As an effort to concentrate our resources on one particular area, we are about to launch a project to package up our organic and paid-for SEO campaigns into one advertising bundle to help Birmingham companies in particular.

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Whether you are just starting to promote your company online or you’ve been at it for a while, you’ll have heard of the importance of list building.

In the Internet arena, where you may never meet most of your clients (or customers) face to face, success comes from building relationships with your subscriber base. You’ll have a lot of “browsers” or “window shoppers” but it’s usually the regular customers that bring you real business.

You won’t automatically get a list of potential customers when you launch your site. You have to actively build your list over time. Here are some ideas and starting points to building your list:

When potential customers go online to view your product (or service) you need a method for them to sign up for more information or maybe some freebies you are offering. This is the start of your list building process. If you don’t have a way for them to sign up, you need to get one quick.

When your list grows and you begin sending them your newsletters, make sure that you give them value so that they really want to be part of your email and they won’t just unsubscribe.

Think about what they will find useful and why they signed up to your site in the first place. Then you’ll get them coming back to your site over and over.

Make sure you use a ‘double opt-in system’. This is where you’ll respond with another email asking them to please confirm that they do want to be part of your list. If done correctly, this will be the start of a great business relationship between the two of you.

By the way, the best software we’ve found to do this is AWEBER. We strongly suggest you sign up and get using it. Here’s a link:

As the world becomes ever more connected, it appears that the one way to keep track of employees that has almost missed the technological revolution has been clocking in. In a visit to a company recently, I found that the staff simply turned up and clocked in using one of those card thingies attached to the way.

How basic!

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This might be a crazy idea, but as part of our knowledge-base project (actually, I haven’t told you about that have I?), we’re going to be including details of other companies that do what we do.

Why?

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Whilst researching keywords for some specific customers, it’s quite interesting to find how people are actually using Google. It seems it’s not just all about the single keyword anymore and people are more likely now to ask a question.

Perhaps the ‘Ask Jeeves’ campaign has actually worked, albeit on the wrong search engine…

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There will be another update to the FREE (really, FREE) DIY SEO (search engine optimisation) e-book coming soon as we include new sections to tackle the ever-growing popularity of social networking.

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Every now and then there’s a whole bunch of media about a new search tool (or toy) that has the potential to boot Google off its throne and beat it at the search thing. It seems that Google is big enough now to be a target that everyone wants to go at and so when something new comes along, the headlines are usually ‘Google Killer’ or some-such.

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If ever there was a social networking tool that divided opinion, it’s Twitter. The views on it are almost polarised between “It’s a waste of valuable time and money” to “it’s the best thing to happen to the Internet since email”.

Well, neither of those statements can explain the real worth of the network to businesses, but maybe this news will make it all clear.

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Creating content for your website is one thing to boost SEO, however there’s also a lot to be said in creating content for use outside your own site. By doing this you can get lots of good quality links.

Trouble is, writing them can be a pain in the backside. You’ve got to sit down and think of a subject before typing away and creating a work of art that people will want to read. It’s hard writing one, how about writing one hundred?

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Websites can be expensive little beasts can’t they? You go along to your friendly web designer and say “hey, dude (‘cos you’re hip), I need a cool website with a white background that’s easy to navigate”.

Then your web designer slaps a huge quote on the table and you are shocked and alarmed and decide to go elsewhere. A hapless few will buy a copy of ‘Dreamweaver’ because they think it will bestow them with a magical design quality and programming prowess. However, the results will be rubbish.

Wouldn’t it be much better if your really well-designed website was actually totally free?

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