How to drive traffic to your website

This topic is one that’s fairly well publicised all over the Internet through various sites, and we are no exception. Here is what we believe are the best techniques not only to get as much traffic as you can to your website, but the correct traffic which bring conversions and more business in the long run.

All of the marketing and SEO techniques that will be discussed are “white hat SEO” and legitimate, meaning Google sees these favourably as opposed to “black hat SEO” where if Google finds out that some of those techniques have been used, then you could be penalised and removed from the Google search listings completely like BMW.de did in 2006, using doorway pages. These are pages that get stuffed with keywords but not visible to humans, only to the Googlebot to gain a better ranking and be shown in more search results. Although bmw.de removed the page almost instantly, Google gave them the “Google death penalty” which gave them a page rank of 0.

So the techniques we are about to display are all legitimate and won’t get you anywhere but further up the Google stairway to heaven.

Keywords.

Yes I am sure you have come across this topic time and time again on your searches, but it is very important. When Google crawls your site it picks up on the most used words then uses them to display your site to others that search particular terms relating to said keywords.

These keywords should obviously be related to the kind of business and audience you want to attract. If you put the term “Cameron Diaz” all over your website but you sell bulbs, then the traffic you get from the search engines are going to be people looking for Cameron Diaz and not bulbs. This will result in your bounce rate will be very high and you wouldn’t receive much business from these visitors.  A good tool to help you is the Google webmaster tools, click here to find out more.

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So here at Merlin Software, we’re a competitive bunch. Like many other companies we decided to do a charity sweepstake for the World cup with most of the winnings being donated to the Bluebell hospice charity in Barnsley.

We all picked teams out of a cup (the world cup as we call it) and donated our money. I (Lee, the Web designer) have Spain, and Penny (the technical support director) has Holland (or…. Netherlands, or… the Dutch) and in no way is this blog entry going to be biased towards my team, the soon to be world cup champions Spain.

As the teams were whittled down and people were knocked out of the tournament, we now approach the final. Not many people would have predicted that Spain and Holland who have never won a world cup final before would be slogging it out untill the end. This is all about to change however and on Sunday the 11th of July we will see a new world cup champion lift the cup, this will then give Spain their first win and one of the coveted gold stars on their shirt.

Even the bookies are tipping Spain to win with odds of 4/7 against Holland’s 6/4 and who knows what the Psychic octopus will chose as his winner (Spain) but if I could borrow him and get him to pick me the correct lottery numbers instead, that would be much better…. and then i could move to Spain with the new Spanish world cup champions.

P.s. Good luck to Holland too (see… not biased at all towards the mighty spain, soon to be world cup champions)

On Monday 5th and Tuesday 6th July the association of charity shops will be holding their annual conference, which is the only national event for charity retail. It is set to be a great opportunity for you to meet new people and network with people in your sector, be inspired and increase your knowledge.

The conference is set to provide two days packed full of useful and interesting information and guidance on how to prepare for the changing world of charity retail. Plenary sessions include BBC radio 4’s Peter White on working better to overcome challenges. Focus sessions include New formats for charity retailing, the future of reuse, Facilitating a culture of innovation in practice, marketing for small chains, minimizing future property legal costs, developing your retail offer and a whole lot more.

Merlin Software will be exhibiting on stand 29 and demonstrating their specifically developed Gift aid Charity module on their EPOS software. Merlin helps make the capture of Gift aid donations easier than ever and keeps track of your donors for marketing purposes. Merlin makes it easier to reach your targets with Gift Aid and reclaiming 28% more from your donors.

On the Monday night from 6.30 for 7.30 there will be an awards ceremony for Charity retail which will be an exciting event and the compere is by the BBC’s Robin Ince, better know for His radio and TV shows such as ‘Just a minute’ and ‘Nerdstock’ although some people only know him as Ricky Gervais’ much bullied support act to his stand up shows. Robin is a charity shop devotee and will be warmly welcomed on the evening.

The Charity retail conference is held at Keele conference park, Keele, Staffordshire on both days and Merlin Software will be on stand 29.

Charity shops conference

The British Retail Consortium has welcomed some aspects of the legislative programme set out in the Queen’s Speech but cautions that parts of it do not go far enough. What is your view of what this new coalition are promising to the retail sector? Is it good or bad for business?

To embrace technology new and old, we are considering running periodic online seminars. These will be to showcase new products and advancements in our software as well as providing demonstrations and guides to help people use the software. Before we invest in setting this up, we want to know how many of you are interested in taking part, and your general thoughts on it.

Please comment on this post, your thoughts and ideas on whether or not you would like to take part and see these seminars.

According to the report from the ONS retail sales have held up, with the high demand for fashion in Britain increasing hope for consumer confidence. The risk now with the proposals of tax rises and spending cuts from the government is that this could dampen demand and affect sales for retailers.

Between the months of March and April, total sales volume increased by 0.3%. Predominantly Food stores seemed to show little or no growth while predominantly non-food stores showed and increase of 0.5%.

Within predominantly non-food stores, non-specialised stores saw an increase of 2.2%, as did textile, clothing and footwear stores by 2%. Due to a fall in hardware stores showed a decrease of 0.5% in other stores.

This increase in sales will come as a warm welcome to the new government as Britain emerges from the deepest recession since the Second World War.

The seasonally adjusted value of retail sales for April 2010 was 4.8 per cent higher than in April 2009. For the three months to April 2010 it was 4.3 per cent higher than the same period a year earlier.

Read the full report here http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/rs0510.pdf

If you did, we would love your feedback. Who did you see there? did you attend any seminars? Did you visit our stand, and if so what did you think to our product?

Don’t be shy, have your say!

On the 12^th and 13^th May we will be exhibiting at the Museum and Heritage show on stand D7, which is the UK’s leading trade exhibition for the world of museums, visitor attractions and cultural and heritage sites.

This show is set to be a great opportunity to showcase our award winning EPOS software to a diverse crowd all expecting our software to tailor to their individual needs, and we know that Merlin has the power to do so. We already have many clients in this sector such as Bressingham steam museum and Canterbury cathedral.

The Museum and Heritage show is set to offer an extensive programme of free seminars and expert advice, this show really is a must do for anyone in this industry and gives the opportunity to keep one step ahead of the game.

Why not come along and see what new advancements and innovative ideas can help your business grow, Merlin Software Ltd are on stand D7 and will be happy to have a chat with you and demonstrate just exactly how our EPOS software can make your business more money and bring back more customers than ever before. We are expecting this show be quite busy and that you probably won’t remember everything at the show, so to help you we will be handing out information packs at the show

Despite a complete revamp and the addition of many extra features Merlin is proud to announce that Merlin 7 will continue to maintain its existing, very competitive, pricing structure i.e. £495 for the initial Master Licence for the ‘Retail-Manager’ system and £250 for each additional licence. Individual sector specific modules are also still vailable at their original prices too – contact us for further details.

Despite the chaos the volanic ash has caused over Europe, at least there is a silver lining for photographers. There have been some spectacular volcanic sunsets over recent days. The following pictures were taken by Andrew on Friday 16th April looking across the Derwent valley in Derbyshire from Froggatt Edge.