Author: Ross
Keyword research for online marketing
Online marketing is a huge area that there are many different elements too. One of the biggest is Search Engine Optimisation and this is effectively improving your site in certain ways to get in moved up on the search engine results pages.
The first thing you need to do when looking to invest in Search Engine Optimisation is to decide you key market in terms of locations and products / services you wish to promote. Once you have a list of these you can then start to decide on your main keywords and phrases. If you are a builder that lives in Kent for example and you are wanting to target local people then you would have keywords that include the areas within Kent as well as the services that you offer.
Keyword research is vital in online marketing and can show you not only where the main competition is and what you may need to start to compete. But also if there are any niche phrases that you can target and gain positions on the search engines easily.
Finding a solution to your programming issue
There will come a time, or many times, in a programmer’s life where they get totally stuck on an issue and cannot seem to fix a problem they have. It may be something as simple as getting a block of text or image to show up in the correct place, but no matter how big or small can be extremely frustrating.
There are a few ways in which you can try and work out what the problem is:
- If you are a confident programmer you can try and break down all the code relating to the issue and double checking it all. A simple spelling mistake can stop something working.
- Use forums to ask other programmers for advice. This can be a great way to find out how to solve an issue but dependent on how active the members on the forum are, it may take a little while to get the right reply.
- Take a break – often when you look at an issue after a break you can spot something you missed a number of times before.
Looking for work as a PHP Programmer
If you are a PHP Programmer looking for work then there are a few things to consider in order for you to establish where you should be looking for work. If you are wanting to work for another company as an employee then you may have the opportunity to choose if you work for a small to medium sized Web Design Company or a larger national company. There are pros and cons to working for either.
If you work for a smaller company you may find that they allow you more responsibility and control over the projects you are working on and may be a little bit more flexible in terms of working hours etc. A larger company tends to have quite specific departments meaning that your job role may be quite restricted and you will find yourself doing pretty much the same work every day. Larger companies often offer better employee benefits such as health care and/or company car.
Getting the SEO score of your website
There are many tools out there that allow you to check the level of SEO your website has. Often they will give you a score or percentage based on SEO factors such as Heading tags, Alt tags, Meta data and page loading time.
These tools can be great for a quick overview, but should never be relied upon entirely. Most programs will simply check that these elements are present on the page and not the quality of them, for example, you may see that you have a H1 tag present on the page but it is currently set to “Home” which is of no relevance in terms of search engine optimisation.
Ideally you want to employ an SEO expert to go over the site for you and advise you of what needs to be done. Often some companies will give you a free SEO evaluation which you can then review to see what changes are necessary.
Using LinkedIn to find a PHP programmer
Social media is a growing industry in which nearly all of us have some sort of profile on. LinkedIn is predominantly aimed at professional individuals that want to link to colleagues, past and present clients and like minded people to share ideas and endorse each other for skills.
If you are looking for a PHP programmers then LinkedIn is a great place to start. You can search for people with that as their job title and then read up on their profile (sort of online CV ), they often will have reviews left by people that they have worked for and you will be able to see how many of their connections endorsed them for a specific skill.
Same with any social media site, the more you put in to it, the more you will get out. There are other social media sites that are sometimes used when it comes to finding the right person for a vacancy you have, Twitter is great for allowing you to post a job and get the advert found immediately.
Finding the right website development company in your area
If you are a business owner looking to have a website created then there are a few pints to bear in mind before choosing which programming company to go with.
- Location: To some people this is not vital as much of the web design process can be planned and achieved by telephone calls, emails or Skype etc. The only thing to bear in mind is that often you can get your ideas and points across much easier and quicker face to face. Also if you do have an issue arise with a local company, you have got a lot better chance of actually being able to meet with them to discuss how it will be rectified
- Reviews – This is vital when deciding on a web design and programming company. Have a look on their own website but also do a few searches on Google or the social media sites to see what their customers are actually saying about them. Do not be afraid to ask if you would be allowed to contact one of their existing clients to get an idea of if they are right for your business.
- Price – Price is often the biggest factor for many companies. This may be that you are signed to a very strict budget and therefore some companies are just out of your price range. If you can afford to shop around a little then do, get a few quotes if possible but don’t always go with the cheapest unless you are sure that you are getting value for your money.
Checking the progress of a website
When a website first goes live, it can take sometimes for the search engines to crawl and therefore index it in their search engine results pages. Ideally you should install some sort of statistics tracking software from day one so you can track the improvement of the site and see what effect your marketing is having on the website performance.
Google offer a free stats tracking application called Google Analytics. This can be extremely useful and if used correctly, you can extract a lot of information on it from the most visited pages to what device your website has been viewed on.
Google also have another application called Web Master Tools, which is used more by developers to check for broken links and crawl errors etc. You can also submit site maps, request Google to re-crawl your site and even ask for certain pages to be removed from the search listings. This again is a free service which should be set up for your site as soon as it goes live.
What is a CRM system and how can it benefit your business?
A CRM system is a Customer Relationship Management System that often stores information about your current, previous and potential clients. This can be vital to not only the day to day running of your business but for future growth and analysis.
There are a wealth of CRM systems on the market, some of which can handle almost all of your customer interaction. Most systems will allow you to create a record for an individual or company and keep information such as contact details, previous purchases, areas of interest and copies of invoices etc. You can often chose a system that will give you analysis data based on the information you have entered, this can be a great marketing tool and allow you to see at a glance the strengths of certain products or trends within selected geographical locations.
If you have a company that may need to provide technical support, this can often be built in to a CRM system allowing customers to raise a support ticket. These tickets can then be responded to though the system and mos importantly be tracked should you need to refer back to an issue.
Keeping your IT equipment and software up to date
When you are running a business it is essential to keep your equipment and software that is running on it up to date. You my not need to buy the latest release of software every time it comes out but you should investigate what the new version offers to be able to decide if it is worth while you having. Very often new software includes security updates which may be vital to your business. A great example of this is anti-virus software. This is something that should always be active and up to date as using the internet or accessing files without it can be absolutely detrimental to your business and possibly clients, should you get a virus.
Recently some software providers such as the Adobe Creative Suite has changed the way it sells its products. Rather than the traditional boxed CD package they used to offer then are now offering the software as a cloud subscription based service meaning that you sign up to their service and use the software paying either annually or monthly. This means that when an update is released they can easily distribute it to your instantly.