Web site maintenance, website management and web consulting services

Not that I deserve to be grouped in the same league as Pareto or Chris Anderson, but I’ve developed a new ‘rule of thumb’ to help microbusinesses grow online, called the 3/30 rule of search engine marketing, which states:

In a market with less than 30000 competitors and approximately 3000 customers, there is potential for a Google number 1 ranking.

Let me explain. Suppose you sell cashmere scarves on your website, as one of my new clients does. A quick search on Google tells me that if my you also sell a ‘plaid cashmere scarf’ you will be competing against just 4930 companies for a Google number 1 ranking. And if your website is optimized efficiently, you can expect a large chunk of the 3600 people who search for and want to buy a ‘plaid cashmere scarf’ each month to at least visit your website. That’s not bad for just one product.

Now imagine you could optimize each page of your website for a specific long-tail, or niche keyword like ‘cashmere sweater v-neck’ (6600 searches a month with only 2650 competitors) or ‘black cashmere sweater’ (3600 searches a month with 21100 competitors). With 20 different product pages on your website all optimized effectively and ranking in Google’s top 3 results, you could expect to receive around 48000 visitors to your site each month.  Impressive!

How to research 3/30 niche markets

As with so many things in life, Google makes it easy to research 3/30 opportunities for niche markets.

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It’s been a while since I checked my Google PageRank and my Alexa traffic rankings, so I decided to have a little peek this morning.

My findings weren’t particularly interesting, but they did get me thinking about the state of my business.

First of all, what did Google and Alexa think?

It seems that Google doesn’t like me quite as much as it did a few months ago. My PR has dropped from an insignificant 3/10 to a paltry 2/10. Why I do not know; clearly I’ve done something to annoy the big G.

On the bright side, Alexa has upped my ranking from 2,216,056 (which is probably as low as any ranking could be) to 829,909 (still rubbish, but better).

Why?

I think there are a couple of good reasons why this has happened to me:

1. I’ve been messing around with my site a fair bit lately. I’ve had 2 site redesigns in the past 12 months, a change in the structure of the site’s content, and a hosting change a couple of months ago. Surely none of this can be helpful.
2. Google obviously doesn’t think much of the links I’ve been building to this site lately. Pity, but sometimes these things happen. Google PageRank is a completely worthless gauge of a website’s importance anyway, so I don’t really care.
3. Traffic to my blog has steadily been increasing over the past 3 months, so Alexa is right to notice my 362% increase in global reach. Of course, Alexa is just as worthless as Google at measuring website authority.

Why I don’t care about Google PR or Alexa

PageRank and Alexa rank are rubbish in my opinion, so what do I consider to be a good indication of my website’s performance this year?

1. More traffic (78% increase in the past 6 months).
2. More comments on my blog (but not enough. Get commenting!)
3. More return visitors (my bounce rate has dropped from a whopping 93% to 59%)
4. More sales leads (from less than 3 per month to between 5 and 8 per week).
5. A higher number of sales lead conversions (no data available, but something seems to be working).

On the whole I’d give my progress a 7/10 so far this year. I’ve fallen short of the goals I set myself but I’m not too disappointed. Besides, I’ve still got 2 months to go.

So that’s how I use a tiny bit of science and a huge dollop of gut feel to measure my online business performance. How do you measure yours?

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At any given moment I have a pretty long list of website repairs needed on my own site. There’s always something to do, and I’m lucky (a) because my site is built on WordPress, which is a very easy to manage website platform, (b) because I know how to make changes to my website myself and (c) because I don’t charge myself to work on my site.

Of course you’re probably not as lucky and there will come a time when you need to stop spending money on website repairs and invest in a brand spanking new website. Now you may think this sounds odd coming from someone who repairs websites for a living, but it’s really just good business sense.

So when should you opt not to repair a website and hire someone to redesign it instead?

1. When your business goals have changed

If you find that your website isn’t in tune with your business, either because your branding has had an overhaul, your market has changed or your business objectives have shifted, it’s probably time to redesign your site and bring it back in line with your business.

2. When your website repair quote is higher than the cost of a new site

If your website manager rubs his hands with glee every time you phone him and he comes to visit you in his new Porsche it’s probably time to re-invest your web site repair budget in a new site design. Adding/editing content on a small business website shouldn’t be a full-time job for anyone, and if you’ve spent the money hiring someone who knows what they’re doing, your search engine optimization should be pretty much taken care of from day 1.

3. When nothing you try seems to be working

If you’ve spent money on countless content changes and search engine optimization, or your site runs every bit of Web technology known to man and you’re still nowhere to be found on Google, there’s either something fundamentally wrong with your website or something seriously wrong with your marketing plan. Take action and spend a bit of money to change the way you market your business online.

4. When your website looks like it was designed in 1997

If you want to chase people away from your website, make sure it looks (and works) like it was designed before the turn of the century. In the grand scheme of things a website is a cheap marketing tool. Invest your website repair budget in a redesign every couple of years and you’ll probably increase the number of visitors, sales leads and customers your website attracts.

What should you do next?

If you have doubts about whether to re-design or repair your website, send me an email or contact me on Skype with the details of your site address and what you want to achieve online. If you can give me some information about what you’re currently achieving that will help too. I’ll take a quick look and give you my opinion based purely on the facts. I look forward to hearing from you.

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