Easy-to-Digest Online Marketing

Hi Michael, http://e-e-t.nl/

That’s a nice site. Well done in terms of visually pleasing Google in particular. You took an advantage of cross linkage, which not many sites offer. However, for a travel site, you do not use enough images to attract people on the first hand. Even if you use icon-like images in front of each menu destination (like here, if you pull down any category) http://www.bostonjewelrymall.com it’ll bring some taste of your site. I don’t understand the language, I can only guess, but I would definitely add travel images, or create a photo gallery. I would also add more ways of communications. You have listed 2 contact us forms, which is good, but confusing. I would add some kind of instant internet messaging, such as skype.(http://www.skype.com). I would remove one form and the icon with phone. You can ask for phone number in your other contact us application. I would assume that travel company would only win listing a phone number right on site. And did you know that there are many services that forward calls to any phone number? This one I guess, s/b good for a travel company: http://www.tollfreeforwarding.com

I would also add a calendar to your contact us form, so people can tell you which dates would work for them for their travel. I would also create the onsite possibility of translating this site to some other language, unless you specifically work with the auditory, who speaks this particular language.

Also, I see just little description about each country, but not specific pre-packaged trips, or the ability to add optional trips to the whole package. For individual travel that you offer, I think it’s a must. What sounds strange, that I can clearly see some English lines among your content, but I cannot understand as why you are mixing the stuff. If only for SEO purposes, it’ll actually harm more than create a value. Actually I just found a pre-packaged tour: http://e-e-t.nl/land/voetsporen-van-paulus, but it’s not very attractive without pictures and bullets to summarize the main content. And I don’t remember the path – meaning, those pages are hidden, where they should be right before your eyes. Actually, I even find the path. Why don’t you put your hot trips (Voorbeeldreizen) on the top and add some thumbnails to them?

Pricing is also an important point for travel site. I did not see any prices listed on your site.

I would also add some weather and currency exchange widgets that you can “steal” from the internet

Also, for a travel company, referrals are crusual – I haven’t seen any on your site.

Make it more interactive, so people would be interested to stay longer or to comeback to your site. Travel blogs are very popular, why would not you add one? Also, start working with forums, Q&As, social networks – that’s where people get convinced to use this vendor or another.

I also don’t understand why do you have a redirect from www.easteuropeantravels.nl to your http://e-e-t.nl/ site. Not to mention that the idea of redirecting is not very SEO-friendly, but also, the first domain would be considered much better optimized to start with, because it contained some searchable keywords.

The content on your site… is it only me, or is it really stretched, instead of default to left align?


Take a look at your metadata. It repeat itself, and the title and description sometimes too long to make it efficient.

Your Alexa rank is to high. I think, you don’t have many visitors to your site yet. If you were to work on this part, please understand, that there should be a healthy balance of visitors who comes from different domains to your site.

I guess that’s it. I am sure I could add more valuable recommendations if I understood your language.

Thanks,

Sasha

Hi Dave - http://www.researchbank.co.uk/

It looks like your site is missing a summary of your services  that is usually makes the home page. Right now, your home page is overwhelmed with links to different sources. I find it uncomfortable to start with.  Also, you have a picture of fortune 500 companies – looks like it should lead to a white paper download, or similar? The link http://www.researchbank.co.uk/FortuneGlobal5002008.htm doesn’t work, giving 404 error.

Speaking of errors, your site also shows a 301 error, meaning, that search engine don’t see at www.researchbank.co.uk and researchbank.co.uk (without www) as one site, and don’t summarize the credits for both – and because of that, your position in organic search result is lower than it should be.

I would remove your “your cart” button from unrelated pages, where there is nothing to buy. If you want it be visible everywhere, you better move to the top right corner somewhere.  I would also add more of the content to your webpage. Right now it looks very sad and boring.  

Most of your content ends up with a sentence “Please contact us with your database maintenance projects.”

However, not all your pages has a link under “contact us” – that should be changed.  And, instead of pointing this link to your email service, it should go to a contact us form. The form itself, if you don’t want to keep a SQL table with information, so the form after submission can come to your email. As long, as there is a contact form on your site, you are given some extra positive points in terms of SEO.

Also, once you leaved the home page there is no way to go back unless you simply put it into browser again. I think your logo should be always clickable back to home page, and I think a link Home should also be in the top menu.

Then, you are explaining how good your in-house team is, however, once you are on About us page, you are only talking about yourself (or may be some other Dave). Give some live, add nice human faces, job roles, etc. Do not let people think that you are actually a sole proprietor with no other employees on board.

Overall, your site is poor on content, bullets, charts, and pictures. It can definitely be improved from this point!

Coming next, it looks like you are not using the Cascadian Style Sheets (CSS) properly. The report shows me some wondering HTML tags here and there. It brings your overall score of your site down.  

Many of your pages also missing or have an excess of metadata, and this should be changed, as well.

No Headings and Subheadings found on your site. Headings are special tags for your visual titles.

Alexa rating is above 7,000,000 which is way bellow it should be.  Google page rank is 2, but it doesn’t really mean much (browse my other answers).

For a site like yours, I think the social media platform is essential. At least, a blog, may be a forum, or just a FAQ page would make a difference. Also, your participation in forums and networks elsewhere should help dramatically not only with SEO and link building, but also with real convertible visitors.

This is just a beginning.. Good luck!

Sasha

Roshan,

 

What should you do with your site? Everything. Starting from the design of your site. If you visually divide your page into 5 parts from top to down, the second from top will be the most viewable part. I would suggest that you bring your flash banner  there and make it taller. Right now, the words in the top right corner do not bring you much value, because visitors do not tend to look all over website in order to find information they need at this moment. I would also make your re-written urls more consistent. Either let them all end up with .html (better solution) or remove all extensions from everywhere. In other words, if you look at these 2 of your links, choose one way or another, but not both of them: http://www.b2bsr.com/products_services/ and http://www.b2bsr.com/contact.html  even if one means a category, and another – just a page.

 

Btw, it’s not obvious, that you have categories with a separate menus (those yellow on your right). In fact, it’s very confusing. If you have a 1^st tier menu (and you do, on top), make sure, your hierarchy is somewhat near.

 

Also, you have 2 large registration forms on your site. They are enormous. You don’t need so much information to make a quote on your services, and I bet many visitors would simply leave your site because of the so many fields that need to be filled out. Only ask for a specific information that you do need to provide with a quote, and contact email or phone number – more than enough to begin with.  And don’t forget to ad browsing/uploading file option to your form – it may be very handful in your case.

 

Pricing is of course s/b part of your site. If you don’t want to place a price list, which latest reports find very helpful, then, at least, you may place the actual price or price range under the images in your gallery (portfolio), to give people some sense and taste just upfront.

 

You have too little information on your pages. Not to mention SEO optimization, that requires some certain amount of content on each page, but how can you convince your visitors to stay longer? I think, your contents s/b redone for good.  Also, I would’ve eliminated the drop downs on your page. I would replace them with the links. Links on your site, pointed to other pages on your site – is a real plus in terms of link building. However, JavaScript dropdowns are not search engine friendly at all.

 

Instead of having a separate tab “Search our site”, which is not actually a search, but more a site map, I would suggest having a search box on your entire site, each page of it (on your template, if you wish).  Site map is different, and it’s more for the search engine robots, than for real visitors. It should have place on your site anyway, but somewhat in the bottom, close to copyright information.

 

I think, your description of online services is very confusing. I would suggest to rethink what exactly you are offering in this case. And, if you are offering any long-run services, where is your member login for example?

 

From SEO point of view, you should clean up your site. Right now, the metadata on your home page is inacceptable long; many pages miss metadata at all;  many images do not have alt tags; you alexa rating is way too bad (over 9 mlns), you almost don’t have any backlinks (10-20), your domain is set to expire in several month, where it should be pre-paid for at least a year ahead at any given time;  search engine robots visit your site very rare, and so on. It’s a whole bunch of work there, but very doable work. If start doing things correctly, you’ll see the tremendous results in just 3 month, and you can be on top of every other similar firm in your state within a year or less.  Just by looking at your title, I assume, you know this stuff better than me. So, good luck! If you need any help, I can be reached at mynewjob@hotmail.com anytime.

 

Thanks,

Sasha

 

Sapna,

Thank you for your request. Here is what I came up with http://www.newdelhilab.com

1. Your site is done nicely, however, it confuses many search engines, because you can see it in both, flash and non-flash version. At one point, it was crucial to do so, because everybody wanted fancy-shmency flash, but did not want to lose on readability. Right now, most of the b2b companies that are not in marketing or media fields, prefer to keep only non-flash version of website, with a trace of flash banners on the home page, because it’s much easier to optimize, keep up, and promote non-flash version. Even though, Google, one of the major SEs in States right now, proclaimed that it can “read” flash now, it’s not totally true. So, if I were you, I would discontinue your flash version and leave only regular one on this domain. You will receive more publicity this way, for sure.

2. Another idea is to have more than 500 words of content on each page. Cross-links, from one page to another, in content, also help a lot.

3. Metadata – is missing on many of your pages. It’s essential to have metadata listed on all pages correctly, because many 2nd Tier Search Engines base their rating algorithm on it. Google tends to say – “not anymore”, but my experience shows quite the opposite. On your home page, the tag is over 70 characters, which is also a point down. The main rule of metadata are: title s/b no more than 70 characters, description should be no more than 150 characters, and there should be no more than 7 keywords per page. From page to page, the keywords s/b different, and they also has to be found in the content of your webpage.

4. Not all of your images have a proper alt tag. It makes difficult for hearing and visually impaired people who use supplemental software to read your site.

5. Your domain is Aged enough to bring you positive points just by keeping it pre-paid for 3 or more years all the time. However, right now your domain is less than 1 year pre-paid, so Search Engines may look suspicious to it – in other words, this is where you would also lose some points.

6. The number of backlinks (references elsewhere on internet, pointing back to your site) is low (one source said 200, another 500), and the quality of references isn’t high enough either. That’s may create an issue with your Google PR ranking. Although, Google PR rank is not very important, especially if you are not looking to sell the advertising space on your site, the number of backlinks is used as the well-rounded indicator of popularity and relevancy with many search engines. So, you might want to start improving your backlinks map by submitting articles and blogs, bookmarking, PR, and so on. The idea is to have at least 1000 backlinks for each year your domain has been active. Even 500 per year, would work… but you are 9 years behind…

7. Your Alexa rating is fair enough 451,855, however, I would try to lower it to at least 300,000 or even 100,000 and keep it this way. Eventhough, it’s a traffic indicator, It doesn’t cost too much to keep it lower.

8. I would’ve also work more on your social networking. First of all, I think the Linkedin is an optimal social network for your business in particular. Other similar networking places would be Xing, eCademy, Plaxo, Naumz, and so on. Also, i’ve noticed that you have submitted several articles to Digg, but never ended up on the first page. This part can also be optimized, because unless you are on the first page, you are not really anywhere promoting your site. Twitter – could make a real difference to you as well. I would not recommend you to explore. Delicious network is a good source of long-lasting backlinks, as well. 9. Also, when try promoting a site, make sure your visitors come to different pages evenly, not only to the home page. Non of your pages, except for the first one, has any legitimate indication of popularity. This is another point that you should work with.

What kind of internet marketing does your company pay for right now? I might be able to comment on your paid search techniques, as well.

Thanks, Sasha

Believe it or not, 10-15 dollars per lead is not that bad. I am constantly working with clients who don't have even such marketing budget per month. Since one of my client is looking for about the same leads, as you are (C-level, decision-makers, IT and Finance management, etc.), I can share with you some techniques I use.

1) Linkedin is a very powerful place to start with. Grow your own network carefully, but explore the available groups in full power. Do you know that you may write directly to 70% of the users who share with you a group or a 2nd and 3rd tier connection? This function has been working great for me.  Even Linkedin PPC works fine, allowing you to spend only 5 cents per click

2) Similar to Linkedin, you may use Xing, Ning, eCademy, and so on

3) Facebook – I am not found of this one, but I know it helps a lot to certain businesses, so why don’t you try this, as well.

4) Twitter is becoming more and more powerful in terms of b2b marketing.  Users are friendly and if you ask your follower to retweet your link (giving the fact it falls into the area of their interests) they would certainly do so. Besides, there are many options to ask others to retweet your links starting from only 4 cents per retweet (www.betweeted.com)

5) StumbleUpon could be a good one – not exactly in terms of finding a new lead, but in terms of bringing your site on a better place in the eyes of google. Each PPC with Stumpleupon.com costs only 5 cents

6) Ipromote.com – to my surprise, does a very good PPC job. I initially started to use it as a cheap way to get legitimate cheap-cheap clicks to my client’s site, and it turns to be a good lead provider. I guess it’s 10 cents per click, but it’s possible that the PPC price changes based on subject popularity

7) I absolutely did not like to use Miva, although, you may try it – it also starts from only 8 cents per click.

Also, if you would want to do more PPC through Social Media, I would suggest you to sign up with each social network separately, instead of using such platforms, as 7Search, for example. It works better this way, although, more time-consuming.

9) Direct Marketing.  If you see a site that might look helpful – do not hesitate to name your price. I’m getting advertising through newsletters which up-front costs is around 2,500K, and I am paying 10-15 times less per each mailing.  Lots of those sites are “playing Solo” and not as magnificent, as they look like, but still bring you good leads, and have over 10K subscribers in the area of your needs

10) Instead of using the expensive Hoovers or Spoke, try using Jigjaw or Melissa to find some prospects free of charge.  Oceanus is good and well up-to-date, but I am not sure, it’s completely free.

11) Actually, do not underestimate the power of Google AdWords. It’s very possible to keep the minimum bid low (around 28 cents to a dollar) and still bring a significant outcome.

12) Banners and Text links placed on other sites – could be a nice solution, as well. Especially, if that other site is a well-visited blog of similar nature.

13) Also you may find b2b bloggers who would do some magic relatively cheap. For example, Hanson would feature you several times in his blog, create and distribute a podcast about your company, and add your banner to his blog for only 250 bucks. And, he is not along. But be very careful if you have in mind asking for blogging reviews from pay-per-blog or submitreviews.com platforms. This can be tricky, not to mention that the announcement of your brand will show up in the questionable source.  I am not trying to prevent you from doing so, just when you do, make sure you know what you are trying to accomplish.

14) Is your marketing budget counted on monthly or on quarterly/yearly basis? On monthly budget, you are limited to a specific amount each month, but if you can plan with quarterly budget, for example, may be some collateral placements would work for you and still cost under 10 dollars per lead.

15) And also, overall brand awareness, good SEO optimization, link building techniques, Press Releases, articles, easy site navigation, creating landing pages leading to registration pages, and site interactivity – all of this eventually bring you quality b2b leads. 

Good Luck!

Sasha
http://www.seo-networking-web.com