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It’s a competitive sector, and Graham Abbey, the company’s managing director, knows how important it is to ensure that Factotum stands out from the crowd. Given that his team of eight employees works virtually, it also doesn’t matter where his customers are based. “We want to work with businesses all over the UK, not just in our region,” he explains. “But other than through direct marketing, the only way we can reach businesses is through the Internet.”

Although Factotum had a presence online, its website wasn’t raising the company’s profile or, more importantly, driving traffic from search engines to the site. Consequently, people weren’t finding the site when they did a general search on Google using keywords such as ‘call answering’.

What Factotum wanted was a way of ensuring its site appeared in search engine listings and that when people clicked on its site, they didn’t leave straightaway.

Realnet, a web design and search engine optimisation (SEO) agency, built, designed and optimised Factotum’s website.

Companies can feature in search engine results in two ways: they can either bid on keyword phrases to appear in the sponsored listings often found at the top or side of a results page; or they can optimise their site so that it appears in the organic search listings below.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) involves a combination of techniques to raise a company’s rankings in the organic (or natural) search engine listings. Research has demonstrated that people searching the Internet will tend to only visit those sites in the first few pages of listings and that they tend to opt for natural search results rather than the sponsored listings, so SEO is vital for businesses wanting to build a strong online presence.

By working with Realnet, Factotum was able to significantly improve its position in the Google search engine results and, therefore, its visibility online. Now, users searching on www.google.co.uk for the keyword phrase ‘diary management’ will find Factotum’s site on page one of the results listings. For ‘call answering’ its website listing appears on page two. “Our goal is to get our website on to the first page of Google for our keyword searches,” says Abbey.

“When we started working with Realnet, probably only one in ten enquiries into our business came through the Internet,” he continues. “Now, 30 per cent to 40 per cent of enquiries come through this channel and we want to increase that to over 50 per cent of enquiries.”

SEO is particularly beneficial for small and medium-sized companies as it is generally cheaper for companies to improve their natural search results than to appear in the sponsored listings, particularly in competitive markets. Abbey agrees: “If I was to go down the Google AdWords route [its sponsored listings programme], I’d be spending a lot of money every month to achieve the same amount of response that we’re achieving now,” he says.

But as anyone working in the digital industry knows, making the website visible through search engines is only the first step. It’s vital that when people visit the site, they also ‘convert’ into customers. “We don’t just want people to find us,” explains Abbey. “We want them to take a specific action when they find us, which is pick up the phone and talk to us.”

To this end, Realnet is using Google Analytics, a web analytics package, to analyse Factotum’s site and identify where improvements can be made to increase take-up of the call to action. These might be simple steps, such as changing the wording on the call to action or moving its position on the page. But even if these changes only increase conversion by a few percentage points, that translates into valuable sales that Factotum was missing out on before.

“What I would add is that this is not just useful for marketing my company through the Internet but marketing my business full stop,” says Abbey. “I’m learning how to describe the services we provide, so as a marketing exercise it is absolutely crucial.”

Need to know: key lessons

• Understand how your market uses the internet: List the words that you think describe your customers’ needs as these are likely to be the ones that they search for
• Seek help: By working with Realnet, Factotum ensured that its entire web presence was being managed by experts in the field
• Review: Continue to review your SEO periodically to ensure that you keep up with what your customers are searching for

The top line: SEO

• Ensures that your business is visible to prospects when they use an internet search engine
• Enables you to keep a better track of where your leads are coming from
• Can put you in front of prospective customers ahead of your competitors