CreditWindow - relaunched SEO site

A lot of work has been going into www.creditwindow.co.uk recently in an attempt to make it a little more SEO friendly. When it was originally designed I had PPC and email marketing in mind, however, unfortunately there is no quick win when it comes to web-marketing so I've had to put some serious thought into the site and how I can generate traffic.

Check out some of the financial products available on CreditWindow.co.uk:

• Pre-paid cards
• Payday Loans
• Credit cards
• Personal Loans
• Bank Accounts
• Unsecured Guarantor Loans
• Logbook Loans

and more services coming soon...

Testing SEO

I've recently been feeling that my SEO skills have come a long way since I started this blog and decided to test this theory on my website CreditWindow.co.uk.

I started off by drafting up a template I could comfortably work with and then had a serious think about site content.

When considering content for your website it can prove difficult to decide what kind of angle to take - guides, news articles, ever growing glossaries, etc, etc. In my case I've decided to try the traditional articles, i.e.

Debt Management Plans - what are they and how can they help me?

What is a credit rating and how does it effect me?

Credit cards - what alternative do I have?

Payday Loans - how can they help me?

Now the next step is to get those links up and keep the content going...

Any ideas would be appreciated on how I can get the traffic flowing!

Digital Marketing 101. Getting the website right

Digital Marketing 1010.

Many digital marketing professionals would have you believe that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the only way forward for any online based business.

To an extent I agree with them, however, SEO is not the be all and end all that so many would have you believe. Despite this it's certainly something that any serious business owner needs to consider when having the website built so by no means a bad place to start.

Website Usability

Google experts have always suggested that a website should be designed with the end-user in mind and shouldn't be built as a lead-generation machine (despite what so many Guru's would have you believe - this doesn't work anymore). Here's a few things you should consider when designing the website:

1. Navigability

If your customer can't find where they need to go how will you sell your products?! An effective navigation menu/system should address:

• Where the user is
• Where the user has been
• Where can the user go

Get your navigation menu right and it's the step in the right direction (Google likes well structure sites - infrastructure is paramount).

2. Consistency

Ensuring that each page of your website retains the same style of design is essential. This includes:

• Make sure your navigation menu is consistently in the same place on every page. Many users will get confused if this keeps moving around.
• Consistent colours throughout the website - choose two or three specifics hues and stick to them. If this changes too much it can lead to confusion and you could lose some of your brand recognition.
• Consistent graphics, logos and headings on every page. Again - this is probably more of a branding thing, however, you need to bear-in-mind that any business that want's to be taken seriously needs to keep logos and graphics consistent as this will make the website and the business more recognisable as it grows in popularity.
• Use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can help with a lot of these issues. If you aren't aware of what these are you can be pretty sure your web-developer is. However, if you are the developer - you have some serious catching up to do if you don't know what CSS is!

3. Both a HTML and XML Sitemap

Large websites should always have a comprehensive HTML sitemap and should be accessible from every page. Users who get lost using the site can use this to find their way to where they want to be. See an example of a sitemap here.

Generating an XML sitemap is relatively easy using tools like XML-Sitemaps.com. Once generated the sitemap should be added to the root directory of your website. The XML sitemap should also be submitted using Google Webmaster Tools and the relevant tools for Yahoo and Bing.

4. Site Content

This is essential for any website. Apart from the fact that SEO largely revolves around high-quality content (and backlinks) it's also vital that you let your users know what the site does - what's it for? Without this a website is nothing. Good content should follow these guidelines:

• Place the content prominently and high-up on the page. Always ensure that your most important content is visible when the page loads.
• Think about your keywords, for example, if you sell unsecured loans then ensure you fit relevant keywords into your articles (i.e. words that users will type to search for websites that sell unsecured loans). However, it's important not to overkill on keywords as this will effectively make the content unreadable. As a rule-of-thumb you should probably focus on making keywords around 1.5% of your total content. For example, if your article consists of 250 words then you may only want to mention your keywords 3 - 4 times maximum.
• Always use descriptive ALT and Title tags for images. This makes it much easier for Search Engines to identify non-textual content.

5. Test the website on a cross-section of people

 Usability should test:

• Do the visitors like the website? This is clearly important as it means that if a user likes a site then they are more likely to spend more time there.
• Do the visitors understand the purpose of the website? If this isn't the case then it's unlikely that anyone will stay for any length of time, let alone return to the site.
• Website errors - usability testing is an effective way of checking that elements such as navigation, site forms, search functionality and other elements work. It's important to make sure all these sorts of things work as it could mean the difference between the visitor returning or not.
• Depth of website - the more information and knowledge the site can share, the more likely people will return and will bookmark it for future reference.

There are a number of other elements you need to consider but I believe I have covered the most important areas to consider in web-design.

Benefits of Digital Marketing

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing means to use digital technology and processes in the development, distribution, and promotion of your products or services.

There are two types of digital marketing which are known as push, and pull.

Pull digital marketing involves the visitors and potential customers coming to you through directly finding and looking at the content you want them to. There are no restrictions on the content, size or type that you can deliver to the visitor, as it is generally a web based medium or web page.

Push digital marketing is where the advertiser pushes the data to the recipient using digital technologies. This can be techniques like email, sms or maybe an RSS feed. The advantage of this method is that you can personalise the message that is delivered and it can be targeted. This effectiveness of this method can be measured.

How can digital marketing benefit your business? 

Before digital media came along, marketers had to rely on print, radio and television advertising to reach customers.

Today, internet and mobile telephone technologies have revolutionised the marketing industry, providing the means to track consumer interests and obtain an inexpensive medium to establish direct contact with the customer.

It is a very cost-effective means of marketing which enables the opportunity to hit prospects regularly and repeatedly. This will help in leaving a long lasting impact on current and potential customers.

There are two major significant benefits to using digital marketing.

• It has a high degree of measurability. The output of a digital marketing strategy is much easier to track than it is with traditional marketing media tools. Additionally the rate of response has been reported much higher.

• They do not require long-standing commitments. Digital media marketing strategy are much more accessible than other mediums and if a change is required, it can be executed almost immediately.

Lastly, focused digital media marketing campaigns are most likely to attract the prospects that later convert into leads.

Related Articles:

Can Twitter Help My Business?

Social Media: the future of small business marketing

5 reasons why your business needs an online presence

Don't Get Burnt By SEO Professionals

With the large number of marketing and advertising consultants (or self proclaimed SEO Gurus!) floating around the World Wide Web companies are becoming more and more wary of paying out money for advice as, a lot of the time, these guys are just out to make quick money and don't really care about their clients.

If you are considering out-sourcing some of your SEO/PPC or even eMail marketing to an agency or so-called expert I would strongly recommend requesting certain requirements of any out-sourced marketing experts you use. These are:

• How extensive is their experience in this field?
It's certainly worth investigating the company's depth of knowledge and experience in marketing and advertising. I strongly suggest looking for verified cases in which they have actually helped a client's website get to the top of the main search engines (i.e. Google and Bing).

• Is the agency/individual searchable in Google and what position do they come?
If a company is unable to appear in a dominant position on Google then how can you expect them to help you? Try using the search term "SEO agency" and see what their position is.

• Ensure they have some form of Professional Indemnity Insurance.
If they don't have professional indemnity insurance or at least a comprehensive public liability insurance policy in place then you should really be asking why?! Any agency handing out advice, guidance or design work should have legal liability protection in place in case they make a mistake.

• A written contract signed by both yourselves and the agency/individual you will be working with.
Again - if you don't know the clauses and regulations underlying the written agreement then you are putting your company at risk and exposing yourselves to potential legal problems should anything untoward happens.

• Ensure that the SEO agency is sending you thorough monthly reports on SEO activity.
It is also strongly advisable to ensure they are willing to arrange bi-weekly conference calls to provide updates.

Reports should include:

1. A list of built links.

2. Graph illustrating changes in rank during the prior month.

3. PPC activity - indicating increases in traffic and lead/sales conversions.

4. Impact of any other marketing they may be undertaking for your company.

and any additional information they can provide you with.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Web marketing spend increases in the fourth quarter

According to recent research by Strategy Analytics Digital Media small businesses are investing more and more money into online marketing.

The study shows that the overall market expanded by 8.5% around the world during the fourth quarter of 2009. Over 11.4 billion was spent between October and December last year, a significant increase when compared to the £10.6 billion that was spent in 2008

These figures suggest that the worst has passed despite the online marketing arena suffering badly over the past year.

The only major player in the online arena to have come out of 2009 who saw an increase in their market share were Google, where other major contenders such as Microsoft and Yahoo saw a significant fall in their revenue shares.

The Strategy Analytics Digital Media Director, Martin Olausson, commented:

"Advertisers started to loosen their spending control valve on experimental ad formats in the fourth quarter of 2009, which led to the growth of new ad formats, such as online video ads."

Photo by Danilo Rizzutit

Google launches free web service for small businesses

If you're a small business owner and haven't yet discovered the joys of owning a business website then there may be a bit of good news for you.

Google has joined with Paypal and BT to launch a new initiative thats been aimed at getting UK based small business on the web. The 'Getting British Businesses Online' (GBBO) campaign has been set up in response to recent research that shows 1.5 million small companies have little or no web presence due largely to expense or complexity of set up.

The campaign gives small businesses the ability to set a free .co.uk website up. The company simply needs to enter simple business information and select the website template they want.

There are a number of excellent features available, including, google analytics to help monitor web traffic and an eCommerce solution provided by Paypal.There are other services that are provided for small businesses, including BT telephone support and Google maps to allow the company to specify their location and contact details.

Despite this good news for small firms there are a number of web-developers that who have objected to this initiative, including Mr Site Ltd owner, Stuart Spice who has stated that it risked undermining web companies who earn their living through selling web development packages similar to that offered by the GBBO's free service.

However, the Director of Create.net, Simon Kimber believes the opposite:

"GBBO is a good thing. It will allow businesses to get directly involved in building a basic website. Once they are ready to take off the training wheels, services like Create will be there to help them take their online presence to the next level."

Photo by Salvatore Vuono

Small businesses must embrace new technologies to succeed

If small businesses are to grow they must be prepared to embrace new technologies to help enhance their sales and marketing activity.

The Commercial Director at the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), Kevin Dendy, commented that investment into information technology (I.T) is critically important from a sales and marketing point-of-view.

Mr Dendy, commenting at the popular Technology for Marketing and Advertising (TFMA) event in London, stated that technology is the way in which direct marketing will move forward, in an attempt to engage their customers more effectively. He went on to say that "it's amazing what you can do now that you couldn't do ten years ago."

Dendy added that if a company doesn't have technology then they're not going to move with the times and will likely crumble as it becomes more and more important to customers and businesses alike.

Image: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Attracting customers on the web

Thanks to the internet the marketplace has become a much harder, more aggressive place to trade.

I have written this guide to help you target and attract the right customers to your website and products.

There are a number of things that need to be taken into consideration before rushing in and getting your website developed:

1. Do you know your target audience?


Do you know the exact demographic of the customer you want to attract to your business? Understanding your potential customer is probably the most crucial element. For example, if your business sells designer label clothes for men then it's safe to assume that the demographic of your customer looks something like this:

Gender: Male

Age-group: 25 - 35

Wage: £20K+ per annum

Marital Status: single

I have to admit I didn't do my research on this product and simply deduced the above demographic based on the types of people I know that buy designer label clothes. However, if you are serious about identifying your target audience then you should probably undertake some simple customer research as and when you can.

2. Develop a clear business model.


Whether you already own an established, more traditional, offline business or not, a new business model is required as operating online will require a different approach to traditional trading. Here are a number of elements you should think about when developing your business model:

Do you have the capital to develop or source products yourself to sell online? This is an important question as this is probably the most expensive way of trading online. However, in the long-run, if well marketed, it could be the most effective way of generating a profitble income.

If capital is a problem then why not consider selling on behalf of another company? For example, many finance companies work with a number of brokers, introducers, affiliates and intermediaries to sell products for them. If you get your website and marketing strategy right this could be a very profitable way of making money without costing you too much to setup.

Monetise your website. A lot of websites on the internet are primarily information focused - such as blogs or news based websites and don't offer a product as such. However, if your site has an opt-in mailing list and a high-level of traffic then you could consider placing adverts or sending out sales emails to your list on behalf of other companies in return for a commission share.

3. Ensure your website will meet the needs of your business.


It is important to update your website on a regular basis if you want to compete on the top search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Freshly updated content is probably the second most important element of search engine optimisation (SEO) after effective link-building so this is an important consideration. Your company should intergrate a suitable content management system (CMS) to help you update your site on a regaular basis.


However, online marketing is not the only elements you need to consider when developing your site - you should consider an effective eCommerce payment system to ensure selling products safely and reliably. However, if your business is focused on selling as an intermediary for another company then it is likely that they will supply you with all the relevant bits and pieces to set this up.

4. Free traffic.


Let's face it - free traffic is the best type available so optimise your website to attract it! When developing a new website or re-developing an existing one then you need to build it with SEO in mind. You could consider getting recommendations from an SEO company, however, this could be expensive and it can also be quite difficult to know which of these companies are cowboys and which are legitimate - do your research first! Alternatively you could source as much information about SEO as possible freely from around the web and try to do it yourself...

5. Branding.


Branding is very important when setting up a new website, especially in a competitive business sector. So your brand needs to communicate how your company stands out from the crowd and conveys the type of values your business encompasses.

6. Ensure the website is conversion focused.


It is very important that your website encourages visitors to take action. For example, is it easy for visitors to view and purchase products or services from your site? So you need what marketers have termed a "call-to-action"- effectively directing your customers to where you want them to go. This can be achieved through a number of strategies:

Use active, urgent language that tells the visitor what you want them to do, for example:

* Buy
* Call
* Register

Position your call to action effectively - this should be placed high on the page and relatively central so that it stands out to visitors.

Create space around the call to action to draw attention to it and make it stand out - big, bold and beautiful is the opinion of many online business owners, however, its also important to think tastefully and try not to put visitors off completely.

7. Web analytics.

Effective, succesful online businesses are obsessed with reports and quite rightly-so. Without web analytics integrated in your website then you're "driving blind". Using a tool like Google Analytics can help you to get answers and solve a multitude of problems. The type of information you can get from this includes:

• Where your visitors are coming from.
• How visitors are responding to your website.
• Whether visitors are leaving the site before reaching the sales conversion pages.
• Top landing pages, etc.

Photo by Salvatore Vuono

A blog overhaul

In recent months I have increasingly neglected this blog and my posts have become less and less.

The majority of my time has been dedicated to my business blog and more recently to my Squidoo - although the profile leaves a lot to be desired at the moment.

But all that is about to change! I have decided that this blog is in serious need of an overhaul to try to bring it more up-to-date and slicker looking than it currently is. This is going to be something of a challenge but I think my CSS skills and marketing knowledge is up to the challenge... at least I hope so!

So keep your eye on this space and see what happens!