This might seem very odd for a web designer and marketer, but this website has really fallen quite dormant for an extended period of time. I have not posted any new material in almost 2 years! I always preach to all of my clients about the importance of posting new original content, but a call last week from a new client made me realize I to should be following my own advice!
This call was from a very web savvy dive shop owner in Zanzibar who really had done his homework with regards to his website and SEO. Spanish Dancer Divers operates on a wordpress site, which is what I always suggest to people. He has optimized his on-page SEO very well. He has his site loading faster than I have ever seen a wordpress site load. He has a lot of great original, and informative content on his site. He was contacting with the sole intent of getting backlinks from other scuba diving websites to improve his off-site SEO. This is a service which we do provide so that was no problem. We discussed what type of links he preferred, where they would be placed, the frequency, etc. He said his website is performing excellent but that he didn’t want to let his foot off the pedal and lose the position and the momentum that his website was producing. The conversation was great and really motivated me to start improving my own site so that I can make this business even stronger and offer even better service to all of my clients.
I found a lot of similarities because like his diving business (which is very busy), I have been very busy for the past few years with making websites for clients. My website, even with its flaws and lack of new content still brings me new potential customers every week. I don’t have much to complain about, but like him I would like to keep my foot on the pedal in terms of marketing my own website so that I can grow my business even stronger.
The truth is, I could probably rely completely on word of mouth referrals for my website design and marketing business. I always am getting offers of “I know you do mostly diving, but would you be willing to make a web site for my friends “any other type of business”? Which most of the time I do end up saying yes too. Having happy customers who refer me to friends is great but I really would like to grow this business in the scuba diving industry and focus primarily on scuba diving as it is something I really enjoy and don’t mind writing or designing around. Word of mouth is great but certainly not as fast for growing a business as taking advantage of all marketing avenues which is what I plan to get back to.
In the next month or so, I will be setting some goals with regards to my own website. I will be working to improve the speed of this website to make it load as quickly as possible. I will be updating the look and layout of the site as well as working to improve the internal linking structure. I will also try to make time each week or two to tackle a topic and write a quick blog post with regards to marketing your dive shop. I am going to start an email marketing list for myself, just the same as I have for dive businesses all over the world. I will begin “Remarketing” through google Adwords to people who visit my site in hopes to increase the conversion ratio of these potential customers. I will also be starting a few ad campaigns on Facebook to reach new potential customers and get them to have a look at the services that we offer. These are all things which I recommend and set up for dive shops all the time. Now I will start taking advantage of them as well!
I probably shouldn’t have needed a reminder or a kick to start doing these things. But I am grateful for the kick and will keep everyone updated with my progress along the way. Now begins the business of expanding and I really do have a dive shop in Zanzibar to thank for the motivation to get me on this track!