Scan this QR code to be taken to my homepage

What is a QR code?

You may well have seen QR codes (QR stands for Quick Response) and you also may wonder exactly what they’re for, how you can use them, or how you get one.

Well, just in case you’re not familiar with them, a QR code is a type of two-dimensional bar code, except it carries a lot more detail than a barcode and is more versatile. And here, on the right is an example of a QR code – this one simply links to the homepage of my site.

A QR code is typically scanned by someone using their smartphone. They do this using an app on their phone – for example, I use “QRReader” on the iPhone, available for free in the App Store. Scanning the QR code can take users to some sort of electronic resource such as a webpage or a vcard (a type of electronic business card).

What can a QR code do?

A QR code can be used in print media (like flyers, brochures etc) or on a website (like my example here). As well as sending you to a website or a vcard, you can also send users to any of the following:

• A phone number (which they can dial immediately, or save, using their smartphone)
• A piece of text (which they can save in the note-keeping app on their phone)
• A geographic location (which they can then use in a mapping or GPS app)
• An email address (their phone will then open up a new email to that address)
• An SMS code (allowing them to send an SMS text message to that number – for example, for a competition)
• A link to download an iPhone App – to do this simply link to http://itunes.com/apps/appname (replace ‘appname’ with the name of your app obviously! This will also only work on an iPhone of course)

Now of course, adding a QR code to your website is not all that revolutionary. After all, if you’ve got a customer on your website, it’s always been easy to send them to another website anyway – that’s what links do! So you never really need one on a website (unless like me you’re writing a blog post about them), but in print media, QR codes really come in to their own.In the past, if you gave out flyers or brochures at an exhibition, you had to include your web address on them, and just hope that people remembered to look at your website later. And invariably, they forgot.

QR codes change that – they allow your customers to move from offline to online almost instantly. That allows you to capture people’s interest while you’ve got it and get them to take some sort of action before they forget.

How QR codes are being used

Here are just some of the good ways that I’ve seen QR codes used in the last year or so:

• At an exhibition, a QR code next to each product, taking you through to a webpage with full details of that product.
• Estate agents increasingly use QR codes next to property details in their window, so people walking past out of office hours can scan the code to see the property online.
• A QR code on a business card – scanning it allows you to quickly upload their contact details straight in to the contacts section of your smartphone.

How to get a QR code

Getting a QR code is easy, and usually free. Just search for “QR code generator” on Google and you’ll find plenty of sites where you can generate a QR code for free. Be careful though, because there are some sites out there that generate a QR code for free but will incorporate an advert in to the process, which will be seen by people scanning your code. This looks a bit tacky and should be avoided.

I recommend delivr but there are many good sites out there generating ad-free QR codes. To find out if you’re dealing with a reputable one, simply generate a code and do a few test scans with your own phone to see if you see any ads.

Another way of generating codes is through the code reader app on your phone. As mentioned above, I use QRReader for iPhone, and this generates codes very easily.

Some QR code mistakes to avoid

QR code useage is on the increase. I see more of them all the time, and I can’t help but look at what companies are using them for out of professional curiosity. Here are some mistakes I have seen recently:

• Linking them to pages that require a Flash Reader – given the popularity of the iPhone and the iPad, this is a bad move, because Apple devices won’t display Flash.
• Printing QR codes straight on to a black background – they need a certain amount of white space around them to be scanned correctly. Without this, they are completely useless.
• Broken links or obsolete web pages – this mistake is surprisingly common.

All of the above mistakes can be avoided by testing. If you don’t have a smartphone yourself, you surely will know someone at home or in your office who does. Borrow one if you have to, with a free QR Reader app, and double check that your QR code actually works, before you go to the expense of printing.

Give QR codes a try

The only way to find out if QR codes will work for your marketing is to give them a try. It’s still early days, and an estimated two thirds of consumers don’t know what they are according to a recent survey so if you’re targeting an audience that’s not very tech-savvy, you may be as well to avoid them.

Otherwise though, QR cards are growing fast in popularity and have every chance of becoming part of the mainstream, so give them a try as part of your marketing communications and see how successful offline marketing can be in driving people to your website.

Related posts:

1. How does a website work?

The internet doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it is part of our everyday lives. It exists in and among all the other things in our life like our work, family, hobbies and interests, the places we go and the list goes on.

And of course, when it comes to the buying habits of our customers, there are some things they will simply never buy online before they’ve seen the product with their own eyes – many people still feel this way about shoes and clothes for example.

So, what’s the point I’m trying to make here? The point is don’t forget that internet marketing is not the be all and end all – it is only part of your overall marketing strategy. The key is to take a multi-channel approach.

There are very few companies that only trade and market themselves purely online. In recent years, even Google, EBay and Amazon have used TV advertising for example. Admittedly, I don’t expect any of these companies to start opening physical stores, but they have at least recognised that the world is bigger than just the internet.

What many companies get wrong is to think that if they can’t get an online sale straight away, they have failed. But the internet can be used at any stage in the selling process, such as getting people to agree to a trial of your product, or reserving a product to pick up in-store. Take a look at  this blog post on multi-channel marketing, which explains it better than I ever could.

The likes of Dixons and Debenhams have been finding outright web sales difficult to come by lately, but instead they have intelligently focused on using the web to drive offline sales instead, taking a true multi-channel marketing approach.

So, if you’re involved in internet marketing for your business you’re right to do so. The internet as a business tool is here to stay. But don’t forget that there’s a world outside the internet, and you shouldn’t think about online and offline marketing as being completely distinct.

Related posts:

1. How QR Codes work and how you could use them in your marketing
2. How does a website work? (part 2)
3. How do you get website visitors?

Now I don’t mind admitting, I don’t blog nearly as often as I should, but any story that combines two great passions of mine – rugby and internet marketing – is sure to get my interest and get me blogging again!

It’s not the first time that the use of social media by sportsmen has hit the headlines. England’s footballers were banned from using it in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. They failed horribly in that World Cup, but I think most football fans would agree that their problems went deeper than social media! By contrast, Colin Montgomerie allowed his 2010 Ryder Cup team to use social media and they won – just. Importantly though, he did spell out what they could and couldn’t tweet about, rather than go straight for an outright ban.

So is Graham Henry – the All Blacks coach – right or wrong? Well first, let’s set the scene for any non-rugby fans out there. The All Blacks won the first ever Rugby World Cup on their own turf in 1987. Since then they’ve failed to win it again, despite arriving as red hot favourites in 1995, 1999 and 2007. Rugby is like a religion in New Zealand, and when they fail to win the World Cup, it hurts them more than most. This year, the World Cup returns to New Zealand, with the All Blacks favourites once again. If they do win it this time they will shake off the “chokers tag” but even then people will still accuse them of only being able to win it on home turf, unlike England, Australia and South Africa who have all won World Cups on foreign soil.

So, this World Cup is huge for New Zealand to say the least, and seemingly no stone will be left unturned in their campaign to end their 24-year wait for another World Cup. Including Twitter and Facebook.  The All Blacks even have some history of their own when it comes to Social Media. One of their players, Cory Jane was dropped from the team during their 2009 tour of Europe and tweeted the fact to 14,000 followers before the team was officially announced, angering the rest of the All Blacks camp.

What followed was the All Blacks being asked to make sensible decisions about how they use Twitter, which seemed to work. Now, with the World Cup less than three months away, senior All Blacks players have asked for a total ban. The good thing about a total ban is that it is at least very clear. And the Twittersphere will no doubt have plenty of debate during any major sporting tournament, without the players themselves wading in.

So are the All Blacks right or wrong? The Social Media ban will certainly make for a more serious, focused atmosphere, but on the other hand, sometimes I think that the All Blacks have been guilty of over-thinking things in the past and added to the huge pressure that’s already upon them. If the senior players have requested the ban, then maybe it’s for the best.

However, personally speaking I’m more a fan of the moderated approach used by Colin Montgomerie in the 2010 Ryder Cup. He gave the players the chance to be sensible and spelt out what would and would not be tolerated.

It’s not just in sport that this type of approach is used. This week I was lucky enough to attend a presentation by Dominic Burch, Head of Corporate Communications at Asda who explained Asda’s attitude to social media. As he sees it, you simply have to accept that social media are here to stay, and your team can and will use them. They therefore train their staff on how to use them, how to set up their Facebook accounts and privacy settings, and how to use them sensibly to avoid bad publicity for themselves and the company.

This would be my preferred approach to social media. After all, they are just that – media. And there will be no shortage of old media comment on TV and radio, and in newspapers during the World Cup. Given the circumstances the All Blacks are in though, it’s hard to criticise Graham Henry for letting his senior players make the decision.

By 22nd October we’ll know if the All Blacks’ campaign has been successful or not, but we’ll never truly know how much their performance has been influenced by the Social Media ban. What we can be sure of though is that the use of social media by sportsmen is here to stay, and will continue to be debated for years to come.

Related posts:

1. What exactly is the point of Twitter?

You see, when people read things on the internet they are in a hurry. Often, that’s why they use the internet in the first place. Whatever it is you’re looking for these days, the chances are you can key it in to Google, hit enter and see hundreds of thousands of results, even for a niche search term.

And with so much information at their disposal, naturally people whiz through it, taking in only the main points. So, the more complicated your web copy is, the less people will understand it. Can you imagine for example, reading a page of an academic journal or a dissertation paper at the same speed that you read a website? You simply wouldn’t be able to take it in properly.

Academic journals use long, often complex sentences and large abstract words and ideas. All of which are very difficult to read at speed and properly comprehend. Simple, readable sentences are much more easy to read and understand online. Here are some quick, useable tips to make your web copy easier to read.

• Use short sentences, with simple words. Read your web copy out loud, it should sound like something that someone might actually say, rather than a long formal announcement or speech.
• Avoid abstract terms and say what you actually offer. For example instead of saying that you “deliver business value through sustained performanceand capability improvements for our clients”, why not just say that you can train businesses to get better results and to grow? Some websites use sentences so long that by the time you reach the end you’ve forgotten what the start was about. This goes against what psychologists describe as cognitive load theory.
• Analyse your content to see its readability. The American ‘Flesch Kincaid’ readability test gives a ‘reading age’ to your content. It ranks its readability as a percentage, and also gives it a ‘grade level’, based on the grades (year groups) in American schools. You can assess your website’s readability here and ideally you should aim for readability of at least 60% and a grade score of 9 (the lower the grade score the better). If you use Microsoft Word 2007 you can even assess the readability of your copy when running a spell check. Find out how here.

The easier you make your website to read, the more people will understand it, and the more likely they are to want your product or service. Personally, I’ve always subscribed to the view that if you can’t describe something simply, you don’t know it well enough. Explaining things simply is a great opportunity to differentiate yourself from some of the boring, bland information that’s out there.

Related posts:

1. How do you get website visitors?
2. How does a website work?
3. How does a website work? (part 2)

As with anything that pervades our culture so quickly, before long there were experts telling you that you must be on it and you can make a lot of money out of it. And many people are still wondering “…but how?…”.

I’m experienced in internet marketing, but when it comes to Twitter I’m a dabbler, not an expert. I’ve spent some time on Twitter over the past six months to see what it can do for my business, and I think I can confidently say you should read the rest of this post to see what it might do for you. It definitely deserves some consideration and an open mind.

Twitter won’t redefine your business overnight, and it won’t replace all your other marketing activity either. For the right businesses though, a little bit of time spent on Twitter could be time well spent.

Here’s some of what Twitter can do for you:

Find people talking about what you offer.
Rather than viewing people’s tweets through the Twitter website I prefer to use TweetDeck. Using TweetDeck you can search for specific words and phrases much like you can with a search engine. Only with Twitter you get to see not just search results, but you get to see people’s actual conversations in real time. So you get to see what they are saying about your product or service, the words that they use and all sorts of other useful information that can help with your marketing.

Give you information that helps you run your business.
You might, like me, be a consultant and want to keep up to date with new developments within your profession. On Twitter I’ve managed to find and follow a number of experts in internet marketing and this helps me to keep my knowledge currentand ultimately provide a better service. So it’s not all just aboutfinding customers, it can be about improving your business and developing your skills too.

Get your message out there more widely.
If you’ve got a great offer or sales message on your website or even if you just want to publicise a free newsletter on your site, Twitter gives you another way to get the message out there. A quick tweet with a link to the relevant area of your website doesn’t take a great deal of effort and helps you build a following. Remember to use your main keywords in your tweets and not only will your followers see your tweets but they may attract the attention of other users searching for tweets on your specific subject.

Let you track your competitors.
If Twitter can be effective for your business, the chances are that you may have competitors who’ve got there before you. Twitter is a very transparent service so if a competitor is on there, you can see how many followers they have, and their recent tweets. You can also follow them and see their subsequent tweets, and of course most will link to specific areas of their website. Twitter is one of the first tools that allows you to jump right in to the middle of the conversations that your competitors are having with complete strangers.
So, if acheiving any of these things could help you run your business better, it could be worth you too having a dabble with Twitter. I highly recommend TweetDeck as the best way to find your way around Twitter – it’s free to download, and it’s really easy to use too, with a simple interface involving columns. There’s even an iPhone version that lets you use Twitter on the move.

If you’ve been wondering about Twitter, my advice is to give it a go. Spend no more than half an hour a day on Twitter for a couple of weeks, and you’ll soon have an idea of whether or not it’s going to do anything to boost your business. You have nothing to lose other than a bit of your time.

Related posts:

1. Pay per click advertising – mastering the basics
2. Will banning Twitter and Facebook help the All Blacks win the Rugby World Cup?
3. How do you get website visitors?

Most new AdWords users think “ …but I only pay anything if my ad gets clicked, so it doesn’t really matter if my ads aren’t that great”. True, but Google only makes money when your ad gets clicked, so if it isn’t a good relevant one that gets a lot of clicks, Google won’t like it and it won’t show up in good positions very often, if at all.

How Google’s bidding system works

Let’s say your ad has appeared 1,000 times (known as ‘impressions’) and you have received 10 clicks. That gives you a clickthrough rate (or ‘CTR’) of 1%. Now let’s say you’ve bid a maximum of £2.00 per click. This means for every 100 times your ad appears, you’ll get one click, earning Google £2.00. So, Google will earn an average of 2p each time your ad appears.

And let’s suppose your a competitor has a clickthrough rate of 3% on his ads, but he’s only willing to pay 75p per click. For every 100 times his ads show, it will get 3 clicks, earning Google £2.25, so on average Google earns 2.25p every time your competitor’s ad shows (compared to your 2p). So, despite his lower bid price, Google will favour his ad over yours, and he’ll pay less than you for a better placed ad.

That’s why you need to write really relevant ads that get a high clickthrough rate. There are other factors that Google considers, but this is just a beginner’s guide, so let’s not get too complicated right now. Even with these few basics though, you now already know a lot more than most.

So how do you write ads that get a lot of clicks in Google?

If you’ve followed my earlier posts, by now you should have very specific ads for each keyword in your list, instead of one generic one. Some other quick tips to make your ads even better are:

• Include ‘negative’ keywords – these will stop your ads showing if certain words are keyed in. For example if you’re a hypnotherapist you’d want to exclude people who want to train as a hypnotherapist so you could use ‘course’, ‘train’ and ‘qualification’ as negative keywords. ‘Free’ is pretty well always a great negative keyword in any market.
• Use keywords in the ad – the ad will draw people’s attention to it if they see the keywords they have used actually appear in the ad – especially in the headline.
• Include benefits, not features – say what benefit your product or service delivers to customers, not just what it is. For example, if you’re a garage offering a pick-up service, stress the convenience of it in your ads.
• Use highly relevant landing pages – link your ads to pages that are highly relevant to your ads, as Google will also assess the relevance of the pages that your ads lead to (known as landing pages). If a lot of people click your ads, but leave your site quickly to see the results again, Google will know and it will count against you.
• Split test ads – if you’re not sure what words your customers respond to – do some tests. Google lets you write multiple versions of your ad and split test them to see which gets the most clicks. Test regularly to see what your customers like.

So you should now be able to dabble in AdWords yourself, if you’ve read all 3 of my posts. As your campaigns grow in size and you want better results, or even if you want to free up more of your time to do other things, talk to me about outosurcing your AdWords management.

Related posts:

1. Pay per click advertising – beyond the basics
2. Pay per click advertising – mastering the basics

So, let’s assume that your AdWords account is set up and you’re ready to set some ads up and start advertising. Where do you begin?

It’s all about the keywords….
Whatever you do, don’t just start writing your ads. Your ads will show when your keywords match what people type in to Google. So, take a step back and take the time to find out what people actually type in, rather than just using the words that you would use, as you may be surprised. With a bit of research, you might just find some keywords that you would never have thought to include.

Incidentally – in the world of pay per click advertising, a keyword is typically a phrase rather than just a word. Very few people search using just one word. If you’re advertising TVs, then “Samsung LCD TV” is still considered a keyword.

So that’s what a keyword is, so how do you find them? Well, there are many ways to research keywords, some free, some not. Probably the best free tool is Google’s Keyword Tool. If you enter a keyword you can see how many people searched Google for that term last month globally, and also within your country. It even suggests some alternative keywords you might want to consider.

Find as many relevant keywords as you can for your product or service, and you’re ready to set up some ads.

Setting up your campaigns.
So you’ve now got a list of keywords. You might only want to advertise one product or service, or you might want to advertise several.  What you need to do now is split your keywords out in to some broad themes. For example if you’re an accountant offering a range of services, you might have some keywords for tax advice, some for audit, and so on.

What many first-time advertisers do is throw all their keywords in to one ad group and show one generic advert to all of them,  and anyone who clicks through will be sent to their homepage. This is the wrong way to do it, as it will drive your costs up and make your ads less effective.

As an example, if someone enters “tax accountant” they should see an ad with “tax accountant” in the headline and be sent to a page about tax accounting if they click through. This might sound pedantic, but it really makes the difference. Google will reward you with lower click costs if your content is highly relevant to your keywords, and users will be more likely to buy or enquire if you give them the information they’re looking for straight away, so you’ll save money and be more likely to make money if you split your adverts out in this way.

Doing it this way takes a lot more time, but trust me, it IS worth it! If you don’t have the time to write dozens of separate ads, then my advice is to just to write ads for one or two products, and write the rest when you get some free time. You’re far more likely to succeed writing one or two good ads for one or two products, than to write one average one-size-fits-all ad for all of your products.

In my next post I’ll explain how Google decides where your ad will be shown and you’ll see why it’s important to structure your campaigns this way.

Related posts:

1. Pay per click advertising – running campaigns that work
2. Pay per click advertising – mastering the basics
3. How do you get website visitors?

AdWords has been around now since 2002, but if you’ve never advertised through it, you might not be aware of just what it could do for your business, and you may be surprised. Here are the basics of what it could do for your business, and in later posts I will explain how you achieve them.

• Getting traffic quickly – you can set up an account with Google in minutes using a credit card and have your ads running in a few more minutes. It’s advisable to take a little while longer over it than that, as you’ll see in later posts, but it’s still much quicker, cheaper and easier than say advertising in a magazine.
• Precise targeting – unlike an ad or renting a mailing list, AdWords brings people to your site, right at the point that they are looking for what you have to offer. Of course there will be a few people using the wrong search term and even the odd snooping competitor, but most people will be interested in what you have to offer, which can’t be said of many offline marketing techniques.
• Flexibility – if you think that AdWords won’t work for your business you may be surprised. It’s more flexible than ever now to meet the needs of different businesses. It now allows you to target people from very specific locations (even down to street level if you so wish), and you can advertise any time you want (for example you might only want to advertise during your office hours) and you can turn your ads on or off at any time if you need to.
• Low risk – while many marketing techniques are expensive and very much “all or nothing”, AdWords gives you the opportunity to test things very cheaply and quickly to see what sort of response it gets.
• Visibility of results - with AdWords you know what you have spent and how many site visits you have got in return.

AdWords now makes it possible for even the smallest of businesses with very little marketing budget to get potential customers to their website and to compete against competitors with larger budgets.

It’s not all plain sailing though. AdWords can become expensive and ineffective if you’re not careful, so see my next post for some common mistakes and how to avoid them.

Related posts:

1. Pay per click advertising – beyond the basics
2. Pay per click advertising – running campaigns that work
3. What exactly is the point of Twitter?

Here are the greatest benefits (in my opinion) of blogging for your business:

1. Adding fresh content – if your website stays exactly the same for months or even years on end, nobody will bother coming back after a while. Blogging is a great opportunity to add new, relevant topical content. New content will encourage people to keep coming back and will also help boost your search engine rankings, which in the long term will help bring new people in too.

 

2. Becoming an authority – if you want to stand out from your competition it’s great to try and position yourself as an authority on your chosen topic or area of expertise. Whilst your main website will explain to people what you do, a blog can add a bit of personality and really give potential clients a flavour of how you think and work and what your opinions are. It can even help your reputation spread further by encouraging word of mouth. In most professions, you’ll probably find that there are topical trends and issues that you can find to blog about and explain to potential customers what the implications are for them. For example, if you’re an accountant it’s great to explain what the latest budget announcement, or a new piece of legislation will mean to your target market, or even remind them of a looming tax deadline. Adding personality to your site can make your business less price sensitive. If you help people understand things that are important to them, they will come to you first, rather than shopping around for a cheaper supplier.

 

3. Building a dialogue - marketing is all about giving customers what they want. And you’ll never truly know what they want without paying a lot of attention to them and ideally asking them what they want. Writing a blog can be a great way to build dialogue with actual and potential customers.  By allowing them to post comments on your blog you can find out what they think and maybe even why they don’t buy from you currently. Some might challenge your views, but at least you will get a chance to give your side of the argument back in response, or in some cases they could make a valid comment that you can use to improve your business.  Either way, comments are something to be encouraged, and not something to be afraid of. Potential customers might even be impressed with the way you respond off the cuff to a comment from another reader.  If however you’re really worried about negative comments you can easily set your blog so that you get to see all comments and approve them before they appear on your site.

These are just some of the business benefits of blogging, and there are many more, so please post a comment if there are any others you want to share. I hope you’ll agree the above benefits are ones that would be good for pretty well any business.

If you want a blog setting up, contact me and I’ll be happy to talk you through your options. It’s really quick, easy and affordable to do.

Related posts:

1. How do you get website visitors?
2. How does a website work? (part 2)
3. Pay per click advertising – mastering the basics

How you find visitors though, is the difficult bit. There are more ways of getting website traffic nowadays than ever. That’s a great opportunity, but also a big problem. We humans are pre-programmed to get confused when we get overwhelmed by too much choice.

There are so many ways to get traffic to your site these days, that many people don’t know where to start – so….they don’t! They spend a lot of time wondering where to start but never really get started. Or, they start something, don’t get instant results and move on to the next thing, then the next thing and then another thing. None of them work of course because they don’t stick at them long enough.

This last approach is bad because most of the ways to get traffic are “slow burners” which will take a while to develop and a bit of patience and tenacity is required. It’s much better to pick one or two things, and stick at them.

Here, in no particular order are some of the main ways to get traffic to your site.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

To get your website on the first page of results you first need to consider what words your potential customers use when they search for your product or service. You then need to build your website in a way that makes it easy for the search engines to find it, and keep adding fresh content regularly. There are a million and one other things to consider too, as SEO is very complex. If you want to know more, keep following my blog, as I’ll be covering the basics of SEO in a post in the coming weeks.

Social Media 

Social media on its own is becoming a huge, diverse discipline – far too big for me to explain fully in one paragraph! Social media are not just for teenagers – they can help your business too. To keep this post fairly short, I’ll just talk about two – blogging and Twitter. Setting up a blog is really cheap and easy – even if you want your own domain name and a decent looking site. It gives you a way to spread your opinion and become a bit of an authority in your marketplace. Combining your blog with a Twitter account, you can then let Twitter users know when you’re adding a new blog post. By making sure that your “tweet” uses keywords that people are likely to search on, you will show up when people search Twitter for information on the service you offer. I release a new tweet automatically each time I update this blog.

Article directories

Writing articles is a great way to show your expertise. In fact you may even already have articles that you’ve written for your target audience or trade press. Adding them to an article directory is a great way of getting your name out there, and also getting links to your site (which can be great for SEO as long as the site they are on is a respectable one). There are many article directories out there such as EZine Articles .

Forum comments

Whatever you sell, and whoever your customers are, there is probably some sort of an online forum or chatroom where they gather. Search for them online, and get yourself on there and join in their conversations. Don’t bowl in with a blatant sales pitch or you will put people off, but try and help them with no direct expectation of gain, and you will find that people warm to you more. Remember to include a link to your site in your signature so people know where to find you. Commenting on forums is great because it puts you in touch with a very targeted, specific audience and your comments will probably stay there for a very long time.

Blog comments

As with forums above, there may also be blogs that your target audience read, which you can easily find online and comment on. The same rules apply – be subtle and add something of value to the conversation.

Pay-per-click advertising

If you absolutely need quality traffic fast, this is just about the only way to go. Google AdWords is great because it can be set up in minutes and you can target ads to people searching for what you offer. You can even schedule your ads to run during certain times of day (such as your office hours) within certain geographic areas (eg within 10 miles of your office or within the UK only) and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. However, running AdWords ads is easy to get wrong, so it pays to learn the basics first. I highly recommend Perry Marshall’s free 5-day email course as a starting point. I am now a qualified Google AdWords professional and I started off learning AdWords through Perry’s book and the information on his website. If you’d like me to manage your AdWords account, then contact me for more information.

So, just to recap – getting website traffic takes time, so be patient and stick with one or two things and get all the good advice you can, and be wary of any scams that claim to guarantee you page one rankings on Google within days. It’s probably too good to be true.

These are just a few simple ways of getting traffic to your site. If you want to know more about any of the things I’ve mentioned above, even if you want to know about some good free resources, just drop me a line or add a comment suggesting things you’d like me to blog about in future.

Related posts:

1. Why you should treat your website visitors like teenagers
2. How does blogging benefit your business?
3. What exactly is the point of Twitter?