I have just written a couple of short advice sheets for a charity. It is for marketers who want to do some digital marketing, but have limited budgets and experience. Here is part one...
Tips on how to build a web site with limited resources and technical expertise
Tip 1: Decide whether to build a Web site or blog
- Do you need a web site? Writing a blog would be simpler. A blog doesn’t need the same degree of technical knowledge and can be built quickly. A blog is simply a simple web site, where the posts are in chronological order (web log). Tips on blogging are within the social media tips document.
Tip 2: Why not consider a free web building tool?
- Just search for free web sites on Google. There is moonfruit, webs.com, GBBO....
- Moonfruit has built over 3.5 million free web sites. You just log in, choose a template and start writing. It really is that simple. They have a library of images and design templates and even e-commerce functionality. You can only build a simple 15 page site for free, but that should be sufficient to get you started. www.moonfruit.com
- Once you have built your free site, you can always upgrade – Moonfruit has a £4 per month service which gives you unlimited pages, paypal e-commerce functionality and more storage space.
- Moonfruit also has a series of free white papers and beginner’s guides, such as how to optimise your site to make it appear higher in Google.
Tip 3: Make it easy to find
- Communicate your web address in every customer touch point, your business cards, ads, email sign offs, blog, brochures....everywhere
- Optimise your site for Google. This is complex and the Moonfruit guide will give you more information. Key things to consider:
- What is your web site address (URL)? Is it easy to remember and also the type of words that customers may search for?
- Make sure you develop a set of keywords (words that people may search for when looking for businesses like yours) and use them consistently and frequently within the copy on your web site (this is called keyword density).
- Tag all of your web assets with keywords. Every picture, link, illustration etc on your site, should be tagged with descriptive words, to show Google what your web site contains. Use the same words in tags that you have developed for keyword density.
- Google also scans your site for links, so build links on your site from one page to another and make sure that the links are on words that are searched for. A builder should have links on words like “house extensions”. Don’t use “click here” or “learn more” as the link words.
- Consider paying for some Google advertising. You can start with a budget as small as £10 and you only pay when someone clicks through to your site. It is simple to do www.google.com/adwords
Tip 4: Make it easy to use and find things:
- Have a contact us page and make sure there is a tab at the top right of your site to take you through to the contact us page – allow them to contact you by phone, email & include your postal address and a map to your location too.
- People expect your logo to be in the top left and for it to be a link back to your home page, wherever they are on your site
Tip 5: Integrate with social media
- If you have other marketing channels, such as a blog, Twitter, Facebook page or YouTube videos, then make sure there are links to these on your home page. www.addthis.com is a free site that will enable you to put a link with all of the social media logos onto your page.
Tip 6: Integrate with your other marketing
- Link to your event programme, email newsletter sign up or communicate product launches
Tip 7: Use the free tools to measure success
- Google Analytics is free. It will tell you how many visits you are getting, where people are coming from, what they searched for, how long they stayed etc www.google.com/analytics
- The Google Adword Keyword Tool will tell you what words Google currently associates with your site, now. This tells you what keywords your site is optimised for now.
- Google Insights for Search will tell you how often different keywords have been searched for in any time / date combination for any region.
Tip 8: Just get on with it!
- It really is not as difficult as you would imagine....
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