A few questions..

[jonbird]

So it’s the New Year and I’m finally getting started. When I found these forums I had come looking to learn about affiliate marketing/SEO type stuff.

Where I’m at now is I’ve decided to have a go at building a local, small but big feel, business and apply techniques I’ve read about (paid traffic, social, retargeting, outreach etc.) along with offline methods learnt in previous jobs, to the business as and when it grows.

This is a physical business with overheads, but its cash flow positive so trying to minimise and keep costs down initially..

For now I’ve thrown together (I’m no coder) wordpress for the front end and using self-hosted sugarcrm to organise myself and manage sales processes.
I’m currently working on the content for the site and a design brief which I’ll put to some offline contacts for logo/branding. Then will pay someone to tidy/pretty/secure the wordpress.

Since a lot of you know your shit, I have a few questions that hopefully some of you can help me with -

Should I use my local telephone number, or a national Freephone type? I’m torn about which looks better from a customer perspective, what about from an SEO perspective? My target area is larger than my telephone code.

In terms of content, aside from the front page and various calls to action:

- About us
- Contact us (could this be rolled into about us and the calls to action?)
- FAQs
- Terms and Conditions

Is there anything obvious I’m missing?

To flesh the site out (and hopefully rank for some longtail terms) I was thinking of explaining our business/services, as well as building pages of content on ‘how we can help you with specific issue.’ Does this sound OK? Would a blog add any value?

The site is ‘live’ but basically looks like the theme template at the moment. I will be adding content and playing around with it over the next week or two before design. Is there any harm in this? I’m assuming it won’t start ranking or get found until I start actively marketing it anyway…

Finally, is there anything I need to worry about using the self-hosted version of SugarCRM on shared hosting? This is going to be used to store client/customer information and I think must be compliant with the Data Protection Act etc? Not sure on this one.

Thanks guys, apologies for the long winded post!

 

[CCarter]

- You can put both the toll free number and the local number on the contact page. I would put the toll free number in a visible spot on all the pages.

- I would always have a separate Contact Us and About Us page - most people are used to this format.

- You might want to add a privacy policy.

- Make sure each page has an image - multiple if possible and adding videos is a plus.

- I have never used SugarCRM, but played around with it, seems good and solid, and there is a strong community around it, so you are in good hands, imo.

- If you implement this the way you are claiming you will, you'll be ahead of 80% of the industry, especially with the offline marketing and design brief (logo / branding).

- One thing I would look at is your biggest competitor and your weakest. Add the common elements they have on their websites. Visit them to figure out if you are missing something completely obvious.

- Ask several people (strangers preferably), what they think of the website WITHOUT telling them it's your website. When they don't know it's your website, they'll be a lot more honest since they won't be afraid to hurt your feelings.​

 

[jonbird]

Thanks for the reply CCarter (and your threads!)

RE the phone line - I'm going to be using a virtual/forwarded line, and I'm trying to keep costs down. So it's really one or the other to start off with.

My initial target area is probably 2-3 area codes max. It can be scaled, but until it's proven (enough of a market) and I've locked down processes/marketing etc. that's enough.

A human would know that it was a 'local' number, would Google? What looks better from a human and search engine perspective?

Thanks

 

[jonbird]

Oh, also, haven't actually deployed it yet but from playing with some sample data SugarCRM seems pretty good. I've used some shocking bad CRMs before. Once I've figured out what functionality I want/need and have some cash coming in then I can always migrate to a SaaS service further down the line..

Found a chrome app (think the license is about 90usd p/a) that uses APIs between the CRM and your gmail/calendar. Trialing it at the moment, but very tempted. Means I can add/edit/access leads, contacts, notes, events etc straight from the gmail interface, you can drop tracking pixels and stock emails in with the click of a button too. Pretty cool stuff which would pay for itself pretty quickly I reckon!

 

[CCarter]

A human would know that it was a 'local' number, would Google? What looks better from a human and search engine perspective?

That might be splitting hairs. I doubt Google cares at that level. When in doubt always do it for the humans. They are the ones buys afterall.​

Oh, also, haven't actually deployed it yet but from playing with some sample data SugarCRM seems pretty good. I've used some shocking bad CRMs before. Once I've figured out what functionality I want/need and have some cash coming in then I can always migrate to a SaaS service further down the line..

That's a little backwards, going from a self-hosted solution where you control the CRM and data to a monthly payment SaaS, No? Usually people go from Saas to a self-hosted solution to gain further control of their data. I'm not a big fan of monthly bills when they are not absolutely necessary.​

 

[danny]

If I'm understanding correctly you've got a brick and mortar business and you only make money off of local customers? Your short tail keywords show local results and that's where you want to be?

If that's true you probably shouldn't be worrying about the traditional organic SEO nonsense. You're not doing yourself any huge favors as far as local results go, and who the hell cares if you get a few long tail keywords where most of the traffic is people out of your demographic?

You don't need a site, but if you have one focus on the user and not the search engines. They don't care, users do. You've got an opportunity to show a landing page or lead gen form or whatever here, so do it if it fits.

For the rest you can really follow your gut. Where backlinks would be important for generic search results, your NAT is important for local. Get it out there, and get it on authoritative sources. Just like links a few good ones is worth more than thousands of shitty ones so allocate resources accordingly.

It's especially important to be listed on places where reviews count as well. As your gut might tell you, a review on a reliable site is a great metric (the harder it is to bullshit reviews, the better a good review will be for you).

Get your social profiles up, get them linked together, get consistent NATs, get fans. I honestly don't know how much social metrics count in local search, but it's another one of these gut instinct things. Focus on the biggest networks, demonstrate some legitimacy and interaction with the community.

The common thread in all of this is you're leveraging your legitimacy as a business, not some technical bullshit you use to tilt a metric in your favor. In the end you'll be judged based on true merit, but you can make your merit more accessible. At the same time, if you actually have a shitty company you're just not going to win at this game. What good would a #1 rank be if it was coupled with terrible reviews anyway?

 

[jonbird]

Yes Danny. Thanks for your reply - it's very encouraging/reassuring to know I'm thinking along the right lines It is a B&M biz, but sort of bridging the gap between online and off, definitely not traditional.. Your analysis is pretty much spot on though. My initial marketing plan is looking something like B2C direct mail/online retargeting (combined with specific B2B cold calling campaigns.) Been doing competitor analysis and I want to fly under the radar of my main competition for as long as possible - they're doing PPC etc.

This is posted in newbie Qs so fuckit.. Can you clarify what NAT means please?

Thanks

 

[jonbird]

To answer my own question, I presume we are talking about: Name, Address and Telephone.. Some great resources on here if one uses the search function hehe. I have decided to start off with a local number - I can always introduce a freephone number further down the line.

To go a bit deeper into explaining my specific situation and why I was concerned about local SEO specifics:

I have 4 x large towns within a 10 mile radius of my company's address. This is my initial target area (approx half a million people.) My business is technically based in one town, but falls in the area code of another - I want to target all four (and the smaller settlements in between.)

I don't think it's worth worrying about at this stage though anyway. My target market will recognise this local quirk, and I will likely be using paid and offline techniques to start off with. Will incorporate some SEO as I go along, but not required at this stage and I am not going to make any decisions based upon it.

Now I have a clear idea of what it is I'm trying to achieve, I have made a clear break down of what tasks I need to accomplish, and organised in terms of priority and how much time I think each task is going to take... I'm pretty bad at flitting between tasks/getting ahead of myself so this was an important step, I think.

Unfortunately this means no more time plotting/scheming and working on marketing plans etc at this stage. I'm totally convinced that there is enough of a market for this service and I already have a decent bit of work lined up (this money will be reinvested into marketing efforts.) There are just certain hoops I need to jump through first and a lot of serious graft to put in before I start actively marketing my services - I reckon this is going to take a couple of months (beginning of April, soft launch.)

This means I'll have to get a part-time job too. I've been out of work for awhile as I actually broke my back around 3 months ago - quite a lot better now though, so it's time to start getting some actual money coming in again..

Ah well, nothing worthwhile is never easy.. Will no doubt be back in a few months time with more Qs, will also try to post useful bits where I have something worth sharing. This forum is seriously packed with good info.

In the meantime - I've found these websites quite useful so far (both UK specific):

Check Browser Settings - detailed demographics, lots of sortable data here.

http://www.duedil.com/ - Suppliers/customer/competitior information from companies house.