Free DIY website search healthcheck

This was originally published on my blog http://fjrcom.wordpress.com/ but I thought it a good introduction to the type of marketing help we offer to local businesses ie not full of jargon & something you can have a go at yourself!

Today the question is not whether you should have a website but rather, is it working hard to attract your customers?

As a founding partner of the springboard business development group, we’ve created a 7 question health check here on Survey Monkey that will give you a good idea on whether you have the main search criteria buttoned down on your site.

The health check is free & takes about…. 1 cup of coffee to complete!

The Office of National Statistics found 75% of UK internet users go online to research products & services before they buy. Not a surprise really & a figure that is only going to grow over the coming years.

Getting chosen is where you make the money, so it’s vital your site is well written & designed to make you stand out from the crowd. It needs support & feeding from your other on & offline marketing tactics. Don’t be tempted to build it or rebuild it for that matter, without first finding out what your customers really want.

The idea behind the 7 question website health check is to provide a way for business owners to carry out their own brief search check. We want to demystify search a little & share with people some of the areas important to the likes of Google. We've spent quite a while designing & refining the questions to highlight the sort of areas we find are most often missing (or not if you answer Yes!) from well coded & structured sites.

This is the sort of top line website review you often see businesses charging for & of course we can undertake a much more detailed analysis if required. However we have found that the answers to our 7 questions quite accurately predict whether a site can easily be found by the serach engines & if there are any wider site issues.

I've set up the survey so people do not have to leave any contact details before seeing the questions - although of course we hope they would like our help in solving any issues they unearth! You can complete the 7 questions & get on the phone to yoursearch expert or web designer & start to ask some challenging questions!

I hope NiS readers find the answers useful & at the very least, a reassurance if they score well.

So, grab a coffee & simply answer Yes or No to the 7 questions & add up your score. If you get anything less that 5 out of 7, get in touch & for a lot less than you think, we can get your score up to 7 out of 7, making it much easier for your site to be found by the search engines.

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Our help doesn’t just stop as getting you found though. We can help you understand those all important customers. Through clever digital & traditional marketing we can create a longer lasting impression & get more of them to choose you over your competition. In the end this generates more sales. That’s why our motto is ‘Results based marketing’.

My plan is to post some key marketing/business development articles here which should build into a useful reference for anyone looking to create & implement a successful marketing plan. Please get in touch however if you would like all the advice in one go!