Hi All,

 

Can you have a look at this site and give me some ideas please? http://www.walkeretal.co.uk/

 

I seem to be struggling with visitors, no-one is really making any contact with the client so I'm not sure if it's an SEO problem or something with the Wording/Navigation.

 

Unfortunately is has to be that particular shade of green!

 

Thanks

at 1st glance, there isnt enought YOU, eg "We help businesses develop and grow!" might be better as "We will help you increase your profits" im not a copywritter, but thats the sort of general direction i feel you should be taking. More emphasis on making more money and more YOU. I didnt see any case studies or testimonials, if they can do what they say they can do there should be some proof eg " Walker et al helped me cut costs and increase my profit margin".

 

Your call to action isnt strong enough, its not saying "I will make more money if i contact you" instead of "free inital visit" how about adding YOU and saying "Find out how I can help YOU get rich and afford a penthouse in Monacco" or sumin ... also it wasnt immediatly obvious that, that was how i contacted you.. took a few seconds to find it.

 

The site is aimed at smaller business, the people who own small businesses are emotionally connected to them so you can use some emotional selling. have a look on here to see what type of selling technniques yell.com use to get our customer and use some of their techniques (not the cold calling - i mean asking things like "can you cope with an extra 10 clients per month" - makes me totally forget its costing money and more thinking wow thats like £5k per month WOAH!)

 

As for SEO, your page rank is at zero. what position are you ranking, and for what keywords? How many hits are you getting a month and where are the hits coming from?

Hate the background image

 

 

 

 

 

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DP Online

at 1st glance, there isnt enought YOU, eg "We help businesses develop and grow!" might be better as "We will help you increase your profits" im not a copywritter, but thats the sort of general direction i feel you should be taking. More emphasis on making more money and more YOU. I didnt see any case studies or testimonials, if they can do what they say they can do there should be some proof eg " Walker et al helped me cut costs and increase my profit margin".

 

Your call to action isnt strong enough, its not saying "I will make more money if i contact you" instead of "free inital visit" how about adding YOU and saying "Find out how I can help YOU get rich and afford a penthouse in Monacco" or sumin ... also it wasnt immediatly obvious that, that was how i contacted you.. took a few seconds to find it.

 

The site is aimed at smaller business, the people who own small businesses are emotionally connected to them so you can use some emotional selling. have a look on here to see what type of selling technniques yell.com use to get our customer and use some of their techniques (not the cold calling - i mean asking things like "can you cope with an extra 10 clients per month" - makes me totally forget its costing money and more thinking wow thats like £5k per month WOAH!)

 

As for SEO, your page rank is at zero. what position are you ranking, and for what keywords? How many hits are you getting a month and where are the hits coming from?

 

Hi Andy,

 

Thanks for the feedback, very good comments.

 

I agree it needs to sell to the small business more and certainly needs to sell the benefit rather than just listing what the business does.

 

"Free initial visit" I also agree needs updating.

 

As for ranking, the problem this site has is the competition from Government Services (Business Gateway, Enterprise etc...) and of course a lot of their services are in fact free so I think this client will have problems trying to sell something you can get for free.

 

Also the Client is adament they want the site to rank highly under keywords like "business advice" and "business support" which I think is unlikely as anything with the word "business" in it seems to bring up those Government Sites.

 

They do get visitors from Google and Yahoo though, using keywords like "Presentation Specialist", "Corporate HR Support", "Polls and Surveys", just nothing from keywords with the word business in it.

Hate the background image

 

 

 

 

 

-----------------------------

DP Online

 

Hi DP,

 

I actually agree with you about the background image, but unfortunately I have to use something relating to Jigsaw Pieces and it has to be dark. I choose a jigsaw image from stock photography, made it blue, darkened and blurred it to give some "depth"

 

However I'm not completely happy with it, you got any ideas?

geting that site to the 1st page of google is going to require a pretty crazy amount work in my opinion. I think on page optimisation is fairly poor, eg they want to rank high for business advice but business advice isnt anywhere on the page!

 

I dont know where to begin with, its like my vegan chocolate shop aiming at selling pcs.. no chance!

 

were you contracted to just design the site or include SEO, the seo on this is going to be expensive, its a very competative area full of very very big players.

 

it might be worth thinking, if i wanted business support what would i search for maybe help wit staff? the direction im trying to suggest is thinking about what people may search for when they mean business support and you may have more success there, but make sure all pages are seo and create 1 page per keyword.

geting that site to the 1st page of google is going to require a pretty crazy amount work in my opinion. I think on page optimisation is fairly poor, eg they want to rank high for business advice but business advice isnt anywhere on the page!

 

I dont know where to begin with, its like my vegan chocolate shop aiming at selling pcs.. no chance!

 

were you contracted to just design the site or include SEO, the seo on this is going to be expensive, its a very competative area full of very very big players.

 

it might be worth thinking, if i wanted business support what would i search for maybe help wit staff? the direction im trying to suggest is thinking about what people may search for when they mean business support and you may have more success there, but make sure all pages are seo and create 1 page per keyword.

 

I have to do the SEO also, but the client doesn't want any additional costs involved such as adwords or paid directories.

 

I have been thinking about what you mentioned above, "business advice" and "business support" will be difficult to rank (those keywords are there by the way, in the titles, descriptions and on other pages within headings and text) but like you say it just won't rank anywhere due to the competition, so will need to think up a different approach.

 

One other thing I have noticed, when I check analytics, I see users landing on the homepage, reading through some of the services, then finally going to the contact page, but then they just leave instead of making contact! Do you think the lack of a business address puts people off?

I have to agree with Mr Mayhem, the site just isn't focussed on the customer. Just looking at the home page it isn't clear exactly what the company does, and even when I find the list of "services" the information provided seems to be just waffle and doesn't tell me anything useful (or what i want to knw).

danny

 

business advice does not appear on your homepage, it is mentioned, you say "Business Planning, Advice and Consultancy" but its doesnt actually say it as business advice, the same as the page title.

 

By SEO, are you only contracted to do on page optimisation or off page as well (back links being the main one).

 

I wouldnt have thought not having an address would effect thinks.. however i was on the ukbusinessforum the other day and a lot of people on there were sayingt hey wouldnt contract a business that wasnt limited.. if this business is limited you need to include the address and reg number.

it wouldnt do any harm to try it for a week. how about setting up 2 contact pages 1 with addy and one without and split testing?

Also more call to action i wanna see some "to launch your business into the premier league enter you details here and we will be in touch to help YOU maximise sales.. etc"

danny

 

business advice does not appear on your homepage, it is mentioned, you say "Business Planning, Advice and Consultancy" but its doesnt actually say it as business advice, the same as the page title.

 

By SEO, are you only contracted to do on page optimisation or off page as well (back links being the main one).

 

I wouldnt have thought not having an address would effect thinks.. however i was on the ukbusinessforum the other day and a lot of people on there were sayingt hey wouldnt contract a business that wasnt limited.. if this business is limited you need to include the address and reg number.

it wouldnt do any harm to try it for a week. how about setting up 2 contact pages 1 with addy and one without and split testing?

Also more call to action i wanna see some "to launch your business into the premier league enter you details here and we will be in touch to help YOU maximise sales.. etc"

 

Hi Andy,

 

If I search for business advice in google and click the cached result (bear in mind I had to use "business advice walker et al") the words business and advice are highlighted in the text of the homepage whether they are aligned together or not.

 

However regardless of that I don't think trying to get the site to rank under those search terms is going to work, as we have already noted there is too much competition from bigger players.

 

I have started building up backlinks, the site is listed under relevant directories now (BNI, Small Business Club, HotFrog Business Directory etc..) and I'm constantly looking for other areas to try and build up relevant links (obviously I don't do spamming blogs etc..!)

 

Regarding the limited option, unfortunately they are not Limited yet so I can't add that, it's an interesting point though. I would like to add an address but the client works from home and is uncertain as to whether they want their home address published on the internet, I just know from my own experience until I moved into my own office no-one contacted me for IT Support (I was originally based on my mother-in-laws kitchen table!)

 

I will certainly look into the wording and call to action,

 

Thanks again for your comments so far

Not had time to read other replies so from the top of my head (as a designer and a visitor)

 

The title and the logo Walker Et Al 'bits for business' don't tell me anything about what the business offers.

 

E.g. Charlotte Maddison- freelance designer.

 

I think the design is rather fussy. The puzzle in the background, then within the pages contents and the header- well it seems alot. I'd probably drop the puzzle background and just keep the green at the top and a similiar plain blue background as opposed to an image.

 

I think once you simplify things you may get more chance of people looking through the site.

char

 

Hi Charlotte,

 

Thanks for the comments, the background was picked up earlier, but I never thought of just removing it, I think that sounds like a good idea, as you say it may focus the eye on the content more.

 

I wish I could ditch the green also but thats the clients company colour and they kept asking to see more of it!

 

Anyway thanks again I like the idea of removing the background image so I think I will push the client to let me remove it (again this was an original requirement, but if I can provide good feedback I'm sure they'll change their minds) (either that or I'll just remove it and see if they notice!)

 

Danny