What do I mean by this?  Well, there are a lot of people who focus so much on getting the search engines to notice them, that they forget their websites are primarily about marketing to people.  And all the search engine juice in the world won’t keep your visitors on your page if it doesn’t read well.

The key to SEO marketing — and why online marketing services in Birmingham are so sought after, at least by the people that know the difference — is in balancing the search engine’s standards with good markketing copywriting.  This means optimising pages for keyword phrases, sure, but it also means remembering to write about benefits, keeping paragraphs short, and using bullet points.  It also means writing coherently, and not sacrificing the quality of the copy just to sneak in another instance of your keyword phrase.

This isn’t an easy task, and usually requires someone who is familiar with the industry.  Botching it can also mean getting penalized by Google and other search engines.  So protect yourself, and your company’s standing with Google, and hire a pro who knows what SEO is really all about!

Technorati Tags: marketing services in Birmingham, search engine optimisation in Birmingham, SEO

Now, I don’t know if all of these sellers did the writing themselves, or if they simply hired poor writers — or left the writing to an incompetent employee to do.  But my experience demonstrates why it is so important to hire a writer.

Let’s talk theoretically for a moment.  Say you wanted to sell Echo1 airsoft online, but knew nothing about website design or shopping cart programming.  Most likely you would hire someone to design a professional-looking website and install a shopping cart system for you, leaving you to handle the airsoft side of the business.  Or say you had a doctor’s office, and the bathroom was out of order.  You’d hire a plumber, wouldn’t you, rather than tackling a job you didn’t know how to do?

Somehow, though, many businesses seem to think it’s okay to write their own website copy.  And maybe it is okay, if they know what they are doing.  But there are a lot — and I mean A LOT — of sole proprietors who think they are good writers when they aren’t, or think they are hiring good writers when they aren’t.  The result is a lot of really bad business websites.

Think of it this way.  There are two factors that are the first things your customers see when they arrive at your website.  One is the design of the website — whether the layout looks professional.  The other is the text — and bad copy will either make visitors doubt your professionalism or make them lose interest altogether.  These are the things that create a potential customer’s first impressions, and bad web design OR bad copy could send them scurrying right back to the search engines and, ultimately, to one of your competitors.

So don’t be cheap — hire a copywriter, and a GOOD one.  Trust me — from what I saw today, if you do this one thing, you will immediately beat out at least 75 percent of the competition!

Technorati Tags: airsoft, copywriter, echo1 airsoft

But that doesn’t mean that your desk shouldn’t be clean - a clutter free desk helps you to be more productive and feel happier with your workstation.  I find that enjoy my work that much more when my desk is clean, and therefore I try to keep it that way.

But what do you do when you run out of space?  I know that in my small little home office, I just don’t have all the room I need for paper files and file cabinets.  My wife sure wasn’t interested when I asked her if I could have a couple of file cabinets in her sewing room - so I needed to figure something else out.

I did some research on as many data storage solutions as I could find, with the goal to reduce my dependence on file cabinets as my means of storing client data.

Thankfully, there are document management solutions available for businesses the size of mine, and I purchased some software and one of the many document scanners on the market.

Now, I am just one weekend away from having all of my client records out of the file cabinets and onto my computer.  In fact, I am going to sell the file cabinets and make some room in my office - it sure feels a little stuffy in here.

Technorati Tags: data storage solutions, document management solutions, document scanners