1

Improve Readability
There is no better way to spruce up dull and lifeless web pages then with the use of imagery. Photos can help improve the readability of overly long and dull web pages by breaking up large amounts of content, providing visual cues and entry points of text. It’s important to ensure images are relevant to content discussed. Try and align the image as close to the most relevant content as possible.

2

Consistency
When adding images to your website, be consistent with image sizes and product shots. On ecommerce sites, this consistency can help reassure customers throughout the buying process. Providing larger and higher resolution images of the product can make the product more tangible and encourage the user to make the purchase.

3

Optimise For Web
It’s important to optimise your images for the web. Large files sizes can really slow down page loads and frustrate the end user so it’s vital to modify both the size and quality of the image if you are working with high resolution versions. Avoid adding low resolution images to your website at all costs. Photoscape is a great little editing tool that allows you to crop and resize images easily - and best of all, its free to download!

4

SEO
An image alone means nothing to a search engine. If you want your images to be indexed by the likes of Google, it is necessary to tell the search engine exactly what is by adding descriptive text to the alt and title tags of your images.

5

Make It Memorable
Oftentimes you may need to explain complex concepts requiring large amounts of text. Imagery can act as a powerful medium for explaining such procedural steps. A simple image beside a piece of related text can make the content easier to understand and therefore more memorable then an abundance of text.

6

Hightlight Features
Photography is an excellent way of drawing attention to your products or services features. By capturing the product or service in its working environment you can convey numerous things, from how it works, how it can be used to its benefits. When selling products online, it is possible to make ordinary objects appear extraordinary by use of unusual camera angles and lighting.

7

Evoke A Response
Brighten up your news and events page by using images for each post. Allow the pictures to do the storytelling. For example if you are holding a charity event, you could use hard hitting images to evoke an emotional response and achieve your desired reaction. Use pictures to convey history and craftsmanship etc that would be difficult to convey via text.

8

Be Unique
Hire a professional photographer – advantage being that they are unique and they relate only to your business. If you are smart about it, you will be able to reuse these images for web and print media for years to come. Only resort to using stock photos if you really have to, as people prefer looking at “real” people and places.

9

Avoid Copyright Issues
Avoid copyright infringement by only using photos you know you have the rights to. Resort to Stock Photography if you do not have access to your own unique photographs. When you buy stock photography, you buy the rights to use it for a variety of purposes. One of our favourite stock photography sites is istock.com.

10

Protect Your Content
Protect your own website images by applying a watermark to them with your logo or some text to deter people from copying them. It’s not completely fool proof, but could just be enough to prevent somebody from stealing your own high resolutions photos.

1

Decide what keywords you want your website to rank high for
This is the most important step in SEO so do your research.

• Ask friends, family, colleagues, customers, anyone what they would search for if they were looking for the products or services you provide. Don't just rely on what you think people will search for, you will probably be surprised what others will say.
• Use Google's Keyword Tool and Google Insights for Search - these handy tools will suggest alternative keywords for you.
• Research your competitors - what keywords do they rank high for?
• If you have an existing site check your stats reports for the keywords people are already finding you with.

Once you've decided what keywords you want (about 5-10 specific keywords), now its time to make sure these appear in abundance on your website.

2

Write your website content with your keywords in mind
Whether it is your "About Us" page or a blog or news article - make sure to use your keywords in the text copy. Search engines consider keywords that appear in the page headline and sub heading to be important to the page, so make sure your keywords appear in your header tags.

3

Create individual pages focused on each of your keywords
You could use your blog or news module to do this or you may already have a suitable page as part of your main navigation. Because you can't fully optimise all the pages in your website for all keywords, this is a good way to get focused rankings

4

Use plenty of internal links
When the search engines see linked words in your text content, they consider these potentially important. So, where you can, link your keywords to other pages on your website.

Make sure your important pages, i.e. service pages, category pages, call to action pages, have links to them from within the text content of other pages on your website. The usual “click here” will not suffice: use text that is relevant before, after and on the link e.g. “We have a huge range of baby clothes and baby furniture suitable for all budgets.”

5

Make use of Social Media
Use social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to create both relevant content and inbound links. Connecting with others on these networks promotes your business directly as well as making it easy for them to share your content with others.

Also consider uploading a useful video of your own onto YouTube – a well optimised video can get you a great Google ranking even if your website is no where to be found.

Publishing your own blog is also a great way to improve your rank – it will force you to keep your content constantly growing and up to date. On top of this most blogging software is already fully optimized for search engines – win, win!

6

Write a keyword rich page title for every page
Use some descriptive keywords along with your business name in your page titles. E.g. If you specialise in widgets don't just use your company name "Acme Widgets Limited" use "Buy Cheap Widgets – Fast Free Delivery - Acme Widgets Limited". Make sure you use a unique title for each page and that it matches the topic of that particular page. The page title will appear linked on the search engine results when your page is found. So, the more interesting and relevant it is the more likely people are to click on the link.

If you have a CMS on your website you should be able to edit the page title easily for each page.

7

Write a keyword rich page description for every page
Most search engines include the description below your title in the search results. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the page, using the main keywords on that page. As with page titles don't include keywords that aren’t in the content of your page. The maximum number of characters should be about 255 and about the first 60 are visible on the search engine results page.

If you have a CMS on your website you should be able to edit the page description easily for each page.

8

Include keywords in the ALT attribute of images
This helps your website become more accessible to visually impaired visitors but also gives additional clues to the search engines. The idea is to write a sentence that describes the image or photo and, where possible, include your keywords. If you have a CMS on your website you can easily do this by editing the image properties of each image.

9

Build Inbound Links
Inbound links are links from another website to your website. This can seem difficult but the following steps will certainly get you on your way to building some quality inbound links:

• list your website in directories
• exchange links with relevant websites
• comment on relevant blogs
• write a guest post on someone else’s blog
• participate in forums
• add your pages to book marking services (Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon etc.)

Just remember to include a link to your website along with relevant accompanying text when you’re building inbound links.

10

Create a listing for your business on Google Places
For local businesses nothing can beat a good listing on Google Places. Make sure you include all your relevant services as well as contact details and website address. Improve your rank in the Google Places results by getting positive customer reviews on websites such as Tripadvisor.com, menupages.ie, qype.co.uk, whoseview.ie, goldenpages.ie etc.

1

Follow Relevant People
Follow people, companies, competitors and anyone relevant to your business or interests. It’s also OK to follow people you don’t know – they might even follow you back! Great contacts and not to mention potential customers can be found by following the right people on Twitter, so the more you follow the better your chances are. Twitter directories such as www.wefollow.com and www.twitireland.com are good places to start, after that consider following people who follow anyone that interests you as it’s likely you will have a lot in common.

2

Listen & Learn
You can learn a lot by paying attention to what to others say on Twitter. The fly on the wall approach can be very effective, especially when listening to bigger competitors. It will help you keep track of industry trends so you can position yourself to stand out from the crowd. You will find many useful links, interesting blog articles and contacts just by keeping an eye on the tweets of those you follow.

3

Be Attentive
Keep an eye on mentions and direct messages. Anytime you get a mention (@yourname) or direct message (private) it’s good news! Once you’re over the elation of getting a mention, make sure you respond. Even if it is a negative comment you’ve received, make sure to address it straight away – your openness will be a positive force and will make people feel engaged with your business.

4

Post Relevant Content
The more useful, helpful or interesting your tweets are the more followers you’re likely to get. Tweet your opinions, advice and any news related to your business. For example, a staff member’s tweet on how excited they are about new projects or products will promote a positive image of your business. Don’t forget about special offers and promotions; but make sure that your tweets are not solely a vehicle for your product or brand.

5

Tweet Regularly, But Not Excessively
It’s important to stay active on Twitter with relevant content. However, if you’re tweeting every few minutes about where you are, what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with, you’ll end up getting unfollowed. Try to find the balance and think quality rather than quantity.

6

Don’t Be A Robot
With Twitter, as with all social networking, it’s important to avoid formal language when engaging people. When posting or sharing a link, add some personality by giving your opinion or take on the link. Don’t just post the url. Add humour where it's appropriate. If you have a particularly out spoken member of staff consider creating a separate account for them. If they have a positive message it will make engaging one to one with customers easier.

7

Customise Your Profile & Website
Reinforce the “not a robot” message by personalising your Twitter profile. Use your logo or own photo as your avatar, write a few lines about what you do in your profile and customise your Twitter background and colours to match your main website. Round off your customisation by putting links to your Twitter account on your website, emails, newsletters and any promotional material you send out. A Twitter widget or feed on your website is a great wayto keep people updated with your current status.

8

Make use of Twitter search
Use Twitter search to follow topics that interest you. Search for your products or services and see what people are saying about them now. You can even do a search that is location based so you can see what people near you are saying about a particular topic. It's great for local news as well as product and market research.

9

Make Use Of Lists
A great way to keep track of who’s who is to organise those you’re following into specific lists: such as customers, industry news or friends. Also take a look at the lists others have created, it’s a good way to find people of interest that you may not have come across other wise.

10

Try Out Third Party Clients
With so many tweets and information sharing going on it can sometimes put your head in a spin. Third party clients, such as Tweetdeck, offer a fantastic way of organising and managing tweets, mentions, messages, searches and lists - so you can spend more time listening to the people you really want to and won’t miss anything important.

1

Submit Your Site to Directories
Adding your website address to local directories or directories that are specific to your industry will aid with your search engine ranking and help drive traffic.

2

Make Use of Social Networks
Social Networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are powerful marketing tools for both your business and website that can help you engage with a huge target audience. Make sure to add links back your website when posting content so that people can learn more about your business, products or services.

3

Write Your Own Blog
Starting a blog is a great way to promote your website and business. The quality of content is of the utmost importance: If you offer interesting and helpful content, people are likely to link to it. Writing articles for other individuals, businesses or websites within your specialised area can also improve awareness of your brand and website. A simple description of your service along with your website address could then be attached to the article.

4

Promote Locally
Start increasing awareness at a local level first. Signup to Google Places and add a marker of your business location. Your website address, business address, hours of operation and even photos can then be added to the marker. Once you do this your business can show up on a map when people do a local search.

5

Make the Most of Media Content
Images, audio and video are now fully indexed by search engines like Google. As a result, it’s important to optimise this content using tags to ensure they are ranking for their relevant keywords. For example a high ranking image in Google Images or a video in YouTube could help drive a significant amount of traffic to your website.

6

Interact On Forums & Blogs
Have something to say? Taking part in forums and blogs relevant to your industry provides an excellent way of engaging with like minded individuals while promoting your business. Aggressive marketing will get you nowhere fast, but some helpful comments and advice with your signature containing your website URL could go a long way.

7

Publish an Ezine
Sending out an ezine with news, tips or information on services or products is a proven means of communicating with your clients and driving traffic to your website. The most effective ezines are clean and simple and offer a very clear message to the reader. Avoid information overload and get more website traffic by including plenty of links back to your site.

8

Put Your Website Address on Everything!
Does your email signature contain a link to your website? Everything you send out should include your website address on it, from emails, invoices, business cards and all various forms of print media like classified ads and phone book listings.

9

Offer an Incentive
Running an online contest and promoting it via a press release to the media has the potential to attract a lot of attention. Online surveys or quizzes with an incentive or prize for participating can also be terrific ways of increasing your visibility.

10

Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay Per Click Advertising offers a fast means of generating traffic to your website, but obviously comes with a price. The fact that PPC allows a website climb to the top of a Search Engine Listing makes it a highly attractive model for marketing but it can require a considerable amount of effort to manage your campaigns effectively. Google Adwords is still the dominant PPC model but Facebook Ads are rapidly becoming a marketing force, enabling businesses to target a very specific audience.

1

Write Specifically For The Web
Don’t take text directly from your brochure and put it on your website. Reading on a screen is very different from reading printed material. You need to keep your reader’s attention as they scan down through your text. Clearly present what you do, include appropriate calls to action and provide the visitor with easy to read and, most importantly, useful information.

2

Know Your Audience
Imagine each page on your website being read by a particular person, a person from your target audience. Now write your content for this person alone. If you can engage on a one-2-one basis then you will get some real business.

3

Use A Personal Tone
By making sure that your content is friendly and approachable, you can help to cancel out the lack of personality associated with computers. Even on a fairly formal site use a more relaxed attitude than you would normally in order to compensate for this perception.

4

Make It About The Reader
I think this is quite hard, because my own thoughts and opinions are so much more interesting than anyone else’s. I’m proving this point in these sentences, talking about me instead of you. A better way of putting it would be: You might find it difficult to talk about others, instead of yourself. Your thoughts and opinions are so much more interesting than anyone else’s.

So turn your ‘me’ sentences into ‘you’ sentences.

5

Make It Easy To Read
There are reasons why tabloid newspapers sell so well. One of these is because they require such a low attention span. Even when writing for a well-educated audience follow these steps to keep them interested: simplify punctuation; be consistent; Use numbers instead of words; Use imagery.

6

Make Pages Easy To Scan
It can be depressing to realise that people will probably not read your carefully edited content. However, the sooner you accept this, the sooner you can start to work around it. Include a summary of the entire page right at the beginning. This helps the reader quickly determine if the page is relevant to them or not. Also write your paragraphs so that the main point is first.

7

Stick To The Point
Usability experts say that you should take your content, edit it down by half and then half it again. This sounds almost impossible but it’s easier than you think. Start by removing repetition, marketing speak, and ‘happy talk’ (content with no real substance like ‘welcome to this site’) and you will quickly find your content significantly reduced.

8

Keep Paragraphs & Sentences Short
As well as keeping the page as a whole short, you should ensure individual paragraphs are short too. Each paragraph should make one particular point as this aids both scanning and understanding.

You should also try to keep each individual sentence as short as possible. Again this aids scanning but also helps to get rid of any waffle.

9

Break Your Content Up
To aid scanning look at each paragraph and ask yourself the following:

• Can I associate a heading or sub heading with this block of text?
• Could this paragraph be represented as bullet points?
• Is there a key message in this paragraph that readers need to instantly see?

10

Use Meaningful Links
It is common to see links with phrases like ‘click here’ or ‘read more’. It is tempting to do this, however try to avoid this temptation.

Many users will scan a page looking specifically for links. They don’t read the text before or after the link so they see it out of context. So instead of linking the words “click here” in the sentence “click here for more news” you can link to the phase “more news” or even the entire sentence.

1

Your ezine template design should reflect your corporate design so readers can tell instantly that it’s you.

2

Ensure your ezine template does not include excessive amounts of images or it will end up in the dreaded Junk mail folder. Large images can increase the chance of your ezine being caught by spam filters.

3

Grab the reader’s attention by highlighting words and using small blocks of  text. Think of a car speeding past a billboard: most readers just glance quickly over an ezine, so you need to get your message across quickly. Information overload will put the reader off.

4

Include links back to your website whenever possible so that readers can view more information about the subject, service or product. Include a call to action link and ensure that it stands out by use of color or using a graphic.

5

Give the reader the option to view the email in their browser in case they have difficulty viewing it in their email client.

6

Don't let you subject line become an afterthought, they are important for the success of your ezine. Remember it must encourage the reader to open it. AVOID USING CAPITALS!

7

Add social networking links or icons such as your Facebook or Twitter accounts to your ezine. This promotes trust, increases clicks and provides a resource so that readers can learn more about you.

8

Be consistent with the times and days you send out your ezine. It’s proven that ezines sent out on a Tuesday or a Wednesday have higher open rates because workers are more relaxed and focused mid week.

9

Set the From email address of you ezine to the address of a trusted or well know member of staff. This will help your readers feel more comfortable about receiving ezines and more likly to open an read them. If you don't have control of this, the From part of your message should at least include your domain name.

10

Analyse your clicks and views after sending your ezine and try to learn from them. If you had a particularly poor click though rate then do something a bit different the next time round. Perhaps you used too much text the first time or maybe your call to action links were not visible enough.

1

Do not make the mistake of setting up a User Profile Page for your business. Create a Facebook Business Account as it has many extra features tailored specifically for businesses.

2

Add important information such as your company logo, company services, opening hours and contact details. Add as much information about your business as possible, in order to gain peoples trust. Use the Info tab to add more keywords, content, and links on your Page.

3

Facebook is not a replacement for your website. Use Facebook as the voice of your business and as a support tool to reinforce your brand. Add links in your posts that will bring users back to your website.

4

Post relevant content. Before you press the submit button: ask yourself "Will this be of interest to my customers". Post special offers, helpful information and company or sector news.

5

Sell Sell Sell is not the Facebook way. Do not spam or Facebook users will grow tired of you fast and will show no hesitation in blocking you.

6

Avoid formal language when posting. Facebook is all about conversation. Remember your fans want to get to know you and your business. Nobody wants to be friends with a robot, unless youre Wall-E or R2D2!

7

Try to post regularly in order to keep connected with your fans. Aim to post at least once a week.

8

Respond to user comments. By staying active and responding to user comments you are promoting a positive image of your company. Showing appreciation for your customers input, will keep them coming back.

9

Promote your Facebook Page. Add your Facebook URL to your website, email signature, blog and any print material you may have.

10

Integrate Facebook into your website to increase traffic and help personalise your site. The Like button & Fan box provide great ways of doing this.