Welcome to b-news.

In this issue:

• Get more out of your website: 'link swapping'
• FREE! Search Engine optimisation
• Administering the resource we are all poor on: Time
• Client feature: Motorcycle Roadtours Australia
• On next issue

Requesting links from sites with a similar customer base as yours - 'link swapping'

In ‘link swapping’ you put a link in your website to another site and they in exchange, put a link to yours. This is an extremely important technique for promoting your website, so don’t disregard it.

Find all the sites that have information, products, or services which in some way or another can complement or relate to your business and e-mail them requesting a link swapping. Don’t forget to ask any organisations or associations in your industry, local on-line business directories, specialised directories (these sometimes may charge a fee), your suppliers, and even your customers.

Some people may not be willing to do the swap, for various reasons, but you will find that at least 25% won’t have any problem, as you also will be promoting their sites.

By exchanging links you will increase the traffic to your website, as people browsing these other sites may need additional information and click on your link.

When you send your website link, send also a brief description of what your site is about, this will be more informative than just the website address and it will more readily capture the user’s attention. Sometimes they may be happy to even include your logo, just ask.

The best part about swapping links is that it will also increase your ‘Search Engine Ranking’. Why is it so? With the exponential increase in published websites, Search Engines are becoming smarter every day. They need to discriminate between quality, relevant sites, and junk. To do so, one of the tricks they use is the counting of relevant links other sites have to your site. Relevant links are links from related sites. For example, if you have a beauty salon and a wholesaler of beauty products has a link to your site, this will count as a relevant link. However, a link to your site from a Computer shop’s site will not count as relevant.

Search Engines assume that if your site has good, useful information, many other related sites will want to link to it, and on this basis they assess your site’s ranking.

It is also important to include relevant keywords as part of the link, not just the website address or the business name. For example, if your business name is ABC Services and you have an Accountancy Practice, the hypertext (link) to your site should be something like this:

ABC Services provides Accounting and Financial advice

So don’t leave it for tomorrow, start swapping today!

In our next newsletter we will be looking at the advantages of Having a ‘Links’ page

Offer is valid for orders placed from 1st March to 15th April 2004.

Call us on: 1300 13 WAVE, 1300 13 9283 or 03 9803 3027 to discuss your needs.

With some much junk mail, spam, and paperwork in general, there are not enough hours in the day to get the work done. At least that was the way I used to feel.

Like most managers, a great part of my day used to be spent doing a hundred different things and at the end I felt like if I had not accomplished anything. So, I made a resolution and bought a time management book. This was one of the best things I have ever done. Now, I am able to organise my day and be productive despite interruptions, and unscheduled problem solving.

Here are the few tips that I found most useful:

• Handle each piece of paper only once. Schedule one or two hours of your day to go over all the paperwork. Take some action immediately after reading each paper; if you leave it for later, the chances are that you will have to read it again.
  
  
• Every morning before commencing work, make a list of
  all the things you have to do. Then write a letter A, B or C before each task depending on the importance. A’s are the most important things, B’s are less important but need to be done, C’s are the things that you can get by doing nothing about. Now cross out all the C’s, you won’t be doing those. Start by doing the A’s followed by the B’s.
  
  
• Try to schedule one hour in the afternoon to do all the telephone calls. You can instruct your PA or receptionist to advice callers that you will be available at the predetermined time and you will be returning their calls then. This will avoid being interrupted every 5 or 10 minutes and can handle any enquiries in a block.
  
  
• And, the most important one: delegate as much as you can. Sometimes it is very difficult to let it go. When you delegate, make sure to give clear instructions and be as specific as possible, including the expected result. Check the work done, and if it is not as you wanted it, be critical, but constructive. We all learn from our mistakes, and next time it will be better. It may take some time at the beginning while training someone to what it is to be done, but it will pay off in the long run.
  
  
• Finally, never leave for tomorrow what can be done today. Don’t procrastinate, do the important things first and without delay.

You may also try keeping a log during the first 2 weeks of every thing you do (at 15 min intervals). This will help you organise your time better.

As a way of saying thank you for your business, we like to promote business-to-business networking between our clients.

As part of this plan, we will be featuring one or two of our clients in all our newsletters.

In this issue we will be introducing Motorcycle Roadtours Australia.

Put bikes and holiday travel together and you have Motorcycle Roadtours Australia.

Feel the freedom that only a motorcycle trip can give you and at the same time, have the holiday of your life.

Visit great locations all around Australia, on-road and off-road, or choose from four overseas destinations: Europe and the Alps, Peru, Patagonia, and South Africa.

A trip you’ll never forget.

For more information visit:
www.mraust.com
E-mail: info@mraust.com
Phone: 03 9399 8399

• Get more out of your website: Having a 'Links' page