Savvy Marketing Tips - January 2010
Hello <<First Name>>
Welcome to this issue of 'Savvy Marketing Tips'. We hope you had a great Christmas & New Year and are now refreshed & ready to move forward with your online  marketing in 2010!
Each month we bring you easy to implement tools and tips for your small business, so you can take advantage of the many brilliant low-cost ways of marketing via the internet. We hope you will find our newsletter a welcome and useful addition to your inbox. If you do, please tell others about us so we can reach more people!
This month we give you some top tips for re-launching a website, something many businesses look at in the new year and how you can lessen the impact it may have on your rankings.
Best wishes,
Sam & Louise
the Savvy Marketers
Top Tips for Re-Launching a Website The New Year is often a time when businesses think of re-vamping their existing website. This could be anything from simply updating the content or re-arranging the layout of the pages to a full site re-design. Keeping your website fresh and up to date is important for your website visitors and for your rankings in the search engines. However, before you start, you need to ensure you don’t fall into the common traps that businesses can encounter when updating a site, particularly if it involves launching a brand new website.
1. 404 ‘error’ page
It's essential you have a 404 ‘error’ page on your website. We’ve covered this in a previous blog post (which you can read here), but basically it’s a dynamically generated page that loads when someone comes to your site from a broken link (perhaps an old page that is still in the search engines’ database) or if someone clicks on a broken link within your website. Here’s an example:
Country Life - complete navigation is offered to the lost visitor
If you don’t have one of these pages, a visitor will end up on a browser error page if they click on a broken link instead, which doesn’t look good. For example:
Spinnaker Tower error page
The only way to navigate out of it is to hit the ‘back’ button in your browser. When launching a new website, make sure you have a working 404 error page so that if visitors arrive on your website from an old web page that’s still in the search results, you’ll retain the visitor on your website and not send them away to your competitors!
2. 301 Redirects
If the content on your new website is fairly similar to the content that was on your old site, but you’re changing the actual page urls (or page names), .e.g from aboutus.htm to about.asp, then you can redirect the old page to the new page with a ‘301’ redirect. This is done by your webmaster on the website’s server. This is a technical job, but it ensures that the search engines will follow the redirect from your old web page to your new web page and know they need to index the new page instead. This will also help with any links you've gained from other websites – the links will follow through to the new page with the redirect and keep your link popularity intact.
3. Website Optimisation
When launching your new website, make sure you optimise it as soon as possible (ideally while the new site is being designed), particularly if the old website was fully optimised. The last thing you want is for your website to lose its rankings that you worked hard for when promoting your old website. You'll find rankings will fluctuate for a few months anyway when launching a new site, but optimising the new website early on may lessen the impact.
4. Google Sitemaps
Finally, set up a Google Account if you don't already have one and use the Google Webmaster Central tool that will tell you of any problems Google has indexing your website and when it last indexed the site, which pages it has indexed and even some stats on click throughs to the site. This is a very useful free tool that gives all sorts of information, so well worth setting up – just ask your webmaster or designer to do this for you as you will need to add some verification code to the site. Make sure you give your sitemap url to Google and also add a sitemap to your new site. Again, this is important if you’ve re-arranged the content for your new site. If some previously easy to find content is buried deeper into the site, you still want the search engines (and visitors) to be able to find it easily.
Following these tips won't stop your website's rankings from fluctuating for a few months when the new site is launched, but should see results eventually bounce back. Just re-launching a website without taking the above precautions will involve a lot more work in regaining any rankings that your website previously had.
© Savvy Marketers, 2010
Recent Blog Posts
WordPress Security - Ignore at Your Peril! - yes, my Forty First website was hacked before Christmas so here are some tips to make sure your site is secure from hackers!
Is Your Home Page Message Clear - tips to make sure your website visitors know exactly what you do
SEO Changes Afoot in 2010 - what could be in store in the search world this year
Give Generously - why you should give away some of your best stuff - for free!
Have You Googled Yourself Lately? - why it's worth occasionally searching for yourself online
Please Can You Help Us?
We're planning some new Workshops for 2010 and would really like to know what you want to learn about! Please can you help us out by answering this short survey? It'll only take a minute of your time. Just Click Here to take survey
We would have offered you a bribe but apparently survey takers who aren't bribed give the most accurate responses! Otherwise of course we'd be sending you some chocolate! :-)
We'd Like to Recommend .....
The Confident Business Networking Home Study System - If you need more clients but find your networking isn’t bringing the results you’d hoped for and, if you’ve nothing more to show for your efforts than a drawer full of business cards, then you need to brush up your skills! Here's a sample of what the system covers:
• 5 simple ways you can get more from your networking today
• 3 insider secrets to help you feel confident when entering a room full of strangers
• The most important thing you MUST do in order to get new business from networking
• How to make a start with networking on the Internet
This Home Study System contains all you need to know about Business Networking so that you can quickly attract more clients with less effort.
* * * * * * *
Step by Step E-Marketing
Do you want to get higher search engine rankings and handle online advertising campaigns without the expense of hiring someone to do it?
Forty First's Step by Step E-Marketing teaches you how to promote your website via weekly telephone calls & emails. This programme is a very cost-effective way of handling your own online marketing campaigns and includes:
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Pay per Click Advertising, such as Google Adwords
- Reviewing Competitors' websites & links
- Helping you develop your website to make it compelling to your visitors
This will increase the visitors and sales to your website, all while you learn the ins and outs of online marketing so that you can manage your own website effectively.
Pssst...Pass It On!
If you know anyone who might be interested in reading 'Savvy Marketing Tips' please feel free to forward this copy to them. Or tell them to visit http://www.savvymarketers.co.uk and get their copy of 'The Ultimate Small Business Guide to Marketing via the Internet'
Savvy Marketing Tips are brought to you by the Savvy Marketers, who are Sam McArthur and Louise Barnes-Johnston. We offer no-fluff, low cost, extremely valuable how-to information about marketing via the internet for the small business owner who has little or no prior experience.
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