Promoting your web site is
essential. Once you have built your pages and uploaded them to
your server it does not mean you will get thousands of
visitors. This is probably one of the greatest misconceptions
about Internet Marketing.
It is like opening a store. Unless you are willing
to pay thousands of dollars for the right position, the
chances are, you will have to promote. The Internet is no
different, but it does not have to cost you a fortune.
We will look at using Google
Adwords in a separate section as this is probably the fastest
and easiest way to get your business going and drive targeted
people to your business.
The promotion process will
depend greatly on what your web site is trying to achieve. If
you have built a business site then the process will be quite
different to making people aware of your local basketball
team, etc. There are, however, some common principles to
promoting your site.
Measure
Your Efforts
The most
important factor to consider when advertising and promoting
your site is to measure the response. I met a man who believed
that if he could have his site rated in the top ten on the
search engines he would get the traffic. He spent literally
hundreds of dollars and many hours achieving his goal only to
find that a month later some other sites took over his
position. He did increase his visitors for a while, but for
the effort and expense it was definitely not worth it.
He was selling
plans for some very nice furniture he had designed. I helped
him to set up a system where he advertised in five different
arena's and measured his responses. The search engine response
was only 10%. His magazine ad and articles bought him 40% of
his visitors and we also received around 10% from ezine
advertising and the last 20% from Google Adwords. By this you can see, that if we do not measure
the responses, then we can fall into the trap of spending 100%
of our time for 10% of the response. He now spreads out
his time and money proportionately to his return. In fact it
worked out he spent 50% less time and money to get over 600%
more business.
Another great
reason for measuring your efforts is to calculate what
different effects technology has on your site. For example a
site of one of my friends was getting a lot of traffic but
people only stayed for a short time. We added a little bit of
audio from his video DVD and the rate of viewing increased and
time spent on his site increased dramatically. This
meant that people after listening to the audio looked more at
the rest of his site. Have
a look here.
It must also be
noted that traffic does not a great website make. One of my
sites gets little traffic however it is very targeted so
the conversion for the sale is very high. Another of my sites
gets a great deal of visitors however the sale conversion rate
is very low. Getting lots of visitors is great for the ego
however it can also chew up your bandwidth and if it is not
having the desired results then it can be more of a hindrance
than a help.
It's
Not All Internet
It is important at this stage
to mention that not all of your promotion will necessarily be
on the internet. Lets take the local basketball team. You may
be able to put the web address on the back of the players
shirts, advertise the site in the newsletter you send out and
even put the site address on your car. There are plenty of non
internet ways to advertise your site very effectively with
little or no cost.
Say you have a business site.
You could also use the above techniques. You could compile
your website into a multimedia format and put it on a mini cd
to distribute or even leave it as it is and distribute it on a
floppy. We talked about relative links in the workshop and this will
enable you to run your site on your computer at shows, etc.
without having to log onto the internet. You could use it in
demonstrations, etc. This is why it is so important to plan
your site carefully.
When ever you make a new
product be sure to tell the media. It only takes one small
radio station or a TV show to pick up your story and you will
see a dramatic upturn in visitors. I was featured on a radio
show a while ago and my sales almost tripled for the next couple
of weeks.
Search
Engines
"Search engine
submission" refers to the act of getting your web site
listed with search engines. Another term for this is search
engine registration.
Getting listed does not mean
that you will necessarily rank well for particular terms,
however. It simply means that the search engine knows your
pages exist.
Think of it like a lottery.
Search engine submission is akin to you purchasing a lottery
ticket. Having a ticket doesn't mean that you will win, but
you must have a ticket to have any chance at all.
Preparation
You should prepare before
submitting to any directory. This preparation means that you
have written a 25 word or less description of your entire web
site. That description should make use of the two or three key
terms that you hope to be found for.
If you have time, you should
consider researching what are the best terms for your site,
rather than guessing at these. The What
People Search For page provided by Search Engine Watch has
a list of resources that will allow you to do such research.
It is essential that the
description you write not make use of marketing language. So,
if you sold shoes and wanted to be found for terms such as
"athletic shoes" and "running shoes," you
might write a "just the facts" description like
this:
Purchase
athletic shoes, running shoes, hiking boots and other
footwear plus try our cross country trail finder.
You would not want a
description like this, which is full of marketing hype, which
editors dislike:
World's LARGEST online
shoe store with the best prices from the greatest brands!!!!
Your web site
should also have good keyword and content about your topic.
There are some great Ebooks around on preparing your site for
search engines as well as some good free articles and
information. Just do a search on Google or a popular search
engine.
This is not
meant to be a comprehensive tutorial on search engines as they
are changing the rules often. Lot's of people have varying
opinions on what is important. Just think of what you search
for and then use that same principle. Many experts are now
saying that it is not just key words but key phrases that are
important.
One tool I have
found very helpful especially for business sites is the
overture search suggestion tool. You can enter the words you
feel best apply to your site and see how they rank. Go
here to try it out. Try entering Internet Business and you
will see a good ranking. Try for rankings in the thousands at
leat. If you put in home business notice the difference. If
they are to much then look for niches within that cartagory.
Here is a good
tutorial on search engines. Click
here.
Articles
Get High Quality Traffic by
Writing Articles
One of the best ways to promote
your website is by writing articles that you can post in e-zines,
and sites that provide free content to e-zine publishers. This
will help you develop credibility and, with time, build a
solid customer base. There are a few things to take into
account to maximize the effectiveness of this sometimes
overlooked marketing technique:
Your article should be short
and to the point. It must act as a free sample that
entices your reader to go to your website for more.
To maximize its
effectiveness, you should present it as a tip, a solution
to a problem.
Write in easy to understand
“layman’s” terms.
Whenever possible, write
from personal experience. People love to hear other
people’s experiences (how did they do it?). This
approach also tends to hold their attention longer.
Be extra-careful to avoid
spelling and grammatical errors. They will make you lose
credibility.
Don’t make your article
sound like a sales pitch; offer honest, value-adding
advice.
Don’t include links to
your affiliate programs in the body of your article. It
will make your advice seem biased.
Also, don’t forget the
most important part: always include a resource box at the
end of your article. A resource box is a small paragraph
(no longer than six lines) with your name, the name of
your business, a short tagline, and that all-important
link to your website. If your readers like your article,
they will follow your link and you will be getting
instant, high quality traffic to your site.
Additionally add all your
articles to your own website as a resource. It will give
you extra ranking in the search engines and if you are
consistent and write an article a week then in a year you
will have another product. A compilation of all your
articles. Keep a note of where they get published, its a
great selling point.
Article Submissions
One of the best and most
affordable ways to get traffic to your sites and to make sales
is through Article Marketing. This is a very effective way to
make a name for yourself online.....the more familiar your
name becomes the more sales you will make. Recognition
builds trust!
Like every strategy that I
recommend this needs persistence, ie. don't be
expecting overnight riches from doing this. This
WORKS.....Just do a search for my name "Mal Keenan"
on Google, at the time of writing there are 28,100 listings.
You will see from the top
results that the majority of these listings come from articles
I have written. That's 28,100 pages with my name and affiliate
links on them. 28,100 opportunities to sell MY stuff and make
a commission. ARE YOU GETTING THE POINT HERE? Get some
articles out there! Keep at it!
I now have 1000's of references
for my name in Google and my articles and links listed on
1000s of websites solely through submitting weekly articles.
The great thing is that this number grows all on it's own once
the viral train starts.
If you cant write articles then
have a look at this service Just
Articles. You can shop around if
you like but you WILL NOT find a better place to get great
quality articles at such an affordable
price. I suggest you buy articles at around 600 words in
length.
At the above prices there is
absolutely NO excuse for NOT getting your articles out there
with
YOUR link at the bottom sending visitors to YOUR site.
Now go here to get software to
submit them: Click
Here for Article Announcer
(This is software will save you countless hours and do a much
better job than
submitting manually.)
I also HIGHLY recommend you
check out Steve Shaw's Submit Your Article Article
Submission Service: Submit
Your Article
I use Steve's service weekly to
submit my article, this is the quickest way to get your links
out there for INSTANT traffic and also serves in the long term
to achieve TOP search engine ranking.
I also own a copy of Article
Announcer software. I occasionally use this when I want to
REALLY skyrocket my promotions.
If you prefer then do it
manually. Here is a list of top article databases:
The basic idea is to write, or
have written, an article related to home business and related
themes, then send it to the article directories with a
resource box at the bottom with a link to your business
opportunity.
You can of course put any links
that you like in your resource box. Just one or two. Also it
is better to have your own site rather than use an affiliate
link. You can get your own site with hosting here: Website
with Hosting
I have been using Article
Marketing ONLY for a recent home business that I have
become involved with and have been getting daily leads. I have
been submitting one article per week. Keep at this
consistently and I promise you will make sales.
This strategy can be applied to
any business and ALL the top marketers are using it. Believe
me it works!
Creating your
own newsletter has two effects. I always make my newsletters
into web pages because this means I have new content on my
website domain every month when I release a new newsletter.
Over a year this means 12 new web pages full of targeted
content for search engines.
Secondly it
means that quite often I can direct an enquiry or support
question to one of these newsletters as I concentrate on
answering the most common questions. Have a look at my
newsletters at http://www.MSICoach.com/newsletter
Technology
There is so
many new opportunities out there to help make your business stand
out. Bloggs, podcasts, video etc. By utilizing these forms of
new technology you can offer tips and tricks, business
information etc in a new format. Podcasts especially are
taking off and are relatively easy to do.
Here is an interesting one for you to see how powerful they are. You
could get interviewed also if you become an expert.
PodCast Radio Show
In today's PodCast
Radio Show, Live from the PodCast
Marketing Promenade we look deeper into PodCast
Marketing and today's Internet Marketing Tip, How to
determine your focus and ultimate positioning pertaining to
Internet marketing. Also, We take a trip to the PodCast
Marketing Green Room. Today we find Internet Streaming Audio
Specialist, Quentin
Brown awaiting in the Green Room. We
discuss streaming audio and the how and why you should include
multimedia within your web site. Tomorrow,
you are invited to join Tony and PR great, Annie Jennings in a
free, one hour seminar all about
Show Liner Notes: Quentin Brown - MP3
Jukebox (Audio Streaming)
Stream IT Now!
Ezines
This is a great
way of targeting your visitors. You can either develop your
own or advertise in some of the many ezines around. Make sure
you learn a little about headlines that will draw interest and
also a little about writing effective copy. Choose an ezine
that complements your information. Again do tests to measure
the effectiveness of this type of advertising.
Joint
Ventures
This is an area
I have found particularly successful. By linking up with some
other people who are wanting to advertise their products or
services, which might have similar or complementary products
or services, you can reach a targeted audience for little or
no cost. Let's look at the local basketball team again. You
might contact some of the local tourist sites or businesses
who would let you put a link on their site for a reciprocal
agreement. This can be a great way also to learn more about
growing your site so it is more attractive.
You see this
all the time offline where different advertisers help promote
each others products. Of course if you can really become the
authority in your field you may get to go on Opera and become
an instant success. I think you get the idea.
Banners
& Links
Banners and
links are another way to generate traffic. Basically what is
involved is you putting some html code that they supply into
your WebPages and every time someone goes to that page you
will receive a credit. Depending on the group you join, your
ad will then be put on other sites in the group.
There are so
many different programs that allow you to do this type of
promotion and I feel that it is very dependant on your product
how effective they will be. Having said this always develop
some different size banners for your product so when people
want to promote it for you they are ready.
Forums,
Newsgroups & Chat
This is a
little more time consuming, however, can also generate some
traffic. I guess you would call it word of mouth. By looking
for groups that are talking about similar interests you can
direct them to your site. Be considerate as these are sites
and groups are looking for quality input not just a sales
spiel.
Opt
in Lists
These are normally free lists
available through listservers such as:
By visiting these web sites and registering as a member of
their community, you may search their database for 'lists'
that match your area of interest. For
advertising purposes, search for 'business', 'entrepreneur',
MLM or some other appropriate keyword.
Read through the results of
your search and watch for lists that allow the posting of ads.
Rules of each list regarding how often you may post, may vary,
so check the rules of each list.
For starters subscribe to about 10 lists. You may need to
reply to a confirmation e-mail to verify your subscription,
then make a note of the e-mail address you will use to post to
the list and any list rules.
Don't forget to reply to the confirmation e-mail. :-)
Free/Paid Classifieds
There are more classified pages
on the Internet than you could ever hope to post your ad to,
so the trick here is to find the ones that have a good flow of
visitors who read and respond to the ads there. Start out by
choosing 10-20 classified ad sites (depending on your time
available) and begin placing your ads. Place ads at these same
sites on a regular basis. Some good ones to start with are:
Do these types of free
advertising work. Well there are those who say yes and those
who say no. The whole point is to try a bit of this and a bit
of that. You will soon see what works and what doesn't. If you
have a niche market then just target your
niche audience.
Tip - When you find a classified site you really like,
bookmark the submission page, not the main page. Saves you
time when you go back to post again.
WHEW! I know that's a lot of information, but you don't
have to do all of it in one day. Take it one step at a time
and pretty soon it will be second nature!
Always remember, no one method of advertising works all the
time - try different things, track your results, discard what
isn't working, keep the rest and above all BE CONSISTENT!
Submission
software
Most of the
submission businesses use one of these two software programs
to submit your webpages for a fee. You can do it all yourself
and even help your friends and business associates.
Simply enter your Web Site details into
Dynamic Submission and press a button. This incredible search engine submission program will automatically submit all your web sites to 1000+ major Search Engines within minutes (complying with all the search engine submission guidelines) and also provides you all the tools to get your web site to be listed on the TOP positions. Dynamic Submission is Search Engine Submission Software at its best.
http://www.dynamicsubmission.com/
Get higher search engine rankings, more customers, and more sales! Internet Business Promoter (IBP) is a multi-award winning web site promotion software tool.
IBP offers everything you need to successfully promote your web site. IBP is a suite of 10 professional web promotion tools that help you with all aspects of web site promotion and search engine optimization.
Software
and Shareware Submission.
I have just started to use
Promosoft and it is a great piece of software.
To everyone who is familiar
with shareware development, it is well-known that a new
software creation often takes much less time than its
promotion. It is also known that a great part of the time
spent on promotion is not always spent very effectively. On
the contrary, a lot of time is usually spent on routine and
mechanical form filling while submitting your software
information to numerous software sites and archives.
It is obvious that you have to
submit your software to as many sites as possible to reach
more customers, but how can you do this spending as less time
and money as possible and yet having provided high accuracy
and reliability of submissions?
If you create
software then you have a great market of shareware sites that
will accept your software and this can be very lucrative. Download
the Pad submission tools here.
PAD is the Portable
Application Description, and it helps authors provide
product descriptions and specifications to online sources in a
standard way, using a standard data format that will allow
webmasters and program librarians to automate program
listings. PAD saves time for both authors and webmasters.
RoboSoftis a submission utility for shareware authors. The program
helps developers to submit their products to 700+
software archives with outstanding accuracy and
usability.
RoboSoft
fills out submission forms automatically, makes search queries
on Internet sites for a given software title. RoboSoft
remembers all login information for every site. In addition it
can produce reports showing the submission status of a
software product.
