of just backlinks and referrals).

There's no 'right answer' on which methods you should use. Different people will perform better in different areas. So even if one method in 'theory' would provide 'better' results... it all comes down to your ability to use that medium. Putting your time into the ones YOU will get the best results from (not where others tell you the best results are) is one of the keys to success here (e.g. would you rather have a very successful twitter campaign with a massive following or a blog that gets a handful of views and even less comments?). Spread yourself too thing, they all suffer.

If you believe you have the time to cover all the areas in the detail required to make them work, go for it. However, if that is the case, I'd suggest you drop your current business and instead set up a "Increase your productivity" training camp :D
 

seanpearse

New Member
Hi Derek,
I've just replied to another thread you were commenting on offering a proposal. Satanta makes some solid points. Each SEO strategy is different depending first of all on how much time you are willing to allocate to it. Article directories, press releases, social bookmarking etc. are all effective methods of building structured two and three tier backlink pyramids which if done correctly will maximise the amount of juice passed on to your site. The downside is this can be very time consuming although much of the article writing etc can be outsourced for peanuts (check out Fiverr ). The key is having good quality, keyword structured, well written ORIGINAL content. Considering your target market is both the UK and Ireland and your business would cover a wide age and gender demographic I would recommend a good organic SEO strategy as opposed to facebook ads or PPC etc. As blacknight rightly says "Rome wasn't built in a day" and a successful organic SEO strategy does take time. If you go out straight away and build two or three hundred backlinks for a brand new domain you will get slapped by Google as it obviously looks spammy. The best practice in my opinion is slow and steady continuous high quality backlink building together with a regularly updated website that permits clients to leave feedback and customer interaction. This shows Google you are transparent in how you conduct your business and are taking a proactive approach to customer feedback.

Also make sure your web designer installs Google Analytics on your site. It's free, all you need is a gmail account and it only takes a few minutes to paste the code into the html on your site's pages. This gives you a lot of valuable information on how people are finding your site (what keywords, search engines etc.), what pages they are viewing and how long they spend on your site (bounce back rate). This gives you a great indication whether or not people actually like your site layout because there's no point dominating the rankings if people are simply clicking back off your site once they find you.

If you need any more assistance feel free to contact me. Good luck!
 
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