Following on from all things SEO the past few months, our latest blog gives small businesses and overview and insight into the crazy, weird and wonderful world of Digital Marketing. Our SEO, content advice and opinion blogs have helped point your business in the right direction in its online journey. But in our industry, we know it’s all about sales and online performance so we’ve put together a few little practical bits aimed at adding value.

Marketing Your Business Online Doesn’t Have To Be a Chore:

Many small business owners in the garment decorating sector are notorious for downplaying the importance of Marketing for their business, especially online. The industry is traditional, leap years behind other sectors; many businesses see it as simply setting up a site for their business and doing the occasional tweet or post on Facebook or Twitter. But what they don’t see is that everything online works together in a synchronized way. 

It’s all about collaborating… Online marketing brings together all aspects of your businesses online presence. Just put together your online content and keywords and mix that with your Blog & Social Media and the online/SEO world is at your feet. What we recommend for our customers is an integrated online strategy, covering all the bases.

eTrader Top Tips:

• Understand Your Customers/Audience: Treat your online customers like you would treat your in shop customers. Nobody knows your customers like you… Online it shouldn’t be any different. Using demographic tools, such as Hootsuite Analytics or Google Analytics makes identifying your online audience easy. 
• Research your Businesses Online Keywords: Know what your audience are looking for to find you, or what you want them to look for to find you. Plan your content strategy around your keywords and build your online presence from there. Use them in Blogs & Social Media and the rest is magic!
• Develop a Social Media Plan: This doesn’t have to be a strict structure. But Social Media plays a wide role in SEO and developing your online image. We recommend a mix of the planned an unplanned. See our Social Media Blog for more on this.
• Keep Up With The Times & Be Innovative: The internet doesn’t stand still. An amazing strategy one day may be wasted the next. Continuously work on new creative ideas to engage both current and new customers, try new things and keep up with current trends.

We know how difficult small businesses in our sector find operating online – It’s breaking tradition. The aim is to make it as simple as possible for your business to have all the tools required to help them succeed online, that’s where we’re happy to help.

We strive to offer our customers as much as physically possible (we want all our customers to get the best returns possible on their sites). This includes things such as auditing, ‘logmein’ sessions and optional Marketing Packs covering areas such as analytics analysis, social media analysis, content review & advice, keyword help and online marketing strategy advice.

We have all the bases covered when it comes to helping take our customers businesses forward.

For more information on improving your online business, all things Online Marketing, SEO & e-commerce in the garment decoration game don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Following on from our recent blog ‘Blogging & Business: A Match Made in Heaven’ where we looked at the art of writing a good blog and how it benefits your online businesses image. We left one stone unturned...(deliberately so we could write this piece!)

We wrote very (very!) briefly on the SEO benefits of Blogging, but this week we have decided to go one further and examine how exactly it works for you & your businesses.

SEO & Blogging: A Surprising Match….

Googles latest SEO guidance is on all things ‘real & quality content’across everything platform you use. The misconception is SEO is just all things backlinks, your landing page and site content but Googles Latest SEO Update focus on providing your businesses customers the whole experience - that’s where Social Media & Blogging come into things.

Google Loves Real Content from Real People….

 Blogging for SEO is all about communicating, collaborating, sharing you & your businesses views, news and opinions – keeping both current and potential new customers in the know.

Just be yourself, write naturally… nobody knows more about your business than you! Creating quality content is ‘two-fold’. It should generate more traffic to your site for potential newer customers but also keep current customers coming back for more (providing you write some interesting/relevant content).

The key is to be transparent, create interesting and relevant blogs. SEO is all about real sites providing real quality content and it couldn’t be easier than with Blogging!

There Will Be Sceptics Out There….

Some organisations hire fake ‘Guest’ bloggers, some key-word cram, but here at eTrader we promote quality content and ethical SEO practice. We encourage customers to actively create quality content across every medium they use. The results are more fruitful in the long term, both on and offsite. We understand that quality content is king as it plays a heavy part in your businesses Online Marketing & SEO performance.

 Here at eTrader we understand how Blogging benefits your online business. That’s why we have started rolling out our fully integrated blog for customers at very affordable prices. Get in touch to find out more!

This weeks blog is brought to you by none other that eTraders Managing Director, John will be regularly sharing his thoughts and views on all things online for Garment decorators. 

Want to know what all this stuff means?

SEO, SEM, SERP, URL, HTML, SSL, PCI, CRM, CMS, AND, ON, AND, ON, AND, ON.................... 

Or more importantly, what's it got to do with your Embroidery and Printed Clothing business?

I genuinely went to a meeting a few years ago with a web development company and thought it was some sort of elaborate game of Scrabble and that at the end of the meeting I would be asked to make words out of all the letters they'd thrown at me and win a prize or something. Sadly not, what I had experienced was the language I like to call 'Gobbledeegeek'.

Then it was off for a meeting with an online marketing company and SEO specialist (luckily my first meeting prepared me well and I knew what that meant), basically the same confusing language would be spoken but.... dare I say with a little less substance.

B2B, B2C, D2C, CTP, CTR, CPA, CPM, BOUNCE RATE, NEGATIVE KEYWORDS, META DESCRIPTIONS, AND, ON, AND, ON...........

Then I realised of course, like accountants and solicitors before them, these guys had created a new language which roughly translates to - 'You don't understand, you pay!' 

Fair enough, like the bean counters and ambulance chasers, some of them are pretty good and worth the money, but watch out for the ones who use it to show you how clever they are or to make you think you can't do most of this stuff yourself. Don't bother learning it if you're not going to apply it, the good guys tell you this stuff in a way you can understand and you can make your own mind up if it's something you want to pay for then go for it.

Anyway, now that I'm a fully fledged member of the Tech and SEO fraternity, and proud of it, I still keep this type of thing up my sleeve just in case....

http://www.iabuk.net/resources/jargon-buster

OR

http://www.directom.com/resources/internetmarketingtermglossary 

Over the years here at eTrader we have become fully bilingual, we talk both techie and garments. So if you want to talk about EMB, DTG, DST with a bit of the above thrown in get in touch and keep an eye out for our regular hints, tips and features on Social Media.