Technical SEO Making Websites Great

July 3rd, 2017

Great Small Business Websites in Scotland – Do You Think You Have One?

This is article is not going to get really technical – but in a minute I am going to get all of you small business owners with websites thinking about why you need to at least be aware of Technical SEO and not just One-The-Page SEO.

Now – web developers and website agencies out there – I am NOT putting my headline question above to any of you – because – you will immediately answer – YES – we build great websites – because you are going to say that – aren’t you??

NO – I am asking the business owners in Scotland who have a website this question:
Whether THEY think they have a great website?
What do THEY know about how well their website is really doing?
How well does your Small Business Website PERFORM?
As an SME Owner paying good money for a website, was it value for money?

Measuring Your Websites Performance

The most simplest way to measure website performance is for me to ask you this – Is your phone ringing – regularly? Is your business bank account healthy?

Well – GREAT! If you are in this bracket then YEH, things could be good for you. I say could be good for you, because it depends on what type of marketing you are doing.
It might be actually, that lots of people really know your brand, and that also, you are doing some form of multi-marketing channel campaigns that are giving you the online visibility you have and so your getting lots and lots of visitor traffic from that. But, who knows – there might be pages inside your website that you are still struggling to get noticed.

So, NO – this is not you – you are saying. I am in the other camp. Let’s see, you do gardening services, or build sheds, or install heating or plumbing, have a small hotel offering wedding functions, your a recruitment company, there you are, tons of small business owners in different fields just trying to make some money. Some of you have been bombarded with emails from so called Marketing Motivators – You know the headline

Hey Did You Know I am a Huge Fan of – (Someone We all Don’t Know) – And if you Come to my Seminar or Workshop it will be Life Changing for all You Marketing Entrepreneurs out there!! BUT – Enrollment for you to be like this person we all don’t know closes in 6 hours. And we only offer you this deal once a year. So, WOW go check it out!!

With the amount of website owners I constantly have coming to me for help. They have been there – but it just took them about 3 years to realise they are no further forward. The annual turnover is still the same, the business has not grown and the website is – well – just about the same as it was 3 years ago.

I know what many Small Business Website Owners are fixated upon when you come to see me and ask for help – I need to be top in Google!! – I hear it all the time.
Listen – I have to tell you – it might be painful to hear – but it is not being number one in Google that counts!! It is not about stuffing your pages with keyword terms, and it’s not pimping yourself out talking your face off doing organic Social Media Marketing on Facebook that is going to cut it either. Paid for Social Media Marketing – well yeh – but that that is another story but not for this article.

Websites Built and Marketed Properly Convert Visitors Retain Customers

Successful websites are converting their visitors, and, can even do this well on PAGE 2 of Google’s results page. Trust me I have seen those results. But that success does not just come from someone saying you just need a content strategy nothing else – just wake up in the morning – do some exercises – go run a marathon – come back write your best piece and that is the be all and end all. You will make lots of money. Unfortunately – there are lots of things to do in order for your website to be successful. And just one of the many tasks but a very important one is checking on your Technical SEO.

How Much Do You Know About Your Websites Technical SEO?

Let’s come back to this website you have and how aesthetically pleasing you find it. You chose it – AND – maybe like how you chose your last car or van for the business. Yeh, looks great, it’s got wide wheels and a dumping great carburetor that will make it go faster and overtake your competitors vans on the road.

NO? – OK – so let us again get you looking at this pretty website you have – but no one is coming – and no money is going into your bank account. Instead lots of money came OUT of YOUR bank account and went to the people who built your website and promised you great things. Again there could be lots of other reasons your website is not working for you. It could be you did not stick at marketing your site for long enough, and I will touch on this shortly. But let us come back to the topic of Technical SEO.

All Web Developers in Scotland are Great!

We would like to think so. I would love to see the whole of Scotland full of great web designers and marketers. But I have to be brutal. There are a lot of LEGO BUILDERS in Scotland. They build websites, but simply take the parts they can find on the internet, things like templates and plugins, that are easy to hook up to each other and wallah you have your website. No coding or anything – no thought towards marketing or your goals or what you liked or disliked about your competitors website, no checking to see how well they built it to achieve the aim – to MAKE YOU MONEY – but hey look how nicely laid out it is – PRETTY!

Search Engines Hate SEO Messes

Now tell me – as a business owner of a website how often do you look at either Google Analytics or Google Search Console?
You say – WHAT? What are these wonderful tools?
I don’t have access to these tools?
But, er, wait! I think my web developer does?
But he doesn’t allow me to see them, says they are for his eyes only.

NO! And again NO! This is YOUR DATA and YOUR WEBSITE and why leave your future in the hands of a LEGO BUILDER!!

I am not expecting you the business owner to be technically minded. You don’t drive around all day in your Beamer or Jag and keep pestering the dealership every 5 minutes that you are not going fast enough!! But you look at the dashboards and you at least know all is well under the bonnet – no red lights!

So, here is our search engine robot crawling your website pages. And not just yours but billions of pages across the internet. Isn’t that wonderful!

But now your search engine is stuck. It has arrived at your website and found complicated URL page addresses, it has found things your developer hoped it wouldn’t find.
This robot crawler hates wasting time, it likes to simplify everything and sail through your website code and the words you put on the page. Now time is ticking because your website is not performing like the search engine robot expected. And worse than that there is a queue forming behind the crawler robot. Oh my god look – it is your customers. They are waiting on your website loading – aw damn! Oh well – look – they’ve gone, they found another website like yours loading a lot faster and giving them a better experience.

Please – Come Back – My Website Is Great!!

And there is the story for many small businesses – A pretty looking website and business that none of these people coming to look at your website had ever heard of you, and unfortunately not likely to hear of you again. But they saw you for a split second for that search they did – but unfortunately your website did not come up to standard.

Well, how are you going to find out what has gone wrong?

Oh Yes! These dashboards have the answers – Google Analytics will tell me how well that developer technically built my site. That Google Search Console that also talks to Google Analytics lists a whole raft of errors my site is experiencing because Google talks to business owners through that dashboard – shouting at you when you have a Technical SEO problem. And if you continue to ignore these two tools – then why should your website do better and be making you money? Google is trying to help. If as a small business owner you learn to understand a least a bit of this data, you can make some great decisions and I am afraid – you might have to some kick butts too – website builders look out!

And there are some other tools outside of Google Analytics and Google Search Console that can tell you how well your site is doing.

A Great Small Business Website Doing Well in Scotland 6 Months in

Shirley Paterson runs a business called NextGenergy. If your domestic electricity bills are shooting through the roof there is nothing this lady don’t know on how to get those energy bills down. You should meet her. She is a mind of information on how to get the most out of Solar or Air Heat Pumps, and have you put better insulation in your loft.
OK – I am selling this lady – but because I admire her talent and passion for all that energy knowledge she has – just incredible! But, she has been learning new skills.

Now take a look at this.

Towards the end of 2016 Shirley had over that year thought she had a great performing website. And, like I said she is knowledgeable in the numbers when it comes to heating your home. But, she got an inkling that her website was just not cutting it. So, Shirley had me do a website audit. Wow! This WordPress website looked aesthetically pleasing but underneath the hood we found to our horror – A Technical SEO mess. It was dreadful – awful – Boo!

From conducting the website audit this gave us a benchmark to step off from and wheel Shirley’s website into theatre and begin operating. My selected tech team and I worked on the site and improved the overall technical website architecture and then we turned our attention to the site landing pages.

What is important to note is that Shirley is like many of you small business owners in Scotland out there. She stayed by her Websites beside! No just kidding.

Shirley, like all of you small business website owners are all governed by 4 key factors – TIME | RESOURCE | KNOWLEDGE | BUDGET. And depending on how far you push any of those levers forward will depend on how well your website will perform. Shirley will tell you herself that TIME is the greatest issue for her. She has so much knowledge to get onto a website page that would be highly beneficial to her audience, but like many small business website owners in Scotland, TIME, is the issue because BUDGET does not allow her the luxury of having someone else do all her day to day website page management and marketing. That is the case for many Small Business Website Owners in Scotland.

And YES – there are some great website agencies and freelance developers out there that do a great job. But for the rest of you wondering why you don’t get more business, don’t just be a LEGO BUILDER. Take pride in the websites you build. All the teams I am working with will always be employed in work building new sites. Because they don’t just build websites, they work as a team to create and follow a standard I developed called OnlineXcellence – and let me be honest – even we have to find time to work at that model ourselves with our own websites. But, we are too busy right now looking after our customers and their websites – because happy customers matter. At the heart of that website design is Technical SEO that will support the On-The-Page SEO and of course the Search Engines.

Great Website Performance – How Long Does It Take to Have a Great Website?

Now that you know you have to take a closer look at your Technical SEO. I know you want me to finish on that all important question above. And you think I am going to answer with – How Long is a Piece of String? – No – I shall be honest with you. For you to have a great website, you will need TIME | RESOURCE | KNOWLEDGE | BUDGET – all 4 working together. However, BUDGET is going to be a key factor – especially if you are not very good at driving your own website everyday. Internet Marketing is a skill. If you are intent on doing all those skills yourself, then see how you are in about 3 years. If you are serious about your business growth online and you commit to each of these factors but with a decent annual MARKETING BUDGET that provides you with a decent set of trackside mechanics who are skilled Internet Practitioners with a posse of great talent behind them. Then again, based on the figures for dealing with the Small Business Owner wanting to market their website, whether selling services or products then look at a time window of 12-18 months. Unless you happen to stumble on something that really takes off quickly – like this guys website:

About the Author

Brian Mathers – An Internet Marketing Practitioner at ICTADVISOR with 20+years helping to grow small business websites

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Is Your Small Business Website Marketing Strategy Successful?

January 5th, 2017

Doing Website Marketing For Your Small Business

So You want to do website marketing and be successful online with your small business website. Let us look at what your up against.

According to recent research, 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, and 75% of users never scroll to page 2.
There are lots of small businesses who don’t know anything about their domain and page authority surrounding their websites with many ignoring how to improve their domain and page authority. This is an important step towards being seen as a trusted resource in your niche.

How Will You Go About Marketing Your SME Website?

Not enough smaller businesses blog and don’t do it regularly enough. If your business did more keyword research you would find that this alone generates enough topics for you to create pages around keyword terms your target market are likely to be using to search for what you offer.

Do You Know Your Industry Inside Out and Have You Created Sufficient Website Landing Pages.

Once you know your industry inside out and have created sufficient pages to turn your website into a magnet you are on your way to beating the competition.

What you want to try and achieve is have Your Business and Your Website being seen as the go to guys.

Not every click will lead to a sale but the value you bring as an authority voice via your blog is an opportunity you cannot afford to miss.

Long tail keyword research is the key towards improving your blog. Long tail keywords might not have huge volumes of searches carried out monthly, but collectively if you target sufficient amounts of these keyword terms through blog topics, and within your content, signpost the reader through to your goal value page, this will over time bring improvements to those pages that matter on your website. It is important to know that long tail keywords make up about 70% of all searches done.

Small business owners with websites forget they are in the minor league and are not going to reach formula 1 within a few weeks or even a year from when they launch their website. But this unfortunately is what small business owners expect, and without spending any money on marketing.

Quality Backlinks with descriptive anchor text are still your priority but small business owners struggle to achieve getting them without help. Going back to what was said about blogging on your website and guest posting on other sites are still a key route in getting these backlinks. But even commenting on other forums and doing some social media also helps.

Depending on your type of business have you submitted your site to the likes of Facebook, Yelp, Thomson Local, FourSqaure and more, which are all important places to get listed.
Did you know that with your Yelp profile it could outrank your website for certain keywords?
How much use are you making of Google+?

With Google+ you can show off the reviews you get and provide information about your products and services. You can write a snippet on your Google+ page and provide a backlink to your blog article or right onto one of your websites goal pages.

Revisit Your Website Content Strategy

Let’s start with how prominent is your website blog?
Do you actually have a blog and does it have a clear link in your menu so visitors to your site can find it?

There are some people out there that will simply promote that you must be doing more Content Marketing and just simply focus on live channels like Twitter and Facebook. But there is still a huge amount of businesses in the SME sector that simply don’t have time or the creative writing streak within them to carry this out. And if you are in this group, then you really have to consider who is going to support your Web Marketing Strategy? To remain competitive you are going to need help to create that content, and do all the other tasks that come with Search Marketing to increase your visibility.

Are You Researching Your Competitors Websites?

It is important to research your competition – but where do you begin?

Without doubt if you are a small medium enterprise you are going to have to make use of a number of tools to achieve this objective. But guaranteed, if you are an SME business reading this, you won’t do competitor analysis – WHY?

Because from experience in having engaged with many small business owners you don’t have time. You are to busy running your business, and more than likely you don’t have the tools. Even if you did have the right tools you did not set out to be an analyst and know what to do with the data generated by these tools.

Some great marketers will simply write lots of stuff and say to you the SME business owner who finds their content that you will be surprised by what you find by doing competitor analysis. REALLY? Yes its true I’d say – You Would. But being blunt, an SME with a website trying to do this on their own is more than likely not going to know what your looking for, WHY?

Because your full time job did not have you set out to be an internet marketer. This is like dreaming – Yeh – I dreamt I fixed my own BMW – it was not difficult at all – nothing to it really!! YEH RIGHT!! Get the picture?

Are You Still Doing DIY Internet Marketing?

A book I think is yet to be written about Website Marketing The Failures and Why. And there would be a big chapter around DIY Internet Marketing.

Right now, there are great books out there such as Internet Marketing An Hour A Day that I suggest everyone should read.

And there are some other really good books, you should consider reading if you were to tackle doing DIY Internet Marketing such as Don’t Make Me Think.

The content of these and many other great books are based around sharing stories and methodologies of small medium businesses who did Internet Marketing – effectively.

And you will find more importantly that most of these stories talk about the website business owners actually throwing some money at their internet marketing strategy to make money and be successful at Website Marketing.

The books will contain stories about the in-house marketing people that were working hard, possibly full time doing web marketing. What was key is that they invested Time | Resource | Knowledge | Budget into their internet marketing.

But I have seen lots of small businesses who came forward with great ideas and insisted on doing DIY Internet Marketing and are no longer in business. Those people who insist there is nothing to marketing and were so great at doing their own marketing but failed maybe should have applied equations like Porters 5 Forces Model which demonstrates how competition influences every industry and market. But I am afraid to say that many small business website owners don’t do all of these things, instead they follow a DIY Web Marketing strategy that says they simply must be number 1 for a keyword term. This is a recipe for disaster.

How to Gain Good Search Engine Ranking Results

It is not impossible to gain good search engine ranking results for your niche, but there is lots to do. You just need to watch Dagon’s Den and them say to budding entrepreneurs most of whom have come from a small medium business background to be prepared to work hard, be focused and get the help of a professional.

Internet Marketing involves lots of elements from page design, creating focused and detailed content, spending sufficient time doing long tail keyword research, knowing your competitor and I am going to add, get to know your CMS (Content Management Software) Platform inside out. Do you know what features your CMS must have to assist with creating great goal landing pages? Will you know how to use the CMS to achieve conversions from those landing pages? And who is going to craft those pages to achieve the goals? Leaving it all to your web developer could be fatal. What is their marketing success track record?

From Submariner to Internet Marketing Practitioner Hunting The Competitor

People reading this who know me can recall that I spent 22 years in Submarines as one of the Command Team in the Submarine’s Control Room. What was learnt from my time spent there was to Know Your Enemy. Because, that is the first step to defeating it. The job under the water was constant analysis, working out the tactics based on the intelligence gathered.

Learning Google Analytics

When was the last time you as a small business owner looked at your Google Analytics to see if your website marketing is working for you?

Would you know what your looking for whilst you are busy say, selling furniture, or offering financial services, or providing services like plumbing, or Joinery, or you have some fantastic products to sell – but you just don’t know why your pages are not performing. The answer to the first question is that small business owners hardly look at their Google Analytics or even know whether the tracking code has been applied to the website. And the answer to the second question would be NO. Because Small Business Owners are no more interested in sitting for hours pouring over analytical data than I am trying to lay floorboards or fitting a heating system.

So, each to their own. And if you want to have a successful website and not waste lots of time following the DIY Website Marketing route, then seek professional help.

The evidence of failed website design and Website Marketing projects I can guarantee is all around you just like other types of projects you have witnessed. Such as that unfinished extension, that project car you were going to restore still sitting there half done – 5 years later. Walls torn down in your property but didn’t see the finished dream of having more space. And a lot of the time it was down to either lack of knowledge or too busy doing the things you are good at.

Time to rethink your Website Marketing Strategy and be more successful with a website this time around?

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Website Design In Fife

November 9th, 2016

Website Designers In Fife Can Only Get Better – And Elsewhere too

This post is being update as it was originally written in November 2016.

Back then ICTADVISOR were website designers in fife but mainly supporting other website designers. Our website designer was mainly on hand to assist with fixes and updates rather than build sites.

In the years prior to 2016 ICTADVISOR was mainly focused upon working i partnership with others to improve website performance. A lot of our time was spent conducting analysis using Google Analytics. We still do that.

We were working with other website designers in Fife and also supporting ecommerce website designers in Glasgow. Most of whom we worked with had to be willing to follow our best practices when it came down to website design and building search engine friendly websites.

Often, when pulled in by businesses on an adhoc basis to assist a business with analysis, paid ads, or to do a website audit we would find there were variations in the standards of how that website had been built, designed or marketed. We didn’t have to look far to find some problematic issue.

Having the opportunity to regularly deliver workshops on behalf of Business Gateway in Scotland allows Digital Marketing Practitioner Brian Mathers to get a snapshot of how businesses outside of Fife were operating with websites.

We have spent many years conducting website audits to analyse performance, architecture and how micro and small business owners tackled marketing. The analysis flagged up a common thread of issues. From the capital Edinburgh, up through the Highlands to Inverness, or across the border in to England and the rest of the UK similar findings were observed. From those micro and small medium business owners it was always about what was NOT working, and in many cases they scrapped site and started again. In some cases that would be the answer, but only if there was going to be a proper migration plan when you move from the old site to the new.

It remains a sad fact of life having been in this industry for over 20 years that the website design industry unfortunately remains unregulated. This industry is unlikely to ever follow a regulation standard for everyone to follow. This therefore is a minefield for the micro small business owner who has a challenging task on how to buy a website?

How does the business owner community who need a website know who is actually following best practice website design and following digital marketing principles?

Across the globe, there are trusted voices in the search marketing and website design world, but the business owner community might not even know who they are.

ICTADVISOR are working hard as website designers in Fife and who bow to those in that super league across the globe, because they have demonstrated proven methods and wrote books that provide good guidance for us to build you a fit for purpose super fast website.

But there are others who simply turn up in the Digital Web Design and Marketing world that follow their own guidelines. But there are at least a handful of website design businesses located here in Fife, who, admittedly are doing their best to contribute to being reputable website builders and marketers wanting to help business owners promote their products and services online.

There is believe it or not more than enough work for that group here in Fife to help improve the websites already out there. That doesn’t take into account all the new businesses that come along needing their first website. are still business owners with websites in place that are simply not working. Just in a coffee break we can sit down, look around and find lots of websites that are just not working having been poorly built and not optimised for their target market audience.

ICTADVISOR are still seeing far too many businesses missing out on huge opportunities to reach their online audience. Business owners remain desperately frustrated trying to get in front of their ideal customer because their website design and marketing strategy has failed them.

This is only going to continue if more website developers and agencies, not just in Fife, or Scotland, but even beyond the UK don’t take greater pride when building websites that are fit for purpose. And they must seek to follow Google’s Quality Rating Guidelines when it comes to ensuring best practice marketing tactics are being implemented.

For anyone who knows ICTADVISOR and dedicated Digital Marketing Practitioner Brian Mathers he has led this company for over 20 years. But has now changed his business model and has his own team of website designers in Fife and no longer just a website marketing company or just doing website analysis. We are doing a whole lot more.

ICTADVISOR today has a ‘website operating theatre‘ where you will find Full Stack Website Developers, Graphic Designers, Copywriters, Paid Ads Account Managers, and Website Analysts looking after business websites entrusted to us.

Digital Marketing Practitioner Brian Mathers has his preferred design team to build new websites, but also be the business where you the business owner can come if the website you have is not well, not performing. If you are the business with a website and no technical backup, we are also that ‘garage’ where you can come and see if we can repair you and so deal with any ‘snagging issues’.

If your business seeks to have a website that works or want to improve the website you have which might now not be bringing any traffic, or your just not equipped to create pages of engaging content to bring in more sales or enquiries, well we can help.

You can put your business website in our hands and have us be the website agency who will make the website better and have it achieve its objectives.

However, we are only going to take certain types of ‘website patients in our operating theatre‘ – if you have the following most common types of website CMS platform we shall be willing to help you:

WORDPRESS
WORDPRESS/WOOCOMMERCE
SHOPIFY
KOMMAND
SQUARESPACE
MAGENTO

We will look at other platforms you may turn up with and we shall take a look under the hood. It might be that you are working with a proprietary CMS platform or some of the other entry level website platforms. We shall take a look and see how bad things are should you turn up with a problem.

If you need a new website built specifically to your needs – we will have a brochure or ecommerce website solution product that fits your needs.

If you are a start-up and have limited budgets – talks to us. We are sure to have a solution that is scalable.

Is Your Website Not Working?

Without fail every month, our website designers in Fife are regularly approached by businesses from all over Scotland and the UK whose website is failing them. What we do as a first step involves first of all doing a review of that Company’s website. Our aim is to find out what is going wrong. Our website audit and performance analysis service is very popular

A Typical Website Scenario

Our website designers in Fife reviewed a website that had been live for around 6 months after a redevelopment by their local website agency. The website domain however had been in existence since 1999. But over the years, every time this business turned to a different website agency or developer to improve their site, the analysis had found that each ‘website redevelopment and migration‘ was not properly managed. In some cases what had been sold as a bespoke solution to improve user experience or performance had been ‘botched’ by the website surgeons hired.

To many failures in the ‘website operating theatre‘ to list here, but enough to say lots of websites were more unwell after coming out of surgery, got worse and in some cases simply died. But, unfortunately, it should have been the website agency/developer that was buried!!

We have lost count how many websites we have revived back to life and make them work for the micro and small medium business community.

The moral of the story, if you think your website is unwell and under-performing then engage ICTADVISOR to conduct a website performance audit.

We do try and not have to break bad news to the business owner of that website.
The dreaded words ‘Your website is terminally ill‘ is not what you want to hear. But in some cases it will be found to be that bad a new site has to be built. But not before we have worked out why the current website is not working.

Having to share a sad story, because we have found the website had been getting slowly poisoned since its birth way – say back in 1999, well it is just terrible news and so we do go through lots of boxes of tissue.

The words we regularly hear from the business website owner is ‘How…Why….I Never Knew….The Web Builder Never Said..‘

There are so many things the uninformed business owner just doesn’t know. But what today’s business owner must do is look beyond what is your aesthetically pleasing website. It is all about all that coding and stuff that lurks underneath like a cancer that could be killing the website and affecting the website from performing in the way you the business owner had hoped. And so, our diagnosis can help to make clear why the website is not bringing more business and greater success.

It has been with regret that some sites with poor website performance simply came down to the pages having suffered badly. Mainly there not being a proper content strategy or link building strategy that follows best practice. And every time that web developer said you need a new site, they simply butchered and severed the old one and didn’t do a proper transplant. We often talk about all this lovely link juice your website should be guzzling. But lots of in-experienced developers are losing this valuable juice due to in-competence. The website owners just don’t have any idea of the risks involved.

Is Your Website Design Failed to Be Built for Marketing Purposes?

Website designers build websites. But the website designers must be led by someone who has real world web marketing experience .

The golden rule is real world marketing practitioners lead the website development project. The reason for this is because their aim is to get traffic, and convert those visitors into either leads or sales. What Digital Marketing Practitioners look at most when doing a website audit review is – does the landing page offer a positive customer experience?

You can tell if a website has been left in the hands of someone who simply BUILDS WEBSITES. At least those who are good developers freely admit they don’t do or want to know the full ins and outs of WEBSITE MARKETING – if nobody leads your project that has marketing savvy your project is regrettably doomed.

Some Common Website Failures

Basic website design and architecture principles overlooked and lots of cases – simply not implemented.
Migration from the old website to the new website badly handled, thus losing the website owner built up relationships with search engines
Badly migrated sites losing sales and enquiries in some cases up to a 40% loss in revenue.
The marketing messages on the website pages poorly constructed due to poor keyword research or the total lack of it ever been done
Pages targeting the wrong Keyword Terms/Phrases in Headlines and so did not entice the audience the business was desperate to attract.

With no proper KEYWORD RESEARCH or COMPETITOR ANALYSIS conducted at the beginning of a website project how are you going to build this website – racing car – that has to win ranking races against your website competitors?

The Need to Rebuild the Website

A key step that is missed when a decision is taken to rebuild the website is NOBODY i.e. the web developer or someone inside the business had ever really questioned or looked at WHY THE OLD WEBSITE had not achieved its objectives – before attempting to build the new website.

All that tends to happen is the developer agency throws away the old site and just builds something else, which in some cases ends up being worse than the website they killed off.

And so, the new website can simply makes the business worse off. The big mistake made often is the old websites back history is lost – murdered really. Simply because the website agency – who claimed they were also internet marketers had not properly conducted a ‘website transplant‘ and had allowed their client’s website to die in their hands.

If you are reading this, are you someone looking at your own website and thinking – I wonder if this is why my website is not bringing me traffic or making more money for my business?

How do you feel about the website you have had delivered from the website agency or freelance developer hired to build your website?

Do you think the web agency or web developer delivered to you a ‘website racing car’ that is regularly winning races?

Is your website beating off your competitors and improving the bottom line in your business?

Does your website meet with Google’s Marketing Guidelines?

What is the Solution to Having a Successful Website?

ICTADVISOR welcomes you to get in touch with us and have just a 15 minute chat to find out if your website was built using best practice design principles?

You might be surprised to find that your website does live up to those minimum standards.
But, well done to those who helped deliver you a successful website. But, if we find that has not been the case – then be prepared to sit down and have us first of all make you a sweet tea whilst you recover from the shock of finding out your website is not fit for purpose.

You could also be a website owner suffering from SHINY OBJECT SYNDROME. So you have a nice looking website, but it is stuck in the garage and not going anywhere soon. However you keep ‘pogo sticking’ around jumping from one person to the other who says they can help you. What you need to do is stick to a proven prescription.

ICTADVISOR website designers in Fife today has rescued a number of websites over the years and as each year comes along, it never fails to amuse us, just how many websites ended up being badly designed or the business was found not to be operating with an effective marketing strategy supporting the website.

Thinking about building your first website?

If the next step is to go and buy your first website, we appeal to you to come and have a free chat with us first.

Thinking about redeveloping the website you have now?

So, you have had a website for a while, but don’t seem to be reaping any benefit from it? Or feel the website is OK but you are just not cut out to market your website?

ICTADVISOR Helps Businesses Build and Market Websites to Achieve OnlineXcellence

We have all the right people and partners behind us to achieve that Goal. Right now one of our partners in this team is busily training Microsoft on how to market themselves again.
And don’t think we are not affordable? Don’t be silly, affordability is what we offer, best practice is what we provide, websites that work is what you want. So, whether you are a large business or a small one (and we are very passionate about all sizes of business) – we are website designers in fife who want to help you, because we know we can. Come and talk to us.

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Fife Business Week Digital Marketing Workshop

October 14th, 2016

Making Your B2B or B2C Website and Online Sales Machine

What Happens During Fife Business Week?
Every Year in November the chance to attend events or workshops with a focus on Digital Marketing.
Find out how whether your own digital marketing strategies are currently Improving Your Websites Performance?

During Fife Business Week – A Digital Marketing Workshop Presented by Digital Excellence Scotland Real World Web Marketing Practitioners

The Fife Economy Partnership host Fife Business Week every year in November which is now an established event in the Fife business calendar in the first week of November.

The Digital Excellence Scotland web marketing team here at ICTADVISOR Ltd who are also part of the Business Gateway Fife Expert Help Team are instrumental in participating every year towards helping some of Fife’s Businesses achieve OnlineXcellence.
Here are just a small selection we have helped:

No matter what type of business you run, if it is supported by a website or needs to have a website in order to raise your brand, then the Digital Excellence Scotland Web Marketing Team have the jargon free and interactive workshop presentations during Fife Business Week that will focus on your business and your website needs.

Most of the time during the day you need to be at the helm of your business. But during Fife Business Week why not take a few hours away from business to explore new ideas, learn new skills on how to market your website effectively.

Bookmark this page and find out where we will be running our events during Fife Business Week.

Find Out How to Make Your B2B/B2C Website an Online Sales Machine

Without doubt it has become more challenging nowadays to both go out and first of all buy a website to support your business and then try and get people to visit the pages on your website.

Small Businesses in particular are not sure what they should have by way of a website or how it should be built. Many small business owners probably find it easier to buy their next vehicle for the business rather than purchase a website.

The challenge when purchasing a website is also knowing where it should be hosted, and what your digital marketing strategy should be. You need to understand what fuel to put into the website to make it go. All of this for a micro or small business can be a bit of a daunting task.

The OnlineXcellence team have an abundance of horror stories they can share about businesses that did not have a digital marketing strategy that totally left their website design and marketing becoming a complete disaster. Some had terrible experiences with web developers who the business owner thought did marketing but found they were not full versed in such practices. Also, get to here the stories of brand name websites who are still in existence today, but will never be able to rank as high as they used too after falling foul of the laws of Google.

If you have either a brochure website or an ecommerce website don’t make the mistakes that other small businesses have done in the past. Instead, take a few hours out and come to one of our informative workshops during Fife Business Week. Listen to the team from Digital Excellence Scotland who can help you plan to make a difference to your bottom line by having a website that should be built for purpose and have the capability of achieving OnlineXcellence.

There is no doubt you need to decide how to drive and market your website on a daily basis. So, do you try and do DIY Web Marketing yourself or do you call in Web Marketing Experts. Find out from the Digital Excellence Scotland Team of Web Marketing Practitioners

Who do you consider to be these web design and marketing experts? – is it in your opinion the web developer or website agency? You might think so, but…..

How do you know you have engaged with the right web agency or freelance developer?
What should you have been looking for?

Do you want to get in front of more clients?

Every time the Expert Help team are asked to meet up with new clients, the first thing heard is ‘If only I could get in front of more potential clients‘

Well, come along to our Fife Business Week Workshops. Find out what other Fife based businesses achieved under the direction of the Digital Boost 1-2-1 Expert Help team some of whom are here at ICTADVISOR

We guarantee if you attend these sessions that last just over 2 hours you will leave with a plan for all of your online marketing in the next year.

The sessions are FREE TO ATTEND so don’t deny yourself of having any success with your business, come along to a Fife Business Week Workshop and see if we what help is available for your business to achieve OnlineXcellence.

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SEO For Small Businesses in Glasgow Fife and All Over Scotland

April 8th, 2016

SEO is it still Alive?

Are You A Local Small Business Owner in Scotland On the Internet trying to get visitor traffic to your website?

Are You saying “I Just Want To Target Customers within 50 to 100 Miles from Where My Business Is Located?

Are Your Instead Targeting Customers All Over Scotland and So, Your Website Must be Found in Search Engine Results?

Are You Doing Local SEO or Wholly dependent on PPC Ads using Google AdWords?

Before You Decide the Help You Might Need With Your Website Marketing, take a few moments to listen to Globally renowned SEO Expert Rand Fishkin formerly of Moz and now CEO of Sparktoro on his topic:

How To Make the SEO Case to Small Businesses

WBF – The SEO Case for SMB

After you have watched this video (the full transcript of Rand’s Presentation is here) then read on below and find out:

Why The OnlineXcellence Web Marketing Team in Scotland Listen To Your Web Marketing Objections and Concerns

You will always read somewhere online the headline from some other respected Internet Marketer’s that SEO IS DEAD! MMMmmm!! Yes, well without doubt the ‘Old School of SEO is dead.

And there are those who will say that the only way to get customers is by doing Pay Per Click Advertising using mainly Google AdWords. MMMmmm!! Well, it is not the only way but I would want to have PPC Advertising included in my overall Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy.

How to Get Help In Scotland To Market Your Website and Get Proper Advice

Here at ICTADVISOR LTD, I have been an Internet Marketing Practitioner for over 18+years now starting out when Google was still called BackRub

Since those very early days (in my opinion) is doesn’t matter which way you look at marketing a website – the web page has to be – Optimised.

Your web landing page must be tuned towards attracting the right audience whose only aim is to find the right page that will answer their need.

If Google AdWords was your only marketing strategy, you still have to ensure your website landing page is – Optimised.

If you are doing PPC, Google takes into account a number of factors associated with both your landing page and how that page aligns to the ad you have created which has to then meet with a Quality Score.

I recently read a very interesting article by Neil Patel where in his blog he made a very valid statement in his conclusion summary. Neil said “Keyword Research isn’t for lazy Marketers looking for a quick buck“.

But unfortunately that is what us Internet Marketing Practitioners in Scotland are faced with when we get approached by the Small Business Website Owners.

And, you know what? I am not going to blame the business owner for thinking like this! Because, unfortunately, there are few places that you as the business owner trying to make your website work can turn too where good solid advice and gaining some education on how to market your small business website can be given to you without you having to break the bank to get that advice and help.

OnlineXcellence Supporting Small Medium Businesses Grow Online

I identified a long time ago that the small business website owner had no place to go to get some decent help that would help them become:

more educated about how search marketing works today
get help to identify problems with their website by getting an impartial website audit review
to find out whether they have engaged the wrong web developer or even the wrong internet marketer
and be provided with information and advice on how the business owner themselves can take some steps on their own to improve their websites performance.

Now you can achieve OnlineXcellence. Right now, No Jargon, no heavy technical stuff, but good solid learning bytes that help you understand what might be going wrong, and how you can take some steps to put things right.

There are many other workshops and events that are held across Scotland – but OnlineXcellence has in our opinion some unique ingredients as to why more and more people are signing up to attend. Soon there will not just be OnlineXcellence West, but we are about to introduce OnlineXcellence East. More details on that soon if you want to be keep informed why not join the OnlineXcellence LinkedIn Group where you can get involved or let us know you want to be on the next Workshops being held in Glasgow or at the front of the queue when OnlineXcellence East goes live.

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Ecommerce Content Strategy Do You Have One?

February 21st, 2016

Need an Ecommerce Content Strategy Checklist?

Running an Ecommerce Website?
Do You Have a Content Marketing Strategy for Your Ecommerce Website?

The Rules Have Changed for Ecommerce Marketing

In order to sell more these days you need to engage more with your target market audience.

If you want this marketing strategy to work effectively you have to bring a number of things that have to meet together:

SEO
Paid Search
Creating Blog Pages
Doing Internal Link Building
Doing Inbound Link Building

Thought this Definitive Guide to eCommerce Content Marketing from PickaWeb provided a decent flow chart that budding new ecommerce website owners should become familiar with.

There is no doubt though, from experience, what is contained in the guide is what you need to do, but we here at ICTADVISOR know with the website managers we are training they need some hand holding here to implement some of these tasks. There are some really creative individuals in some small businesses but many we come across are simply just to busy running their business and don’t have enought time to actually market their website and implement anything of importance that is included in this valuable guide below. If you want to talk to us about implementing the Complete Digital Marketing System with help from us and our partners – GET IN TOUCH.

Click image to open interactive version (via E-Commerce Content Marketing).

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Pay Per Click Advertising Does the Small Business Need to Do it?

February 16th, 2016

Pay Per Click Advertising Using AdWords – Does Your Small Business Need It?

As part of our Pay Per Click Advertising service commitment to clients doing online advertising using Google AdWords , we make extensive use of our WordStream Product.

This also allows us to plug in and listen to informative webinars and gain snippets of information from the products founder Larry Kim.

A recent event Larry Kim did – hits home with some vital statistics and facts that I believe the small business owner does not get to know about – but should.

Everyday new businesses get in touch with the OnlineXcellence Marketing Team at ICTADVISOR to help improve the marketing of their website. The biggest problem they arrive with is that most of the businesses have just recently got a website and their problem is they have no traffic and no sales and very disappointed with the website developer or agency. Yes, there appears to be an abundance of agencies reaching out to build your website, but lots seem to fail in the marketing of a website. Many do not have Pay Per Click Advertising as part of their marketing strategy.

Another reason why businesses come to us – is because we know the GOTO website agencies that deliver successful websites who are working with us on quality web projects working collaboratively to grow our clients websites online and have them make money for their business no matter what product or service they provide.

I find many small business owners expect their website when launched should just WORK!.

Small businesses still think they can get to the top without Paying for any form of marketing at all. And if you mention a monthly fee beyond a few hundred pounds even, they decide to go off instead and drive down the DIY route, and so expect to fail! We have lost count of how many businesses came back to us having done this and then 6 months later saying – we were right, that they should have just got our help to market them in the first place. That’s right – 6 months wasted.

So, while you ponder on that – what were those key points that Larry Kim said which I agree with?

1) Most of your content goes nowhere. typical reach in Facebook is around 0.5% and this figure is going to get lower. Larry said WordStream published 1600 articles in 6 years. Did some sums and only 5% of his articles in 6 years only generated about 500 page views.
And you have to consider WordStream is a very proactive business online creating lots of articles because they have resources to do so. Whereas many small business owners of only 2 or 3 people and less have very little time to sit and create great content every week and become constantly
socially engaged.
2) A well planned SEO strategy will take 6 months or more to have you get some traffic, but most organic listings are not memorable and you might not even reach a page one listing anyway in just 6 months if you try to go it alone.

Should You Be Doing Pay Per Advertising?

The message is simple – Small businesses need to become more educated in order to understand better where to channel their efforts if they are keen to make money from their website, especially if your website is in its infant years.

The OnlineXcellence Marketing Team have delivered the OnlineXcellence Marketing Model at City of Glasgow College now technology allows us to deliver OnlineXcllence Digital Marketing Support to small businesses wherever you are via our online 1-2-1 sessions.

This year will see the biggest event being held in August at a location to be confirmed soon which sees two of the biggest names on the planet in Search Marketing today speaking to Scotland’s businesses. Keep following us and watching out for announcements about this event which is also going to be tied in with the launch of a new brand business that everyone will be talking about come the summer once you see it appear in TV, Radio and Internet Campaigns, and we are proud to be part of that.

Meanwhile, whilst the excitement grows – Listen to the Authoritative Voice on Paid Advertising Larry Kim and then let us help you achieve – OnlineXcellence.

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How To Get More Website Traffic

February 6th, 2016

How To Get More Website Traffic – Are You Looking for Answers?

Business Website owners in Scotland usually have just one question when they ask ICTADVISOR for help – How to get more website traffic which is quickly followed by if only I could get in front of more customers I know they would do business with me.
But having a website and trying to manage and market that website whether its a brochure or ecommerce site is no easy task for the small medium sized business owner. Your challenges are much tougher compared to the big brand names online who already have the four most important factors already addressed – TIME | RESOURCE | KNOWLEDGE and most important of all BUDGET!

A Must Have Digital Marketing Strategy to Help Website Owners achieve OnlineXcellence

When Digital Lighthouse was around a number of years ago this was their message.

ICTADVISOR LTD based in Scotland but delivering services across the UK and now in the USA are an established Internet Marketing Company delivering 1-2-1 support to its select customer base. Part of the support helps in educating the business to implement a digital marketing strategy. Just spending an hour of your time in talking with us will provide the answers you need on how to get more traffic to your website using our proven marketing methods that will help to convert traffic to your website into paying customers who want to do business with you.

A Successful online marketer Jonathan Jay

Before Internet Marketing Practitioner Brian Mathers of ICTADVISOR, met with marketing entreprenuer Jonathan Jay he read the book 1001 Ways to Get More Customers. It was recognised from reading the book and listening to Jonathan, then meeting with is marketing team, that many small medium business owners tend to take a DIY approach to digital marketing. The micro and small business SME try to deploy all the steps involved by themselves or tell you they are getting help from someone who claims to know what they are doing. But many businesses soon find out that the cost to try and roll out a digital marketing strategy that will involve a multichannel marketing strategy can soon rack up huge costs. The business owner tries themselves to orchestrate 6 different people or more who are all trying to bring traffic to their website. The problem ends up nothing is joined up. So, what is the alternative? Getting the right people in to do some of the work for you. An added dimension is to provide knowledge transfer to someone who will have the responsibility and accountability for the website who is inside the business – should they want some of that responsibility. If you are seeking help with your digital marketing, want to get more customers, and get your site making some money, then, if you realise the DIY route is not for you and all it will bring is possible headaches, consider what a competent team can do for you.

Most Business Owners Aren’t Website Marketers

Brian Mathers has seen many business owners in his 20years of marketing experience putting a lot of time and money into marketing their websites, but were just not getting it right. Many are driving the website blind. Not using any tools whatsoever to help with marketing decisions or when planning campaigns. Website marketing today has become more complex, and without a proper digital marketing strategy in place you will not know what is or isn’t working for your business. The recommended advice is to get a Digital Marketing Strategy that focuses on what you’re trying to sell and who you’re trying to sell it to.

If you want to find out how you can get more traffic to your website and have it convert into business for your company:

GET IN TOUCH CALL 0141 340 9979. TALK TO US ABOUT YOUR WEBSITE GROWTH

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Fife Business Week Generates More New Business For ICTADVISOR

November 17th, 2015

Small Business Owners in Fife Wanting to Achieve OnlineXcellence Learning Digital Marketing Strategies

Fife Business Week is annual event that reaches out to Fife Small Business Owners. As Digital Marketing Practitioners committed to delivering OnlineXcellence and provide Expert Help support on behalf of the Public Sector to Scotland’s small business community. Come and find out what support is available for small business owners to get help and support with your website projects. During Fife Business Week, we go beyond providing just a general overview of what you should be doing as a Small Business Owner with a website. The sessions we deliver usually involve some hands on sessions whereby we actually talk through with business owners issues we find by going through their website and offering recommendations and help to overcome issues you may have been struggling with.

The OnlineXcellence program is a complementary mix of business consultancy and training that is helping Company owners shape the future of their business. We focus on having the business doing what it set out to do when promoting itself online – make money and achieve getting effective results from specific landing pages in the website. We are regularly engaged with a variety of businesses from all over Scotland who have set out to deliver either products or services, and they all keep telling us one thing – we want more customers (and what business owner doesn’t?)

The only difference is today you have got to go looking for those customers you want.

Unfortunately, many small businesses have limited time and resource which is preventing them from being on top of their marketing game. If someone is still knocking on your door and talking about offering OLD SCHOOL SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) you need to tell them you have moved on. And of you are fortunate enough to be working with us you will already be into trying new modern ways towards reaching out to new prospects.

If you want to find out how you can get more traffic to your website and have it convert into business for your company:

GET IN TOUCH CALL 0141 340 9979 or 01592 745992 TALK TO US ABOUT YOUR WEBSITE GROWTH

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Internet Marketing Strategy

October 10th, 2015

The Must Have Internet Marketing Strategy For Small Medium Business Owners in Scotland with a Website

Planning to have your first website – have you worked out your Internet Marketing Strategy?
Looking to redevelop the website because you feel that it is not bringing you traffic and sales – what is your internet marketing strategy?
You need to have an Internet Marketing Strategy – so where do you start?

LET ME GRAB YOUR ATTENTION

DO YOU WANT TO HAVE A FREE INTERNET MARKETING CONSULTANCY SESSION?

COME AND SPEAK TO ICTADVISOR SOON – First – grab a coffee, sit back and here what we learned when supporting Jonathan Jay back in 2015 when he used to run a company called Digital Lighthouse who we supported. What he says here about Small Businesses does make sense…………

The Need to Implement a Digital Marketing Strategy to Increase Traffic to Your Website

Find out how you could be working with one of Scotland’s leading Internet Marketing Practitioners Brian Mathers of ICTADVISOR and his Global Internet Marketing Partners

Website Marketing Practitioner Brian Mathers of ICTADVISOR is helping businesses across Scotland build and market successful websites and can help your business put in place an Internet Marketing Strategy to help grow your business online.

With 20years experience in Internet Marketing Brian has helped businesses large and small grow to achieve multi-million pound turnover.

ICTADVISOR whilst based in Scotland is also now working in Partnership with a new business venture based in PITTSBURGH USA covering the eastern Seaboard out to New Jersey. Massachusetts and over to Quebec and Ontario in Canada where we are delivering internet marketing services through a joint working relationship especially for businesses across those regions serious about being online.

How Are You Going to Get More Traffic to Your Business Website?

If you are truly serious about marketing your website and willing to invest sufficient time with Brian Mathers and his website design teams in both Scotland and the USA, then read on………….

How would you like to have someone locally to hold your hand through the process of professionally implementing an internet marketing strategy for your business website?

You are just ten steps away from implementing a digital marketing strategy that will see your business being promoted effectively online by implementing a marketing strategy that is going to get you more traffic to your website and ultimately more customers who want to do business with you.

THE NEXT STEP CALL 01592 745992 – get in touch with Real World Internet Marketing Practitioner Brian Mathers who will help you plan towards becoming engaged with a complete team of real world internet marketers that will spend considerable time devising an online marketing strategy that will get you more customers.

GET A DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY TAILORED FOR YOUR BUSINESS – a marketing process that is essential to your needs: we are providing an internet marketing strategy that comes with ongoing marketing support and advice to support your business as it evolves. From helping you plan marketing campaigns to drive traffic to your web pages, making videos to promote your products or services, putting in place an email marketing system and much more.

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