For small businesses playing the Internet Marketing game is tough.  It involves a big investment of your time and money and you need to know that it’s working for you.

But stop for a minute! Before you get started, read my guide to Internet Marketing mistakes that small businesses make, so you can get it right first time.

1. Not Working to a Business Plan

There are so many different aspects of Internet Marketing to get involved in, and you want to try them all.  You’ve got a web site, you’re using email, trying out Twitter, beginning blogging, thinking about AdWords – and that’s before you mention all the basic SEO work that you’ve been doing.

Be honest though, do you have a business plan for all of your efforts?  It’s hard to find time for all the different things that you could be doing, and if you aren’t clear about what you’re trying to achieve, you might find that your enthusiasm for it all fizzles out pretty fast.

It’s far better for you to choose one aspect to work on and to do it really well than to spread yourself thin.  For most businesses this may just be basic SEO – yes, social media may be sexy, but it’s far more likely that you’ll get quality leads from Google.

2. Looking for a Quick Fix

I’m going to let you in on a secret:  there is no easy way to get great results from Internet Marketing.

Whether you are working on SEO, social media or PPC you need to put time and effort into any Internet Marketing strategy.  Yes, it is harder this way, but you avoid potential penalties associated with the “quick fix” strategies that Google sees as spam.

3. Not Giving Your SEO Enough Time

You’ve taken the advice to stick to White Hat marketing techniques and you’re doing everything by the book.  So, why is it taking so long for you to take pride of place at the top of Google?  Haven’t you done enough?  Don’t you deserve it?

Unfortunately, these things do take time, and anything that you can do to “hurry things along” is likely to be penalised for spam.  (See my comments about quick fixes above).  It can be frustrating when it takes months to meet your goals, but you have to be patient and keep working at it.

4. Worrying Too Much About Your Competition

It is healthy to keep a watchful eye on your competitors, but it doesn’t make good business sense to obsess over what they’re up to.  If they are ranking higher than you, do some competitor analysis to see if you can learn anything from them and move on.

Constantly wondering how you can get one over on them is a waste of your time that is much better spent on your own Internet Marketing efforts.

5. Obsessively Checking Your Rankings

Or AdWords position, number of fans on Facebook, number of hits to your website, Page Rank…  It isn’t a good idea to focus too much on these details, because the simple truth is that in the grand scheme of things they don’t matter.

Think back to your business plan: was your goal to get to number 1 in Google or to increase the number of visitors to your website?  Did you simply want 1,000 visitors a day to your website or to increase the number of visitors who sign up for your services or buy your products?  You should measure your success against your original objectives, not an arbitary number.

6. Not Analysing Your Data

You had 1,000 visitors to your site last week, you’ve got a CTR of 5% on your AdWords account, your home page has a Page Rank of 5…  So what?

Yes, it’s good to know the stats, but what do they mean?  Again, you have to think about your bottom line.  If your site visitors – paid or otherwise – aren’t leading to conversions or qualified leads for your business, then you need to ask whether your Internet Marketing is honestly working.

7. Starving the Budget

The Internet is amazing – anyone can build a website, send out marketing emails and so much more – and it’s all free!

Sorry to disappoint, but that just isn’t true.

You can build a free website, but a professionally designed site is likely to have greater impact and to help you to achieve your marketing goals.  Not using an appropriate email marketing package can potentially cause difficulties with managing subscribers and data protection concerns.  Even if you have paid out for an AdWords account you have to remember that you can only do so much with a limited budget.

There are many low cost ways to use the Internet, but none of them are entirely free, and as with anything in life you get what you pay for.

8. Not Thinking About Links

If you can only do 1 thing to improve your websites visibility, build links to your site.  Too many small business owners avoid link building because it’s time consuming or simply too hard.

Yes, there are other things you can do to increase your ranking, but these will only have limited success. The most important ranking factor for your site is still the number of high quality and relevant external sites that link to you.  Without working on this, you will struggle to see results.

So, now you know what everyone else is getting wrong, you can get your Internet Marketing strategy right from the start.  Start out with a clear and realistic goal in mind, remember that everything you do should bring you closer to achieving it and you will do well.

More advice for small businesses:

Top SEO Myths

How to Use Internet Marketing to Boost Your Business

How Customer Reviews Can Help Your SEO

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Katie Saxon

Linking, linking, linking.  Search engine optimisation is all about getting high quality, trusted sites to link to your own site – but is there such a thing as the perfect inbound link?

There is no “one size fits all” answer I can give you for the perfect link, but there are certain criteria you can use to assess the possible value of any incoming link.  The more criteria it meets, then the more time and effort is worth devoting to getting “The Perfect Link.”

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Here are my top 21 signs that an incoming link is likely to be perfect:

1. The site that your link is coming from  must be relevant to what your business does or offers – it is essential to be “on topic”
2. The content that is on the page that the link is coming from should also be contextually relevant to your site
3. The link goes directly to the most appropriate content on your site, or the right landing page
4. The site should be trusted and authoritative, as measured by trust scores like Page Rank
5. The inbound link will have keyword rich, relevant anchor text
6. It is a text link, not an image or logo link
7. The link is likely to be moderated, meaning a human needs to approve the link, and it’s not an automated directory or free for all site
8. You’ve not paid for the link;  it is a gift
9. The link is not reciprocal
10. The link to your website will be the first link on that page
11. Even better if it were the only link on that page, or one of very few outbound links from that page
12. It should not be in the footer or sidebar – ideally it should be in the body of the text surrounded by relevant keywords
13. The page that the link is on should be frequently crawled by the major search engines
14. The site should not link out to any bad neighbourhoods (spammy links)
15. The IP address that the site is hosted on should not have any spammy sites on it
16. The site should be well established in age, but not out of date
17. It should have a lot of trusted inbound links itself
18. It should send as much relevant traffic to your site as possible
19. You want the link on a page that is likely to remain there for an indefinite amount of time (for ever would be nice)
20. The link does not have a NoFollow tag
21. The link is not redirected using a referral script

So many characteristics… and that is why there probably no such thing as a perfect link!

However if you can find sites that have three, or four or more of these criteria then what you just might have is your killer link…

Recommended Reading:

Recipricol Linking:  Good or Bad?

Link Building Strategy working with Bloggers

Getting Perfect Links:  Susan’s list from 2007

Developing your Inbound Linking Strategy

+++Wayne Barker+++

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So the summer is here and  business is a little quieter than normal – in other words it is the perfect time for an SEO Health Check. Rather than kick back and enjoy the sunshine use a little bit of your free time to ensure the SEO on your website is up to date, you will thank yourself later down the line when you have no spare time at all.

When giving your site an SEO health check it is important to make sure that you run through things in a specific order to ensure that nothing is missed out. To save you the trouble I have compiled a quick checklist so that you can ensure that all your bases are covered.

SEO Health Check

1. Make sure your Title Tags are looking good. Your Title Tags are the best way to ensure that the search engines understand what your site is about and it is essential to include the keywords that are most relevant to the page – and make sure your Title Tag is around 6o characters long. It is a good idea to avoid using stop words (like a, the, is, at) and using some form of punctuation the ‘pipe’ (the symbol that separates text | it looks like this |) is a  favourite over here at Hallam!

Never use Title Tags that mention ‘Home Page’ or ‘Welcome’ as they will mean absolutely nothing to a search engine. Never duplicate Title Tags across a site – make sure each one is unique.

Not sure about your Title Tags?  Then read our Title Tags Factsheet.

2. Check your Meta Descriptions. Although Meta Descriptions have no bearing on how well you rank within Google and the other search engines (at the moment!) they are crucial for usability reasons. The Meta Description is the two lines of black text that appears below the Title Tag in the search engine results. This gives you a golden opportunity to target more of your essential keywords in order to entice people to click through to your website.

3. Check your headings (h1, h2 and so on). Although recent investigation has shown that the headings tags do not carry as much weight as previously thought it is still important to include them for a usability point of view – it isn’t going to harm your ranking efforts either. Make sure they are keyword rich and relevant to the copy on the page. If you do not have the possibility of adding heading tags through your current CMS then don’t panic, some bold text on your keywords and featured at the top of the page will do.

4. Review the content of your site. Have a good look round the content of your site and ask yourself if it is useful. The content should be relevant to your business, be keyword rich and useful to visitors to your site. Put yourself in the position of the visitors to help you consider this. When reviewing your content you should also ask yourself if you have been adding enough new, fresh content – Google loves new and unique content more than ever. If you haven’t got one already you may want to consider setting up a blog on your site in order to add this fresh content (that is topical to your business niche) on a regular basis. Make sure your keywords are used in the body of the text but don’t worry too much over keyword density (there is no known perfect keyword density!)

5. Consider your keyword research. When did you do your keyword research? Is it still valid or are people searching using different terms now. There are a bunch of ways to carry out your keyword research and Katie wrote a great post on keyword research tools that you may want to have a look at. My personal favourite is the Google Wonder Wheel which is great for brainstorming new keywords. And don’t forget the trusty old Adwords Keyword Tool – which recently had a face-lift.

6. Check your Alt Tags. Recent research has shown that the Alt Tag carries more weight in the ranking process than we previously though. If you are unaware of the Alt Tag it is the text that accompanies a picture to help describe it if it is not able to be displayed, or to enable or enhance the user experience for people with disabilities. So with the Alt Tag carrying more weight than we once thought you may want to use your summer SEO period to make sure all the pictures on your site have relevant Alt Tags – just make sure they are descriptive and helpful and then try and squeeze a keyword in.

7. Check your internal linking. Make sure that all your important page are linked to from other pages on your site using keyword rich anchor text (anchor text is the text that is used for the link).

8. Check your inbound linking strategy. As you probably know link building is the bread and butter of any SEO campaign and every site should have an ongoing link building campaign. With your SEO health check it is important that you are using techniques that are up to date and do not break any of Google’s guidelines. Consider using guest blogging as a way of getting inbound links and spreading the word about your company and the services or products you offer. Never (ever) buy links!

9. If you have videos, photos and other media – optimise for Universal Search. If it has been a while since your last SEO Health Check then you may be missing the boat on this one. Make sure all your media is properly optimised in order to help your site get good rankings through other channels. Check out this post on Optimising for Universal Search for all the information you will need.

Whilst I don’t claim this SEO Health Check list is exhaustive it should prove to be the launching pad for continued success on the Internet, after all it is important to keep up to date if you want to keep the rankings you work so hard for.

+++Wayne Barker+++

Most companies set out to create a website that they can rely on to be relevant for the next few years.  While we don’t know exactly what changes are on the horizon, there is one thing that you can be sure of, your website needs to look good and function properly on a mobile phone.

Anyone who attended Charles Arthur’s talk at The Internet Conference will know that online browsing on the move is a major new trend.  More and more people are browsing the internet on their phone.  More and more people have smartphones.  The numbers of people buying smartphones and using them to surf the web is set to get much, much greater.

So all of you smart website owners will want to get ahead and make your website is mobile-friendly now.

Use the iPhone simulator to find out how your website looks on an iPhone.  Chances are if it doesn’t function properly on this fancy smartphone, less sophisticated mobile browsers will struggle with your site.

Do you like what you see?  Does your website look good on a mobile phone?

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Katie Saxon

Inbound links: we all want them, but how do you get them? One SEO tactic is to create Linkbait.

Linkbait can be anything that will get website owners, social media mavens and bloggers across the Internet linking to you. You can use video, images or good old-fashioned words to get the link love flowing. But for now I’m just going to tell you how to write great linkbait in 5 easy steps:

1. Solve a Common Problem

First up, pick your topic wisely. One thing that people love to read about (and link to) is a simple solution to their everyday problems.

Are you a mechanic? Tell us how to pass our MOT. An account? Give us a budgeting trick that’ll make our money go further, or discuss the government’s most recent budget. And photographers? I think everyone wants a few secrets for how to look great in every photo.

Think about the questions you get asked time and time again and turn that into great linkbait.

2. Entertain us

Or why not just entertain us. Do you have a shocking/funny/stupid story to do with your product or service? Can you compile a list of the most ridiculous accidents with/misuses of your product? As long as it sharing it won’t harm your brand go right ahead.

3. Create a Catchy Headline

You need to give your article a title that will stand out in a crowd and make people want to read on. Something short and descriptive should do it. If you’re really stuck “How to…” is often a good place to start.

4. List It Out

People, especially Internet users, love lists. Numbered lists especially. They’re easy to read, easy to digest and you know roughly how long it’ll take to read.

Whether you’ve decided to be funny “Top Ten Mobile Phone Disasters” or helpful “How to Pass Your MOT in 5 Easy Steps”, use a numbered list. It’ll help you to write short, snappy paragraphs that people will want to read.

5. Be Controversial

Love it or hate it, being controversial is a sure fire way to get you noticed. You might just decide to deliberately leave someone out of your top five to get attention. Or you might write a bad review, create a “Top 5 Worst…” or just add an alternative point of view to an ongoing debate.

Warning! Don’t be rude, abusive or libellous just to be controversial. It won’t get you the right kind of attention – and may get you into trouble legally.

There are lots of ways of creating linkbait for even the most unexpected products and services. The Will It Blend? videos by Blendtec prove that it just takes a bit of creative thinking. Get brainstorming, trying to see what you do from a different angle and soon you’ll be creating some quality linkbait.

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Katie Saxon

Welcome to Katie Saxon, who has joined Hallam as an SEO Executive. She’ll be part of the team writing blog postings, and this is her Social Media Checklist for New Employees.

Welcoming a new member of staff into your company? This is a good time to run through the essentials of a good social media presence.

Build a LinkedIn Profile

An absolute must – not only does it help your company by boosting your online presence, but also new employees can connect with your staff, partners and clients in a quick and easy way.

Remember to include a keyword rich link to your company.

If your newbie is at all shy or not good at remembering faces, this is an ideal way to introduce themselves while showing their credentials.

Take a look at my LinkedIn profile.

Get Blogging

Does your company have a blog?  (If not, why not? Blogging is an important SEO tool, ignore it at your peril.)  Ask your new member of staff if they would write a post for your blog.

The exact angle is up to you – they could write about their first day/week/month on the job.  Maybe you want them to give a beginners perspective on some of your expert knowledge.  It could be as simple as asking them to write a short piece introducing themselves.
Just go with whatever will work best for your company blog.

Start Tweeting

If you’re on twitter perhaps your newbie could write some twitter posts for you.  It’ll take them less time than writing a full blog post, so they might be happier with doing this.

Maybe you don’t want them to tweet on behalf of your company, but could they use twitter professionally?
If they have their own profile, which establishes them as an industry expert and employee of your company they can tweet about relevant content that interests them.  It helps you to build your company profile, without you necessarily needing to monitor what they say.

Follow @ksaxoninternet to see my latest tweets on Internet marketing

Sign up to Delicious

This is a really good way for any new member of staff to start knowledge sharing.  I’m always stumbling across interesting articles online that I want to share with my colleagues and connecting on Delicious is an easy way to do this.

If your staff already use Delicious then this is a great way of pointing your new employee towards the articles you want them to read. You can see what I’m reading on my Delicious profile.

Create a Google Profile

This is another useful way to build your company’s online presence.  And if you’ve got your staff tweeting, blogging, connecting on LinkedIn and bookmarking on Delicious their Google profile can direct you to all of their other social media profiles.  Take a look at Susan Hallam’s Google Profile.

There are of course lots and lots of other social media applications that your staff can use to enrich their experience of working for you – and to increase your web presence.  My checklist is just a starting point – you just have to decide which are most appropriate for your business.

Hope you find this useful, I’ll be writing again soon, Katie.

You may be fantastic at putting pen to paper, but when you’re writing for the web things are a little bit different.  There are some basic guidelines you should keep in mind when writing web (and search engine) friendly copy.

1. Remember to Use Headings

There are two reasons for doing this.  Headings break your text up so that it’s easy to read on screen.  And they’re great for search engines – which use headings to work out what your page is about.

2. Keep it Short

I don’t mean that you can’t write a long page for your website, Google actually tends to prefer longer pages.  But you need to think about keeping your sentences and paragraphs short.

Most people won’t read a paragraph that’s longer than 3 lines.  And using one sentence (or even one word) paragraphs can be a great way to hook your customers.

Go on…

3. Ask Questions

Another good way of engaging with your readers and holding their attention is to address your text directly at them.  And an easy way to do this is to ask your customers questions – don’t you agree?

4. You Don’t Have to be Grammatically Correct

I dnt fink u shud rite lik this, but the web is a more informal medium, so strict grammar rules don’t always apply.  Indeed, sometimes more grammatically correct content can sound forced, because online copy tends to be more conversational.

You wouldn’t normally write a sentence starting with the words “but” or “and”.  But sometimes this is appropriate to keeping your copy flowing naturally.  As a rule of thumb, if it sounds ok when you say it out loud then it will work on your website.

5. Emphasise the Right Words

Using bold text and italics is a really good way to add emphasis to certain words or phrases.  But you have to do this right.  Consider the difference between these two sentences:

“Please get the emphasis right when you are writing for the web”

And…

“Please get the emphasis right when you are writing for the web”

The first sentence probably sounds more natural to you – you can imagine me sitting here, exasperated, begging you to get your emphasis right.  But stop right there.

Search engines think that you will emphasise the most important words in your copy.  And so, they will use text in bold or italics to decide what your page is about.  The second version shows that this page is about writing for the web and that’s why I should use it.

Remember that humans as well as search engine spiders have to read your website.  If you emphasise too many words you’ll make your text hard to read – and you’ll probably confuse the search engines too.

6. Make a List

Lists and bullet points aren’t just a good way to make reading your website a nicer experience for your customer.  They can be a tool in your SEO arsenal.

People love numbered lists (6 Tips for Writing Well for the Web, The 5 Best Tricks for Keeping Fit, How to Write a CV in 3 Easy Steps).  So if you want to write articles that your customers will shout about – and link to – a numbered list might do the trick.

For more advice on optimising your website try our SEO training, which will cover copywriting perfect webpages.

I am frequently surprised by the amount of people using Google Analytics who aren’t familiar with URL tagging. This is the process of adding extra information to a link, so that Analytics can identify it as coming from a particular source, keyword and/or advert.

In fact, URL tagging happens automatically for all AdWords users – it’s how Analytics knows the difference between “paid” and “organic” traffic in your Search Engines and Keywords reports. But its use reaches far beyond AdWords. Consider an email newsletter or “e-shot”. If you make a plain, normal link in your email, the traffic it generates will be split between the Direct Traffic report and the Referral Traffic report.

Why? Because if you use an email client like Outlook, clicking a link in an email is like copying and pasting that link directly into the web browser’s address bar. If you use webmail like GMail, Hotmail or similar though, you are already visiting a website (the webmail site) and clicking a link is a referral from that site. So visitors from an email campaign will be split between the two. Worse, they will be lumped in with the Direct or Referred traffic you got that day anyway. Hardly the ideal method of measuring the success of your email marketing.

If those links in the email had been tagged, you could identify every single visitor generated by that email as a distinct group. You could then measure their engagement (time on site, pages per visit etc.) and their conversion rate, as well as making them an Advanced Segment to delve deeper into their visits and compare them to other groups of visitors, or even the last email marketing you did (if that was tagged too).

How does it work then? Pretty simple, as it happens. You simply need to add some information in Google’s defined format on to the end of the link addresses in your email. It looks like this:

http://www.website.com/page.htm?utm_campaign=campaign-name&utm_medium=marketing-medium&utm_source=website-or-email&utm_content=advert-content

Looks exciting eh? If you break it down, you have a list like this one on Google’s help page:

So:

• Source is the place that the visitor comes from
• Medium is the type of marketing (cpc stands for Cost Per Click and is the standard term for defining pay-per-click advertising in Analytics)
• Term is the keyword used (or any other defining feature of the advert)
• Content is only really required for distinguishing between pay-per-click advert content for the same keyword
• Name is the name of your campaign, whether it is a specific campaign or maybe something like “Newsletters”

In the example of an email newsletter, I might define the Name as “Newsletters” and the Source as “December Newsletter”, thereby grouping all my newsletters in one campaign, but being able to distinguish between each month’s newsletter within that campaign.

You could also use the Content tag to define which link in an email someone clicks. For instance, you might link to the same page three times: once at the top of the email, then in the body copy and finally at the bottom in case people missed the point. If you don’t differentiate between those links, you won’t know which one got clicked on most, because they all go to the same page. So, my URL tag for the first link might look like this:

?utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_source=December&utm_content=Top

My URL tag for the body copy link would be the same, but it would say “utm_content=Body” at the end instead, and so on. If you don’t want to mess around writing your own link tags in HTML, Google provides a URL Builder here.

The uses for URL tagging don’t end there, as you can tell from the table. If you do any pay-per-click (CPC) advertising anywhere but AdWords, you won’t be getting the URL tagging automatically, so traffic from the likes of Yahoo Search Marketing or MSN AdCenter will be appearing as either Direct or Organic traffic, meaning you have no information on the performance of those paid-for adverts once the visitor lands on your site.

What about advertising on a site that also links to you organically? Again, all traffic will be referred, but you won’t know how much of it comes from the paid-for advertising. If you tagged your advert links, you would see those visitors as a distinct group. The same is true if you use Google Merchant Centre (formerly Base) to list your products in Google Shopping search results – if you don’t tag your Base feed URLs, all the traffic will be lumped in with normal Google organic traffic and you won’t see how your Shopping listings are performing. The screenshot below shows how Shopping traffic has been separated by tagging the visitors as coming from “base”, with Yahoo pay-per-click traffic also distinguished from organic Yahoo visitors:

By using URL tagging, we can then see the visitor engagement statistics for those groups, along with their conversion rate, per-visit value etc. It gives us much better information to use when deciding what works and what doesn’t in our online marketing campaigns.

If you want to learn more about using Analytics, I have Google Analytics training events scheduled for next year in London and Nottingham. You can see all my planned training events here.

Link building is the magic fairy dust of search engine optimisation. How hard can it be? Actually, it’s pretty darn hard and link building tips are always welcome.

Last week I attended Ian Lockwood’s  “Top Link Building Strategies” breakfast briefing and he’s agreed to write up a recap of his top 5 recommendations.

1.  Get listed in Local Business Directories

These listings will improve your visibility in the Google Local search results, and provide valuable signals as to the location of your businesss.  They also help with general link building.  We’re only looking for high quality directories, with links that are indexed by Google.  As a word of warning, many of these will result in telephone sales calls (just say No).

http://www.accessplace.com/
http://www.zibb.com/
http://www.bizwiki.co.uk/
http://www.hotfroguk.co.uk/
http://www.shoplocally.co.uk
http://www.freeindex.co.uk/
http://www.uk-local-search.co.uk/
http://www.bview.co.uk/
http://www.applegate.co.uk

2.  Get Testimonials.

So easy, this one. Think of all the suppliers you use who have a website, who you would recommend to others. Offer them a testimonial and ask that they link to your website, so that their visitors will know it’s a genuine testimonial.

3.  Run a Competition

Why not run a competition to link to your site? Offer a reasonable prize and a time limit on entries, then promote it to relevant websites, forums and blogs. It’s a good idea to post about the competition on your blog too, so people can leave comments with links to their pages when they’ve entered. Remember to state who the winner is when it’s over, otherwise you’ll get lots of emails!

4.  Offer Your Product or Service for Review.

This requires a bit of research first, as you will need to find websites who will review the type of product or service you offer. Assuming you can find some, why not ask them to review it in return for a free product/service? They will link to your site as part of the review.

5.  Get Links from Other Regional Businesses.

Whilst reciprocal links are, in the main, pretty useless for SEO, reciprocal links from other businesses just like yours will still carry weight. Why? Because they’re about exactly the same subject! Google expects sites about the same topics to be linked together, so these links still count. If you only operate within a particular geographic area (locally, nationally or internationally), why not search out companies doing the same thing in non-competing areas and ask to swap links? It’s a win-win, you just have to explain the importance of links to SEO, if they don’t already know.

Ian also talked about a number of other tips, including asking for links on your website (best done if you incentivise people through a free gift or money off coupon), writing guest posts or articles for other peoples’ websites and creating useful resources related to your business, which you can then promote and get links to.

If you are looking for other link building ideas, why not take a look at my blog archive of link building ideas.

And finally, I do offer a link building service so get in touch and we can discuss your requirements

What does your business do? If I were to limit you to just 25 words, would you be able to delight me with your business proposition?

Stop right now and think: are you able rattle off a succinct sentence that conveys the breadth and depth of what you do, as well as make it clear what makes your business special, and the benefits you offer me?

And do you have that 25 word statement slapped prominently on your web site home page?

The lack of a simple, clear statement like this breaks a number of cardinal rules of web design:

• Don’t make me think. I don’t want to hunt around to figure out what you do. If I can’t see it straight away, then I’m hitting the back button.
• Don’t assume I know your business. You know what you do, but I don’t. So make it simple for me, and tell me what you do.
• Don’t keep your light under a bushel.  You know your business is great, so go right ahead and tell me.  Tell me the benefits of using your business rather than your competitors.

This 25 word statement isn’t just for your Internet marketing. As they say, there is nothing new under the sun, and this statement means you have a handle on your business.  It might form part of your marketing collateral, or your elevator pitch (That’s the 30 seconds you get to clinch the deal with me if we were trapped in a lift together. Heaven forbid.)

Your 25 word statement is essential in Internet marketing because:
• My attention span is short on the web, I’m scanning your website, so keep it short and sweet
• Your statement is very likely to be naturally keyword rich, which will help in your search engine optimisation. And if it isn’t keyword rich because it is full of waffle, or using those wasteful words like “quality” or “solutions” then rethink your statement.
• You can reuse the statement when it comes time to include a description of your website in directories, or as part of your pen picture.

So, what exactly is is that you do?

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