Welcome to 2009! Well, it's a little overdue, but the team at insilicoTM would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year. And as our New Year's gift to you, we'd like to present you with our New Year's checklist; a list of things to update on your website: Have you updated your copyright © notices? Are your contact and address details up to date? Have you opened any more offices lately? Have you tested your contact form and any other online forms recently? Have you added any new content to your website recently? If you didn't tick all the boxes above, and are so busy that you can't attend to these important items, the team at insilicoTM are ready and eager to help so just give us a call on (08) 9200 4431. GFC (Global Financial Crisis) By now everyone has heard more about the Global Financial Crisis than they would care to. The irony of this crisis is that people are now being cautious and thinking about every expenditure, and while that's prudent, I think this can go too far. For example, if we stop advertising or updating our web pages, people might think we've gone "belly-up" especially since a domain lasts for 2 years even if the business has closed. So we have some suggestions you can use to help drive business your way: 1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) While a lot of businesses have cut back their spending, not everyone has. There are still lots of businesses that are spending. In fact, some are spending more as they see this as a time to spend less money (as businesses discount their services) to get more coverage to generate more leads and, hopefully, more business and more cash. One of the ways to do this is to make sure your business appears in Internet searches in the most appropriate place. If you build custom widgets but only service the Malaga area, it's much harder to show up on page 1 in Google when someone searches for "custom widgets". But if you're the only custom widget company north of the river, then you should be looking for page 1 exposure for "custom widgets malaga", "custom widgets joondalup" (Joondalup's north, right?), "custom widgets perth" and "custom widgets western australia". Depending on the size of your market and the number of competitors will determine exactly how you configure your keywords to achieve page 1 ranking. What could you do to help your search engine placement? 2. Keyword Density When the search engines "spider" your website and record it in their databases, they also inspect your webpages to make sure that your search keywords match the content in your webpages. In the old days, some devious people would put the "search terms du jour" into their keywords so their sites would appear and the poor user would end up far away from those Pokemon Trading cards they were looking for. To fix this, the search engines now check your page content against your search terms. If they match, they give you an electronic tick and your search terms are honoured. If not, they can do anything from dropping the search terms that they didn't find to ignoring your site altogether. So it's important to have content that matches the search terms, and that measure is called Keyword Density. With a sufficiently high keyword density, Google et al will consider that your page is a suitable candidate to display whenever someone searches for, say, Pokemon Trading Cards and so your chances at a page 1 placement are considerably higher. A word of warning though: flagrant littering of your webpage with "pokemon" repeated hundreds of times is considered "search spam" and will also be ignored, so we need to find that happy medium. Keyword density can be measured, and we have a free online tool for you to try out, but only 5 times a day :) Just visit our Online Tools and then let us know how you got on. 3. Test and Measure As anyone who has ever engaged in any form of business development and coaching knows, one of the golden rules is test and measure. And the same is true of websites. Our favourite measuring tool is Google Analytics which is a piece of JavaScript code that goes into your website and tells Google who has been visiting, where they came from, what they searched for, what they looked at, and when they left - and even where they went to, if you have it set up correctly. Best of all, is that Google Analytics can directly compare last weeks web traffic with this weeks - a very useful comparison if you have web-based promotions. For example, whenever we send out this newsletter we see a marked spike in our web traffic as everyone checks out what we've been up to. Example of a Google Analytics report So there's 3 ideas you can implement through your website to help generate more leads and hopefully more business, but if any of this is outside of your field of expertise please feel free to give us a call at insilicoTM on (08) 9200 4431 and one of our staff will be more than happy to help. Business Improvement Showcase As many of you know, insilicoTM is a member of Business Networking International (BNI), an international business group which helps businesses grow through direct referrals. The mantra "Givers Gain" reflects the intent of the group to help you grow your business by finding quality referrals for people and companies that can use your services. Each BNI chapter permits one person from each job category so there is no conflict of interest within the group; you are the sole representative for your chosen field. And as you remain a member, the groups trust in you is further established and even their most respected and highly guarded clients will eventually be sent your way for, in our case, a website makeover or something similar. Our chapter, Leading Edge, meets in Leederville at Kailis Brothers every Thursday morning at 7am and is currently looking for businesses in the following categories: car detailing cleaning pest control recruitment consultant interior designer valuer caterer telephone systems So if any of you would like a hearty breakfast and a chance to see this referral generator up close and personal, please call Naomi on 9200 4431 and she will be happy to arrange for you to attend as our guest. So, What Have We Been Doing Since Last Time? We've finished a couple of new sites, and have made some changes to a few others. Amongst the list are a milliner, a mobile phone shop, a pub, a legal firm, a farm stay, and a school library association. These sites are a mix of our custom website designs, content managed systems, and sites managed under a service agreement. And of course, every website is created specific to the client's needs; no shoehorning the client's logo into an off-the-shelf-sold-hundreds-before template here! Content Management System Websites (CMS) WASLA Content Management System www.wasla.asn.au SI Helena Content Management System www.si-helena.org.au Lord and Company Content Management System www.lordco.com.au Custom Websites (CMS) Fiona Dixon Designs Custom Website www.fionadixon.com.au Settlers Rest Custom Website www.settlersrest.com.au If you or your clients, colleagues or even friends need some help with their websites, please refer them to insilicoTM. News from the Trenches WordPress, our Content Management System (CMS) of choice has recently be upgraded. Version 2.7 has had some changes to the administration console, many of which make the "back end" much less intimidating for the new user. The sidebar contains grouped menus for ease of use, and the new framework can automatically upgrade everything for you as new revisions of WordPress and WordPress plugins are released. And of course WordPress still remains simple to use when creating new content for your website. If you can use a word processor then you can use WordPress. Call us today to find out how easy it is to manage your own website. Google has announced Google Ocean, part of the new version of Google Earth. With Google Ocean, you can navigate the Marianas Trench like Jacques Cousteau (am I showing my age now?). Download it free of charge from Google at earth.google.com/ocean/, or if you have Google Updater installed, check the Updates for Google Earth version 5. And don't forget Google Moon (www.google.com/moon/). New Services Web Bling If you have been wanting to make some changes to your website but are not sure what to do then why not try our "web bling"? This is an inexpensive way to have some fun with your website. We offer a choice of 3 designs to add to your website for noted days such as Australia Day, Valentines' Day, Anzac Day, etc., and our next designs will be for St Patrick's Day. So if you'd like to be notified when the next web bling becomes available, contact Naomi at admin@insilico.com.au. Pay-Per-Click Advertising When you just have to be number 1 in website searches, we now offer Pay Per Click Advertising (including Google Adwords). To find out more about this hot new service, check out our web page and brochure. Other News Busy little Campaign Monitor, our preferred Newsletter sender-outer-er, has been upgraded to allow us to pass the control of newsletters into the hands of our clients. Changes to their services mean that insilicoTM can set up your newsletter template and create an account for you, and you can do the rest. Whether its once a year or once a week, you can now send newsletters to your valued clients and prospects whenever you like. So if you've read that you should be in contact with your clients more often, then now is the time to find out more about this great offer. Because if you're not in contact with your clients, then who is?? Victorian Bushfires Before we go, we must turn our attention to the horrific bushfires that have devastated Victoria. For all those concerned about the people and animals in those areas, we offer some contacts for donations: or through Ozark and Wildlife Victoria helpforwildlife@bigpond.com | Bushfire Appeal, PO Box 181, Coldstream Vic 3770 And also a big hats-off to Coles and Woolworths for not only donating a day's takings to the appeal, but for staggering the weeks so we can shop in both places to further contribute. Well done to both companies for putting people first! Closing Thoughts "The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way." Dale Carnegie Best of business from all of us at insilicoTM Paul O'Neill Technical Director © 2009 insilico | admin@insilico.com.au | (08) 9200 4431 | Suite 33, First Floor, 133 Kewdale Road Kewdale WA 6105 | ABN 250 0293 8908 To unsubscribe, please click here.