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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This is a guest post by Steven Chappell.

No one can deny that the Internet has radically changed the way we do business in this technological era, and practically every business today from the small company to the huge enterprise recognize and utilize this powerful medium to sell their products and services.

The influence that the world wide web has had on economy in recent years is incredible. According to The IMRG Capgemini E-retail Sales Index, over £46 billion was spent online in 2007, with around £15 billion of that amount during the holiday season alone (Nov 1 to Dec 31), marking a 19% increase over the previous year.

This growth of online spending makes it crucial for you to choose the right e-commerce platform for your business in order to have a competitive site for your customers. There are many different platforms available at varying prices, but the choice can be a little bit overwhelming for the inexperienced.

Some of the most important features of any platform that have to be considered are, security, scalability, reliability, and support. When choosing an e-commerce platform it is vital that you take these aspects into account as you not only want to make it as easy as possible to accept payments from your customers, but you want them to feel assured in the knowledge that their transactions are completely secure. It is also important to evaluate the different costs associated with each platform.

Let’s consider three e-commerce platforms that are well established, and how you might decide which one is best for your business.

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You may have noticed that Web designers/managers/marketers spend a lot of time encouraging you to buy services to help you promote your website online. We often seem to neglect the need for micro business owners to promote their websites offline as well.

Remembering that many of your potential customers still use traditional media to find you, you might want to allocate a little bit of your marketing budget to some of the following offline marketing activities:

1. Place a classified advert in the local newspaper. Classified adverts are cheap, and if you place them regularly enough, people will start to notice.
2. Teach a class. Recently I held a training program for a group of small business owners, teaching them how to maintain their own websites. Two of the students referred their friends to my website and I signed them up for regular website maintenance contracts.
3. Add your URL to everything. Let everyone know you have a website by addding your URL (your web address) to your purchase orders, your invoices, your brochures, your sales receipts, your letterheads, your fax covers and your email signature.
4. Make a bumper sticker. Get your local printer to make a sticker of your URL and stick it on the back of your car. Every day hundreds of people will see it, and you may just get some website traffic as a result.
5. Write your URL on the beach. I couldn’t resist this one. I read a forum posting a while ago about a guy who wrote his website URL in the sand every morning. If you’re selling something that beachwalkers want to buy, this may just work.
6. Send a letter. Develop a relationship with your clients by sending them a personal letter thanking them for their business and directing them to your website to receive a limited offer or helpful information.
7. Create an online tool to help clients. If you can afford to hire a freelance programmer, create a free online tool to help your existing clients use your products more effectively.
8. Speak to more people. If your micro business is anything like mine, a lot of your new business comes from referrals and simply from striking up a conversation with people. Having a business card handy helps to direct people to your website for more information.
9. Give away promotional gifts. If you’ve got the budget, buy some unusual promotional gifts and send them to clients. You never know where a pen with your URL on it could end up.
10. Write a press release. Tell the media about new products, new projects or anything else work talking about by writing press releases. Having your URL in the byline will definitely bring you website traffic if your press release is published.

If these ideas sound a bit too tame for your liking and you’re interested in trying shock tactics (or you just want a laugh), you should read Patrick Altoft’s ‘5 Killer ways to promote your website offline‘.

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