Update your
business cards and add your new website address.
Change all
your ad's to include your website address. (including yellow page ad's,
flyer's, newspaper, magazines, etc.)
Put your
website address on all company documentation.
Update your
company listing with all community websites, such as chamber of
commerce.
Make sure your
website is Search Engine Optimized so you can be found on the top of
the search engines.
Submit your
website to all search engines and directories.
Start ad words
campaigns to get more leads.
Having a
contractor website is the essential first step for attracting Internet
customers. But to maximize the benefit from your website, you need to
help customers find it. It's like having an attractive storefront. Now
all you need is a busy street.
Internet ad
campaigns such as Google Pay-per-Click and Yahoo Search Marketing put
your website onto the busiest streets of the Internet - the top of the
first pages of Google and Yahoo.
If you have a
website, customers who are ready-to-buy can find your website 24 hours
a day, 365 days a year. Taking their time and with no pressure, they
can look over the professional quality of your website and develop
trust for your company. Then, while they're still on your website,
customers can send you an E-mail about their job. Or they can give you
a call.
Pay-per-click
advertising gives the contractor another tool in the marketing tool
box. This type of advertising can be modified for any
budget and with the use of keywords will target only the type of
services you want to promote. Best of all the pay-per-click advertising
can be turned on and off at anytime. So when your booked
and don't want any additional jobs you can stop the ads and turn them
back on when you're ready.
Here's the
length of time it currently takes to get listed at each of the major
search engines once you have submitted your web page.
|
MSN
|
Up to 2
months
|
|
Google
|
Up to 4
weeks
|
|
AltaVista
|
Up to 1
week
|
|
Fast
|
Up to 2
weeks
|
|
Excite
|
Up to 6
weeks
|
|
Northern
Light
|
Up to 4
weeks
|
|
AOL
|
Up to 2
months
|
|
HotBot
|
Up to 2
months
|
|
iWon
|
Up to 2
months
|
You can get
your site listed much faster if you use paid inclusion programs offered
by some search engines.
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How to increase profits with a
newsletter
It's time to stop throwing your
marketing dollars away. Some of your ads are costing you a lot of
money and are not generating enough leads to continue the ads. If
you want to generate some leads and increase your profits, consider
using a very simple yet effective and often overlooked marketing
tool. The customer newsletter is a serious marketing tool and can
generate new leads while generating new jobs from past clients.
Here are the facts about newsletter marketing:
Newsletters are widely read and shared among friends, family, and
co-workers. Readership for a newsletter is actually four times
more than a traditional newspaper.
Customer surveys revealed that readers think a newsletter is more
credible than an ad in any media. The print media has known this fact
for a long time and some are starting to offer the "newsletter"
sponsored ad in their publication. They realize that they are
losing marketing revenue because most ads are not generating the leads
or opportunities the businesses need to continue the ad Therefore
they are trying to find ways to let business place paid ads that have
the apearance of a news article, which is generating a buzz and a lot
of businesses that have taken advantage of these find that the results
are better than any traditional ad.
A newsletter provides a lot of benefits for a business. They
provide brand recognition and help to establish your business as an
expert and authority in your field. It increases name recognition and
sets your company above the competition in the minds of the reader.
Newsletters provide a larger media so you can give detailed information
to the reader, while an ad is condensed so save advertising
costs. A newsletter enables you to educate the reader about new
products and services. Giving them tips and insights with how to
articles are found to be shared more. Your newsletter could be placed
on a face book account, mentioned in a tweet, sent to dig.com.
The benefits of your newsletter going viral are endless. Once you have
established your business as an expert or the go-to company, prospects
will be more likely to call you and hire you for their next project.
A newsletter is not only read by more people, it also has a longer
shelf life than ads. Newsletters, because they are emailed, are
more likely to be kept and shared for a long time after it was first
received. Because of this phenomenon, newsletters can be used to
attract new customers, increase repeat business, enhance a company
reputation and improve customer communications. With all the benefits
that a newsletter offers it is confusing why more businesses don't
implement this form of marketing.
Newsletter marketing is effective, but only if it provides real value
to the reader and is professional developed. A newsletter is not
a one page ad about a business. It must have well thought out
articles that attract readers. Articles that feature new products
and services, helpful tips within your business' expertise, or a
special section about a completed project. Free tips are one of
the best ways to provide the reader with insightful information and it
goes a long way in building customer trust.
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The importance of Website Navigation
Website navigation is one of the most
important and critical elements in web design. The effectiveness
of a website hinges on ease of navigation. The internet
statistics have shown over and over again the people surfing the web
are very impatient and they will click away from a website quickly if
it does not load quickly or if it is hard to understand how to navigate
through the pages. That is why website navigation is one of the
most important elements to consider when planning your web design. Here
are few basic principles of web design navigation to follow to have an
effective website.
Web navigation should first of all make sense to the site
visitor. Common sense navigation is based on a traditional
format, that does not mean that you must lose creativity, but site
visitors expect to see similar navigation for well designed websites.
The basic purpose of a website for the intended visitor is to provide
information about a product or service and to get the visitor to take
action, such as purchase, a call, or fill out a contact form.
Therefore a basic guideline of site navigation should be implemented
into the web design.
All elements of web navigation should be clear and linked by using
standard conventions. The standard linking principles are
buttons,
underlining texts, mouse overs, and menus. Creativity with
linking
registries that is ambiguous or not easily detected by a visitor will
only frustrate and could cause a click away. If you can not
resist the temptation to use a non-standard linking structure then
provide explicit information for the visitor so they understand how to
navigate. Avoid multi-step processes and remember the 3 click rule that
professional web designers use.
Every page on a website should be reachable within three clicks.
Studies have shown that most users will not click more than three time
to get the information they are seeking. Keep a website simple.
It is not recommended to use flash movies or splash pages. A
simple attractive website will prevent a click away.
Here's a list of the standard navigational structures:
Regardless of the type of navigational structure a standard exists.
These can be single links, drop down menus, or expanding menus. A
menu can be expressed as a graphic or text with a interlink to get to
the next page or information. The important factor is that each page on
the website should be within two or three clicks away from the home
page, with the most important page only one click away.
To make your website more successful, follow the basic principles of
web
design and utilize a navigational structure to increase the number of
pages visitors will go to. The result could increase sales,
leads, sign ups or whatever goal your site is designed for.
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How Contractor Web Designs Get Better Rankings in
Search Engines
The main key for contractor web designs is to get
your website ranked high in the local search engines. Here are some
simple techniques that will help you get a higher search engine
rank. Search Engine Optimization is the term commonly used that
describes what search engines look for when ranking websites.
The first step is to set up a contractor website with targeted
information on the services provided by using keywords. Place your
primary and secondary keywords in the first 25 words on your site and
scatter them evenly within the page. Explore the web and use the
right words or key phrases to pull the type of potential clients that
you are targeting.
Insert your keywords in your site's Title, META tags, Headers,
etc. Keep your website format simple so that your clients can navigate
easily from one of your pages to the other pages on your website so
they can find the information and details that they are looking for.
Submit your website to search engines and directories. This is
all the pages, not only the main page. I recommend manual submissions
for best results. It is best to avoid automatic submission
software.
Be sure to keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and
processes and accordingly modify your web pages this will help your
ranking to stay high in the search results. Utilize web tools and
utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
Spy on your competitors and other websites in your niche to watch
what they are doing with their promotions and content, so you can stay
one step ahead of them.
Use reports from your web hosting service to see where your
visitors are coming from. Break down your traffic's location and how
they found your website, whether from the search engines or from links
on other peoples websites, and what keyword phrase they used to locate
your website.
Make your clients visit easy and give your potential clients a
lot of ways to remember your site, by giving those free reports or
other valuable information.
Demonstrate your expertise in your industry and service by
creating and submitting articles to ezines about your company.
Don't look at your Contractor website as a billboard. Make it an
interactive and always evolving site for selling your services. The
search engines want to see your website change and development in your
individual pages and they will reward you with better search engine
rankings. The steps to obtain high rankings for a contractor web
design is the same as all websites, but the focus on local search
rankings are more easily obtained.
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Strategies To Increase Your Seo Rankings for
Contractor Websites.
Strategies to increase a contractor website SEO
ranking is the same for other websites. The main goal for most
contractor websites is local lead generation, therefore the strategies
to increase page ranking is still very important and geared toward
local search results. It's impossible not to have heard about SEO.
Everyone uses SEO to promote products, services or information. The
online environment is a very competitive market. This is why using the
right search engine optimization strategies is vital. Of course, there
many SEO techniques available, but not all of them are recommended.
Here are some strategies to find out more about the best ways to
increase your SEO Rankings:
Your main goal is to promote your website so that it gets a
higher place in search engines. If your websites has no visibility, no
one will find it. For example, if your site or blog is about
contracting remodeling services in your local area, you should use
relevant keywords to promote it. If you succeed, it will appear on the
first pages in search engines.
Keywords are words that may be used by people searching for
information. You can use keywords consisting of single terms or
phrases. In other words, those who search for something on Google are
using a keyword or keyword phrase. Therefore, it is extremely important
to use the most appropriate keywords in order for your website to
appear on first few pages of a search engine. For construction
companies the keyword such as bathroom remodeling contractor in
(location) is the key to local SEO.
If you look in the upper left of your web browser, you will see a
text that displays the Web page you're visiting and in some cases, a
brief description of the website. This text is known as a web page
title. The title is one of the first things that a search engine spider
'sees' when scanning a website. This is why you must choose relevant
titles for your services.
Using white text on white background, including text behind an
image, using CSS to hide text and setting the font size to 0 can make
your site be perceived as untrustworthy. If it is considered that your
site contains hidden links and text, it may be removed from Google
index. This means that it won't appear in search engines.
Your site's ranking in Google search results is also based on the
number of back links to your website. Google takes into account the
quantity, quality and relevance of these links. However, some
webmasters use link exchange schemes and build web pages only to
exchange links. This violates Google's webmaster guidelines and can
negatively affect your site ranking in search results. The best way to
get other websites to link back to you is to create unique content
which can quickly gain popularity on the web and increase your website
SEO Rankings. Provide valuable information that your clients will
enjoy reading and other sites will link to you. Contractor
websites that offer clients information about a service that you are
promoting and help them to understand the details and your experience
will gain creditability and attract quality leads.
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Techniques to Increase Contractor Website Traffic
Based on Keyword research reports, there was over 4
million Google searches by Internet users in the United States during
November 2009 for contractors. With so many Internet users depending on
Google for information when searching for contracting services, the
advantage of ranking well should be a priority for all construction
companies and it represents a large marketing opportunity for any
contractor website, yet few contractors are taking advantage of this
lead generating opportunity.
One of the quickest ways that website owners use to submit their
websites to Google is through a free program called Site maps. This
service simplifies the web page submission process while supplying
comprehensive reports itemizing the visibility of your web pages in
Google. Additionally,, these reports show:
1. Statistics 2. Errors 3. Top queries 4. Page Rank 5. External Anchor
Text 6. Diagnostics 7. Suggestions
Most importantly, Site maps routinely alerts Google of any changes or
updates made to your pages. This is a must use service for website
owners to gain favorable positioning and exposure in Google. The
problem is many small business owners are unaware that such programs
are even available to them. As a matter of fact, this is just one of
many free services created especially to help web masters improve and
significantly grow website traffic that leads to more customers. More
clientèle means more profits and an increased bottom line.
To take advantage of the Site maps program and other tools all you need
to do is sign up for a free Google account and sign in to Webmaster
Tools. You will be given some very straightforward to follow
instructions to verify that you are the actual owner of the website you
are submitting. After the verification process is done you will then
have the option to create a site map. Don't worry, you'll have access
to
step-by-step instructions on how to properly set up a Site map for your
website. Follow the instructions carefully. Once your site map has been
set up and submitted take a look at all of the other programs available
to you and use them.
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Meta Tags & Search Engines - What's Important
Many say that meta tags have no influence on your
placing with the search engines. Well that is almost true except for
one " the description meta tag. Almost all search engines (including
Google) do not actually take it into account for ranking purposes " yet
" many use it in their search results.
Google by and large uses the description meta tag as the text to
display when it shows your website in the search results. We find that
it will use this nearly 70-80% of the time. The rest of the time it
will pick up random text from your home page but usually it picks up
the first 156 characters of text on the page if it does not use the
description tag. Make sure your description tags are always 156
characters or less.
So when you use a good description and a search engine uses it
then it will help your click through rate. If your description is
attractive people will click though more.
All meta tags should be at the start of the page inside the head
tags.
Google is a little rascal when it comes to using or not using the
meta description tag. When it does use it you can have full control of
what is displayed to prospective visitors but it will often vary what
it uses at will with sometimes it just plucking a piece of text from
your web page.
To ensure you have more control over what Google chooses as the
text in the search results as well as setting the description tag
carefully also make sure that the first 156 characters of text on your
page says what you would like to see in Google.
If you have a flash site or just use pictures with a little text,
you have a problem! We have seen Google pick up the alt text from an
image and display this when it didn't select to use our description
tag. This will tell you to ALWAYS have some text on your page even if
it is only 156 carefully selected characters.
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Important Factors In Internet Marketing
There are tens of thousands of sites on the internet
that can give you helpful advice about marketing. Evidently, the more
reputable the sources are you employ to turn into a dedicated marketer,
the more probable it is too come about. Your time is precious, in the
same way as your efforts, both of which will gain by applying the
primary rule of discovering which information will be of benefit to
your occupation. Just provided you start using this trusted web
resource quickly, and use the information from it, you can be confident
your revenue will increase over time as your experience increases.
Searching description:
Information: Change is a regular occurance with online marketing
so any thoughts you have will need to be adaptable, whether you are
engaged on your alone or have linked up with an affiliate program. A
website that's set on supplying this type of selective information
should also provide guidance on what type of software ought be used.
Despite the reluctance of numerous net marketers to determine the
success or failure of their work, this must be done and is something
which training websites can help with.
Plans: Internet marketers are forever on the hunt for new
techniques in advertising their service. It is never easy guaranteeing
your chosen audience follows what you are trying to achieve but
internet marketers know the power of review articles, blogs and web 2.0
sites that have clever keyword use and back links to their main website.
Ensuring you stay trustworthy: Attracting visitors for visitors
sake is not the way to behave and looks to the person entering your
site that you are are anxious for their business. You have to ensure
your clients believe your intents are reliable and by applying those
recognized methods, like networking, you will benefit their endless
confidence. A professional site will not only help you obtain members
but will ensure that current users will be gratified with what you're
offering via excellent service and level-headed methods.
Up-to-date information: A reliable site will keep you on track,
make it apparent things you could do in a different way (not always
because you've done it the wrong way either) to better your site and
eventual earnings. Although it often takes a while to reach - once you
reach a certain stage you may find this site you have been using can
point towards other avenues you have not yet tried like SEO techniques
and other other ways to use networks
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Web Design Elements to Avoid
As a contractor web designer, I provide tips to help
contractor website owners that is designed to give the visitors the
greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a
welcoming experience. It doesn't matter if a contractor website offers
the greatest service, if the website is poorly structured it
won't be able to generate one lead, because visitors will simply click
off your website by the poor design.
When I'm talking about a "good contractor web design", I'm not only
talking about a good graphical design. A professional web design will
be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to
a good website design. The accessibility design, interface or layout
design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward,
which is graphic design.
Here is a list of some features of the worst web designs I've come
across. Compare this list with your own site as a checklist and if
anything on your site fits the criteria, the website should be
redesigned and modified.
1) Background music
Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, a CD or anything
related to music, I advise you to stay away from putting looping
background music onto your site. It might sound pleasant to you at
first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and
every time a visitor browses to another page on your site, the
background music starts playing again. If I were your visitor, I'd just
turn off my speakers or leave your site. Moreover, they just add to the
visitors burden when viewing your site -- users on dial up connections
will have to wait longer just to view your site as it is meant to be
viewed.
2) Extra large/small text size
As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics. User
accessibility is one big part of it too and a good contractor web
design is properly balanced with the text on your site to be legible
and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without
straining their eyes
3) Popup windows
Popup windows are over used to display advertisements. The goal of a
contractor website is to present a professional image and provide the
potential client with the information they are searching for. A
visitor to a contractor website is searching for a company that they
want to trust, believe the contractor has the experience to do a
quality job, and are looking for examples, testimonials, and the
details of the company. A popup window will distract the client
and in most cases will cause them to move to the next site.
The purpose of a contractor website is to generate leads. If the
website is not providing the information the client is seeking, in a
carefully structured manner, the site will drive customers away.
Minor adjustments can help a poorly designed website to start
functioning optimally.
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Search Engine Optimized Pages
The purpose of a website is to get visitors. A major
source of traffic for most sites on the Internet is search engines like
Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on. Hence, by designing a search
engine friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in search engines
and obtain more visitors.
Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index
websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a
page, reads the content of the page and record it in their own
database, pulling up the listing as people search for it.
If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should avoid using
frames on your website. Frames will only confuse search engine robots
and they might even abandon your site because of that. Moreover, frames
make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site
without using long, complicated scripts.
Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images.
Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you
present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual
form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically.
Use meta tags accordingly on each and every page of your site so that
search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is
about and whether or not to index it. By using meta tags, you are
making the search engine robot's job easier so they will crawl and
index your site more frequently.
Stop using wrong HTML tags like to style your page. Use CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and
efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make
your pages much lighter and faster to load.
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Tips To Improve Sales With Your Website
Anyone who has been marketing online knows that the
lifeblood of a business is the traffic of a site. More visitors equal
more sales. However, here are some ways that you can tweak your sites
with to improve sales without the need to get more visitors.
The first method is to weave in your personal touch in your sales
message. Nobody wants to be sold to by a total stranger, but many
people will buy what their close friends recommend to them. If you can
convince your audience that you are a personal friend who has their
best interest at heart, they will be convinced to buy your products.
Remember to speak to an individual in your sales letter, not to your
whole audience.
The second method is to publish testimonials and comments from your
customers. A good idea would be to publish both good and bad comments;
that way prospects will be really convinced that these testimonials are
real. When prospects see testimonials on your website, they will have
the confidence to buy from you because human beings follow the herd
mentality; when others have bought and proven it authentic, they will
jump on the bandwagon and buy too.
Use visual representations for the problems and solutions that your
product offers. Not everyone will read your text copy from the head to
the tail, but most people will pay attention to images on your website.
Offer quality bonuses to accompany the product. When you offer bonuses
that complement your product, your prospects will feel it's a very good
deal and it would be stupid to miss it. Be sure to state the monetary
value of your bonuses so that people will be even more compelled to
grab your good bargain.
Lastly, ask for the sale! Many people entice their prospects with the
benefits of their product, sell to them with stories of how it has
solved many problems, even offered killer bonuses but forget to ask for
the sale. Give a clear instruction on how to buy your product (e.g.
"click the button to buy now!").
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Improve Usability of Your Construction
Website
No matter how brilliant your construction website
design is, if it is hard to reach the content of your site then your
site is as useful as an empty shell. Here are some tips to improve the
usability of your website to ensure it serves its purpose - to generate
leads for the contractor. As the owner of www.contractorwebstudio.com,
I hear the feedback from many homeowners and businesses searching for a
contractor on the internet. Most state that they form a first
impression about a company from just a few seconds on the site.
The first method is to make sure the content is targeted. Potential
clients searching for a contractor want to locate a company that they
can feel comfortable with. The goal of a construction website is
to present the first impression of trust, quality, and distinction,
after all the client wants to find the right company for their project.
If you have large blocks of text, make sure to use CSS to space out the
lines accordingly. The longer a single line of text is, the greater the
line-height of each line should be. Also, make sure the font size of
your text is big enough to read easily. Some sites have 10-pixel-tall
text in Verdana font; while that may look neat and tidy, you have to
really strain your eyes to read the actual text. Think about the market
you are targeting.
Make it easy for visitors to find content that they want on your site.
Construction websites should first of all state clearly the
construction specialty and focus on the type of projects the company is
trying to capture. If you have numerous project photo's on your site
and a certain visitor wants to find one single project, you have to
provide a feasible means to enable visitors to do that without hassle.
Be it a segmented photo gallery or or index of project photo's
that you have, providing such a feature will make sure your visitors
can use your site with ease.
Ensure that your site loads fast if you do not want to lose visitors.
Most internet users will leave a website if it doesn't load completely
within 15 seconds, so make sure your website is delivered to the
visitors as soon as possible to retain their attention.
Last of all, test each and every link on your site before it goes
online. There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional
image than broken links.
A properly structured construction website will provide each visitor
the opportunity to develop an impression of the company and will be
able to decide if the website they are viewing is the company they want
to invite to discuss their project.
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Contractor Website Generating Leads with Good Planning
For anything to work well, care must be taken to
make
firm, workable plans to execute it and the same goes for contractor
website designs. With a well thought out contractor website design, you
will be able to create a site that generates multiple streams of leads
for your company. In fact, may contractor websites turn into online
wasteland because they are not well planned and do not get a single
visitor. Gradually, you'll will not be motivated to update it anymore
and it turns into wasted cyberspace.
The crucial point of planning your contractor website is optimizing it
for leads if you want to gain any income from the site. Divide your
site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages
and subsections in those blocks. For example, you might have a "current
projects" section, an "customer testimonial" section and an
"specialty" section for a contractor website. You can then write and
publish relevant articles in the respective sections to attract a
stream of traffic that comes looking for further information.
When you have a broader, better-defined scope of themes for your
contractor website, you can sell space on your pages to people
interested in advertising on your page. You can also earn from programs
like Google's Ad sense and Yahoo! Search Marketing if people surf to
those themed pages and click on the ads. For this very reason, the
advertisement blocks on your pages need to be relevant to the content,
so a themed page fits that criteria perfectly.
As Internet becomes more widespread, advertising on the Internet will
bear more results than on magazines or off line media. Top Contractor
websites generate leads everyday and contractors are able to prescreen
and qualify the leads they want to accept for a bigger ROI.
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