So you’ve built your website and ready to start greeting customers. But first you need to make sure your site can be found.

In follow up to last week’s post on Pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimisation (SEO), here are 10 free tools for boosting your search engine ranking, and welcoming more visitors to your virtual shop:

1. Google Adwords Keyword Tool – the first step in any SEO campaign is identifying your keywords. This handy tool will let you know which keywords to target, as well as offer suggestions on popular phrases you might not have thought of.

2. Wordpress – now you know which keywords to target you’ll need to boost the number of times they appear in your content. More than just blogging software, Wordpress offers an entire content management system for adding keyword packed articles. With 100s of customisable themes to choose from and a vibrant community of plugin developers, Wordpress can transform your website from a static brochure to a resource of industry news and info. Publishing great content will also work wonders for your search engine ranking.

3. XML Sitemap Generator – whenever you add new content to your site you’ll want to make sure Google knows about it. Sitemaps help the search engine’s spiders crawl around your site and understand what it’s about. This generator will create a search engine compliant sitemap that you can upload to your home directory every time your site is updated.

4. Google Webmaster Tools – after you’ve uploaded your sitemap you can use this handy utility to analyse its data. Google Webmaster Tools shows you how the search engine views your website, and, crucially, it will let you know if there are any problems to fix, such as broken links.

5. SEO Book’s Rank Checker – created by Aaron Wall, one of the SEO scene’s most respected bloggers, this Firefox plugin enables you to check where your site is ranking in keyword searches. You can save the details of every campaign and run reports from your browser in seconds.

6. Hubspot’s Website Grader – this award winning tool can run an SEO health check on your site before awarding it a grade and offering advice on how it could be improved. You can discover how effectively your site is described, its readability level and how often it has been bookmarked on social bookmarking sites (e.g. Digg and Delicious). Should you wish to show off, the Website Grader provides you with code to paste into your site so you can display a badge featuring your search marketing quality score.

7. SEO Quake – this plugin for web browsers adds a toolbar displaying info on the SEO effectiveness of websites, as well as underscore entries on the search results page. You can check the number of your website pages that have been indexed by the different search engines at a glance, as well as spy on the success of your competitors’ campaigns.

8. Backlink Watch – along with regularly adding great content, you’ll want to build up the number of inbound links from relevant sites. If you’re posting useful content then you should start to attract links naturally. But it also helps to post comments in forums and on blogs to let people know you’re there. This handy tool will let you know who’s linking to your content, and track the success of your link building campaign.

9. StatCounter – once your visitors start arriving you’ll want to be able to know what they’re looking at and how long they’re engaging with your site. This free tool offers a wealth of valuable info, such as what links visitors are clicking on, how they’re finding you and in which country they’re based. Warning: checking your stats in the hope of seeing a flood of new visitors can be addictive.

10. Google Analytics – no list of SEO tools would be complete without mentioning Google’s free analytical software. It tells you everything you need to know about your visitors and the ‘stickiness’ of your website. The insight you gain into how visitors are interacting with your site can help you understand the journey they’re taking and what pages need improving to push more visitors to the contact page or checkout till.

Search marketing is a complicated beast. But at least with these tools you’ll have a fighting chance of understanding how it’s done.

As mentioned last week, getting onto page one can take weeks, months or even years for competitive terms. But the sooner you implement an SEO strategy the sooner you’ll be able to greet customers finding you through the search engines and buying your pixelated products.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Internet marketing should be easy. You just cobble together a website and wait for the sales to roll in, right? Well, if it was that simple we’d all be internet millionaires by now, smugly sipping cocktails on a beach somewhere.

But unfortunately for us, there are a few barriers to remove before you can expect the enquiries to come flooding in. Firstly, people have to be able to find you. Otherwise your investment in a website is waste of pixels.

To get noticed, you have two main options: pay per click advertising or search engine optimisation.

Pay per click (PPC)

Launched in 2000, pay per click (PPC) is the system of sponsored ads that have amassed Google its fortune. PPC is a quick, easy method of generating traffic. You simply choose which keywords to target, work out a budget and wait for the visitors to arrive.

What makes PPC attractive is its measurability and ability to show its ROI in clear numerals. Campaigns are also simple to manage, with clear data on conversions and how your money has been spent.

What’s less appealing is the high cost of popular keywords (although a way around this is to target the less obvious but cheaper ‘long tail’ phrases).

Another problem is that PPC is only a short term solution. If you decide to cut spending then your website will simply disappear into the depths of the search listings, never to be seen again.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO, on the other hand, is the long term alternative to PPC for getting to the top of the natural listings (and attracts 72% of clicks).

Working how to optimise websites to appear in response to certain queries is a complex process, and has given birth to an entire industry. Legions of SEO bloggers and consultants diligently work away trying to guess what line of code will magically push their clients’ sites to the top of the rankings. The problem for them is that nobody really knows for sure (and Google isn’t telling).

What we do know is that SEO involves having the correct page structure, tags and back links that tell Google what your website is all about. But SEO isn’t just a job for the technically minded or IT department. It’s also the quality of your content that impacts your ranking, making SEO the responsibility of marketers as well.

Good quality content improves your ranking due to the nature of Google’s business. Their success relies on providing the most relevant results. Consequently, it’s the websites regularly updated, with articles, blog posts and other keyword rich content, that receive the thumbs up and get pulled to the front.

Useful, well written articles can also attract links from other relevant websites (aka blogs), which is another key figure in the mysterious equation for getting onto page one.

Content marketing

Being able to drive traffic to your website is one hurdle, working out how to convert that traffic into sales is another. Your website needs to be able to change how people think and feel about your company if it’s going to convert them into customers. You can achieve this through your content.
Well written articles that offer to solve a problem, provide useful info or valuable insight can build trust and confidence in your expertise. They can also make your website ‘sticky’, keeping visitors glued to your content and engaged with your website for longer. This gives you more time to encourage them to take action and leave their email address before they leave.

PPC or SEO?

Investing in a content driven SEO strategy offers long term benefits compared to PPC. Once your website starts ranking highly for your key terms it’s likely to stay there. The drawback is that reaching such lofty positions can take weeks, months or even a year for competitive search terms. This makes SEO difficult to justify if you want quick, quantifiable results.

Ultimately, deciding whether to rely on PPC or SEO to generate traffic depends on the nature of your business and structure of your website. A sensible approach is to treat PPC as a quick, easy way of attracting customers, and SEO your long term objective.

Either way, internet marketing is a complex, evolving puzzle. You can endlessly spend your time making tweaks and word changes to improve your website’s conversion rate. So any images of sipping cocktails on a beach will have to stay on your desktop’s background for now.

In follow up to last week’s brochure design tips, we thought we’d discuss why you should consider printing your brochures digitally, rather than rely on good old lithographic.

Digital is being hailed as a revolution for small business’ print marketing: compared to litho, digital is quick, often cheaper and can deliver messages personalised to your customers’ interests.

Why is digital printing different to lithographic?

Traditional litho ‘offset’ printing requires the creation of a plate for every print, which is then used to transfer the image via a rubber blanket onto the paper.

Litho is great for printing 1000s of catalogues, magazines and books at a relative low cost. But its cost is less attractive when you’re only after a few hundred brochures and flyers.

Digital printers, on the other hand, don’t require the creation of a plate. Instead they use software to render digital images directly onto the press, bypassing the need for an expensive plate altogether. This offers numerous benefits…

What are the benefits of digital printing?

Cheaper – without the need to create a plate for every image, small businesses can print small quantities of brochures, flyers and business cards cheaply. There are already a few web-to-print businesses (such as moonpig.com and lulu.com) that have sprung up to capitalise on the low cost of small, customised print runs.

Faster – each litho print run takes a long time to setup. Digital presses, however, can be setup quickly and are capable of enabling next day, or even same day delivery.

Greener – the elimination of a plate, and shorter make-ready, means you also don’t need all the other printing materials and waste that go along with them. So you no longer have chemicals, ink and paper filling up your bin; and because you only print what you need, less chance of obsolescence. Some digital printing machines are even designed with their own recyclability in mind.

Customisable – every print can be customised to include unique content, such as the customer’s name, personalised URL and relevant images. Personalising marketing helps improve the response rate because people are more likely to engage with content that’s relevant to their interests. Litho, on the other hand, only allows a static ‘one size fits all’ message per print run.

High quality – the quality of digital printers is rapidly improving, and is almost indistinguishable from traditional litho. Their reliability is also getting better, and eventually they’ll be just as consistent, and competitive, at long print runs too.

Digital printing puts one-to-one marketing into customers’ hands

Digital print has opened up print marketing to small businesses by making it cost effective to deliver timely, relevant and personalised messages. This is the type of marketing weary consumers are crying out for, so digital print technology has arrived at just the right time.

Here at bda we’ve experienced first hand the benefits digital print offers for one-to-one marketing. In a recent campaign for Siemens, digital printing enabled us to create individual brochures personalised to match the responses customers logged on their website. This enabled Siemens to not only deliver marketing finely tuned to their customers’ interests, but also saved cash because they only needed to print what was requested, rather than end up with a pile of unwanted brochures gathering dust.

Litho still has a role to play in printing mass produced materials. But for fast, cost effective and personalised one-to-one print marketing, you have to go digital.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

With all the fuss about the internet, it’s easy to forget about one of marketing’s workhorses that’s helped businesses promote themselves almost since the invention of the printing press. The fact is that a large proportion of people still prefer to receive offers in print, which is why the humble brochure deserves to be respected.

A brochure should reflect your expertise, professionalism and the quality of your products. And it needs to be eye catching and captivating if you want it to effectively promote your company.

But even creating a simple brochure in which all the elements are working together can be a complicated process. So to get you started, here’s bda’s top ten tips for designing brochures you’ll be proud to hand out, and are more likely to be read and responded to:

1. Identify its purpose – what do you want the brochure to accomplish? Do you want it to announce a new product? Raise your company profile? Or generate sales? Deciding on your brochure’s aim early on in the design process is vital because it will influence its tone, appearance and the result you can expect to achieve.

2. Work out the hierarchy of info – write a list of all the points and information you want to include in the brochure. Then put them into a prioritised list ensuring all the most vital info is at the top. This will make it easier to plot out what needs to go on each panel of your brochure.

3. Use high quality images – your brochure should provide a visual feel for who you are and what you do. So you should invest in high quality stock images or professional photography that reflects the expertise of your company. Trying to save money by using free clip art or pictures from a friend’s camera is only going to cost you in the long run in lost sales.

4. Make sure it’s well written – your brochure’s words need to appeal to your target customer, sell your benefits and reflect your personality. So choose your words carefully or hire a copywriter to choose them for you.

5. Select an appropriate font – the style of lettering you use will influence your brochure’s visual appearance and reflect the personality of your company. Try and avoid over used fonts, and don’t necessarily copy whatever’s popular at the moment. Font fashion changes quicker than that on Oxford Street.

6. Proofread – read through it several times, read it out aloud and read sentences backwards before you sign it off. Spelling mistakes can damage your credibility, and lead to your freshly printed brochures only making it as far as the shredder.

7. Paper quality – select paper that’s within budget and reflects the quality of your product. Normal weights for brochures range from 80gsm to 350gsm, whilst there’s a wide range of qualities to choose from. Choose paper that reflects your brand message without bankrupting your marketing budget in the process.

8. Choose a finish that enhances its appeal – there are a huge range to choose from, such as gloss varnishing, embossing, foiling, laminating and special finishes such as flitter etc. So choose the type you think best enhances your brochure’s feel, look and message. As with paper quality, some special finishes can be expensive, so ensure you get different quotes before committing to production.

9. Personalise to improve response – customising your brochures with personalised URLs (PURLs) as part of an integrated campaign can increase the response rate because people love seeing their own name in print. Modern tracking also enables you to capture data you can use to make future campaigns even more personalised and targeted.

10. Be realistic about what your brochure can achieve – after you’ve decided on all the elements above and sent your design off to the printers, you shouldn’t sit back and expect the sales to come rolling in. Ultimately, your brochure is a teaser for building intrigue and interest in your products, services, company or event. Long-term marketing success lies in capitalising on the interest your brochure builds through follow up activity, such as email campaigns and sales calls, and continuing to deliver relevant messages your prospects are happy to receive.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.