How would you describe your company and its mission?

We are a firm of solicitors serving a client base centered around Lancashire & Cumbria. We cover Commercial Property, Corporate law, Commercial and Personal Litigation, Family, Probate and have a specialist Rural Business department. More than 50% of our business is with business clients and a fair amount of that is repeat business.

How long have you had a website and what is its main purpose?

We’ve had a website for around three years now. This is its second incarnation and we are already looking at a redesign to keep it looking fresh and new. The is essentially a brochure site, with news items to keep clients updated about areas of law that affect our client base, and news of the firm. We have also recently added a password protected Extranet area where we can hold documents such as auction packs, and property information so potential buyers or agents can download them.

Does the site work for you? ie deliver the benefits you were expecting?

I don’t suppose initally we expected much from our site. It was set up as a defensive measure, we had to have one because everyone else had one.
There was never any intention to “sell” any services through the site, we have seen various other firms try that and none have really succedded. In Law, the personal service is very important. We did hope that if anyone was looking for a new lawyer, they might see the site, contact us and eventually become a client. As there was no optimisation, we got few visits to the site and it generated little new business.
It was mainly there so people who had seen our web address on stationary, etc could visit, or via one of the links from various directories such as the Law Society directory, Yell.com etc.

What is your online marketing strategy? – which methods do you use to attract potential customers?

We now have an optimised site that appears well up in the rankings for our chosen serach terms. We also utilise PPC advertising on Google as well and have increased the number of links from other sites.
The strategy is to try and get people viewing our site

How does your online activity mesh with your offline marketing?

What we are starting to see now is an increased number of new clients who have initally viewed our site and then made an appointment to see us, turning into clients

How do you see the future regarding your online activity?

Unless there is a significant change in the legal lanscape, then I feel our website will continue as a non transactional presence. The firm is growing rapidly and is in the process of merging with another sizeable firm in Preston and East Lancashire, hence the present redisign to match our new corporate branding.

What is the single biggest lesson you have learned about your web activities?

If you don’t get your website optimised, its invisible. Prior to optimising our site I searched under one of our chosen phrases. I got down to page 50 on Google and we still hadn’t appeared. With the right tags in place we now have most of our chosen phrases on the first page, some in the top 3. It takes some thinking about and some work but if you want your site to be seen, its worth it.The stats package we now use use shows us how many hits per day and which pages are viewed so it makes it easy then to see whats going on.

Can you imagine life without a website?
I can when I’ve got updates to make and precious little time to do it!. In truth the website is an excellent tool for what we want and we are starting to see new business as a result of it. I certainally wouldnt want to be without it now.

Thanks Bob – Napthens Solicitors Preston

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There are some good examples below but the two main variables are:-

- The keyphrase you choose and the level of competition for it
- Where you are starting from – ie your existing reputation with Google (and as you know Page Rank is a good indicator of this.)

Here’s a company that took two weeks to get there. www.iobuild.co.uk. For their chosen keyphrases ‘garden office ’ and ‘garden offices ’ they were on the second page of Google and getting no enquiries, and although these are quite competitive phases, because of their existing page rank ( 4 and 5 for several pages) it was a simple matter of optimizing one page and within a couple of weeks they are number one and two on google. This was the time it took the google spider to revisit after the page had been optimised. Now of course they get lots of enquiries.

Hi Jan, – We have jumped to position two on google for ‘garden offices’ So well done, and thank you! Kind Regards ,Lynn Fotheringham, InsideOut Buildings Ltd.

Here’s a different example – www.ampwire.co.uk have a relatively new website and therefore low page rank. However because their main competitors have not optimised for the phrases they chose – ‘wire mesh radiators ’, ‘wire mesh grilles ’ to name but two. They have a number one and a number three ranking respectively (out of 350,000 and 750,000 competing pages). This was achieved with a couple of weeks of the website going live despite a Page Rank of zero on the optimised pages! So, if your competitors don’t optimise (and most don’t) you’ll get rankings very quickly and business as a result.

Jan , I am over the moon with the results from the site, I have seen a significant increase in enquiries generated via the internet, thank you. Pam Wilson, Managing Director, Ampwire.co.uk

This company – www.lantex.co.uk – were number one on google on ‘textile manufacturing company ’ within days of their site going live (out of 11,400,000 competing pages!). Although a brand new site was produced we preserved their existing page rank (5) by keeping the filenames the same. This, and the little serious competition enabled good ranking to be achieved very quickly.

Hi Jan ….We have had approx 6 new clients since web page posted – great stuff. One
from USA today! Regards David
David Hardman, Chairman, Lantex Manufacturing Company Ltd

A similar story with www.heskins.com – new website, preserved page rank, number one rankings on ‘anti slip tape ’ and ‘non slip tape ’ despite over 15,000,000 competing pages. They’re exceptionally busy generating masses of business from all over the world.

Jan, that really is good! Best regards,Larry
Larry Longton, Managing Director, www.Heskins.com

….A different example from a different type of business. www.manchesteracupuncture.co.uk does what it says on the tin. In this case it took a bit longer (about 3 months) because of their low page rank and reasonable level of competition (1/2 million competing pages for ‘manchester acupuncturist ’)

Hi Jan,
Thanks for the report, I am very pleased.
Just to let you know I have such a great response to the web site since you have been optimising it, there is very little other advertising that I need do.
It has been great to be able just to let you get on with it with confidence.
With best wishes. Abbie Richardson, www.manchesteracupuncture.co.uk

As you can see most of my clients send their thanks and appreciation (and some send me cash as well!)

So, give me a call if you want me to estimate how long it will take for your company to start getting serious business through your website.

jan@janklin.com
www.janklin.com
07946 513521

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How would you describe your company and its mission?

Cloggs.co.uk is an online retailer specialising in fashion footwear, jeans, denimwear. The website evolved out of a locally-successful independent retail store based in Birmingham. After the first website went up, we immediately uncovered people willing to search for and buy our brand name fashions through the internet. From a handful of weekly orders, we now handle many thousands of monthly orders.

Our mission is to provide a first-class alternative sales channel for our brand-focussed customers at the forefront of ‘Etailing’ technology, supported by the highest standards of fulfilment and customer service.

How long have you had a website and what is its main purpose?

Our first website was created in 1999. It was hard-coded with an out-of-the-box shopping basket and complimented an original small-scale mail order operation. We showed to ourselves fairly quickly that there was a market for interactive online fashion mail order and that we were in a position to service that market. By the end of 2002 we began to properly promote the site and expand the offer significantly, causing us to require a much more sophisticated website infrastructure and backend administration platform. This allowed us to manage our growth and continue to provide a high quality of service to existing and new customers. The main purpose is simply to provide a competitive online sales channel for the products we sell.

Does the site work for you? ie deliver the benefits you were expecting?

Our current choice of platform works in the sense that we are able to take a large volume of orders in a scalable way and is fairly robust from an operational perspective. However, the technology never seems to be entirely free of glitches or errors that have varying degrees of knock-on effects to the business. We have to take a pragmatic approach to this though – as long as you can step back and look at a business that works for our customers, our staff and commercially, that is the main thing. I think that it is very hard to find a perfect technology partner or solution that is as flexible as you need it to be commercially and does everything you would need it to without problems.

So, ‘yes’ it ‘delivers’ pragmatically speaking and ‘no’ it doesn’t always in a strictly commercial sense.

What is your online marketing strategy? – which methods do you use to attract potential customers?

We first and foremost try to encourage repeat business. That means delivering a valuable service to the customer that beats alternative sales channels, fulfilling orders quickly and providing excellent after-sales service, amongst other things. It is very easy to gain business through the internet in the short-term but if you can’t meet customer expectations, the marketing costs of gaining those first-time customers are too great to be profitable. Our online marketing costs can only be justified if a high proportion of customers liked their experience enough to come back and buy from us again.

We have a number of partnerships to support traffic to the website – pay-per-click campaigns, affiliates, shopping channel agreements. These diversify dependence on any one particular source of traffic but are very costly to justify in simple sales terms; you have to look at it as investment in a customer database. Because of this, we are focussing most attention at the moment on our position in natural searches which deliver free traffic.

How does your online activity mesh with your offline marketing?

Our offline marketing consists only of communicating with existing customers through short-run pamphlets promoting particular lines and encouraging them to remember who we are and to come back again at some point. Offline advertising is something we are yet to explore – as a small independent business it would be hard to justify the expense when the returns may take some time to materialise and may also be intangible.

The attractiveness of online marketing is that returns are very visible in real time and you can just work with the numbers to justify or discontinue any expense.

How much business do you do on the web?

About 65% of our business is now online, but rapid growth is pushing that figure higher all the time. It is hard to see us being a pure-play online business because our brands like to work with bricks-and-mortar businesses and there will always be customers who won’t buy footwear and clothing online. Sales online do not always reflect shop sales either – certain lines do better in our store than they do online and vice versa. They will always be complimentary operations for us, although online success may now provide the opportunity to expand the offline business.

How do you see the future regarding your online activity?

We want to continue to provide a service that is valuable to customers and will push the growth of that business as far as we can take it. We want to be at the forefront of the technology because customers are more and more demanding and it is so easy for them to shop elsewhere – we have to provide the best all-round experience available. People have been saying it for years and we are still only just seeing the beginning, but the internet represents the future of shopping and an online component will be almost unavoidable for retail businesses in the future.

What is the single biggest lesson you have learned about your web activities?

Concentrate on two key working relationships. Firstly, focus on building a strong partnership with a reliable technology partner who understands the commercial requirements and can deliver upon them. Secondly, find an effective, affordable online marketing partner and/or strategy which concentrates on highly qualified traffic. Don’t be so concerned with cost and would only ever select partners with proven track records, provide excellent references and already handle businesses bigger than your own.

Can you imagine life without a website?

Yes, it would be lot less stress, I could being involved with technological issues on a daily basis and the world would be simpler. But it would be commercially disastrous for us.

Anything else you want to add?

There is no one single solution or model for everyone else to copy. The things I’ve described above apply to our experience and has worked for us but it may not be relevant for lots of businesses. A pragmatic approach is the key – if it works, keep doing more of it; if it doesn’t stop doing it. Accept that there will always be flaws and work around them.

Cloggs handle many major brands including Levi Jeans, Merrell Shoes, Oakley Sunglasses and many others…

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How would you describe your company and its mission?

ASG Services is a service based company that manufactures and installs location labels, signs and line marking solutions to the materials handling industry.

We supply to mainly large distribution companies as well as directly into the materials handling industry, racking manufacturers and IT providers.

We have offices in Warrington and Atlanta, Georgia. Where we employ approx 26 people comprising production, installation, sales and support staff.

Our mission is to provide our customers with the most appropriate solution available that represents the optimum value to the client.

How long have you had a website and what is its main purpose?

Our initial web site went on line approx 8 years ago now and was aimed at supporting our sales team as a reference site to direct potential customers too.

Our next site was quite technical with several down loadable data sheets and information about or products. (www.asgservices.co.uk)

Then we started to look at e commerce as a way of generating sales enquiries and this is when we started discussions with you about how to completely shift the focus of the site towards tangible returns.

This subsequently involved a complete redesign of the site so that it was as completely search engine optimised as possible.

Does the site work for you? ie deliver the benefits you were expecting?

When you mentioned in a meeting that search engine optimisation could easily add in excess of £200,000 per annum to most small companies turnover I was quite sceptical.

After getting embarrassed about my current site when you informed me of all it’s short comings we put down an action plan to go forward.

Search engine optimisation has added significant benefits to the company.

Once we added pay per click advertising and blogs etc I can safely say that over £200,000 has been achieved already and we are changing our business strategy and products because of it.

What is your online marketing strategy? – which methods do you use to attract potential customers?

Our online marketing structure is very direct. We had done very little traditional marketing other than through our sales team. Subsequently most of our work came from within the industry.

Now we produce more quotes every month from sales team of fewer people and subsequent cost. That means we have been able to employ a full time marketing manager to manage not only E commerce but also other marketing activities that we weren’t doing before such as press releases etc.

It remains to be seen how more direct work will affect our average order value within our business but it has certainly reduced the cost per quote by a significant margin.

How does your online activity mesh with your offline marketing?

Online marketing is a great way of providing the sales team with direct opportunities to quote customers.

These customers need to be responded to very quickly as compared with our other routes to market such as referrals etc. We keep a very tight control on branding but this is done not only by our marketing manager but also by our designers that are constantly able to offer fresh materials within the same brand image.

This is vital as keeping a tight brand image adds value to customers perception of the company.

Other minimal forms of marketing such as advertising within the trade press and exhibitions are done on a very minimal budget and on the same basis of our Web culture. i.e.to provide the maximum amount of active sales leads for the minimum amount of spend.

I believe within marketing circles brand awareness marketing such as exhibitions is called “Willie waving!”. I am of the opinion that markets are changing and with customers being less loyal if we aren’t constantly focused on lead generation we may in future not have a Willie to wave.

How much business do you do on the web?

I suspect we now generate approx two – three leads per day from web based activities. While many of these are for small order values of just a few hundred pounds we have received massive enquiries for both the UK and USA market which have directly lead to contracts. We have had particular success around some of our most important keyphrases – Floor Marking Systems and Warehouse Rack Labels

Some the 42% sales growth we achieved last year was from an improved UK materials handling industry market but it was by no means all of it. We have been able to offer more products and services to a larger customer and industry base as a means of our web based activities.

How do you see the future regarding your online activity?

I have changed my opinion of e commerce completely over the past 18 months. I now view search engine based marketing as a priority in our marketing activities and don’t see how that we change in the foreseeable future. I am conscious that as other businesses look at how to capitalise on search engines as a way of generating business that this may impact on the cost of pay per click advertising but feel more than confident that our generic search engine results will continue to strengthen and reduce the opportunity for competitors to compete.

On top of that I believe that with the support of SEO knowledge gained from you and also constant detailed reviews of how search engines operate I am sure we will be able to stay ahead of our competition in this field as well.

What is the single biggest lesson you have learned about your web activities?

Ignoring the bigger picture on e commerce could have cost us the lead on our competitors in the UK. Spending a few months getting this section of your marketing correct can give very big returns to your sales figures.

Can you imagine life without a website?

Life without the web would be a lot slower like it was in the good old days when you could drive to an appointment and enjoy the drive as we didn’t have mobile phones either!

Anything else you want to add?

The web tools available to provide essential marketing information, that in traditional marketing are difficult and costly to find, make making web based decisions easier to make.

Having an open mind to new ideas in this as well as other fields should provide larger benefits to companies than the cost of implementation.

Thanks Tony and happy willie waving

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Businesses have had their sales transformed by getting high rankings on search engines, here’s your opportunity to do the same.

Who is the Webinar for?

Its for you if….

- You want to get new profitable business through the web
- You are happy to commit some time to learning the ‘best practice’ process and the latest web based tools and techniques.

What is a ‘Webinar’?

An online presentation delivered as it would be in a training environment – see a sample here … Webinar Sample

What does this webinar comprise?

5 x 12 minute presentations covering the following:-

Module 1 – Introduction & Finding Keyphrases
Module 2 – Auditing Your Site & Advanced Keyphrase Analysis
Module 3 – Optimising Our Web Pages
Module 4 – Developing Backlinks & Using Directories
Module 5 – Monitoring Our Performance & Fine Tuning

The modules cover all the latest web based tools and techniques to DIY your web optimisation to get you high rankings.

Free tools will be referenced for you in each of the modules.

Examples are shown so you know exactly what to do at each stage of the process.

You’ll be expected to do some work between each module applying what you have learned to your own web site.

How much does it cost?

Its free if you are a subscriber to Jan Klin’s (free) online newsletter (drop me an email jan@janklin.com putting SUBSCRIBE in the subject box and I’ll subscribe you).

Otherwise it costs £195 plus vat (If you dont increase your sales twenty fold you’ll get your money back!)

Are there any additional benefits to paying for the webinar?

Yes

1. You’ll get unlimited access to all the modules right away (rather than one per month)

2. You’ll get a comprehensive course ‘workbook’ to accompany the programme which will allow you to capture all your actions in a structured way and act as a complete blueprint for your optimisation.

- The workbook covers all the slides presented, detailed instructions on what to do and templates and checklist to capture your actions

- Also provided is an Excel spreadsheet on which to conduct your keyphrase analysis which automatically calulates KEIs.

- Details of some futher tools, case studies, strategies and techniques to out compete the fiercest competitors.

Please email me jan@janklin.com if you wish to order or if you need more information or call – 01928 788100.

I look forward to helping your succeed

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You’ve probably had enough of me talking about link building so I promise this is the last input on the subject, but it will complete a very important topic.

I also want to introduce you to a (very low cost) resource you may wish to use to do this work for you and then talk about some measurement tools so you can keep track of your search marketing activities. But first….

The Last Word On Link Building

It really is, and for those of you who want oodles more detailed information on the subject there’s a great and comprehensive article called 131 Legitimate Link Building Strategies at http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2160301.

It covers off how to put together a courteous letter to potential link partners, different strategies and sources of links and much more. If you dont want to read it here’s a shorter version of ways to get more links:-

1. Reciprocal Linking – your business partners, customers, suppliers, websites with complementary services – you know, I’ll give you one if you give me one. Not as good as one way links but almost if the content is relevant

2. Set up your own blog (like this one) and leave a link to your site. Also comment on other blogs and leave a link (careful though, you intent needs to be sincere – not just a device to get a link). There’s more information on this at http://www.janklin.com/blog/qa-spotto-blog-or-not-to-blogse-optimisation-and-blogging/

3.Participate in newsgoups and drop your link – http://groups.google.com/

4. Search with one of your more important keyphrases – who’s at number on in the list? Of course its your top online competitor. Check out his backlinks using one of the tools you have leaned about (Marketleap, Linkpopularity.com, Linkdomain at Yahoo). Maybe you should get some of the same links as him?

5. As 4, but try to find some not directly competitive sites in the top rankings and maybe approach them for a link.

6. Local trade organisations you may be a member of (eg your local chamber of commerce, Federation of Small Business etc)

7. Sites with geographically local content – local city council site, business link, tourist board etc

8. Professional bodies you may be affiliated to – Chartered Institute of Marketing, Institute of Directors, Fellowship of worshipful stomemasones etc

9. Set up an affiliate scheme. NB Make sure you set up your own scheme (for example My Affiliate Programme from www.kowabunga.com) rather than using an intermediary like Commission Junction, so you own the link not the intermediary.

A Useful Resource

If you want to outsource this the of course you can. The going rate for link building is around £12-£15 per link if you do this, however, here’s an interesting option.

www.elance.com is an online marketplace for web related services. Here you can post your requirement and get guys form all over the world bidding for your business. You’ll get some guy from India offering to do your link building for, lets say, a very competitive price. As little as £3 per link.

The suppliers on elance are all star rated by people who have used them so you can get a sense of the quality they offer. I’ve used the site a few times with good results. The trick here is make sure your specification is detailed enough. You can see what other people have specified as a guide but please get in touch with me if you want input and I’ll share with you the spec I used for link building.

Measure and Modify

You’ll need two essential tools to monitor your search marketing effectively. One’s a ranking checker so you can check your progress with the keyphrases you have chosen with the search engines you want good rankings in. The other is a graphically oriented web stats tool. The good news is you can get good free tools for both of these needs.

Ranking Checker

Marketleap can do this for you. If you want something a bit more automatic look at the tools I’ve mentioned previously at http://www.janklin.com/blog/qa-spot-good-tracking-tools/.If you want something completely automatic use what I use – Internet Business Promoter from www.alexa.com.
I paid for my version (which does an awful lot more than rank checking) however it does rank checking very well and you can download a free version.

You can feed in the keyphrases you are interested in, tick off the search engines you want to check, and IBP will check and report back on your positions by keyphrase for each search engine.

If you check regularly and do the things I’ve suggested you will see a gradual (sometimes sudden) improvement in rankings and of course ultimately more business.

Web Stats Tool.

There are many – a good free one is www.statcounter.com. A more comprehensive one is www.dataplain.com . The last two you’ll need to pay for so try statcounter it will probably be all you need, at least in the early stages.

What do you need to monitor?

At the very least you’ll want to display nice graphs of your monthly, or weekly, visitors so you can see the upward trend.
You’ll also want to see which search terms and which search engines are bringing you visitors.

Another useful thing to measure is your ‘keyphrase market share’. For example you could find out on the keyword assistant at Yahoo how many searches per month the phrase ‘designer giftware’ generates (don’t forget to multiply by 2.2 to take account of google). Lets say its 1000. You webstats tool will tell you how many click throughs you get for this phrase. Lets say its 10. Work out the percentage – in this case its 1% – so there’s lots of room for improvement. If its 20% maybe you’re as optimised as you can get.

Actually there’s no limit to what you can measure and how this may hone your activities.

Remember one other thing about search marketing which is different from most other forms of marketing is that when people arrive at your website having searched for a relevant phrase – you have a qualified prospect. If you sell ‘Sony Vaoi z1sp laptops’ and someone types in that phrase and lands on your site you have a high possibility of converting the visitor to a sale. This again points to the all important keyphrase selection stage.

Anyway best wishes with it and let me know how successful you are and call if you need help (Jan Klin on 01928 788100: jan@janklin.com: www.janklin.com)

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I got to know of this blog only a few months ago. Is there an easy way of guiding me through the whole process rather than having to go back to the ‘archive’ and ‘previous’ for all the early lessons?
Susan Marks, Property Consulting Ltd, Grantham

Answer:

I’ve listed all the lessons below, with hyperlinks, in the correct order for you so you can use this to guide yourself through the process in a logical fashion.

This is where the process to successful SEO is outlined, essentially the stages we will follow to optimise our site:
http://janaklin.blogspot.com/2005/03/search-engine-optimisation-seo-diy.html

Lesson 1 is about auditing, checking on ‘where you are now’ with your important keywords:
http://janaklin.blogspot.com/2005/03/lesson-1-understanding-how-you.html

Lesson 2 is more on auditing – checking whether there are any issues preventing good rankings:
http://janaklin.blogspot.com/2005/05/lesson-2-identifying-roadblocks-to-seo.html

Lessons 3 and 5 are about the all important finding of effective keyphrases (lesson 4 is about ‘pay per click’)
http://janaklin.blogspot.com/2005/06/lesson-3finding-keyphrases-to.html

http://janaklin.blogspot.com/2005/08/lesson-5-better-keywords-will-bring.html

Lesson 6 is about structuring the TITLE tag – the most important metadata in your site as far as SEO is concerned:
http://janaklin.blogspot.com/2005/09/lesson-6-hot-title-tags-for-no-1.html

Lesson 7 is about structuring your visible content and other important metatags
http://janaklin.blogspot.com/2005/10/lesson-7-optimising-on-page-factors.html

Lessons 8,9 (and part of 10) are about the important process of Link Building
http://janaklin.blogspot.com/2005/11/lesson-8develop-backlinks-to-bury.html

http://janaklin.blogspot.com/2006/01/lesson-9-lets-get-linked.html

Lesson 10 covers monitoring, measuring and improving you SEO:
http://janaklin.blogspot.com/2006/03/lesson-10-end-of-road-measure-and.html

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Answer:
Try this http://www.checkrankings.com
Its free, and it allows you to check up to 10 keywords daily with the major search engines. Better still it graphs out you results so you can visually see your trends over a period of time.

Another one is http://www.prsearch.net, this tools focuses only on Google but allows for the checking of 15 keyphrases and displays the results in an easy to see format.

Here’s some other interseting tools you may also find useful:

Robots.txt and tags

You can restrict what search engine spiders see at your site, which links they follow etc. using the Robots.txt file and the robots metatags. This is useful if there are content pages you dont want to be indexed – Your ‘contact us’ page for example, or pages you have dedicated to specific customers.

Google Mashups

…is the term given to the overlaying of data onto Google Maps. Many of you will have come across google earth and google maps. An interesting application is to look at a map of where your web visitors come from. All you need to do is copy a bit of javascript to your site and away you go; get it at http://www.gvisit.com

Want to track and map bird migrations, solar eclipses, pubs in London? – whatever you want to see graphically on a google map probably someone has already done it – see http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com

Link Building

A couple of tools related to this months topic..

Try – http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html
A fascinating tool which allows you to see graphically how Google sees you in relation to similar sites.

…and another useful link tracking tool – http://www.linkhounds.com/link-harvester/backlinks.php

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We will also kick start the process this time by concentrating on web directories – one of the most important sources for backlinks to your site. Next time, and in subsequent postings, I will provide you with information on the myriads of different sources for developing backlinks.

The approach I want to suggest to you is as follows:-

1. Estimating the number of links you need to outlink your major online competitors

2. Produce a list of sources for these links

3. Workout and execute a plan of activity to achieve this over a period of time.
(The time period I will suggest is 4 months – but you may wish to vary this up or down depending on the number you need and the time you have available)

Link building is of course an ongoing process so I hope you’ll continue to develop links after the four month period, however, we all need to set targets with SMART objectives so we can achieve some good short term success to fire us up. I’m sure many of you are familiar with SMART objectives (Specific; Measurable; Achievable; Realistic and Timebound.)

I have found that spending around 1.5 hours per week over a period of 4 months has a major impact for most small businesses. The other thing to be aware of is that search engines prefer a gradual, rather than sudden, build up of links. I’ll give you lots of other link sources next time so you can add to your programme after the four months.

What I have found useful as a starting point is to construct an Excell spreadsheet in which to record the sites you want links from along with other useful information. Such a document might include columns for the site/directory name; the url; the Page Rank; free/paid for; link status etc – I’m sure you can think of other useful columns also.

In fact I have one already set up which references around 300 directories. If you want a copy of this send me an email (Jan@janklin.com) put DIRECTORIES in the subject box and I’ll send it to you.

1. ESTIMATING THE NUMBER OF LINKS YOU NEED

The starting point is to select a major keyphrase you want top rankings on and search for it in Google.

The resulting list will be of course your major online competitors.

Choose the one you consider to be your nearest and most relevant competitor. It may be the guy in position one; don’t go below position five.

Next, determine how many links he has. You can use any of the tools I told you about last time or simply go to Yayoo.com and type:-

Linkdomain:www.competitor.co.uk -site:www.competitor.com

The number of his links (excluding internal links) will appear in the top right and look like this:-

Results 1 – 10 of about 120 for linkdomain:www.competitor.co.uk – 0.45 sec. (About this page)

You’ll need to store this number somewhere, ideally in your spreadsheet if you set one up. Divide it by 16 to give you the number of links per week you’ll need to generate – assuming you are working to a 4 month time plan.

2. GENERATING YOUR LIST OF DIRECTORY LINKS

As you generate this list you may wish to record them in your spreadsheet along with relevant associated information – Page Rank, How to register (look for ‘add url’, ‘Join Directory’, ‘Add Link’ or whatever the method is) and any other relevant information. Also you will need to prioritise them. This may be based on Page Rank, whether or not you can add anchor text and relevance. You could have a column of your spreadsheet to record the relative importance of the directory.

You could record them and add them later, or of course you may wish to link as you find them.

How to generate them?

1. As already mentioned I’ve got a general list of 300 or so you are welcome to.

2. Simply by doing a google search on keywords relevant to you will generate some directories. For example typing in ‘wedding’ or ‘hotels’ will generate a hit list which will include oodles of wedding and hotel directories.

3. You may wish to be more specific by searching for, for example ‘electrical engineering directories’, ‘business directories’, ‘legal directories’, ‘ecommerce directories’ etc focusing on the industry sector and business type relevant to you.

4. You can use one of the standard directories , like the Google Directory,( http://directory.google.com/) and click on “Reference” then click on “Directories” then select the “categories” most relevant to your site.

5. If you go to http://www.isedb.com/html/Web_Directories/Specialty_Directories/ you will find a directory of topic specific directories.

6. http://www.incominglinks.com/ is another good source of useful directories organized by category

The above will allow you to identify as many directories as you can manage, but one more thing before we move on.

The Yahoo directory and DMOZ are two really important ones (Page Rank of 9 and 8 respectively). Unfortunately you will have to pay around £200 to get listed in the Yahoo directory but it really is worth it. Also DMOZ (www.dmoz.org) is managed by volunteer ‘web republicans’ who give their time for free and who vet every site submitted. Because of this it can take 3-9 months to get listed but its well worth the effort. DMOZ is the largest free directory on the web and is the input source to all the major search engines including Google.

3. YOUR ACTIVITY PLAN

We’ve covered this already really. But this is just a matter of setting some time aside each week. (say 1-2 hours) to find the directories and create the link. You should easily be able to add 20-30 links per week and over a few months this will build quickly to outlink your competitors.

Be aware that every time you add a link you are not only increasing your search engine rankings but increasing your exposure to potential customers, and it really works.

Since spending a couple of months link building ASG Services (www.asgservices.co.uk) are now number one on Google for several phrases including ‘warehouse rack labels’.

Just before Christmas their delighted MD called me whilst travelling to London to pick up a £90k order. Needless to say the enquiry came from the web and that was why he called. My reward was a delightful bottle of expensive red wine. So, when you start getting large orders as a result of your search engine rankings (which you surely will if you follow my advice) you may feel compelled to demonstrate your appreciation in a similar way.

If this is the case please don’t think you need to wait ’till next Christmas since I’ve discoverd the delights of drinking all year round.

Best wishes for great success in 2006

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