Marketing a website.

[sstein]

Hi,

I am creating a website for a friend who is an IFA. The website is going to be an expansion of his current business. can anyone recommend the best way to advertise and market the site.

Through the site you will be able to view info on mortgages / protection / insurance etc. There is a mortgage calculator and forms where you can submit details for free quotes.

The site will have meta tags, alt tags etc to maximise its usabiltity as I heard this is good for search engines.

Obviously the best way would be to get into Google, Yahoo, MSN search engines etc. Is the best way to achieve this through Pay Per Click. Does anyone have any experience of pay per click and has it been succesful for you? Is the quality of the hits any good (no point getting hits from people looking to buy jumpers on an IFA site).

Thanks in advance,

-

Stuart

[magic torch]

Hi Stuart

Basically content is king, a well written frequently updated web-site will do well.

The more quality links to your site the better, first stop should be adding it to www.dmoz.org/

I believe the normal ratio for PPC to 'normal' searches in about 20/80. You'll probably find PPC expensive for a IFA too.

Too much to go into here really, but http://searchenginewatch.com/webmaste is a good place to start.

Worth a quick read of www.google.co.uk/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

I built a business just by being high ranked on Google, and no other marketing, the results can be amazing!

[sstein]

Thanks for the reply MT,

I will have a read of those links, I have designed the website to have accurate and relative content to maximise search engines. Plenty of meta tags, alt tags etc.

Cheers again,

-

Stuart

[J_S_G]

Make sure all the meta tags are different (and relevant) for each page... any duplication and Google'll start ignoring them, negating any effort that's gone in to them.

[Plotloss]

J_S_G said:

Make sure all the meta tags are different (and relevant) for each page... any duplication and Google'll start ignoring them, negating any effort that's gone in to them.

Google ignores meta tags as a matter of course doesnt it?

[J_S_G]

Plotloss said:

J_S_G said: Make sure all the meta tags are different (and relevant) for each page... any duplication and Google'll start ignoring them, negating any effort that's gone in to them. Google ignores meta tags as a matter of course doesnt it?

I could be wrong, of course, but as far as I know it does use them, just with a relatively low weighting set on them.

[jacobyte]

sstein said:

I am creating a website for a friend who is an IFA.

Stuart, YHM - give me a call. We specialise in websites for IFAs and know the right things to do on the web for financial services.

[jacobyte]

Plotloss said:

J_S_G said: Make sure all the meta tags are different (and relevant) for each page... any duplication and Google'll start ignoring them, negating any effort that's gone in to them. Google ignores meta tags as a matter of course doesnt it?

META Description is surprisingly important with Google.

[Plotloss]

jacobyte said:

Plotloss said: J_S_G said: Make sure all the meta tags are different (and relevant) for each page... any duplication and Google'll start ignoring them, negating any effort that's gone in to them. Google ignores meta tags as a matter of course doesnt it? META Description is surprisingly important with Google.

The Googlebots MO is to 'behave' like a human so in the main they are ignored.

Good article here: www.googlerank.com/ranking/Ebook/meta.html

[J_S_G]

Plotloss said:

jacobyte said: Plotloss said: J_S_G said: Make sure all the meta tags are different (and relevant) for each page... any duplication and Google'll start ignoring them, negating any effort that's gone in to them. Google ignores meta tags as a matter of course doesnt it? META Description is surprisingly important with Google. The Googlebots MO is to 'behave' like a human so in the main they are ignored. Good article here: www.googlerank.com/ranking/Ebook/meta.html

It depends on the other content on the page... whether there's much of it, whether that's repetitive, etc. as far as I've been able to determine. Never found it to utilise them heavily unless there's little else to go on, but repetitive tags are very much pointless.

[jacobyte]

Plotloss said:

jacobyte said: Plotloss said: J_S_G said: Make sure all the meta tags are different (and relevant) for each page... any duplication and Google'll start ignoring them, negating any effort that's gone in to them. Google ignores meta tags as a matter of course doesnt it? META Description is surprisingly important with Google. The Googlebots MO is to 'behave' like a human so in the main they are ignored. Good article here: www.googlerank.com/ranking/Ebook/meta.html

Note that in the article, it is their "opinion". Our "experience" shows otherwise. Our site ( www.screenbusiness.net ) has a pagerank of 6, and Google actually uses the Meta Description in its listing of our site, even though there is plenty of content on the homepage. Do a search for screen business and you'll see. Interesting nonetheless.

Edited by jacobyte on Monday 5th June 12:26

[Gruffy]

Meta Tags are used but they must relate to actual content, otherwise they pretty much worthless. I'd recommend having a chat with Panacentric. Speak to Rob - he's a bit good.

[J_S_G]

Gruffy said:

Meta Tags are used but they must relate to actual content, otherwise they pretty much worthless.

Gruffy said:

I'd recommend having a chat with Panacentric. Speak to Rob - he's a bit good.

Or drop me a line if anyone needs further info... I do plenty around Search Engine Optimisation.

[sstein]

jacobyte said:

sstein said: I am creating a website for a friend who is an IFA. Stuart, YHM - give me a call. We specialise in websites for IFAs and know the right things to do on the web for financial services.

This is what happened when clicked on your website???

BANNED CONTENT ALERT
A banned word or phrase was discovered. The file has been removed. See your system administrator for further information.

Context: '[Message Body]'
Content Rule(s): 'Sex (English) > Severity - Low, Profanity (English) > Severity - Medium'

Copyright © 1993-2005, Networks Associates Technology, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
www.mcafeesecurity.com

-

Stuart

[J_S_G]

sstein said:

jacobyte said: sstein said: I am creating a website for a friend who is an IFA. Stuart, YHM - give me a call. We specialise in websites for IFAs and know the right things to do on the web for financial services. This is what happened when clicked on your website??? BANNED CONTENT ALERT A banned word or phrase was discovered. The file has been removed. See your system administrator for further information. Context: '[Message Body]' Content Rule(s): 'Sex (English) > Severity - Low, Profanity (English) > Severity - Medium' Copyright © 1993-2005, Networks Associates Technology, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.mcafeesecurity.com - Stuart

Heh heh, that's because they've got an address of S u s S E X . *snigger* That should really be moved off the homepage of a site like that - could come a cropper of many filters.

[jacobyte]

sstein said:

This is what happened when clicked on your website???

BANNED CONTENT ALERT
A banned word or phrase was discovered. The file has been removed. See your system administrator for further information.

Context: '[Message Body]'
Content Rule(s): 'Sex (English) > Severity - Low, Profanity (English) > Severity - Medium'

Copyright © 1993-2005, Networks Associates Technology, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
www.mcafeesecurity.com

WTF? - LOL! Never had that before. You clearly have an overenthusiastic matron running your security

Any chance you could find out what the evil word is so we can use a synonym?
Cheers

[J_S_G]

jacobyte said:

Any chance you could find out what the evil word is so we can use a synonym?
Cheers

^ See my post above

[davidd]

Don't forget all the other marketing stuff.

Make sure he gets the url on all of his business stationary, send a mailshot to existing customers and new prospects telling them how great it is.

Do some email marketing.

There is more to this than just how the site ranks on google (although that is obviously important).


Speaking of google, one of the things is supposedly does is rank your site on the importance of sites that link to it (sounds fair and I'm pretty sure it does infact do this as we had a link from the bbc and our position went through the roof). A good way to get links is to do press releases which link back to articles on your site, of course you have to get them out there, into decent publications but it will help.

The other thing you could do is to get banner ads on sites such as money supermarket of fool.co.uk, or maybe even here

D

[jacobyte]

J_S_G said:

jacobyte said:

Any chance you could find out what the evil word is so we can use a synonym?
Cheers

^ See my post above

We're in Surrey, not Sussex.

[J_S_G]

jacobyte said:

J_S_G said:

jacobyte said:

Any chance you could find out what the evil word is so we can use a synonym?
Cheers

^ See my post above

We're in Surrey, not Sussex.

Ah, sorry, misread which link he'd clicked. Assuming it was www.screenbusiness.net, the only thing there that looks like it could trigger anything is the definition of a css class of "black body" (space added by me), especially in the context of other words on the site (if it's using weighted filtering) - services, client, personalised, etc. A bit tenuous, but all I could come up with from it.