When i say very secure i really mean something like this Ad5h*tGx6rX – how horrible is that? well yes that’s the whole point, its much harder for any human or computer program to work out that login password than say the sometimes used ‘password01′ which is really terrible. Even your name and a few numbers after it is really useless. Remember its not just humans guessing your details its computer programs coded to try thousands of combinations a minute and they run until they crack your details or they run out of possible combination that they have programmed in. This is where your super secure passwords beat the hacking program but your name + few numbers loses badly.

Ask yourself how good is your password? is it really easy to remember your password? is it a simple variation of your real name or business. If so you could be at risk a pretty major risk.

Or do you hate typing in your password each time, do you have to copy and paste it from a secure file location somewhere when you need it, does it really annoy you? if the answer to these are YES, then you are probably petty secure

Trying to save yourself a few moments of time by being lazy or not hurting your brain each time you log in really can ruin your business or life. The risk you can put yourself at is really serious, using the same passwords for most logins means if you get hacked then all your systems get hacked. If your email was to vanish in a day, years of email gone in a second how bad would that be and how bad would the effect be on your business?

As more and more business start using cloud services, security really is something to take deadly serious. Dropbox for example now have a two-step verification which is an optional but highly recommended security feature that adds an extra layer of protection to your Dropbox account. Once enabled, Dropbox will require a six-digit security code in addition to your password whenever you sign in to Dropbox or link a new computer, phone, or tablet. Full link to that article here: https://www.dropbox.com/help/363/en

You should also 100% have an anti-virus program running on your computer and firewall program. Keep these up to date. I personally like the paid for version of AVG but there are lots out there, Norton, McAfee etc.

If you do nothing else please just think about your logins and ask yourself as a responsible person, are my logins really as secure as they should be.

Here’s the fact, this will ruin your business on the Internet.

even worse if you rely on the Internet for sales of your services or products this very thing could easily put you out of business.

So why is this and how does this actually work?

The companies that offer this 9 times out of 10 use old and now banned techniques to trick Google in putting your website high up on the rankings.

They do bad SEO which can very short term work in putting your site higher up on Google. They then charge you for their services as they have done what they said they would. As an unknowingly tricked and happy customer y go off all happy with your website sitting high and you start getting business, things are great and your feeling really happy with life.

And then…

months later in an instant the phone stops ringing and your website stats show that hardly anyone is coming to your website, Whats happened?! It’s as if you have vanished from the Internet. Guess what? You have.

Google has worked out what has been done on your website (either technically or had a webmaster review your spammy looking content and verify it) and has now removed your website from its search engine. Not only that it has put a big black mark next to your website so you can never recover and reappear on Google search. In some circumstances you may be lucky and Google may reach out to you and let you know you have been punished and give you a lifeline to remove all bad links + content to your site. Now you just have the task of finding access to all the 1000′s posts and manually removing each one. An impossible task really, then you will end up paying someone to fix it all and that would not be cheap.

Sadly it’s happening more and more and we see it regularly now with customers coming to us bewildered as to how this has happened.

I’m going to try to explain what those naughty companies have actually done.

In short they run a program which creates low quality nonsense blog posts about random words and submit these articles to literally 1000′s of website blogs or forums.

Within these articles they include a link back to your website using a keyword you want to rank for.

This is perfect unless the websites they submit too are low quality sites, and they always always are.

In the examples pictures below I will show you a recent customer we have seem get ruined by this very method.

They paid a company who claimed to be able to get them loads of traffic to their website and high on Google. The company submitted posts to very low quality sites and Google found out. They have been hit hard and punished by Google for doing this luckily they don’t rely entirely on the Internet for sales but if they did then it would of been game over.

As you can see from the screenshot this blog has nothing to do with storage more so the actually written post with a link back is talking abut random things! It’s a total load of nonsense and Google have found them, out.

They’re is only one way to get s great position of Google and that’s by doing it properly. If something’s sounds to good to be true it usually is so next to,e someone calls and says for £299 we co put you on Google page one think about if it worth the risk, only use highly recommended SEO companies that you have heard of.

There is only one way to rank high on Google and that is to create decent quality content that people will actually want to read and then and only then apply proper SEO to the site to maximize its overall SEO position.

We hope that by doing this it will give other businesses ideas on the kind of things they should be doing to stay competitive in today’s challenging market.

This is the first time we have done it, but for me there was a pretty clear winner. We started working with them in 2011 and right from the start they had big ideas about what they wanted to do online and with their business. So i am proud to present the Purple Cloud Solutions Business Awards 2012 to Jo and Diana at Buttercream and Bows who provide cake decorating courses teaching you how to make really beautiful looking cup cakes in Sutton Coldfield.

We have given this award to them because of the following reasons below:

They keep their website up to date

Really important for their customers and Google that the website is kept up to date with no out of date content/info on there. They are always updating/tweaking their course page descriptions and adding/removing booked classes.

Use of Social Media

On Facebook

I’ve taken a screenshot below of their timeline just to show some examples of how they use Facebook so well.

They show high quality photos of their products relating to the timing of the post e.g. in this example valentines day which is linked to some valentines day courses they have available.

They have an offer which they posted on Facebook which gives customers a free gift.

They have posted a recent video from their YouTube channel which is a tutorial of Jo making the actual valentines cup cake that you can see in the picture.

On Twitter

Below shows them engaging with people on Twitter and using photos to showcase their products and happy customers.

It’s all just great content and its all relevant to the time they are posting i.e Valentines. It’s an exact example of what you should be doing and they this ALL YEAR ROUND. You can see people ‘commenting’ on it and ‘liking’ the posts giving buttercream and bows massive exposure to new potential customers across Facebook and Twitter. It’s not just whacking things on Facebook for the fun of it, its carefully thought out and published with relevancy across the board and that’s key to success online.

Offline Marketing

They don’t just rely on their website to bring in leads, living within Sutton Coldfield i have noticed their adverts in the papers and heard them on the radio! some things work better than others but the point is they try different routes and then focus on the ones that work the best, they are out there doing stuff.

Video

They have used video in a number of places, on their homepage to showcase exactly what they offer and have had some videos done which sit on their YouTube Channel and feeds through to their website. This includes testimonials of their customer which is golden. If you want to find out what other people think about their courses just watch the videos and you can instantly see that people think their great and have really the enjoyed the classes.

Newsletters

They send out regular offers and info on their courses via newsletters to potential customers.

Blog

They still have some work to do on their blog but at least they are blogging! helping with the SEO of the website. We have spoke about the blogging and this will be something they will be working on in 2013. It’s so important.

What I love about working with these two is that they want to expand and come up with new ideas and ways to make their business better online and offline, they chat with us about ways to do this and listen to what we have to say and then implement the ideas we come up with. They understand that to get the most out of their business online they have to put the effort in. They have seen great success since launching their website and its because they have put the effort into maintaining their website, keeping the content fresh and interesting. They then do the same on Social Media. They have highlighted areas to improve on their website and have plans set out to do this in 2013 and that’s the great thing, they don’t want to just let it all go stale they want to keep improving everything they can on their website.

So BIG Congratulations to Jo and Diana at buttrecream and bows for being Purple Cloud Solutions 2012 Business Awards Winner!

Hopefully after watching this video you will have a good understanding of the way Google splits out its search page into different sections depending if you want to rank naturally with good SEO or use paid services such as Google ad words.

Hope you enjoy watching the video below:

Remember you can hit the full screen button to view full screen and increase the quality of the video if your Internet can handle it. We have recorded in HD for you so you can use 720p HD if you want

If you read this and think it wouldn’t be relevant for your business or industry then you are very wrong and i will tell you why…

Your customers search for your good and services on Google right? using video on your website, Facebook and YouTube helps your Search Engine Optimisation.

As a business, any business you need to create video and link it to your website. You do need to apply the correct kind of tags and keywords to your videos so that you get the benefit from it, but that is not difficult.

Google owns YouTube, Google loves video, Google is where your customers search for your goods/services, Video helps your Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Optimisation helps your business appear on front page Google.

Being on from page Google gets you more customers.

How to start with video for your business?

A great way to start with video for business is to think about creating a video blog on your website. This can be a normal blog on your website but include video posts embedded straight from your YouTube channel. In short, create a video and upload it to YouTube. Then embed that video on your website, share the video or better share the blog post on your website that has the embedded video on across social media platforms such as Facebook.

A good idea is to first create a list of content that you will make videos for. Then create a calender of blog posts for when you will release this content to the world, maybe once a week you upload a video blog post to your website. Create about 10 videos so you have decent stock of video content. Create new videos each week. You can always mix and match the content you have, this way if you come across something that’s really relevant to the exact day/week your releasing your video content then you can put that video up in place of one you had previsluy planned in the schedule.

Video relevance

If you can create videos that are linked to your industry and relevant to the things happening in your industry on that specific day/week then that will gain more interest obviously. An example would be if its winter or there has been loads of snow and your a plumber for instance then create video content of you outside in the snow talking about winter and how your pipes may burst or boiler breakdown etc. This type of video blog post would be silly in the summer but very relevant in the winter.

You want to release regular content and keep it coming so as i said before creating a block of videos before you start will give you that cushion you need in case you cant for whatever reason make a video for a week or few weeks.

Remember to get your web designer to upload these videos onto your website or blog and start to really get the benefits that video can bring to your website

Its the year of video people, like we always say, get their before your competitors do it!

you can also put video on LinkedIn if you didn’t know.

Video ideas for business…

• If you have a shop then lots of video footage of your shop
• customer testimonials
• personal reviews from yourself promoting your products
• how to videos/tips
• answer questions that customers regularly ask you? answer them in videos

The below screenshot was taken from a video that helped one of our customers go from hardly any phone calls a week to over 10 calls a week. this was just one video of him talking about the services he offers. I use to all the time as an example because it was taken on an iPhone, edited slightly and just uploaded to YouTube and the value this video had to his business was just incredible.

How long should the videos be?

keep them short and to the point, maybe 30-90 seconds for short clips and no more than 1-2 mins for longer clips. Make sure the first 10 seconds of the video holds really key and engaging content.

Don’t have music playing for 25 seconds then cut to your message, as most people will navigate away after 10 seconds.

Now go create video!

Hopefully this has give you an idea of where to start with creating video content for your website and you can start using video as a great marketing tool to pull in more customers for your business. I know some industry’s are harder than others to create interesting content for you, but either way if you make a rubbish video or a great one, they will be pretty much the same when it comes to helping your overall SEO so id just get started on it, even if it meas just using your iPhone camera and uploading video straight to YouTube from there. Its a start and definitely better than nothing!

No doubt as a local business owner you will have noticed the massive change from offline to online activity by your customer base in terms of buying products or finding you in the first place. People no longer pull out the old rusty Yellow Pages when they need a service from someone just so they can call some faceless company based on a few words and a phone number. In fact I don’t even know where our yellow pages book is. You just don’t have to go looking for an old book which doesn’t really give great details of the company your calling anyway, and that’s the key, your customers don’t need to, why not? because their mobile phone like yours, which is probably in your pocket or on your desk right now is capable of pulling up the exact service they want within seconds they can view a company’s website and full service list with testimonials etc etc.

Newspapers are not the same as they were, not because there’s no news – it’s because their advertising revenue is way down. Companies realise that their customers aren’t looking there any more. These days, who would choose a company from the three that are advertising in a paper when they can find 50 to choose from online and then go straight to that companies website and read online customer reviews to help with the buying decision? They expect the convenience of IMMEDIATE information. Waiting till they get home to dig out the Yellow Pages is not an option any more.

With the dawn of the smartphone internet usage is booming. iPhone’s, Androids are just everywhere! There are 4 billion mobiles phones in use today a quarter of these are web-enabled smartphones.

Everything that is happening all around us is pointing to a marketplace within the next couple of years that will be predominantly online. These people, your future customers, won’t even consider using Yellow Pages or a newspaper. Many of the internet generation will have NEVER used Yellow Pages or even bought a newspaper (why do that when you can visit your chosen newspaper’s website for free on your smartphone, right?) I must admit I don’t and never have downloaded a free version of the newspaper, but then I just look on bbc website for anything important going on and search Google for the rest.

Stay connected to us even after we have built your website and benefit from our knowledge going into this online world. Our best customers do this and we have many talks about plans and ideas they have to grow their business online and often just call for a chat and run their ideas past us for advice. Have a think about what you want your website/online marketing tool to achieve 2013. Do you know what it is you want your website to achieve this year? maybe its to conquer social media for your business? maybe its to climb to rank 1 of Google or simply get more visitors to your site and increase your sales conversation, well just give us a call to discuss. Its free advice we offer to all our customers!

Whatever you do in 2013, if your not online, get online! If you are online, do not just let your website rot away and become stale, we can see that the customers who are successful online are keeping their website up to date with good content and constantly in talks with us about new ideas and ways to market and promote their products online. the old ways of promoting businesses are really starting to crack now, you have to get a good foot hold on the internet with your business before your competitors get so far ahead that even having a website wont help you. Its no longer about having a website online, that’s now a must have for any business regardless. Now you need to take the basic having a website online and then making it keep up with the expectation of today’s advanced users. Poor design and slow websites do more damage that good now. Ranking on page 5 of Google means your business doesn’t exist in the online world. Get there ahead of your competitors before its too late.

Get Listed on Online Business Directories

You should be listing your business and website on all decent business directories. We are in association with a local business directory site, which only promotes businesses in Sutton Coldfield. so you should definitely get your business listed on www.suttoncoldfieldrated.co.uk if you haven’t already.

Remember we are here to help you grow your business online not just build you an amazing website, but to support you online for the life of business.

There are still a lot of businesses out there without a website struggling along wondering why they are not getting the same amount of customers that they used to get. They have been advertising in the paper or on Yell and their customer base is just getting less and less.

Did the people vanish? No, they just look for products and services in a different place now. It’s called the Internet, more precise its called Google and Facebook. There are many other online places of course but in general thats where the people are. Consumers are also far more savvy than they used to be, they know how to use the internet to search for the best deals and like to really research products before buying. Its because its so fast and simple now to this thanks to the internet.

According from a study from Google….

50% of internet users have researched and compared products.
40% of offline buyers have conducted online research prior to purchase.

Lots and lots more consumers globally now also navigate around social media sites in search of profits reviews and user comments.

Now its all figures from some Google study and who knows really how true those figures are but regardless we know that one thing that is true is that most people now use the internet to buy things and look at stuff. So if you’re a business you need to have your things and stuff online so that the people of today can search for it, find it and buy it from you.

How do people find your products/services? Watch a quick video below:

They go onto Google and type something like “Product/Service in Town/City”

That’s how customers generally find you online.

If you’re a business to consumer business and your not visible for searches like that then you have a problem.

If your customers are actively searching online for your products and your competitors are showing up on Google or have more online visibility than you do then its an issue you really need to address.

Get a website and use:

• Internet Marketing
• Google Ads
• Search Engine Optimisation

This will help you target and sell your products / services online.

When customers do finally arrive at your website make sure you don’t lose them straight away. Make sure your homepage is good enough to keep them on your site to navigate around and look at everything you have to offer. Its estimated a person will decide whether to stay on your site or leave in about 1-2 seconds of your website loading. A poor homepage will discourage users that your products/services are any good and they will most likely click back and go.

Home Page Content

This is your online shop window to the world, if your front page is not done correctly you risk losing your potential customers after all the hard work you have put in getting them to your website in the first place.

Good website design is very important but its not just about a really pretty website design, its also about making sure you have the right content on your homepage and throughout your website.

The following things your homepage should contain:

• Clear info on who you are what you do
• Contact info – tell your customers how to contact you
• If you are a local business, tell them where you are – people buy local
• Clear navigation with working links – basic stuff
• Company logo is a decent place – build brand
• Links to your social media pages – quick access to gains likes or followers

Ideas For Other Website Content

After the homepage, look at the other pages on the website. When adding content to your website make sure its two things. Relevant and Unique.

• About Us Section – people like to see who’s behind the faceless online business
• Our Team – show your customers the human side of your business
• Products/Services – good images and descriptions of your products
• Case Studies – success stories from your existing customers
• Order/Book links – clear buy now buttons for your products
• Contact Us/Location Map – make it easy for people to find you
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Terms and Conditions
• Privacy Statement
• Disclaimer

Blogging and How it Can Help Your Business

There are so many reasons a blog can massively help your business. The main ones i can think of right now are listed below. It is hard work but it definitely pays off. Google loves fresh content and there are many extra tricks you can do to leverage this in your favor to help you jump up the search rankings and create a quality blog site that your customers and potential customers will find really useful and admire.

• Establish yourself as an expert
• Great SEO benefits
• Increase traffic to your website
• Broadens the range of your target audience
• Keeps customers informed and interested
• Improves communication with current customers
• Increases customers loyalty and trust
• Helps good quality link building

Few more ideas of content for you website:

• Competitions
• Discount codes
• Special offers
• “how to” videos

If you don’t have a website then get one

If you do have a website review your homepage and make sure you’re not missing anything that could be putting potential customers off.

It’s called Bounce Rate and it now has an effect on your SEO.

What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce Rate as displayed in Google Analytics is defined as the the % of people who visit your website and then navigate away without visiting any other page on your website.

In short, it is the percentage of visits from your customers that arrive on your site possible through the homepage or some other landing page, but visit no other pages, and then leave.

Having a high bounce rate is very depressing, it’s like getting loads of customers just standing on your shop doorstep but never actually coming inside, and now to make your life even worse, Search engines have now started considering the bounce rates in their organic ranking algorithms.

Having a high bounce rate will affect search engine position because it implies to the search engines that your website is not relevant to the searched term used to land on your site and will consequently penalise the website which will ultimately be reflected in its search engine position.

However if your website is of a high quality, looks good and relevant to the target market, is easy to navigate and has targeted the right keywords then there should be no need for a person to bounce away from the website. Instead they should be engrossed by the content of the website, and navigate around further. This is then rewarded by search engines as good user experience and will then be noted by the search engines as their aim is to provide their users with the best quality results.

Why Does My Site Have a High Bounce Rate?

There count be a number of reasons so you will need to check:

Website Content

Your site content sucks. Could be as simple as that, your website should add value to your visitors. The flow of information should be in such a way that it should be able to carry the visitor from the page they are on to the other pages on your website. Your website is like your home, if you want your guest to see the entire house you need to take them around.

Website Design and User-friendliness

Presentation is extremely important on the internet. Don’t do silly things. How often do you like to visit a website which throws up pop up windows in your face the moment you visit? Most people just leave straight away. Unless they are very relevant and well presented, but mostly its a no no.

Site Navigation Structure

Always keep your site navigation simple and intuitive without leaving anything to your visitor’s guess work. Its very likely that most of the bounce rate is caused by poor navigation system on the websites.

Technical Errors

404 pages and other technical errors should be avoided at any cost to minimize the bounce rate.

Irrelevant Keyword Selection

Search engines consider the keywords used in your site content in their ranking algorithm. If your website shows up for “dog training” while you are selling “dog food”, chances are, the visitor will simply leave your site. The same goes with meta titles and descriptions of your site pages.

Links From External Websites

You have less control over this as anyone could link to your website so quality backlinks from relevant websites are a must but, sometimes you might get that rare backlink from an unrelated off topic website. This might pull in irrelevant visitors which in turn leads to increase in the bounce rates.

So what bounce rate should my website have?

There is no definitive answer as to what a high and low bounce rate is as it is dependent on factors such as the nature of the website and how many web pages it contains. Obviously 0% is the ideal figure but not realistic. As a general rule of thumb anything below 30% is low, whilst anything above 50% is considered to be high and therefore should be addressed in order to ascertain the reason for the high bounce rate.

How can I monitor the bounce rate?

The bounce rate of a website can be monitored using tools such as Google Analytics which can tell its users which individual web pages have the highest bounce rates over a period of time.

So there you have it, its just so important to have a well structured and designed website from the very start. Check out your bounce rate and if its over 50% cry a little and then when you’ve calmed down do something about it by reviewing your navigation and content along with other things mentioned above…