Website Marketing Resource

Web marketers see it all of the time.

Companies of every size and description still have unrealistic expectations with online marketing.

Many can be described as web wannabees because they have no clear objectives for the Internet. There is also no vision or concept for being on the Web, other than a vague and urgent perception that "I’ve got to be on the Web now." This is the web wannabee syndrome and if unchecked it can be disastrous for a small business.

Ill-conceived, poorly-executed web sites have very little chance of success when there are so many sites being launched with an astute e-commerce strategy, good search engine optimization, aggressive promotion, attractive interactive tools and more. As a result, the web wannabee needs to shift thinking to a dynamic approach that is creative, innovative and strategically sound.

Any effective marketing strategy requires the deployment of a strong, mission-driven plan. And the Web is no different.

Here are some questions to ask:

1. What are my company’s goals and expectations from the site? Direct sales? Customer service? Image building? This sounds simple but the answers can drive the site in entirely different directions conceptually.

Little do you know but you too could be making mistakes with your website that are costing you your search engine rankings.

Goggle and the other search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to keep pace of search engine spammers. Some novice website owners may be like me and be making big mistakes in the eyes of the search engine bots which will lower their search engine ranking or blot their website right out of existence from everyone except those people that have been given their website URL.

Let me tell you my mistakes and what I’ve learned from them… In 2000, I started a small research vineyard. Soon I wanted a website to tell people about it, advise others how to grow grapes, and get my research information out to the public.

I was on a shoe-string budge so I learned HTML myself. My website was quickly posted to one of those “free” website hosts. Two months later, my website was hitting the top “5″ in the search engine rankings for all of my keywords. I had lots of relevant content which made this possible. I was in heaven!

Although Blog was the most requested word of 2004 as per Merriam Webster Dictionary Online, there are quite a few people, for whom the word Blog is still unknown.

Blog is an online journal of events, raves, rants of the people. When blog first came, it was gladly adopted by teenagers and later by adults to write about their daily lives. Then writers and journalists entered the mix, writing about books and investigative reports on their blogs. Blogs gained prominence in 2004 US Presidential Elections. Meanwhile few innovative people invented "Business Blogs", "Corporate Blogs" and "Company Blogs". Suddenly Blogs started appearing on the Company web pages. Somewhere along the line, people discovered that search engines like Google and Yahoo were displaying Blogs, in most cases, above other search results. Impact of this discovery was huge! Corporations started writing blogs in the hope, to get more prospective customers to visit their websites.

So what exactly is a Business Blog? It is a blog about a business. It is a carefully planned journal about company products and/or services, tips and tutorials about using company’s products. At times, customer service issues are addressed using a blog. Some companies have put up white papers on blogs, while others are achieving branding of their products on the blog. On rare occasions, blogs are used to launch or test market the product.

Although generating online traffic is an important goal of any website, attention should always be directed to the very first and most important issue in website marketing: targeting online customers. It’s important to remember that the definition of your online customers always comes from your customers’ basic needs and preferences. Your customer’s needs define your online business. If you define your customers based on their requirements, you will know what direction to follow based on your understanding of their needs. As a result, you won’t necessarily sell your products or services to a specific demographic group, but rather to the people who actually need your products or services.

The web site should be based on the premise that your customers need information to make intelligent, informed buying decisions. This type of thinking should guide strategic and daily decisions regarding further development and marketing of the site. Never lose sight of the target audience.

Most of the time, targeting means targeting customers as a whole group, whereas real targeting is based on online market segmentation. It is always important to consider targeting market segments instead of the whole market.

How To REALLY Use Google Part Three
 by: Andrew Wroblewski

In Part One, we covered the basics of searching on Google.com and in Part Two we moved into more advanced search techniques. In today’s third installment we will peer into some ways of using Google you may have never thought of or knew existed.

DATE RANGES: You may limit your search to an exact date of a “range” of dates that a page was indexed by Google. To use Google’s “daterange” function, you will need to express your dates in “Julian” dates. This date format is express as an integer. To convert a common date into Julian format go to: http://www.24hourtranslations.co.uk/dates.htm

As an example, if I wanted to find pages (about a certain topic) indexed by Google during the month of May 2003, I would type in:

“spyware removal” daterange: 2452774-2452803

TYPES OF FILES: You can limit your Google search results to specific files ending in a particular extension (.doc, .txt, .rtf, .pdf etc…)

To find a file on the topic “spyware remover” in Adobe (.pdf) format you would type in: “spyware remover” filetype:pdf

The saying "Quality, not Quantity" is applicable even to the world of email marketing. So many organizations are purchasing large databases of email addresses, with hopes to achieve high open rates and sales. The truth is that you are more likely to achieve your campaign goals if you send an email out to 100 targeted individuals than you would to 10,000 randomly purchased email addresses.

There is a common misconception when it comes to the quantity of emails in your email list. A lot of business owners think that the key to running successful email campaigns is to send their emails out to thousands and thousands of email addresses and this is commonly achieved through the purchase of large databases. This way of thinking about email marketing is wrong and will only result in discouragement and campaign failure.

When you purchase email lists from companies, you can never be too sure how they acquired these email addresses in the first place. Often, large databases of email addresses have been collected in ways that are misleading to the users providing their email addresses. This means that the individuals to whom you are sending your email are not sincerely interested in what you have to say. You also risk being labeled a "spammer", because spam is essentially what you’d be sending- unwanted email.

Do you ever wonder what the point is in spending all this time, energy and money trying to spread your website link around?

Do you get a sinking feeling in your stomach every time you have to shell out more money for clicks that give you impressive numbers but lead nowhere?

Are you weary of crazed marketing types clamoring to swap links with you when you know that there’s no *real* interest in what you offer?

Link distribution makes sense if you want to get more exposure and watch your website climb higher on the search engine hierarchy, sure. Being highly and permanently visible is vital to the long-term growth of your business. Buying your way to a big, fat subscriber list will help you to feel popular and loved.

But what good is that sky-high Alexa rank if the people who are clicking on your site have little to no interest in your product anyway?

Having a website that’s widely visited by people who are only mildly concerned with what you do, is like having tons of people who claim to be your friends but no one to call up when you want to get close and personal.

The new MSN Search is quickly gaining popularity among internet search engine users. Google still being the #1 search engine with Yahoo in #2, and MSN in a strong #3. Each of the three major search engines has their own unique algorithm, and MSN is no different. Over the past several months I have had amazing success with MSN. With a few tweaks and tricks I have all of my sites ranked top 3 (mostly #1’s) with my targeted key words. This article will give you a quick look at how I have managed to rank so high so often.

Choose Your Key Words

In order to fully succeed with msn, you have to target your key words carefully. For example, if you have a forum which is targeting video gamers, you would likely target a key word phrase such as "video game forum." By targeting a specific key word, or phrase, you give your site direction, which will make ranking on search engines much easier. If you are unsure of which key word(s) to target check out this key word suggestion tool from Digital Point.

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/?keywords=fgfgf

Add key Words To Your Title

How to Grow Your Affiliate Commissions by Being Different
 by: Jinger Jarrett

Remember high school?

I still shudder when I think about it. We all want to fit in. I know I did. If I could just fit in, maybe I could be popular too.

Now that I’m an adult, being different is more important. The reason why is that by being different, by being me, it has helped to improve my business.

You can use it to improve yours too.

It doesn’t matter if you sell affiliate programs, MLM, or even your own product, how you will benefit is that by being different, you are offering your potential customers something no one else is offering.

This is especially true with affiliate programs and MLM programs.

How can you be different from thousands of others who may be promoting the same program you are?

A few tips:

1. Write articles about your industry, resources that relate to the product or service you are selling, and tips about how to use your product or service.

Have you been searching without success for a way to make money on the internet? Maybe you’ve been going from one idea to another ? wasting more and more money without much if any return.

The conventional wisdom of internet marketing is to build a huge multi-page website and stuff dozens of affiliate links and product offers into it. And the truth is, if you do it right, these kinds of sites do make money.

Trouble is, writing 40 or 50 content rich web pages takes a lot of work, especially for a one person operation. Most people just don’t have the time or willingness to build a 50+ page website.

Fortunately, there is a much easier way.

Build simple 3 page sales sites. Notice the plural. These sites are built and set on auto-pilot and then you don’t have to do anything to keep them going. So the strategy is to make a series of them.

So?What is a 3 Page Site?

It’s a collection of components that are designed to create an income stream. The necessary components include?