Try asking your customers which words they would put into Google if they were looking for your product of service.  These will probably be your “key words”.  Try putting these words into Google yourself and see where you come up.  The goal is to get onto page 1 of the results, since not many people will look beyond page 1.

Not on page 1?  Don’t panic, there are a few simple (cheap) things you can do that will make a big difference in most cases.

Not on page 1?  Don’t panic, there are a few simple (cheap) things you can do that will usually make a big difference.

1.  First Job!  Google loves lots of rich relevant content!  So make sure you have lots of words on your pages, not just photos.  Make sure your “keywords” crop up regularly in the text (but don’t over do it).  Obviously, provide good descriptions of your products and services, but also consider adding regular news updates or better still, add a “Blog” to your site.

2.  Another quick thing to do is to make sure your key words are in the “title” of your web pages.  The “title” is the (usually) blue bar that runs across the top of Internet Explorer when you look at your website.  Adding titles is a two minute job with the Joomla content management system.  Each page of your website should have its own unique title which should tell the user (and Google!) what the page is about.

3.  Your long term goal should be to get as many other people as you can to put links on their websites to your website.  Ideally these linking sites need to be “relevant” – i.e. should be about similar subjects, and written around the same key words as your own.  So a link from any trade associations or other membership organisations you belong to are a good start!  Here’s another way to get good links – visit other people’s relevant blog sites and leave a comment.  Often you get the chance to leave a link to your own website.

You’d be amazed at what a big difference a few good links can make! Don’t expect your site to rise to the top straight away, the changes you make can take days or weeks to take effect.

4.  Last Tip – and this one won’t cost you a penny.  Use Google Analytics to track who is looking at your site.  This gives you a pile of useful information to track who is visiting your site, which pages are most popular etc, even which site they were on before they came to you. This is valuable marketing information that can help make your website a powerful tool for your business. See http://www.google.co.uk/analytics/en-GB/ for more information.

Still not enough visitors?  Think about a Google Adwords Campaign to drive traffic to your site.  This need not cost much because you set a limit for how much you decide to spend per month or even per day. You only pay for the people who click through to visit your site. See http://adwords.google.com/ for more information.

Feel free to give me a call if you would like to know more about any of the above.

Dave Golding
07980 700558