Welcome to a short read!

Welcome the first of an occasional series of news emails for CBJ Digital clients and friends. Its purpose is to inform.  We all get far too much spam and unnecessary email communication so these missives will be short, and sweet.  Four subjects today:

• CBJ is are now offering an email / campaign feature similar to the one you are reading now. This is for both existing clients and for those organisations that who are not yet members of our client community.
  
• SEO and how to keep up the ranking of your site in search engines – modern myths.
• HitsMonitor
  
• Networking, Coffee and spelling
  

Email Marketing Campaigns

Till now, CBJ Digital has offered clients a low-cost plain text emailing option that is incorporated into the CBJ Digital Admin System for those who have chosen to use it with the membership facility (allowing user login to a password controlled area of the website), or for those clients using the e-commerce account-holder function. We now have available this type of more stylised and attractive marketing campaign system which can be uniquely designed to fit in with your own corporate styling requirements. What is even more helpful is the reporting that comes with it. You, the client, have direct access to see the results of the campaign with real time reporting. You can see an audit trail of who has received the email, who has opened it, what click-throughs resulted and other things as well. There is an automatic unsubscribe facility so you can keep your email address lists right up to date. No, the system cannot be used for spamming – and we do ask clients to confirm the opt-in nature of their emailing lists. If you are interested to see a demonstration or discuss costs then please call either Mike Thirlwell or Malcolm Iliff on 01477 549696 or send us an email.

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

It is understandable that clients are not only concerned with the look, feel and effectiveness of their sites – they are also keen to get high search engine rankings. The manner in which CBJ Digital sites are constructed is specifically designed to aid ranking – hence our strap line Where Websites Work - but we cannot do the whole job for you or guarantee results. However we do offer several bits of advice which should get you there – or certainly close to the top.
• Get other (genuine) sites to put in a hyperlink to your site.
• Keep your site changing and keep it up to date – a static site will eventually disappear from the search engines altogether- that’s true!
• Ensure the front page (the landing page) of your site has plenty of keywords and useful information on it. Flash introductions are a no no as the search engines do not usually interpret text in Flash pages.
• Meta tags are ineffective – many search engines almost ignore them
• Keep your site alive and up to date! (Did I say that before? It is soooo important!)

Most advertised SEO offers that guarantee ranking are not worth the money if you are using a CBJ-built site. There is a lot more to say about ranking than we can put here – if you are interested to know what works and doesn’t work, please contact us. We would be happy to guide you through the ground rules and advise on what we can do to help your site get the prominence it deserves.

HitsMonitor

Finally, if you have not seen the richness of functionality that is available in HitsMonitor then do have a look at our live demonstration at www.cbjdigital.com/hitsmonitor . It shows the who? when? why? how long? which pages? and much other useful information.  However, HitsMonitor is only good when you use the information to develop your ideas for your own site!

Finally, Finally …

If you are not using all the features we have available in our Content Management System, have a look at the pages on our own site www.cbjdigital.com/services/ where a lot of these are listed. If you are interested in discussing these do give Malcolm or one of the many Mikes in the office a call. By the way, we rely a lot on networking to get most of our new clients. Networking works – do let your contacts know about us …. Please. And if you would like to buy some great coffee for the office or home from a quality company with a quality website try www.hrhiggins.co.uk !! I could go on -  but more next time. (By the way, do you really spell it despatch or dispatch?)

Welcome to the November issue of CBJ Despatch.

In this issue

	Welcome to a short read!
	Email Marketing Campaigns
	SEO – Search Engine Optimisation
	HitsMonitor
	Finally, Finally …

Also of interest

Thought of touring India?  Have a look at this specialist site - Essential India.  Its worth just looking at the pictures.

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