January 2011 saw the 6th month in a row where Design Incorporated had set record website visitor numbers.

For years now, we have always attracted significant numbers of visitors to our website but with visitor numbers increasing dramatically month and month – so much so that they are now double what they were only 6 months ago – we went to investigate what we had done differently over the past 6 months to help create this sharp increase in website visitor numbers:

Keyword Research – understanding which keyword phrases our potential clients are more likely to be searching for has always been critical to us. Even more important however, is the process of optimising our own website with these keywords and keyphrases so as to help ensure our website appears on the first pages of that particular Google search. Our SEO web development is highly important to us and over the past 6 months we have continued to keep our website highly optimised. We have, in fact, narrowed down the searches to be ‘quality-specific’. That is, if a potential customer is searching for a creative service at a certain high level of quality, it is more than likely that Design Inc will appear higher up the rankings.

Blog – our blog continues to grow. The quantity of blog articles is important of course but not as important as the quality (and the keyword relevance) of the content. This helps Design Inc rank higher in relevancy for all those keywords & keyphrases embedded into our blog articles. And that is one way in which Google works:- ie just how relevant is this website for the particular keyword/phrase which you are typing in? For us, we have become so much more knowledgeable in the past 6 months in understanding just how to write an effective blog, so much so that each story attracts hundreds of new visitors to our website daily.

AdWord Campaign – whilst our monthly Google spend has remained unchanged for our PPC campaign, it is important to note that in the past six months, the keywords in which we are investing have changed significantly. Having carried out extensive research into our Google statistics last Summer, we clearly saw where are money was best spent and where we felt it was being wasted. This enabled us to reappoint the Google spend in much more truly effective ways. Our AdWord spend is working so much better for us now without any increase in investment.

Social Media – last year saw the introduction of Design Inc’s social media marketing push. With accounts set up within Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, etc, we have been able to create more relevant industry networks, a dedicated following as well as many more inbound links to our own website. And of course, the more inbound links you have created, the more opportunities there will be to attract more website visitors.

Inbound Links – as mentioned, the more inbound links there are to a website, the more opportunities there are for visitors to find themselves on your website. And one very good way of increasing inbound links is through entries on online directories. In August 2010, the marketing team at Design Inc invested their time researching and adding our details to over 200 online trade & industry-specific directories (some paid for but most free of charge). The upshot is that the combined might of these directories help push more new enquiries our way than ever before.

Email Marketing Services – all the email marketing solutions we send out – whether this be eNewsletters, eShots or simply the eSignature at the bottom of our everyday emails (introduced in July 2010) – all provide active hyperlinks back through to certain areas of our website, therefore offering more opportunities for increased visitor numbers. Our eShots are sent to those who specifically sign up to receive information from us, and although we have been creating eShots for years now, we can see that sign up numbers were much larger than they were than in previous years. The more people who sign up, the more receive our information, the more they mention us to others, the more new visitors we attract. And, with our own eMarketing statistics report, we can directly see just who has clicked a link through to our website, what they were interested in, who signed up, etc. This information is priceless to us.

Overall, it is impossible to pinpoint just one factor which has helped us increase visitor numbers. All the above website marketing tool (and more) are responsible for bringing more visitors to our website, and ultimately more enquiries from it. Rest assured we will continue to keep this trend going, not just for ourselves but to all of our website customers.