The internet has now become one of the first ports of call for customers looking to learn more about a business. Therefore, as with any good marketing material, your website copy should make a strong first impression and be aimed at driving enquiries and sales.

As Walt Disney once said, “always leave them wanting more”. Your website copy should be concise and provide enough information to hook your audience. Many companies make the mistake of attempting to answer every possible question on their pages, which can lead to text-heavy clunky sites.

So you’ve got to be focused. Once you have your website structure, make a list of key points for each page. The list should only be 3 or 4 items long. Stick to this list and ensure that pages don’t openly duplicate text across the site. You’ll also need to bear in mind your keywords and ensure these are scattered throughout with the necessary frequency to attract search engines.

As with your blog content, you will need to decide on your tone. This will be largely dictated by your corporate identity and demographic.

Regardless of your demographic, you should be aiming to galvanize them into finding out more. Calls to action are a frequent, and crucial, part of any website design. Make it very clear what you want the user to do: if you’re an ecommerce retailer you’ll need lots of prominent ‘Buy Now’ buttons. If you sell professional services and you want the website to act as a lead generator, you’ll need to make every effort to capture your visitors’ ID, via contact forms, newsletter sign-up boxes, or free information products in exchange for contact details. The psychology of many web users is to ‘look and not touch’. Converting your traffic to sales has to be the primary aim of your web content, so make sure you give you visitors clear incentives to leave their contact details with you.

A blog is one of the fastest and easiest ways to grow your web presence and provides a superb platform for your business to engage potential customers, without resorting to the hard sell. A recent study of 1,500 SMEs found that blogging increased website traffic by an average of 55%. Furthermore, the average company that blogs has 97% more inbound links and a massive 434% more indexed pages than the average company which does not blog.

Having a blog on your website brings huge benefits. However, with only 250-ish words to get your point across (the best blog posts are brief), how can you make your blog stand out and best reflect you?

Before starting you should have identified your main target demographic, as this will largely dictate the tone of voice you adopt within your blog articles. Consultancy businesses may wish to take an advice-led approach to display their expertise, for example. Whatever your decision, make sure your chosen voice is an authentic representative of you; there is no point writing in a ‘teenage’ voice if your business is a luxury catering service.

Once you have your style, you want to look at your substance. Blogs should contain certain keywords that will get your site ranked by the search engines, but without becoming a blatant sales platform. They are an amazing way to show off a wider knowledge to your customers, informing, helping and sparking debate. For example, if you sell wedding dresses, you may wish to highlight new catwalk shows, provide handy hints on finding the ideal accessories or ask if white really is the best colour for the big day.

Finally, remember that blogs are interactive, so don’t be afraid to express an opinion and start a debate. However, do try to present a balanced argument; it lends your blog credence and inspires thoughtful and considered responses.

Remember Write My Site offers a full blog management service if your business wants to add blogging into the marketing mix.

Google has taken the next step towards real-time search results by signing deals with MySpace and Facebook to include publicly available status updates in its search index. Google recently signed a similar agreement with Twitter. According to a Google spokesperson, the partnerships will go live on Google across all English language domains (both .com and .co.uk) “over the coming days.”

When a Google user runs a search on a particular topic, they will now receive real-time updates from the three social media sites as well as the usual list of search results – a development the business community would do well to take on board. Search engine optimization efforts will now need to include a social media presence if businesses are to succeed in putting their brands at the top of the Google search results for relevant search terms.

In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Tom Stocky, Google’s director of product management said: “People want the most up-to-date information and that’s what services such as Twitter have provided a great platform for – which is why we are really happy to work with them and gain access to that information so we can deeply embed it into our search system.”

Stocky emphasized the importance of speed to Google search: “Search speed means two things: one – how quickly results come back to you and two – how quickly we can update the information. Adding real-time results to our product will massively help with the latter part of this definition. We have to make our results as fresh and relevant as possible.”

Bing is also taking steps towards real-time search results. It is currently running a separate site which integrates ‘tweets’, although it has yet to integrate Twitter updates into its main search. The company is also working on a similar dedicated site for Facebook updates.

Computer giant Dell has announced it has made more than $6.5 million in revenue as a result of its activity on Twitter. More than half of that has been generated within the last six months alone.

Here’s what Dell had to say about their Twitter success:

“Our @DellOutlet is now close to 1.5 million followers on Twitter … Today it’s not just Dell Outlet having success connecting with customers on Twitter. In total, Dell’s global reach on Twitter has resulted in more than $6.5 million in revenue.”

(From the Dell Community blog)

Dell is also a good example of the way in which a brand can benefit from separate, dedicated Twitter accounts.

The Delloutlet account in Canada @DellHomeSalesCA was set up after pressure from Canadian bloggers and Twitter users, and has generated $150,000 in sales since going live.

Dell’s Brazilian Twitter account, @DellnoBrasil, has generated a massive $800,000 in eight months. As one of the large emerging markets that’s really good news for Dell and also shows strong adoption of social media.

We’ve been flying the Twitter flag here at Write My Site for quite some time. With a targeted  approach, Twitter can be a fast, direct route to new business. You don’t have to be a global brand to make money from Twitter – you just need to invest some time and effort into creating an authentic voice for your organization which can connect with customers.

Talk to Write My Site about a social media strategy for your business.

Content has to be at the centre of a successful link building strategy. That’s the verdict from Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft which aims to rival Google. The search engine’s webmaster blog clearly states:

“We’ve said it before, and you’ll hear it said again: content is king. Providing high-quality content on your pages is the single most important thing you can do to attract inbound links.

“If your content is unique and useful to people, your site will naturally attract visitors and, as a result, automatically get good links to your site. By focusing on great content, over time, your site will naturally acquire those coveted inbound links.”

Here are Bing’s top tips for stellar web content:

•  Develop your site as a business brand and be consistent about that branding in your content

•  Identify relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media people and let them know about your site and its content

•  Write and publish concise, informative press releases online as developments warrant

•  Publish expert articles to online article directories

•  Participate in relevant blogs and forums and refer back to your site’s content when applicable (Note that some blogs and forums add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to links created in user-generated content (UGC). While creating links to your content in these locations won’t automatically create backlinks for search engines, readers who click through and like what they find may create outbound links to your site, and those are good.)

•  Use social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to connect to industry influencers to establish contacts, some of whom may connect back to you (be sure you have your profiles set up with links back to your website first)

•  Create an online newsletter on your site with e-mail subscription notifications

•  Launch a blog or interactive user forum on your site

•  Join and participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums

•  Ultimately, strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry and let people know that your website contains your published wit and wisdom