A bit about how Google works
Of course its not magic. Its just a list of well-defined instructions for calculating and bringing order to everything on the internet. Or to use its proper name an algorithm. This algorithm zooms around the net (or as spider it crawls) and uses uses automated reasoning to catalogue your website and place it in the big scheme of things. This all gets stored on a giant hard drive. So when somebody does a search Google can instantly give you the results it assumes are the most valuable on the internet.

So what is SEO?
Google uses a pretty impressive list of instructions (algorithm) to work out how valuable your website is to the world (these instructions are a closely guarded secret) so it can impose some kind of natural order. Put in the most basic way I can think of search engine optimisation (SEO) is a way of applying certain techniques to gain an advantage with Googles algorthm. Or put even simpler, its just a way of cheating the system.

Two basic principles
Keywords – Google indexes all the words on your website and summarises what each page is about. It stores the information and works out which is the most specific page about that subject on the net. When someone searches for ‘red wine from provonce’ Google can link that search with the most specific web page (or what it considers to be an authority on that subject). The more authority you have the more valuable are to someone looking for knowledge.

Backlinks – In our culture we know when something is good when lots of people like it. Its the same in search engines. The more people link to a webpage the better it must be. Again the idea is to find an authority on a given subject. This is something that’s out of your control because other people are deciding on the genuine value of your website by linking to it. Of course with SEO you can fake that which is why I said its like cheating the system.

In closing
Of course there’s a lot more to it than this. There are two ways of doing really well on Google. One is to produce something that everyone likes or needs. Something that is so good people will link to it and tell their friends about it who also link to it. An extreme example is the BBC website. They’ve created an amazing resource and come in most news or sports searches.

Or you can use search engine optimisation (SEO) to make Google think you’re an amazing resource so you come high in the rankings. I think the best strategy is to use a mix of both.

There are elements of a website business owners need to know about because it can make the difference between getting leads and getting nothing. Unfortunately it takes more than a well designed website to keep the sales coming in. And that means more work for you. Fortunately for you not many small business owners have the dedication or belief for this type of approach. And that makes the potential pay-off even better.

Take it from me. Iv had quite a few well designed websites in my time. And it wasn’t until I stopped obsessing about design and started to address the points below that my website started to make me money.

Here are three tips to help you take your website from a tired old man to moneymaking superstar.

1. Creating an offer
There is an assumption that if we sling a few words together, knock up some text or blurb it will be OK. Yet words are arguably the most important part your website. Your words form part of your offering to the world. No words, no offer. And without an offer there is nothing to accept and buy.

Considering the importance of your offer you’d think business owners would put a lot of consideration their web text. Yet time and time again its left to the end of the project and put together quickly and under much duress.

Turning what you do into a web friendly but of text is very hard. Especially if you offer bespoke services. Getting off the typical marketing spiel we’ve all become used to and onto something that will actually sell requires persistence and skill.

Think about what your actually is your offering to your customer or client from their point of view. Write it down. Then write it down again. Keep doing it and build up a picture. If you’re using a WordPress website you can put it on your website and get a feel for it and change and delete it. This is a brilliant way of fine tuning your offer in its real environment.

If your thinking of getting a website start writing your text now. You’ll be in a position to design your website around a well thought out and considered offer. That will give you the jump on 99% of your competition who have just knocked something together at the last minute.

Ask some friends or associates to look at your website. Is it clear exactly what you’re business is offering? If not you might be missing out.

2. Stimulating a response
A good website should create a response from the person using it. It might be to get in touch, sign up to something or pick up the phone. The trade term for this is A Call to Action. Something written or graphic that acts as a command. You need to tell the person what you want them to do.

Our website has an instruction to pick up the phone and call on every page. The form on the contact page is big and is it intended to be inviting. There are buttons on all the sales pages directing people to get in touch. The slide show has buttons telling people to click here. If you don’t tell people what to do they might not do it. That could be the difference between creating leads and sales and not.

Have a look at your website. Does it have clear instructions? If not, try adding some. See if it improves the amount of sales and leads you get.

3. Web traffic
Might sound obvious but its an often overlooked part of most business owners website strategy. There’s a notion that all you have to do is put a website up and the business will come flooding in. Unfortunately its not always that easy. Your web traffic needs to come from somewhere and that somewhere needs to be looked at.

Getting traffic from the search engines is the first port of call and the easiest to sort out yourself. Read our guide to getting your website into Google to get started on this.

Have a look at your web stats. How much traffic are you getting? Could you get more from the search engines or other sources?

1. Cost effective – It’s completely free and has an army of developers constantly working on it to keep it up to date and secure. This means that you don’t have to pay a developer two or three days work to code a platform from scratch.
2. Design – High quality themes give you great designs at a price that’s a snip. As WordPress is the most popular system there is a large market of designs to choose from. Some of them are even free. Most of the themes are written in HTML5 which means they can be viewed on a iphone or ipad. Unlike a lot of other CMS’s out there were this would be an additional charge.
3. Branding – As WordPress’s code is so well written it’s easy to customise your website to your own unique branding. That’s why I choose to use WordPress for this website.
4. Growth – You can add to your website very easily with a flexible interface. This includes adding new pages and content. There’s thousands of free plugins so you can expand the functionality of your website to include forms, calenders, email subscription and all kinds of widgets. There are over 30,000 plugins available. You name it, its probably there and yours for free.
5. Search engines – Its well written and simple code is standards compliant. That means its excellent for search engines and can be read by screen readers. Its easy to use interface is great for enhancing your search engine capability without having to change any code.
6. Social media – WordPress is built for sharing. You can easily integrate your YouTube videos and Twitter feeds. You can automatically update your Facebook and Titter feeds every time you publish a new blog article.
7. Prototyping – A lot of the time you don’t know if the text and images you’ve written and compiled is going to work until it goes on a live website. You can do any many designs as you like but there will always be something you miss because a design and a website are essentially two different things. WordPress’s flexible and easy to use system allow ‘s you to make tweaks and get it right without the massive cost and pain of having to change lots of code.

Those damn email just won’t stop coming. The more you action or delete the more turn up. It’s never-ending. You go away for a day and come back to an inbox full of them. They can take up a lot of time to answer and are sometimes just unnesscary.

Email encourages us to make simple communication more long winded than it has to be. That means longer to read, longer to write and easier to be misunderstood. I’m dyslexic and emailing can be the bane of my life. Since it was decided that bad spelling equaled being crap at your job I sometimes have to check and re-write simple emails two or three times for fear of looking ‘unprofessional’.

Another reason to reduce the time you spend emailing is because no one reads them properly in the first place.

So here’s my top 7 tips to help you get your email inbox back. I hope it helps you to free up some time so you can go on Facebook or Twitter a bit more

1. Getting off those newsletter lists with Unsubscribe.com
How many newsletters have you signed up to? How many can’t you be bothered to unsubscribe? How many times have you given someone a business card and found you’re now on their mailing list? The worst culprit is the newsletter that you can’t unsubscribe from without logging into your account and changing your settings. In my world that’s like being held to ransom because I just can’t be arsed to find my details for an account I probably haven’t used more than once. Even if I did login, were are my user settings? Best just to let it go and do it next time while I get on with more important things.

All those emails mount up and add to the noise in your inbox. They’re also a bit invasive, it’s just we’re so used to clearing up crap its become the norm. Unsubscribe.com lets you unsubscribe from lists and helps to protect against spam without having to do anymore than press a button on your email client.

This is it on MacMail (you can get a button on most email clients and Gmail etc). Just press that button and see you later. One less email. Easy.

2. What goes around comes around
Put simply if you don’t want to receive loads of emails don’t send them. I must have sent hundreds of emails in the past asking if you know how to…..or do you have….. when I could have Googled it or found it for myself. Now I’ve started to question if I need to reply or even inquire about this in the first place.

It’s too easy to send an email and forget about without being aware that’s someone else’s time I’m taking up. If I’m doing that to other people, chances are someones doing it to me.

3. No news is good news
The most draining and time-consuming email exchanges are between you and your pissed off client. Exchanges can go on for days and fester in the mind after you’ve gone home. After a particularly hard week when just about everything that could go wrong did gone wrong and I spent most of the week typing emails it hit me its time to get my house in order.

It’s a bit lateral but fixing problems before they happen can reduce potential misunderstandings and long drawn out exchanges. For me that means taking a step back and creating some proper systems to stop this happening again. <—— link

5. No need to reply!
Writing NNTR or actually saying no need to reply as the end of the message. The person on the will probably be happy to write one less email.

6. Be clear
Being able to write well and explain what you mean is a great skill and essential for making projects run smoothly. Its also bloody hard. Sometimes it feels easier to put a question out there and hope the other person will get what your trying to say or will help you work out what you want to say.

This can create long strings of email confusion. Working out what you want to say first can save both of you time and get that essential info you need quicker.

7. Instant message
Instant messaging over Skype is great. You know when someones in. You can send a quick message, type what you want, they reply, you can go back on forth a few times. Job done. Its in real time so its easier to have conversation which makes it easier to sort out those little details and have a bit of fun along the way. You don’t have to wait for the reply to be emailed back that day or week. That means one less email and one less reason to check your emails.

This morning, after some coercion from my fiance I signed up to Movember, the campaign to raise money and awareness of prostrate cancer. It means I have to wear a mustache for the whole of November.

So I had a shave and am left with a sort of gingerish hair clump above my lips. Convinced that I do actually have the worst mustache in the world I am going to look like a complete plank I have to ask myself what I am actually doing this for.

Last night we went into London and there seemed to be loads of people with mustache’s, some good, some bad and I thought it could be a pretty fun club to be in for a bit. If I can get some of my friends involved and raise some money for a good cause I could really learn a lot.

So here are some of the reasons why I’m growing a little ginger animal below my nose.

1. To raise money for a good cause
2. I think I worry to much about how I look and this will really give me a chance to get over myself
3. To get out of my comfort zone
4. It give me a chance to be creative and use all my marketing experience to get my friends involved
5. Learn about social proof and how it influences our decisions and motivation
6. Can I use it as a marketing tool to get in contact with old clients and remind them that SO Creative is around

So this morning I sent out a load of emails to friends with the picture above asking them to join in and grow a tash. I got a few ‘oh my gods’ and one donation of £10. Progress. Then I put the picture up on Facebook and got a lot of comments taking the piss (I guess the cardigan didn’t help). Apart from a few giggles not much going on there.

When I left the house this evening I was convinced people were going to be rolling around in the street laughing at me. London didn’t give a toss though and when I got back I thought I had better things to do than worry about people think of me. Progress. Then I got a email from a friend who’s going to join in. That made my day.

So at the end on day 1

• £10 in donations
• 1 fellow tash accomplice

To Donate to November click here

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Day 3 – Ain’t Mo rush

Ive realised its no good bombarding people with message for donations because they’re not going to be heard. I’ve changed my tactic and will let my friends become aware of what I’m doing when they come into contact with me. This means I have to have more contact with people. Either by seeing them in person, chatting on the phone or on Facebook. Putting a picture of myself on Facebook whilst wearing a christmas cardigan doesn’t seem like such a bad idea now. Sure I got the piss taken out of me a bit but it did create a large conversation and now a lot of people know what I’m doing.

Its a slower tactic but I think a better one. When you’re asking for money for charity its easy to assume people have got nothing better to do than to give to your cause. When the word is around that I’m growing a mustache for Movember (and the mustache actually looks like a mustache!) it will be a much better time to ask for donations and my friends my be more inclined to give.

When I woke up this morning I almost ran to the mirror to see how the tash was coming on. Its getting less gingery and more pronounced. I’m almost starting to like it there.

Last night I bumped into my neighbour who’s also growing a mustache for Movember. A friend called me late at night and asked how he can take part. The web developer who was making some tweaks to this site read this blog and donated a tenner. Rather than call people a pussy if they don’t join in I think its much better to let people make up their own minds.

So at the end on day 3

• £20 in donations
• Team Fanstastic created, 2 members so far

To Donate to November click here

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Day 4 – Can I create a story?

Chocks away! Have had a lot of offers for donations once my tash is a bit more visable. Can’t really ask people to donate to something they can’t see.

I’ve completely forgotten its on my face so am getting used to it. Even had one person tell me it suits me!

Put up a pic yesterday of mustache progress on Facebook with a comment about it still being ginger. Got a few comments and likes etc. Made this pic of me in the RAF uniform for a laugh cos everyone keeps saying I look like I’m from the 1940′s with my tash.

The more fun I can make it the more people will get to know. Hopefully it will create a kind of story with the climax being a big bushy mustache and lots of donations. Only 12 days to go till the end Nov so need the Mo to start growing.

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Day 8 – Mo one said it was gonna be easy

mmmmm…getting donations isn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be. It seems you have to do a bit more than simply grow a mustache and ask for money.

Have tapped up my parents but only have £30 so far. Maybe because its for a whole months rather than one event its easy for people to put off and do later. There’s going to be some organisation involved in sending out some appeal emails and calls at the end of the month.

Still there’s 6 days and as the bush gets bigger it might be time to add some styling.

Try and create something remarkable.

So at the end on day 8

• £30 in donations
• Team Fanstastic created has kinda stalled

To Donate to November click here

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Day 12 – Mo one cares

Movember is nearly over and I’m getting a bit worried I’m not gonna raise that much (I seem to have taken it on as a personnel challenge). Iv been on the phone today trying to drum up support but getting money out of people isn’t quite as easy as I thought it would be.

Lots of people are going to do it ‘later’ so I’m a bit concerned nothing it going to happen. I’m getting a bit shy asking for donations and am getting a bit tired of going mentioning it to the some people again and again. It’s the last day tomorrow so will give it a final push. Feeling a bit despondent though

I have mixed feelings about my mustache. Part of me can’t wait to get the hair off. Part of me is liking it. Being three into this though its starting to feel a bit ludicrous to ask for donations just because I’m growing a tash. It’s like nothing really (not what I said at the beginning).

So at the end on day 12

• £50 in donations
• Been entered into a competition by the Movember website (woohoo)

To Donate to November click here

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Mo more

December 1st and Movember is over. Shaved off the tash this morning. It looked more blonde that ever with all the shaving foam on. I got to see what I look like with a mustache and raise some money for charity. Not a bad way to spend most of a month.

Some of the donations came in from the unlikeliest of places. Some of the donations that were promised never actually appeared. I think I found that disappointing. Friends promising to donate then not getting round to it. I was starting to pester people and I guess the challenge with this is to let people make up their own minds.

One of the things I’ve learnt is we do things a lot more enthusiastically when we’re moved to act. That’s the basis of advertising and why it works. Move someone emotionally and they’ll get passionate about what your selling and maybe even irrational (enough to part with their money). Without that its a hard slog.

I had these big plans to get a group of us and put up funny pics in Facebook everyday and create a campaign. A friend did that a few years ago and together they raised thousands. Guess as I suspected near the end of Movember, growing a mustache isn’t really that big of a deal. Without the entertainment of a group of us doing it there wasn’t much for people to get into so it was easy to forget to donate or to just not bother. And that’s fair enough.

Another things I learnt is that at the end of the day although I did it to raise money for a good cause I think most of it has been about me. About what I wanted to achieve and about getting over my fear of looking ridiculous.

Part 1 – Catch 22

After six years of trying to build up a freelance design business by myself I felt exhausted. There was a constant list of things to, fires to put out and the next bit of work to chase.

The dream was to create a better life for myself. The reality was that I was overworked, stressed, poorly paid and very anxious. I was unable to switch my brain off from work and no matter how long a break I took after a few days back ‘in the office’ I was knackered.

Although I’d tell people I was running my own business I was really a freelancer. There were a lot of things I was fed up with, here are a few:

1. Being a freelancer only really works if you’ve got a good stream of constant work. Some of my designer friends seem go from one job to the other without any effort. If you don’t have a secure stream of work you have to spend loads of time and resources on your marketing and that drives your costs up. If you have to invest your time and money to get a website, go on twitter, create your own brand, go networking etc you need to take your freelance business into a new dimension to position yourself so you can charge the right rates.
2. As a freelancer not having work makes you insecure and a bit twitchy. Even when you’ve got work for 3 months you know after that it might run out. Unless you’ve got your marketing absolutely spot on you’re always going to be in an insecure position. Freelancers tend to take every bit of work they can get (glut) and run themselves ragged because they know it might dry up any minute.
3. At first working by myself was great. I could tuck myself away, get lost in some design work and dream the dream. I was the boss and its egotistical but I kind of felt like I was going to make something great happen by myself. Looking back I think its insecurity. Anyway after a while it really sucked. There’s just so much you have to do. You can literally end up spending all your time working. Unless you manage things really well the to do list never runs out.
4. I hate charging by the hour for most projects. You need more flexibility when working on creative projects, a bit of breathing space. We all know the situation, the meters run out but the client is really cool. Do a bit of extra work free for the cause. If the client is a real pain in the ass you don’t do the work and you charge him for the extra bit. I’m not sure I want to decide the outcome of a project this way. I’m sure my clients don’t either.
5. It always felt like the money was for me, rather than the business. That made me really uncomfortable. How much should I charge to do that. I never thought I was worth it so I had a problem asking for it and was a shit negotiator. I took the lazy way and under quoted a lot. I might have escaped the uncomfortable feeling but I didn’t do anything for my self esteem or finances.
6. It’s hard to grow because you need money to hire people. You also need to trust your choice with repeated working together. As a freelancer you will only ever employ other freelancers. This is fine on a costs basis but when it comes to running complicated web projects good communication is essential. How do you develop empathy with each when you only work together occasionally? You need some down time, to hang out and get to know each other or understand each other sometimes. There’s no money in that so as freelancers we’d probably prefer to be off doing something else.

So there I was at the end of the line, by myself and pretty pissed off with everything. I felt like I was in a catch 22. I really needed someone to come in as a partner and help turn a bunch of vague ideas into an actual working business. But who? I’ve always been on the look out but never really found anyone who was interested or who I thought I could work with on this level.

Who’d have thought the solution would literally be right under my nose.

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Part 2 – Sharing is caring

Part of the problem of getting someone in to help me was the cost. Another is the times it takes to develop ideas and implement things. Like a lot of freelancers money can be very tight at times and I can’t afford to pay someone for some full on business development.

Luckily for me I didn’t have to and I like I said solution was right under my nose. I’ve asked my girlfriend previously about helping out but it was only in the normal cliched way. Like doing the accounts and other admin work. Hardly the kind of thing she’s want to do when she got back from work. Needless to say it never really turned into anything.

When Kinga became my fiance and I asked for help with more exciting work like design and copywriting everything changed. All of a sudden I had someone who I talk through ideas with and get an opinion I really valued and that helped to move things forward. I always knew we could work well together as a team but I had no idea it would be this good for design and web projects.

This culminated in us spending two days sat side by side, each with a computer to launch this website. Without her help all that work would have taken months. Not because I don’t have the skills but because having someone you can work through problems with and who’s passionate about the same thing provides the inspiration and rocket fuel to get it done.

So the website got launched. Work on it is still on-going but the point is it got launched. It could have sat there for ages in a folder on my imac doing nothing. Now it’s up and is another thing off my mind.

Being part of a team can be hard because you have to expose your weaknesses at times. Without the teamwork though I would have never completed this website to such a high standard in such a short time. It wouldn’t have been so enjoyable either and surely that’s the point of it too.

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Part 3 – Say My Name say my name

Working as a freelancer/company with the name Simon Oliver (as I did for 6 years) always bothered me a little. I’ve been told its a good name (and I agree), its sounds nice. In my own mind though the entire business centered around me and its been hard to see how I could grow what I do into a larger business with more people. I would ask myself why anyone would want to work for a company with my name. It felt like it was smothering me sometimes.

I’d played around with names before like Oliver & Co but that didn’t really suit me so I dropped it. So it was with a bit of a surprise that when the idea of changing the name of the company to SO Creative was suggested I dismissed it out of hand. It took a bit of convincing from Kinga and my friend Lionel for me to even entertain the new name. Once it started to grow on me though that was it and there has been no looking back.

The more I let go of being Simon Oliver Design (its alllll about me) and become part of a group of people who are on the same side (including clients) the more I’m enjoying my work. And the more work I’m getting.

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