Alice Elliott's blog

Don’t wait for your customers, go find them

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Gone are the days when customers came to you. The internet may be compared to a massive shopping-mall, but it is, of course, so huge, there is no way anybody could possibly walk pass your shop (website) unless they knew it was already there.

There are some websites that capitalise on this phenomenon, due to [...]

Analyse how your website performs

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

One of the areas of my new job is to analyse websites for improvement. This involves looking at Google Analytics to view its performance, assessing what the visitor sees when they visit the site, and whether the design and copy works or not.
Assessing Analytics
Going into the Analytics of a website is a fascinating experience. There [...]

What 3 elements make up SEO?

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the natural or organic method of getting your website placed higher in the search engines, as opposed to paying for online advertising.
As a result it is a task that is never ending, always requiring you to be one step ahead of your competitors, and any successes tend to be short [...]

Forget your blog, forget your readers, forget SEO

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

There is nothing worse than setting up a blog and then forgetting about it – like someone said in a Twitter post, “a blog with no new content is like a cheese sandwich”. Although this made me smile, he is right. An inactive blog is the same as a brochure website, looking pretty but with [...]

Keywords should entertain blog readers as well as search engine spiders

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Keywords or key-phrases are particular words that are the most searched for in search engines. Found through websites such as Wordtracker, they are, in fact, search engine spider food, and including them in your blog posts will help raise your status in search engine optimisation (SEO).
Keywords or key-phrases should be inserted into four places in [...]

Websites and blogs: how are they different?

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Actually a blog is a kind of website, as they have many similar attributes.
They both occupy a presence on the internet, use an URL or web address, need a host server to keep them online, contain information such as text content, pictures, links and keywords, both benefit from search engine optimisation and can be tracked [...]

'Blackberry' doesn't say 'babies clothes' to me

Monday, June 29th, 2009

One young entrepreneur was asking for advice on her babies’ clothes business on a women’s business forum. She had decided to call it ‘Blackberry Babes’ and wondered if it was a good name or not. This is my response:
I’m still a little confused why you need to use ‘blackberry’ – is there some underlying [...]

New business? Want a website? My advice is: don’t!

Friday, June 26th, 2009

You’re an entrepreneur and you want to start up a business. Great.
The first reaction to getting a slot on the internet is to get a website. Wrong!
Why wrong? This is because websites are notoriously expensive things! How much cash do you have? I suggest you should have a good think before you go throwing it [...]

Why is 2009 is the year of the question?

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

I’m going to put forward a concept that has revolutionalised the internet world during 2009.
Start thinking in questions!
Why? There’s a question. Google constantly researches into how it can provide a better service for its customers (in fact, how it can make more money), and it has found out that people are now thinking of the [...]

10 Fantastic Books About Marketing Your Blog Online

Monday, April 27th, 2009

This is another excellent post by Randa Clay about 10 ‘must-have’ books if you want to succeed in blogging:
http://randaclay.com/blogging/10-fantastic-books-about-marketing-your-blog-online/
A well worth read!