Cutting the fat on your website marketing budget!

SEO

Over the years we’ve given countless advice to customers, friends of customers etc about internet marketing and the best practices.

I thought I would put a simple guide which although may sound a bit obvious might actually save you a few quid in the next 12 months whilst getting the same amount of new customers.

Okay the basics

Question: How do you monitor where your new customers come from?

Answer: I recommend installing a really good an impartial tracking system to your website to monitor where they all come from. Forget Google Anallytics, you want Statcounter.com the simple reason it’s not Google, it’s a 3rd party software designed to do just what we need and it’s FREE. Unlike Google Analytics which was built to monitor your PPC traffic but that is also free, try them side by side you will see a difference.

Question: Do you know what sites/directories you are paying for every year?

Answer: Most people don’t and take it as gospel when they get that ‘renewal’ call from the likes of Yell.com or Thomson Local that they have always paid for their service. There are some smaller firms that have never provided a paid for listing for your business but will do their best to convince you otherwise. So the simple way to sort through this is take 30 minutes out of your day and look at all your receipts for online advertising.

Once you have done this look at your website stats and see where the traffic really has come from. These statcounters do not lie, plain and simple. Even if you do want to keep advertising with a paper or online directory you will have to ammo to negotiate prices.

Tom Peary is the director of SEO21 Ltd. Offering SEO, Website Design, Digital Marketing, Google Places Optimisation, Guest Blogging, Copywriting and Link Building Services.