There are hundreds of businesses around Ireland that have a website made, just to have something there. Unfortunately, the internet is a highly competitive place and getting more so by the day, so just existing online is no longer enough. You need to be actively driving traffic to a user friendly website that meets all of the needs of your potential customers and converts them into leads and sales for your business.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the practice of optimising your website so it’s as easy as possible for search engines (like Google) to find when users are searching online.
It improves your rank on search engine results pages and makes it easier for your potential customers to find you when they are looking for the services you provide.
Generally, the higher you are in the rankings the more organic traffic you will be able to get. The more traffic you can get for free, the better, as every click is a potential customer.
SEO isn’t a quick fix however, depending on your industry and how much SEO work your competitors are doing, it can take months to see the best results.
Some SEO firms promise that they will make you ranked #1 for specific terms in Google, but due to the nature of SEO that’s just not a guarantee that can be made. If your rank drastically improves in a very short space of time, your SEO agency might be using “Black Hat” tactics.
These are basically shortcuts that go against every search engine’s policies like buying links etc. While they may work in the short term, “Black Hat” tactics carry huge penalties when you get caught which means that any good work will be undone and you may struggle to ever regain your original rankings before you started SEO in the first place.
You should always choose an honest SEO company that has a track record of good results and sets realistic goals.
Depending on your business type, we can advise you on which type of advertising would suit your business best.
It might be Google AdWords search advertising, shopping, remarketing, YouTube ads, social media ads or a combination of everything.
Using Google AdWords, we can put your business at the very top of Google search results for specific search terms about your services and products. We get your services in front of potential customers, right when they are looking for you and drive traffic to your website or a specially developed landing page to maximise conversions.
Over time we tweak your campaigns to focus in on the search terms that maximize your ROI.
Google search ads work incredibly well in tandem with a good SEO strategy, as we can go through the keywords that lead to the most leads and sales in AdWords and incorporate them into your SEO plan.
Google AdWords also includes remarketing which allows us to target ads to people who may have visited your landing pages or website but didn’t fill out a form or make a purchase.
This a great way to get potential customers back into the sales funnel, as often times they may have just got distracted before converting and still need your products and services.
It also includes video advertising and remarketing on YouTube, this is a fantastic way to generate traffic to your site if you have videos of client testimonials or your products in action.
If you sell online and have an ecommerce website, Google Shopping ads are also a great way to get your products in front of people right when they are ready to make a purchase.
These ads show at the top of Google search results along with a title, a brief description of an image of your product. When a user clicks on them they are brought directly to the product page on your website where they can make a purchase.
It is highly targeted and allows you to show your ads to the people that are most likely to want your products and services.
For example if you were running a wedding photography business in Douglas, you could target your ads to only be seen by people from Cork that are engaged to be married.
Similarly if you were selling children’s toys for ages 8+ you could target your ads only towards parents with children between the ages of 8 and 12.
This high level of initial targeting coupled with the ability to make adjustments over time make social media advertising great for driving high converting traffic to your website.
Driving traffic to your website isn’t much use if it’s not converting that traffic into sales and leads for your business. Your website should be your best salesperson, and it can be if it’s built with conversion optimisation in mind. Sometimes, what seems like just a small change, like removing an extra click in the checkout process, can have a huge impact on conversion rates.
At CLIQ, we use our years of conversion optimisation experience to help your business maximise the chance that every user will turn into a conversion.
Check how conversion optimisation and integrating an upsell system helped us to boost one of our clients’ sales by 366%!