Website Marketing Resource

Search Engine Keywords Selection
 by: Zaak O’Conan

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination - your website - you need to provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your site. You do this by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the Open Sesame! of the Internet. Find the exactly right words or phrases, and presto! hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or too over-used, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site - or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do arrive - decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

First let’s start with definitions:

SEO: Search Engine Optimization, SFO: Search Friendly Optimization.

These two things are what most webmasters have trouble balancing. These things seem to always be on opposite ends. On one hand you have to make sure search engines can crawl your website without any problems. On the other you have to keep the site looking good to keep your visitors.

These are all based on what kind of site you plan on making. A corporate website selling shoes in the real world might focus on keeping the site looking good to visitors. And maybe pack it up with flash and all kinds of descriptive images. On the other side a site about online products, e-commerce, might cut back on the images and focus on seo. I will go into both of these just in case.

Let’s start with seo. The first thing you need if you choose seo is to meta tags. Now there many meta tags generators out there for a quicker way to make them. But I suggest like me you make them yourself according to the search engines you want your site to better perform at. In short you have to study those search engines and find out how they get their content and what meta tags they require or may find usefull. Mine is based on google so check out the source of the blog and those are the tags that google uses.

The other day I had an appointment to meet with a client about a real estate classifieds website. We decided to meet at a local restaurant and discuss the project over a few beers and oysters. For the first hour or so we talked about his goals and the general operation of the website, the design, functionality and his goals for the next year or two. I finally asked him about his marketing budget and what forms of advertising he was planning to use. Not to my surprise, he replied “I will just get listed in Google and the rest will fall into place.” Mind you, I’m sitting there with a well proposed business plan in hand, mission statement and all, although the section on marketing was no where to be found. I spent the next hour giving my new client the abridged version of Internet marketing and advertising. Needless to say, the reality made him reconsider his marketing plan.

The truth is that most people believe that they can abandon all “Off Internet” marketing and become the next LendingTree.com within a month. Obviously this statement may be a little over exaggerated but the principal is still there. A website should be an extension of your physical company and treated as such.

Ready for more tips on how to make your AdWords campaign work more effectively for your business?

Start with a Modest Budget

Just as you should start with a smaller geographical region, start with a modest campaign budget. Spend a few days or a few weeks fine tuning your ads before you really decide to pump up the budget. The more “finished” and tuned your ads are before you start spending serious amounts of money on advertising, the better.

Patience in building a strong ad group before you expand will benefit you and your bottom line.

Remember Your Audience

Write ad text that will appeal to your audience and bring in the traffic you want. If your products appeal to hobbiests, use terms that hobbiests would understand. If your products are directed mainly at younger customers, use youthful verbage and terms that will draw their attention.

You only have your ad text to convince the “right” customers to visit your website. Make those words count by making sure that you target the message toward them.

Attract the “Right” Customer

An opt-in e-newsletter is one of the most effective marketing tools you can use because it is fast, personal, and inexpensive. Many small businesses are using e-mail newsletters to introduce themselves to new customers and to communicate with existing ones. By sending useful information on a regular basis, you maintain continuous contact without being annoying. In addition, an e-mail newsletter can enhance your credibility and increase sales.

Creating an E-mail Newsletter

Producing your newsletter doesn’t have to be a monumental task. First, decide on the frequency of publication. This is based on how much time you have to do the work. Publishing it monthly or quarterly is probably a comfortable pace for both you and your readers. Next, produce a graphic design for your layout.

Many e-mail list management companies provide online templates for their customers. You simply type or paste in your information online and an HTML or text-based newsletter is automatically created for you.

Now it’s time for the content of your newsletter. Concentrate on topics that your readers will be interested in, not only the ones that you find fascinating. Try to use real-life applications. For example, you can describe past successes and maybe even interview a customer or two. This way, you tell your audience how you solved a problem that relates to them and conveys that you are a results- oriented professional.

For some reason, people who look to the internet to make more money or start their own online business are drawn to the internet marketing or home business industries. Ironically, these marketers (and I was one of them!) become affiliates for “make money from home” products, or buy reprint rights for the same, and thus try to sell something they have no experience in.

Sooner or later, new internet marketers will hear from an established “guru” that they should stay away from the internet marketing niche. Instead, they should find a “niche” they are interested in-for example, baseball-and focus their marketing efforts on that niche. The reason given by the gurus is that the internet marketing niche is already overcrowded, and “newbies” are going to have a hard time cracking that niche. (Of course, these "gurus" also encourage you to buy their products, because they will help you become a better marketer?.)

While I agree that the internet marketing and home business industry is overcrowded, and while I do not think it is a niche at all, but a large overarching concept, I think it is still possible to carve out a niche within this concept for yourself. This is true, if for no other reason than there will always be new people coming online looking for ways to make money online. Why shouldn’t you be the one to reach them? For myself, I found many other “money-making” websites before I found the gurus’ websites.

How To Monitor Your Search Engine Positions
 by: Zaak O’Conan

Since search engines are the first stop for people on the Internet looking for goods or services, the position your website appears in search results is an important factor. If your URL shows up far down the results list, the chances of the consumer never finding you increase incrementally. Once you achieve a high search engine position, it is essential that you make sure you maintain the high ranking you have worked so hard to achieve.

This means you must come up with a strategy to monitor your search engines positions. This strategy is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign. Think of your search engine positions as your online portfolio. Would you let your stock portfolio be ruled by chance and market fluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on your stocks so you could buy and sell when the time is right? This is the way you must consider your search engines positions.

You’ve just built a website and can’t wait to start popping up in the top listings of search engines. After all, you’ve paid this company even more money to create "optimized, search engine friendly pages, start building links and add lots of fresh content." If it takes weeks and months for the search engines to notice me, do I have to wait that long to see if the money was worth it?

No! It’s true that it takes time?weeks, even months to build up your web presence, but there are ways to follow your progress. It’s important to note that if you already have an established Internet presence and wish to further optimize your site, it usually happens much faster than a site that is brand new with a brand new domain.

If you are already listed in various directories and your existing website has been up and running long enough the search engines have probably already indexed your site and those linking to it. (to see if your site is indexed with a particular engine, in the search field type "site:www.yourdomain.com"). As you modify your pages and add new content the process of moving up in search rank is much swifter than starting from a brand new, un-indexed site. ?

Let others help with your marketing efforts. You can have strangers pass your site to others and span the globe with viral marketing. Create viral marketing with a free e-book or inviting email, it is powerful and free. To start a viral marketing campaign that grows exponentially and without effort send a witty or clever joke, picture, or poem to people in your address book. If enjoyed the recipient will pass it on to those in their list and so on. You may have received the Bill Gates free offer in your own box. This email has been circulated around the world for over three years and seen by countless. Be sure to include your url with a heading, either near the bottom or in a signature file. Do this once a month and watch your web traffic grow.

Pass on a free e-book with your contact details inside. Encourage others to add it to their websites and offer your branded e-book to everyone. As part of your introduction include your website and a message stating that the e-book is free and is to be passed along, so long as nothing is changed or altered. This includes your bio, contact information and links to your site. Cannot write? No problem. There are thousands of books available for you to co-brand and start your viral trail.

Paid URL Inclusion
 by: Zaak O’Conan

There are many ways to promote your website and one of the most efficient ways is to use search engines. Search engines are the first stop for most people trying to find information, services, and products online. Because of this, it is essential that your website appears quickly in search results.

The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which offer what is known as “paid inclusion.” This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.

Of course, every search engine already has an automated program commonly called a “spider” that indexes all the web pages it locates online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The major issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.