SEO Consultant advice on Twitter for Small Business

Posted by: Bright Biz on May 3, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write a post about how to use twitter for small business benefit for quite some time, but things have been so busy here with new clients, that I generally feel bad writing information and articles here when I have clients that need my help.

One question I often hear as an SEO Consultant who often recommends that small businesses start a twitter account is “but why do we need one?” I was going to write about why, and I’ve stumbled across this great blog post, the information is based on law firms, but applies to any industry so check it out:

Twitter

Customer Feature: NattyJane Designs

Posted by: Bright Biz on April 7, 2010

I’ve been very lucky lately to help out some wonderful work at home mums with their websites.

Thanks to the power of social networking, NattyJane Designs was one business website I had the delight of assisting to revamp.

Nat is a lovely lady who offers graphic design services at wonderful prices. She specialises in products such as

Photo Storyboards

Birth Announcements

Party Invitations

Business Packages and Logo Design and more….

Thankyou Nat for allowing me to work with you on your website, I’m glad you love the results so much. I highly recommend anyone looking for custom designed photographic products to head over the NattyJane Designs.

Filed Under: Bright Biz News

Customer Feature: Support a WAHP

Posted by: Bright Biz on March 12, 2010

One of the biggest goals of establishing my own online marketing consultancy, was the desire to help small business  demystify the internet and make being online easy, inexpensive and effective.

It’s for that very reason that I teamed up with Amanda Powell of Support a Work at Home Parent & Minkabelle Designs to help launch her new websites.

Amanda needed 2 websites, one for Support a WAHP and one for her own business Minkabelle Designs, and I was extremely honoured to help her find a solution.

Together, we created flexible and attractive solutions to her needs that allow  her to communicate easily and effectively,  update and change the site with absolute ease when she needs to, and it all looks great as well!

Not only that, I was very happy to give Amanda some inside tips about search engine optimisation and some ideas that will help her businesses in the short term and long term.

Thanks Amanda, it was fun working with you.

Email Marketing for Small Business - What are the Benefits?

Posted by: Bright Biz on February 20, 2010

While many large corporations use email marketing as a vital part of their marketing plan, small business has been slower on the uptake. Thankfully as more and more small business owners feel confident in approaching consultants to assist them with their online marketing activities, they are also discovering the huge benefits and low costs of implementing an email marketing campaign.

What is Email Marketing?

Quite simply, email marketing is one of the most inexpensive options to contact your customers when you like. Not only is it inexpensive, it is also completely trackable.

Email marketing, just as it sounds, involves communicating with customers and prospects via email. Unlike other forms of marketing, you are able to know how many people are reading your email and if they click through for further information or take action on any email offers you may give.

Email Marketing is a unique marketing tool that allows small business owners to compete with large corporations successfully and in many chances stand out above large businesses by offering personalised and targeted offers that customers respond well to.

How to Implement Email Marketing?

There are several ways to create and manage an email database. While some business owners decide to store customer details within their own email account and submit email blasts that way, there are many disadvantages in doing so. Not only does this option take time to manage, it also lacks the previously mentioned tracking capabilities.

Self managing email lists can become messy, and also places you at risk of being placed in spam folders of your customers. Working with a respected email marketing database company allows you to leverage their reliability and have an increased rate of success at landing directly in an inbox instead of a spam folder.

Steps to Starting Email Marketing

  1. Sign up with a recommended autoresponder company
  2. Set up your account and create your new email marketing lists
  3. Insert sign up form html code onto your website.
  4. Direct people to join your newsletter list.
  5. Send your email database members regular, high quality emails.

OR

Have your entire email marketing set up and campaign created from scratch and managed by Bright Biz. We can provide the set up, full service management or just monthly editing, the choice is yours.

If you’d like email marketing advice for your small business, please don’t hesitate to contact Loreena.

Getting Google Love: What does Google Really Want From Your Website?

Posted by: Bright Biz on February 9, 2010

Need some relationship advice? Well my guess is that if you’re here then yep, you do! If it’s your relationship with Google that’s giving you trouble then you’ve come to the right place. Today it’s time to take a look at the relationship between your website and google.

Now don’t run away scared! The entire relationship play between a webmaster, their website and Google can seem overwhelming, so this series is going to break it down for you in easy to understand pieces. Today is the first installment.

How to Get Google Love for Your Website, by Knowing what Google Really Wants.

It’s important that you believe me when I say this, because it’s the absolute truth…. What google wants is…. *insert drumroll here*

………….Relevance!……….

If you stop just for a moment and think about yourself when you are using google. What do most people do? Search for the most relevant answer for what they need to know.

Now whether that’s an answer about a recipe or a business dilemma, Google bot’s goal is to provide you with the most relevant piece of information on the internet, to give you your answer.

See, not so scary is it? The first step to ranking well in the Google Search Engine is to be sure your site is relevant.

What Should my Site be Relevant For?

Aaahhh, yes, the age old question. You know your site needs to be relevant, but relevant to what? The answer to that is……

Relevant to the keywords your readers would use to find your site.

If I have a blog, or a website about dog food, of course, I need to provide relevant information about dog food. But exactly “what” about dog food? Well I want to be the expert supplier in organic dogfood.

So there you go, I need to target my site around keywords relevant to organic dogfood. So now I know what I need to be relevant for, I will start to be sure that my site contains keywords and information related to: Organic dog food, how to buy organic dogfood, best organic dogfoods, home made organic dog food.

Does all that make sense? It’s not too hard for our first step towards getting Google Love.

The summary of today’s lesson is:  “To rank well in Google, the first step is to be relevant. To do that, we need to figure out who we want our readers to be, what information they need to know, and what keywords they would use to search for that information.”

In the upcoming articles on getting Google Love, I’ll direct you further on the step by step process you will need to undertake to get your website relevant.

Real Estate Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation

Posted by: Bright Biz on September 8, 2009

Online Marketing for Real Estate Agents is a vital tool that can increase visibility of properties in a way that is otherwise impossible or extremely expensive.

Being in the market for a new home means that I spend lots of time searching for the right property, so it’s really frustrating when I constantly discover that very few real estate agents understand the dynamics of internet marketing, or what it has to offer.

I don’t have time to walk the pavement to search the window of real estate agents locally, so the first thing I do is head to Google, as do most other real estate hunters. What I find is not so good!!! Of course there are the major sites such as Domain and Realestate.com.au, but often I want to dig deeper on the sites of individual real estates. The problem is, I can’t find most of them!

When I CAN find a real estate agent with good search engine rankings, their website is often poor and not updated and the photos they put on site are horrid if they are there at all.

I get the feeling that most agents are possibly listing a few of their available properties on the “big” real estate websites and hoping people will find them, BOY WHAT A MISTAKE!!!

It should be the aim of EVERY real estate to rank first on google for all the possible property terms within their local area. Getting on that first page of google before the big sites is a huge advantage, and being sure your website contains great detail and amazing photos is the next step to getting the potential buyer/renter to make that call and give you their money.

This frustration has given me the inspiration to write an easy step guide to internet marketing for real estate agents, I’ll be posting the first part soon!

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Posted by: Bright Biz on July 15, 2009

Search engine optimisation or SEO as it is referred to is the task of optimising your website both on-site and off -site to ensure it ranks as highly as possible in the search engines.

In current years it has been discovered that a majority of people use Google or other search engines as their first stop for research on products and services they are looking to buy.

This being the case, it makes sense that all business owners should have their website ranking as high as possible in order to get as much exposure to new customers as possible.

The secret to SEO is that most people don’t click past the first 2 pages of search engine results. This means that there are 20 top positions available, with the first 10 being the most highly prizes first page ranking positions.

Search engine optimisation is a long term process, the first steps to get started are:

1. It’s really important to know what words your customers are using to try and find your product. These words are referred to as keywords. These keywords make up the basis for your seo campaign. Keyword research is one of the most vital steps in SEO as the wrong keywords will return very little result or ROI.

2. Benchmarking: Know where your website is ranking right now. It’s important to understand where your website sits in relation to competition for your chosen keywords. This benchmark will be mark against which any ranking improvements will be measured.

Once those 2 steps are complete, it’s time to move on to the action taking and results!… more on this soon.

Search Engine Optimisation Port Macquarie NSW

Posted by: Bright Biz on February 25, 2009

Bright Biz offers a several specialisations from their base in Port Macquarie:  Search Engine Optimisation, Online Marketing and Email Marketing for businesses located Worldwide.

Our local area is Port Macquarie in NSW, and while the internet allows us to service companies and people all over the world, if you prefer in person consultations and meetings then we are happy to travel, we understand the online marketing needs of small business and are here to help.

Filed Under: Bright Biz News

Online Marketing Port Macquarie - Welcome

Posted by: Bright Biz on January 19, 2009

Hi,

Welcome to Bright Biz. My name is Loreena Walsh, owner of Bright Biz an Online Marketing Consultancy focused on helping Small Business owners utilise the online environment and other technologies to take their business to a new level.

We are based in Port Macquarie, NSW, Australia but work with clients worldwide to assist them with their small business marketing.

Getting online used to cost from $2000 to $30000 for a business website. The truth about many websites is that they simply DO NOT WORK!! A business website, especially for small business needs to be targeted, focused, and convert website visitors into customers. Something that many websites do not achieve.

So how can this Port Macquarie Website & Marketing Consultancy help you?

  • If you don’t feel in control of your website - Call us
  • If your website is costing you money for little return - Call us
  • If your website ISN”T bringing you targeted customers that you can track - you need our help.
  • If you are confused about how to get online - We’ll help you today.
  • If you need ways to link your online and offline marketing - We can solve your marketing problems too.
  • If your website is nowhere to be seen within Google or other search engine search results - we’ll fix that for you FAST!!

In short, our business is about helping your business. Small business is my passion. Technology is my passion and I sincerely hope that more small business takes the initiative to take control of the online medium that’s been controlled by big business for too long.

Contact Loreena today for a chat about how getting online could help your business. No obligation and a no sell introductory chat about your business is on offer, no pressure just a few ideas between business owners.

Hope to talk to you soon.