Hi Visitor

Just a quick update to let you know what will be done each month as part of your planned maintenance.

I decided to implement this to help deal with issues before they arise, help keep your website up to date with the latest patches and upgrades available and also ensure it stays high in Google.

There are things you can do also which I will detail at the end of this newsletter so please take a moment to read through this section as it can be useful in getting your website up in Google.

In this issue...

Monthly Backups

Each month, usually between the 1st and the 5th of the month a backup of your entire website will be taken and stored locally just in case there's a problem later in the month. You can of-course take your own backups and store these for later use should you need them but in most cases this is just a precautionary measure as the website works fine.

Please note that in some cases your account will require a temporary upgrade in order to facilitate this so if you are doing your own backups you may receive an error indicating that there is insufficient disc space. This can be upgraded for you on a temporary or a permanent basis, just get in touch.

Google Analytics

Around the 1st of each month I will also be downloading and mailing your Google Analytics to you. The report you receive is only a fraction of the information available and is useful for the following reasons:

• You can identify which pages are most popular
• Identify how many people eave your website on the home or any other page
• Identify which pages are not used
• See quickly which pages are most popular

As you can see the information provided from Analytics can be invaluable. For example, your most popular pages could perhaps carry special offers or promotions. These don't necessarily need to be discounted either, you could easily place a combination of products or services as a "bundle" and offer these.

This is exactly what I do with BT products because people want an "all inclusive" price, it just makes life easier for them and also for you...!

Google Webmaster Tools

When used in conjuntion with Analytics this can be a very powerful tool. It will tell you which keywords are most prominent on your website, which search terms are most popular and give you an indication of which areas of your website are most popular.

The primary reason I tie these two tools together is so that Google knows that there's a concerted effort on our part to get your site up in Google, maintain and update the website and also to ensure that any new content placed on your website is indexed quickly.

XML Sitemap

As part of the Google Webmaster tools monthy tasks I also update your XML sitemap. This is a quick list and index of all pages on your website for the search engines and is used not only by Google but by Yahoo, Bing and all the other major search engines.

There are also a number of other tools I implement manually to ensure Google keeps revisiting your website for new content and this works well for just about all the websites I work with.

The Power of One

I covered this in my last newsletter and just wanted to update you on what this can do to benefit your business. If you take a look at my homepage (Website Design Tenerife) you'll see a few social networking icons in the top right corner and at the side of these a +1 icon. It should have a number 4 above it. This basically means that 4 people have +1'd my website. What does this mean...? Well, if someone searches for Website Design Tenerife and sees my link, if they are signed into their Google account, it will display a small blue +1 icon to indicate that someone else has already recommended this website. The idea here is that people are more inclined to click this.

The tool is still in development by Google and I'm sure Facebook will have their own new toy coming out soon but for now I am using it and testing it on a couple of customers websites so maybe you'd like this too...?

Find out more quickly with Google's own video here.

Things You Can Do...

As with anything, if you leave it to gather dust it'll simply be ignored. You need to keep it up to date, fresh and constantly look at new ways of doing things.

Think of your website like a shop front, it needs new dressing on a regular basis and the product range is constantly being revised. With a website changing the window dressing can be as drastic as a complete redesign or as subtle as simply displaying fresh content in a "news" or "update" or "featured product or service" box on the home page.

My own website doesn't actually do this. However, I recently placed a quick overview module on my home page detailing the various design and maintenance packages available as I noticed these pages received a lot of traffic, so why not make it easier for people to find?

Content is King

Fresh new content is what users like: Updates, offers, news, articles, events or anything that shows you are constantly updating your website. If it were a shop you would do the same, a new poster outside with an offer, a special product bundle in the window or a new service dedicated to existing clients.

Promotions

As I mentioned above, you don't necessarily need to discount products or services, you can simply bundle together a number of products that are popular and offer them as a "bundle". For example, with BT products I rarely sell just a phone line or ADSL on its own so I create "bundles" where the customer can simply pick both together and have an all inclusive price.

Newsletters

Why not let your customers know about what you are doing...?.

With my unique mailing system we can identify how many people receive the newsletter, how many open it, how many click a link and even right through to which page on your website they view.

Contact me to find out more...