Posted by Admin on November 14th, 2006 — Posted in Internet Marketing
By Adel Awwad
Are you stuck in a rut when it comes to marketing your website on the Internet?
The success of your website, either for business or pleasure, depends entirely on the people who visit it. If you don’t market your website, then you might as well be “a needle in a haystack”.
The World Wide Web is a vast, almost endless virtual world, and the amount of people competing for the same traffic is immense. So if you aren’t spending the time to market your business effectively, you might as well close up shop because if no one can find you, then there isn’t much point.
If you need more traffic, here are 5 ways you can work on building it.
Articles: Write articles that relate to your website, and submit them to free content sites like ezinearticles.com. If you’re not good a writing articles, hire someone to do it for you. There are literally hundreds of places where you can submit your articles to for free, and they allow you to include a byline. Your byline may contain information about you and your business, but make sure that you include your website URL so that readers can easily click on it to find out more.
The point behind free content sites is so that publishers of email newsletters, websites, and even print material can search and find articles to use in their publications. The rule is that they must include the author’s byline, and that is how it benefits you. Wherever your work gets used, it will include a link to your website.
Press Releases: No matter what type of website you have, you can benefit from the use of press releases. Use a press release to share and announce what is going on with your website. Are you having a special sale, or hosting a fundraiser, whatever it is, write up a press release and submit it to both online and offline sources. Don’t forget to include your website address and contact information.
Blogs: These have become very popular on the Internet and more and more website owners are creating one. Use yours to share information or new resources that you found useful. You can also write about contests, freebies, and new products or services. This is also a great place to meet potential clients and customers. Don’t forget to use your affiliate link when referring others to another’s businesses web products and services.
Email Newsletters: Though e-newsletters are commonplace on the Internet, there are still some website owners who’ve yet to get on board. Signup for a program, and get that subscriber signup box on your website today. Newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with new and old customers. It reminds them that you still exist, and they are bound to go back to your website because of it. Remember to offer informative articles along with your promotions and announcements.
Freebies: No can pass up something that is completely free. Write an ebook about your business and give it away. Include links to your products, services, and affiliate programs in it. Offer free shipping, free gift wrapping, buy one, get one free, offer a free gift with purchase, give away discount coupons with their first order, and the list goes on. Whatever your website, there will be something you can offer to your customers for free. It will give them a gentle push towards clicking that order button, not to mention how many people they will mention their “freebie” too.
These may all seem like common, small marketing steps, but they really do work. If you’re willing to spend the time and make the effort to do them, you will see the benefits in the form of website traffic.
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Posted by Admin on November 13th, 2006 — Posted in Internet Marketing
By: Todd Mintz
Perhaps you’ve experienced the following…your company has just launched a brand new corporate website which cost $50,000. It looks great, has some snappy flash animations and strong messaging. Your organization does $10 million in gross revenues per year, and your website is expected to generate at least 10% of that…or $1 million in sales. Piece of cake to meet quota, right? Many businesses fail to grasp that website development is only the first step to making online sales. Just because your developer created an excellent website according to your specifications does not mean that your site will rank in the top group of search results for any keywords relevant to your goods and services (other than perhaps your corporate name). Without search engine visibility, your prospects will have little chance of finding your website and your company will see, at best, a minimal boost in its Internet sales volume. Fortunately, your corporate website need not keep its anonymity. For minimal additional cost, your company can transform the site from online deadweight to search engine heavyweight. The following two-tiered approach will work wonders: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the science of naturally achieving top rankings in the search engines for revenue-generating keywords. “Organic” website creation rarely creates any of the components necessary for search engine success. So, to bring your website to the top of the engines, an SEO campaign would need to do the following: Provide optimum keyword density for your targeted keywords. Trade links with many other webmasters that run relevant websites (extremely important). Make sure that other aspects of SEO (i.e. page length, title tags) match up with accepted standards for search engine success. Note that search engine optimization success does not happen overnight…it might take 2-3 months before your company sees results from your SEO efforts. However, your business need not wait that long to generate online revenue…you can implement a Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign and make sales immediately. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is the ability to bid your company to the top of the search engines for your targeted keywords. The two major vendors of Pay-Per-Click ads are Google AdWords and Overture. If you have accounts with both, you will be better positioned to reach potential customers in all the major search engines. When creating a PPC campaign, you need to address the following issues: Keyword selection. If you don’t select keywords broadly enough, you won’t reach all potential prospects. If you select keywords too broadly, you will be spending money without making sales. Keyword bidding. In every keyword list, some are overpriced and some are bargains. Also, it is a myth that you need to be the high bidder to generate the most revenue…frequently, ROI is better when you bid less. Ad Copy. Does your ad copy contain your targeted keyword? If not, you are probably not getting an optimum click-thru rate. Landing pages. If you are sending all your prospects to your website home page, you are not maximizing sales conversion. Top performing PPC campaigns create special landing pages that reflect the particular keywords selected. Without search engine marketing, a corporate website has minimal ability to generate revenue. Effective SEO and PPC campaigns not only allow companies to make sales quotas, but have tremendous ROI and the cost per lead for search engine marketing, according to a recent report by U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, is far lower than any other sales lead generation method. Todd Mintz is the Director of Internet Marketing & Information Systems for S.R. Clarke Inc. (http://www.srclarke.com), a Real Estate Development and Residential / Commercial Construction Executive Search / Recruiting Firm headquartered in Fairfax, VA with offices nationwide. He is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx (http://www.semportland.com): Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association.
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