Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

I wanted to take a rest from talking about social media within your online business, as I seem to have done for the past few posts, and take it back to some basics about setting up an online presence

With the proliferation of DIY website tools like Wordpress, anyone can have a site up and running in less than an hour. I visit a lot of sites every day and read a lot of content, and sometimes there can be a real fashion over function mentality to the design – that is, it might look good, but the usability and functionality are terrible.

This can make people put your information in the too hard basket when it comes to finding what they want, or interacting with it how they want. As an online business owner, how your site looks, feels and most of all functions are key to success. Your content might be great but if it’s too hard to digest, it doesn’t matter.  Read more...

Getting people to any site is a challenge, even more so to a new one. Until your SEO kicks in (and even when it has) and delivers organic search traffic, you need to rely on other methods to get people’s attention.

There are 3 (almost) free tips I can recommend to drive traffic to your site and begin to build awareness (and hopefully quality links).

Blog, and Make Your Content Topical and Current

I am a big believer in blogging, regardless of your niche. Somewhere on your site, you should make room for a blog and write on it regularly. You may think that your insights into your field may not mean much, but to an audience that is coming to your site to know about your product, they may find it useful. And it is a way of actively generating content to a site that may not be otherwise be visited by a potential customer.  Read more...

I really wanted to call this first post the Adventures of Bollocks in Twitterland, but I thought better of it for SEO purposes…

I’m really excited this week to write the first in a series of posts that will see me work with a live site in an effort to drive visitors and ultimately help with sales. The client has given me permission to use their site as an example of how to use different techniques and be completely transparent about what we are doing.

Each post I plan to outline what tasks we will undertake during the week ahead. Thoughts, comments, feedback and alternatives are more than welcome. I hope along the way, this becomes very much a crowd sourced overhaul through your feedback.  Read more...

Social media and Social Networking have become such buzz words in the past few years and many businesses have tried to use it to market products and services, with mixed results.

Probably best that we define social networking /social media first. For many just getting into online business, Facebook and MySpace are considered to be the beginning and the end of the social media landscape. While they can both have their place if used correctly, they are also incredibly broad in terms of their audience and application, and therefore not necessarily the way to go for business. Social media however can relate to any aspect of the web that allows people a level of interaction and community.  Read more...