The passion has always been at ICTADVISOR to provide assistance to the micro and small medium businesses across Scotland. It is a combination of services that bring both support and learning to those in your business, setting realistic timescales, budgets and transferring of knowledge to help you have a successful website.

Right now in these unprecedented times has it ever been more important to be online and visible if you are chartering these choppy seas whilst the world works together in combating Covid 19 whilst at the same time looking at how to survive in being a Digital Business.

We are concerned though about how some of the larger glass house web marketing companies are targeting smaller businesses trying to encourage them to part with large amounts of cash but not taking into account where the business is right now.

We have already heard of one story whereby the agency is happy to have the business spend around £1000 a month on paid advertising but are going to take £15k as an admin fee – to – do other things with them. And this was a micro small ecommerce business that is able to work from home with drop shipping deliveries.

There are also the agencies claiming to do wonderful things, who are quick to tell you which big brands they support and suggest they can are able to bring huge amounts of traffic to the micro small business website. But, it always seems to come at a huge cost.

A huge step that seems to be often overlooked is the micro small business first of all conducting a website audit. This is the most cost effective first step as it can analyse where you need to spend time within your website fixing things, and the priority areas where you would need to spend money on marketing site to at least stay competitive, from improved indexing and visibililty strategies in order to maintain rankings.

Website owners, especially in the micro small business community still have lots to learn. Many will attempt the DIY website marketing approach, and even have a go at building their own website using some off the shelpf software vendor products such as WIX, Weebly, Shopify and many others.

But this usually brings a limited degree of success as many micro small business owners did not set out to be graphic designers, coders and SEO specialists.

In these uncertain times over the next few months ICTADVISOR is continuing to invest in the marketing tools we work with to help the micro small businesses weather the storm and make the right decisions towards remaining competitive. We also follow closely the advice from our marketing colleagues we have built strong relations with over the years such as Matt Bailey of Sitelogic Marketing and Rand Fishkin formerly of MOZ and now the owner of Sparktoro. We have always seen both as being very successful global marketers who guide us here at ICTADVISOR in Scotland to support our passion for handholding the micro small business community as we like any professional web marketers want to see our client base websites do well.

One key take-away right for the micro small business owner now is a message that is still as important today as it was over 5 years ago.
Don’t be simply fixated on why you are not ranking top for a keyword phrase. Its not all about keywords despite keyword research being an important task to  do regularly. Take a closer look at your website’s technical SEO problems. Hence the importance of a website performance audit.

Website owners are always going to be governed by Time | Resource | Knowledge and most importantly their Marketing Budget.

What those factors require in order to work is doing things as a team. We as professional marketers need us all, the business owner/in-house website manager to make a contribution to the overall marketing strategy and work together – it is therfore a TEAM effort that equals success.

Do you still want to have or remain having a successful website?

Even if you just want a 15-30 minute chat – ITS FREE – to get some answers in laymen terms as to how you should consider the future of your busines online – The Digital Excellence Scotland Web Marketing Practitioners Team are here to try and help Scotland’s micro small business community achieve OnlineXcellence.

We look forward to speaking with you if you have some time on your hands whilst quarantined in your home.