It’s Grant Your Start Up Wish Wednesday! This is #3 in a 5 part series (if you missed the other ones, #1 is here, #2 is here). Today’s Wish was Granted by Kelly King Anderson, Founder of Start Up Princess and Janet Meiners, Internet Marketing Coach and Fairy Godmother for Start Up Princess.
Meet new member, Start Up Princess Cindy Kroske, a delightful South Carolina-based woman entrepreneur with a passion for health and nutrition. Cindy became interested in selling whole grains and supplies for baking bread 16 years ago and became a distributor of several high quality products and opened a local store and then more recently a website. When Cindy approached us she was concerned about her under-performing website and asked us what we thought she could do to increase sales and drive more traffic on her site, My-FavoriteThings.com
Cindy has a lot of time, but a limited budget to build her site. Here are some possible solutions:
1. Focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Look at Keywords: According to Fairy Godmother Janet Meiners, Internet Marketing Coach, Cindy needs to maximize and incorporate keyword phrases into her site. About 85% of people use a search engine to find a business online. She needs to do some research to see what words they are searching for. A tool like Digital Point can give you an idea of how people are searching for your products. Then incorporate these keywords in the site. For example over 61 people a day search for “whole wheat bread recipe.” Since that relates to her business she could put a recipe for whole wheat bread on her site.
Choose keyword phrases that are 2 or more words long (one word keywords are often too competitive and give you little opportunity to be found in search engines). These are words that describe what she sells that people are searching for. Put a 2-4 keyword phrase relating to each page of the site in the title, and in the meta description. Repeat those keywords in the heading of the site and throughout the text. So on the recipe page, the title tags and meta tags should say “whole wheat bread recipe.” Name the recipe Whole Wheat Bread recipe. Here is a tutorial on how to change meta tags .
Find keywords and write meta descriptions and a title with them for each page of the site. So when you’re on the page selling wheat grinders the title of the page should have that keyword phrases about wheat grinders.
Right now each page of her web site has the words: My-FavoriteThings.com in the title. That means she probably ranks well for the term: My-FavoriteThings.com. However, since it has nothing to do with what she sells it doesn’t help her business. It would be much better to rank well for the items she sells. Look at what web sites rank high for the keywords that relate to what you sell. Notice how they incorporate keywords onto their page.
Consider Title Tags: There are SEO tutorials on YouTube that teach about title tags. I also recommend signing up for Wilson Web’s email list to become more educated on internet marketing.
2. Newsletter Campaigns: Cindy has a great newsletter list (500+) from her local customers who shop at her store, to help promote her website, I recommend that each month she offer “internet only specials” to her existing customer base through an email newsletter and link to her website. She could give new recipes and put the ingredients on sale. Constant Contact offers 2 months for FREE.
3. Start Blogging about Bread Making and Supplies, linking to your product pages. Cindy is passionate about what she does and has expressed interest in starting a blog. I would only start a blog if she could have someone install a WordPress template on her existing site, so that any traffic generated from the blog goes directly to building her ecommerce store. She might talk to Fairy Godmother Sarah Lewis of Blogging Expertise about her rates. I would also highly recommend she learn how to blog from Yaro Starak of the Blogmastermind Yaro will teach her how to set up a blog on her website, how to blog “pillar posts” that will drive traffic, and how to maximize her efforts in 1-2 hours a day and make significant income. I’ve found his case studies, podcasts, and resources to be extremely helpful.
Blogs to start reading about how to blog for traffic and money: Problogger, eMoms at Home; Be sure to sign up for her free 10 day blogging course!
4. Press Releases are also a great way to add traffic, everyone can benefit from sharing their latest news with the press and news ranks the highest on the web, so don’t delay! Here’s our Free Press Release Sites info from Fairy Godmother Ponn Sabra.
5. Get Free Marketing Tips from Duct Tape Marketing are super and are usually easy to implement to any type of business
Other ideas: Cindy’s physical store which also needs a boost, I would recommend she consider receiving *FREE* mentoring from a SCORE counselor and her local SBA office. I also recommend that she look at Williams-Sonoma’s model of tasting/teaching/training in her store; classes are for a fee but samples are always free upon entry to the store.
Best Wishes, Start Up Princess Cindy! Please let us know what strategies are effective!
To do a press release on the PR Web website, do you have to know how to do web pages, graphics, etc.? Or do you just write up an article?
HI Deborah!
No you do not have to know about web pages, graphics, etc. to submit press releases to distribution sites such as PRWeb.com or other distribution centers.
In each category, for example, you want to add images, there are drop-down tabs to browse and find your image source (e.g., where your picture is located on your hard drive, which folder), and click and save. It’s as simple as sending images/pictures via email.
So, yes you have to “write up the press release”, but there are many principles to make it search engine optimized, as you can find the beginning of my Online Press Release series here.
If there are anymore questions, please ask.
To our continued success & empowerment,
Ponn
Thanks Ponn for your response and help here! You’re a magical Fairy Godmother of PR!
WOW! The information you shared is GREAT! You gave me MANY concrete suggestions and I’m excited to start tinkering with the whole site and make it much more functional! This will be so much FUN! You’ve energized me to do much more with it! Now if I can just figure out HOW to put all these wonderful ideas into play, I’m sure we’ll see some major results! Thank you very much for all the advice! I’ve shared it with many and gotten really positive comments! And our kids think it’s awesome that Mom’s now a PRINCESS! :O)
Glad you feel it is useful info for you!
We heard your wish…Now we want to hear how you “Make it Happen”