Entry-level presentation as part of a range of CPD seminars for Northern Irish solicitors, aimed at providing the delegates with a baseline understanding of good online practices and digital marketing.

2. Use the internet to grow your business
Barry Adams & Rachel Murphy
Pierce Communications
Web: http://www.piercecommunications.co.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/PierceComms
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Piercecomms

3. Barry Adams
• Senior Digital Marketer at Pierce Communications
• Built my first website in 1995, started my career in all things
online in 1997
• Specialisation in SEO
• Dutch (yes, really)
• Previous employers include:
 Philips Electronics
 Honeywell
 Quotezone
 Independent News & Media (Belfast Telegraph et al)

4. Rachel Murphy
• Masters in Marketing from University of Ulster
• Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and
Chartered Management Institute
• Been working in Online Marketing for 7 years
• Previously employed by Bank of Ireland (sorry) and
looked after their 39 websites as well as microsites that
were developed for Dragon’s Den and Leinster Rugby

5. Agenda:
• What makes a good website?
• What drives traffic to a website?
• Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation
-- BREAK --
• How can you use Social Media effectively?
• How blogging can help your business
• Web strategy – tying it all together

6. What makes a good website?

7. First impressions matter
• The “look and feel” of a website has the greatest
impact on users’ credibility assessments, with
professional site designs heavily influencing
credibility perceptions
• Once users have seen a web page, it is difficult to
overcome the first impressions they form based on
the professional appearance of a page’s design.*
*Source: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/merrie/papers/WebCredibility_CHI2011.pdf

10. Key Aspects of good web design
• Your site’s purpose need to be instantly evident
 Don’t make users look for the purpose of your site
 Strong headlines, clearly named navigation, images
• Your site needs to be easy to use
 Uncluttered layout, good supportive images, works in all
browsers
• Tell users what you expect them to do
 Use calls-to-action to guide the visitors to the
relevant conversion page

11. Web Development best practices
• Standards-based
 W3C compliance is not a must, but should be worked
towards
 Cross-browser compatibility
• Internet Explorer 7,8,9 / Firefox / Google Chrome
 Limit 3rd party plugins
• avoid Flash, Silverlight & QuickTime
• JavaScript is OK, within limits

12. Content Management
• Open Source systems are a good choice
 Easily portable so you’re not dependent on a single
web developer
 Constantly upgraded with security fixes & functional
improvements
 Most are based on standards and will generate
compliant websites
 Many plugins & extensions available for extra
functionality
• Examples: Wordpress, Magento

13. What drives traffic to a website?

14. Traffic Sources

15. Search Traffic
• Search traffic is the biggest traffic driver for most
websites
 Search encompasses both organic search and paid search
advertising
 Increased traffic via organic search is achieved via Search
Engine Optimisation (SEO)
 Increased traffic via paid search advertising is done via Pay
Per Click (PPC) advertising on Google AdWords

16. Search Engine Results Page*:
*SERP

17. Organic search results:

18. Paid search advertising:

19. Other Traffic Sources
• Referral traffic
 Clicks from other websites on to yours
 Social Media can be a big driver of referral traffic
• Campaigns
 Email marketing
• Direct traffic
 Bookmarks / Favorites
 Clicks from external (non-browser) tools like Outlook, Lotus
Domino, etc.

20. What is Search Engine Optimisation?

21. Definition of SEO:
Search Engine Optimisation
 Wikipedia: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the
visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-
paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.
 Getting more relevant traffic to websites via search engines' organic results.

22. Why is SEO important?
Worldwide Internet Usage
 2 billion users online
 Dec 2009: 131 billion searches (that’s more than 49,000 searches/second)
UK Internet Usage
 51.4 milion users (82.5% of the population)
 In April 2010, Google received 4.1 billion search page views in the UK
 The UK internet economy is worth £100 billion = 7.2% of UK gross domestic product
Search Engine Usage
 89% of all online purchases in the UK begin with a search
 95% of all UK Internet users choose Google as their preferred search engine
 Organic search results receive over 75% of all clicks
 91% of users do not look past the first page of search results

23. Clickthrough rates (CTR) on
search engine results:

24. SEO is about two things:
Keywords Links
 Keywords match a search query to a  Links determine which webpage ranks
webpage. highest.

25. The SEO process:
Keyword
 Find the right keywords to optimise for
Research
On-Page  Implement those keywords on the website
Optimisation  Make the website search-engine friendly
Linkbuilding  Build links to the website to increase its authority

26. The Long Tail of search words
Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/illustrating-the-long-tail

27. Google Adwords Keyword Tool –
http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

28. On-site Optimisation
Elements to be optimised:
+ Title tags
+ Meta Description tags
+ Headlines and paragraph structure
+ Body text
+ Image alt attributes
+ URLs
+ Internal links
+ Sitemap (HTML and XML)

29. On-Page Optimisation
+ Title tag
<title>Pierce Communications - Design,
Marketing, Digital, Print</title>
• Put your focus keywords in your title, and include your brand
name (use separators like hyphens – and pipes | )
• Keep it short – 65-70 characters
• Unique title for every page on your website

30. On-Page Optimisation
+ Meta Description tag
<meta name=‘description’ content=‘Pierce Communications is a
leading marketing services agency based in Belfast,
Northern Ireland. Services include print design, web
design &amp; build, SEO, PPC.’>
• Not a ranking factor – but a very important click-through factor
• SERPs only show 150 characters – but no guarantee they’ll actually show
your description.
• Try to include the focus keyword once

31. On-Page Optimisation
+ Headlines and paragraph structure
<H1> headline
<H2> subheader
<H3> subheaders
<p> paragraphs
• Allows SEs to understand the content and its context

32. On-Page Optimisation
+ Internal links
• Link from top to bottom
• Link sideways & diagonally
• Use keywords in the link
Wrong:
To read more about wedding rings,
click here.
Right:
Read more about wedding rings.
• Use breadcrumb links:
Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/diagrams-for-solving-crawl-priority-indexation-issues

33. Linkbuilding
• Links determine a page’s authority
• Higher authority = higher ranking on SERPs
• More links = higher authority
• Not all links are equal
 1 valuable link from a high authority website > 100 links
from low-quality sites
• Link text is very important
 Branded link: Pierce Communications
 Keyword-rich link: Web Design Belfast

34. How to build links?
1 Directory Submissions
2 Press Releases
3 Article Marketing & Guest Blogging
4 Linkbait

35. Want to learn more about SEO?
• Training (Digital Marketing Institute)
• Read SEO books
 The Art of SEO
• Read SEO blogs:
 Search Engine Land
 SEOmoz
 State of Search
 Search News Central
• Hire a professional

36. [15 minute break]

37. How can you use Social Media
effectively?

38. What Is Social Media?
“Social media is an umbrella term that defines the
various activities that integrate technology, social
interaction, and the construction of words, pictures,
videos and audio”
http://www.wikipedia.org

40. What Is Social Media?
More simply put:
Social media is
people having
conversations online

41. Powered By Tools Such As...
YouTube Facebook Twitter
Flickr MySpace Blogs

42. What Is Social Media?
It’s all about the C’s
• Community
• Communication
• Connected
• Collaboration
• Creative

43. Advantages Pitfalls
• Reach customers that • Places higher demands
traditional marketing on your time
misses • Places higher demands
• Build brand loyalty on your talent
• Lose some control of
• Learn how to improve
your marketing effort
your products and
• Delay on your Return
services
on Investment
• Learn more about your
target audience

45. Stay Or Go?
• Some companies just don’t “get it” yet
• People are not just demographics anymore, to
connect with them you need to understand that
relationships are more powerful than marketing
• That is why social media is not a fad...it’s a new way
of communicating!

46. Stay Or Go?
The old communication model was a monologue
• Only 18% of TV ad campaigns generate positive ROI
• 90% of people who can skip TV ads, do
• The average person is exposed to 3000 advertising
messages a day...only 14% trust them
• 78% of people trust the recommendations of other
consumers
Nielsen “Trust in Advertising” report, October 2010.

47. What Can It Do For ME?
It’s not a magic bullet! But over time it can give you:
• Visibility- by engaging in daily conversations with
your audience you are at the forefront of their mind
when they need your service
• Brand yourself as a Resource- All that visibility and
sharing means that you become the go-to resource
and a voice that people trust in your industry

48. What Can It Do For ME?
• Help you get speaking gigs- Conference organisers want
people in their industry who are both trusted and visible.
• Build a community- By making yourself available and
sharing information you strengthen your community.
• Highlight your service- SM offers an additional avenue to
show off and talk about your services in an informal way.
• Find new projects and clients- you can receive leads and
referrals as a result of your social media presence
• Hang out with other Influencers- Social media lets you be
friends with the people your clients most look up to.

49. What Can It Do For ME?
• Tell your company’s story- People like to conduct
business with companies they know.
• Be a Mentor- Sometimes you’re the person they are
trying to meet and the person they’re learning from
• Improve your writing skills- Want to be a better writer?
Enter the world of social media!
• Develop better ideas- Armed with blogs, forums and
social discussions you’ll be able to try and get feedback
on ideas before you develop them
• Network faster- This morning, through twitter, I had a
conversation with one of the top social media experts in
the world- you can’t buy access like that

50. What Can It Do For ME?
• Find partners- An offshoot of networking you may be able to
find future mentors or people to share resources with
• Get answers faster- When you get involved in SM you build up
a network of people who can help you answer questions or
point you to resources
• Create a resource depositary- Every time someone tweets an
article that is useful save it!
• Develop your company culture- It forces you to pin down who
you are and what you want your brand to be
• Better hires- Using SM can help you to hire smarter and faster.
It helps you cut through the clutter and find the most talented
gems

51. So You Want To Start...
• Choose the appropriate channels
• Get your content right
• Build up a list of permissions- just because the tool is
free does not mean that the channel is free!

52. The Appropriate Channel?
• LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are the most
established channels but each has a different tone
and function
• LinkedIn is very much a business tool
• Facebook reaches people in their social time
• Twitter easily straddles both

53. The Right Content?
This depends on your goals:
• If your aim is to win new business, the focus needs to
be on providing good know-how or industry insight,
which is of use to clients and demonstrates quality of
thought within your firm
• Conversely, if your objective is to market the firm to
future trainees, you might talk about interesting work
completed by the firm

54. So Should You?
Yes, if you are willing to put in the time and energy that
this channel requires to be successful.
If you build it, they probably won’t come. If you look
after it, they’ll start arriving.

55. How blogging can help your business

56. What Is A Business Blog
What it’s not:
• A place where you keep and report a diary of your
company’s activities. This is more along the lines of a
personal blog
• A business blog is much more part of your online
marketing toolkit

57. Others Do It, Why Should You?
• Differentiating your business and services
• Attracting prospects and developing new business
opportunities
• Helping to enhance and build your visibility and
brand
• Positioning yourself as an expert
• Improving internal communications
• It will act as a central element to SEO

58. Ok, But What Are The Advantages?
• Develop your position and reputation as an expert
• Create a real dialogue with those who matter
• Lead generation
• Brand Awareness
• Educational marketing

59. How Do I Start?

60. How do I start?
• What do you want to do with your business blog?
• Who is your target audience?
• What results are you looking to achieve?
• How will it integrate with your other marketing
activities?
• Who will be blogging and how often?

62. Final Thought
• Legal profession already has a strong blogging
community, so the appetite for it is there
• If you’re going to do it, do it properly
• Keep it fresh, keep it regular, keep it interesting and
it will become a great tool.

63. Web Strategy – tying it all
together

64. SOSTAC®

65. Start with setting goals & objectives
• What do you want your
website do deliver for your
business?
 Don’t be online just for the sake
of it
 Have a clear goal in mind, and
focus your online activities on
achieving that goal

66. Identify your core online channels
• What traffic source will lead to you achieving your
objective in the most effective way?
 SEO + PPC + Email + Social
 Usually a mix of channels works best
• If unsure, start small and try things out

67. Don’t give up too soon
• Persist – especially with long term activities such
as SEO and Social Media
• Acquire expertise
 Either in-house or agency
• See what your competitors are doing
 Don’t simply copy, but be inspired and original

68. Measure
• Use web analytics like Google Analytics to measure
the result of your online activities
 Track conversions and attach a value to them
• (Re-)Focus on those channels that deliver the biggest
ROI

69. Questions?
badams@piercecommunications.co.uk http://www.piercecommunications.co.uk
rachel@piercecommunications.co.uk 02890 371010
Thank you for your time & attention