It doesn’t matter how many thousands of happy customers you have had over the years, it only takes one disgruntled customer to leave you a scathing online review to tarnish your reputation. Very rarely will a happy customer take the time and effort to leave you a glowing review and one of the biggest downfalls of internet marketing is the missing trust factor. The lack of human to human contact, often means your business misses out on the all important relationship building that you can achieve through meeting someone in person. This is why reviews and testimonials have become incredibly important.

Most good business owners pride themselves on customer service, happy customers are returning customers, happy customers will recommend you to friends and family. At some point someone will feel you let them down. A bed review has the potential to turn customers away in droves, once posted online on sites such as Google Places, Qype, Trip Adviser, Hot Frog or similar what can you do to rectify the situation?

• Remain Professional: You may have had the worst possible day at work, you may have at the time done everything you felt you could to passify the person and make good a bad situation, yet still they have gone online and ripped your business to pieces. It is really important you step back, and take out your emotional involvement in the situation. Address their concerns and complaints in an calm professional manner, however tempting it is do not abuse them.
• Face it head on: Once a bad review is posted it is there to stay. It is human nature to want value for money and they will always check the negative reviews before the positive. Make sure you respond publicly, if customers can see you take feedback seriously and have taken steps to address the issue you can win them back.
• Apologise and explain: Explain how you have rectified the problems they have encountered. If most of your reviews are positive, the tiny bit of effort it takes to respond will show that you care what your customers think. I have written an example below:

Dear Mrs Smith

I am sorry to hear you encountered problems with our service today. We wanted to let you know you have addressed the points you raised, and we have made the following changes based on your feedback…… (insert a list of changes)

A lot of focus in life is based around negatives, but what about the positives? Have you thought about engaging with the happy customers, the ones who are likely to return and recommend your services? For example customers who have taken the time and effort to say “A great little cafe I buy my lunch here every day, staff are friendly and the salads are fab.” A short simple response of “Hi Vicky, really pleased you are enjoying our cafe, we are expanding our salad bar over the coming weeks and would be interested in any preferences our customers might have.”
Instantly you have made that customer feel special, you have highlighted that their thoughts are important to you, and you have told anyone reading that you are expanding your services.

Sometimes a bad review is not as negative as it might first seem, by reacting positively showing you take your customers feedback seriously, taking necessary actions to rectify their complaints, you have gone some way to restoring your reputation and improving your customer experience.

It’s the time of year where we are all looking to the future and what we can do to make things better than last year. This focus and attention should be applied for your Internet Marketing as well.

You should look into the good and the bad from the last year and assess what needs to be changed to make this year SEO.

Your SEO New Years Resolutions should be as follows:

Give up Building bad links:

Go to Yahoo site explorer and look up all of your links. Do they represent your business and your website in a good way? Are they from pages with good page ranks? Are they follow links? Make sure that you don’t have too many paid links from sites that aren’t relevant to your industry.

Commit to adding fresh new content on a regular basis:

Your SEO success will be enhanced considerably by adding regular new content to your site but as well as that you would benefit from periodically checking that the content on each page relates to the keywords that are being optimised on them.  Start the new year with fresh new updated pages that reflect your business plan for 2011.

Be realistic about your success and get clear facts.

Adding Google analytics code to your web pages is essential for tracking the effectiveness of your website and for tracing the visitors behaviour. Most sites have this code in the pages but don’t forget to add it to your wordpress blogs and to all new content. Finding out clear facts will give you a reality check as to what works on your website and what doesn’t. Being realistic about your site is always a good new years resolution!

Make sure Search Engines take notice of all your pages.

Make sure your site  has an xml sitemap which gives a clear instant navigation to a search engine about all the pages you have in your site. If you have already got one then make it your resolution to ensure that when adding new content to your site you update your xml sitemap and then resubmit it to Googles Webmaster tools. This is a clear instant way of making sure each page gets indexed as it should. This will benefit your SEO to make sure no optimised pages are left out of the equation when placing you in the SERP’s is decided.

These are but a few tips to ensure your SEO continues to grow in a positive manner for the New Year. As long as we all remember that SEO is a constant thing that should be re audited throughout the year but it is always best to start the year with best practices in mind.

Santa, in ensuring he gets all his presents to those good little boys and girls (and me I hope) will do everything to prepare in the months running up to the expected moment of joy when he takes off with Rudolf and the crew to ensure that everything goes smoothly.

He will look at all the things that are needed in preparation for his trip to be successful and to ensure he has covered all bases required.

Santa is so good at this and never leaves any important aspects out which is why he is such a success in his wonderful career. This leads me to think that if this Christmas thing starts to not work out so well for the big man he would be great taking a job up in internet marketing, completing internal SEO for websites.

Lets think about the jobs that need to be completed for the internal SEO changes to make a website perform its best and compare it to Santa’s CV and job skills and see if he has the skills required…………………

Keyword Selection is like present selection

Each year when thinking about what gifts to take to which kids Santa has to select the best presents that will bring the most joy and happiness to the children. He could use these skills in his keyword selection. He has to make sure his keywords are the most popular ones that people like to use with the best search volumes. Instead of looking to see what the most popular toys are from all the Christmas lists sent to him Santa can use the Adwords keyword tool which will give him the Local search volumes for his keywords helping him to decide which he should use to optimise his site with.

Keyword distribution is like present distribution

Santas next job would be to decide which presents he would give to which child. Now this skill is one he could use for the next stage in internal SEO. Santa has to decide from the presents he made where in the world he is going to distribute them and which lucky child will be getting which toys. He would pick the most popular toys for the best behaved children and the next 2 best for the second and third best behaving group of children. The presents left over will either go to girls or boys depending on which suit which sex best. This skill of santas would work really well for distributing his keywords if he was to work in SEO. The most popular keywords would go on the best position ( Heading 1 on the Index Page), The second and third popular would also go on the index page (heading 2′s) and the rest of the keywords would go onto the product/ services pages depending on where they fit best.

Page titles and Meta Data are like writing present tags.

After Santa has got all of his elves to wrap all the presents, he needs to make sure that each present is properly labelled to make sure that the correct presents are put in the right sacks by the elves. This is so he knows what sacks contain which presents. Santa could use this skill working on the SEO of a website when it comes to writing his page titles and meta data. He needs to write these to ensure that the search engines know what pages relate to which keywords. His page titles need to contain the keywords used on each individual page as do his meta description and meta keyword tabs. This will confirm to the search engine what keyword searches to list each page under.

Internal Linking is like organising present sacks.

Although Santa is a very clever wonderful man, he too needs some help. Often on his trip round the world he does take a senior elf with him to point out which sack contains which presents to ensure he is fast enough to fill his sack before going down each chimney pot. The elf points to Santa which bag has the Xbox 360′s in and which has the Barbie dolls in etc to make sure he always knows what toys are where. What Santa has learnt from this procedure, is very much the same as the internal linking he would need to set up on a website if he was to do internal SEO for a job. He would have his keywords on other pages of the site and like the elves pointing to the right sacks he’d use the keywords as anchor text which is linked to the page where the keyword is contained. This tells the search engine what keywords are in each page. Santa’s internal linking will ensure the search engine doesn’t get confused and that it can quickly decide which page relates to which keyword.

Site maps are like Santa’s plan for what presents are being delivered where.

Finally we come to the main event of Santa’s job each year, the delivery! Santa has a lot of houses to get round in a short space of time and this requires clear planning on what he is taking into which house. He will have a clear list for each house which provides him with an extra confirmation of what presents go where. This list he keeps is a lot like the SEO sitemap Santa would have to build. The sitemap would act as an extra way of confirming to the search engines about what each page relates to. It helps by providing an additional system of links that says what keywords go where in the site just like Santas lists tell him what presents go to which house.

All in all looking at his CV he sounds like he would make a great person for a Internal SEO consultant, but I personally hope he keeps his current job else I would so miss leaving out his mince pie and sherry on Christmas Eve waiting to see what treats he brings…for the kids of course!!!…….Ho Ho Ho.

Strength in Numbers Brings Online Success

Over the past few weeks, nay, months, we’ve focussed on the technical elements of SEO and internet marketing. From Rebecca’s musings on the march of the Google monster to Nick’s weekly blockbusters, we’ve plumbed the depths of SEO in a relentless search for perfection (pun intended).
With this in mind, I thought I’d write a little something on the importance of building relationships for internet marketing success, complete with a few ‘thank yous’ of my own to those with whom my colleagues and I have worked over the last few months.

So what do I mean by building relationships?

Well although internet marketing is the realm of businessmen, cut and thrust dealings and hard sell techniques always fail online. It’s much easier to dismiss someone’s sales pitch when they’re not standing in front of you, meaning that an old school salesman trying to sell online has lost his most powerful ally: pressure.

No; the way to success in many areas of online marketing lies with earning the trust of those you’re working with.

Link Exchanging

Take a good old fashioned reciprocal link exchange for example. The best way to get a link of value is to first find a site which is worth praising. This forces you to survey each site individually, which allows you to get to know your potential link partner before getting in touch and voicing your proposition.

Building takes two things – time and action. If you try to do too much with a contact, both in terms of giving and taking in your professional partnership, things are likely to stall after too long. Having said this, if your relationship is left to stagnate, with inaction on both sides, you’ll soon forget all good feeling you had toward one another and will be back to square one.

If you’re only making contact because you want a reciprocal link, then you’ve almost always failed before you’ve begun. Sure, approach contacts with the link in mind, but don’t see this as the be all and end all.

A well established relationship is much more valuable as it may give long term fruit to both parties, providing links, exposure or support time and time again in the future. Plus, most savvy internet marketers will know when you’re only after one thing, and some may not take too kindly to it.

Guest Blogging

The bloggers ace in the hole is no different, and could in fact require more trust and mutual respect than a simple reciprocal link. Accepting someone’s guest blog onto your site is like lending them your car. Your website becomes a vehicle for their views, opinions and also their brand.

Therefore, just like you wouldn’t let just anyone take your Porsche for a spin, neither will you want a stranger posting content onto your site. Bear this in mind if you’re looking to send your blogs far and wide and try to reassure webmasters that you’re compatible as people.

Goodwill

Goodwill goes a long way online precisely because so many businesses forget that they’re corresponding with real people, with real likes and dislikes. You wouldn’t go up to a stranger in the street and ask them to wear a sandwich board advertising your brand, so why do it on the web? However, you might visit an industry contact for help with your marketing campaign, provided you have a good existing relationship with them which has benefitted them in the past

Try to form a relationship which is based on real interaction – prove you can keep to your promises and you’ll find your contacts keep to theirs.
To finish, we’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone for whom we’ve guest blogged in the past six months. We’re delighted to have built up some strong working relationships with internet marketers from around the globe, and are looking forward to making more.

We’re talking about people like Ann Smarty of Search Engine Journal and Mick Meaney, Webmaster of internet marketing news hub RINF. With their help, we’ve been able to prove to ourselves and others that good online working relationships can be built for the good of both parties.

A huge thank you also to Authority Domains and Andrew.G.Rosen of BloggingPro. Webmasters like these have helped us create better and more popular blogs, and without the cooperation of others we’d have nothing to show for the long hours spent beavering away at our desks!

We are all well aware we are sitting rather uncomfortably in the middle of a recession. There is a general feeling of unease with the new coalition government promising reform, people don’t know whether to spend or sit tight and save it for the potentially tough times ahead.

As a business you would be wise to review your spending… yes. In these uncertain times you would be wise to tighten your internet marketing budget… big mistake. I am not suggesting you take uncalculated risks, but in tough times you need to fight harder for your share, it is times like these you need to be savvy, to know your market and supply what people need.

You need a marketing plan that is measurable, with specific objectives, you need to focus on actual sales. I read a brilliant quote a few weeks ago (apologies for not remembering where) “fail often, fail cheaply and know when you need to get out”. In other words find a niche, test the water if they bite then invest more, don’t try and invest to much to soon.

It is important to look closely at your marketing efforts. A website can be a powerful tool, but are you using it effectively?

Review Your Market:

Do you really know your market? Do you know the demographics of your chosen market/areas, most importantly are you offering a product or service they are prepared to buy? Have a good look at your current internet marketing campaign, and see if there are opportunities you are missing out on.

Review Your Website:

Go back to basics and review your internal optimisation, it is often surprising how the little things can start to add up. Set some time aside and give your site an overhaul. If possible get a fresh pair of eyes involved they will highlight problems, ideas for improvement and new ideas.

Stand Out:

Can you better what your competitors are offering? You need to identify a reason why people should pick you over the other 10 results on page one. Consumers are now more wary with their money, most turn to the internet to get a good deal, you need to make sure you convince them that they are. Testimonials, free returns will help people assume that you have faith in your products, and they wont want to send them back.

My last point for the day… Answer the phone! My parents run a business, over the years to top up my pocket money I have helped out in the office. I can’t remember how many times I argued with Mum about both of us being out the office at the same time leaving no-one to answer the phone. My standard answer was “if it is important they will call back”. In this case I am happy to hold my hands up and admit I was wrong and my Mum was right. There is nothing more infuriating than a business not answering the phone when you are limited for time. With times as they are, you can not afford to miss a single customer, even more importantly if you are an e-commerce site don’t hide your contact details it does nothing to install trust in your company. I have often wanted to know more about a product before committing to buy. Make sure you train your staff on how to answer the phone and deal with customers in a polite fashion. During times like these you need them more than they need you!!!