Website Marketing And Why You Need It
Website Marketing; This is where I feel that most website designers fail their clients miserably. They are excellent "techies" and can create the most stunning websites with flashing buttons and good looking graphics.
They can create websites that Fortune 500 companies will be proud of. But when they create websites for their clients they often neglect the Internet Marketing part. The marketing element is usually the last one to be considered.
The old adage "build it and they will come" is not true especially on the Internet.
Once You Have Your Website You Have To Market It
Obvious marketing techniques involves printing your website name on brochures, letterheads, business cards and in all your print and other media offline advertising. This is a crucial step in telling your existing and potential customers where they can get more information from you.
Then off course you need to market online. The best place to do this is with the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and others, as 85% - 95% of your website traffic is going to come from them.
They are getting harder and harder to get listed on and listings change all the time. It is a full time job just to stay informed about new changes and the only guarantee is that their algorithm will change and your website's ranking, along with it, good or bad...
You can advertise on the search engines in two ways: Free Listings and Paid Listings.
Free Search Engine Listings
This is the most popular and also the most competitive form of advertising as every single business out there in your market (including your competitors) want to be in the top 10 listings for Google. Obviously not everyone can, but there are two ways in which you can "optimise" your website to ensure that over time at least, your website will have a chance to be in the top 10.
The funny thing is, if you really want to rank well, these rankings are not free at all! What most people do not consider is that EVERY DAY thousands of competitors are entering the market for your products and services. This means ALL of them want to rank on the first page. This also means that it is becoming harder and harder to rank well for search terms and phrases related to your product and services.
It now takes much more effort and time to rank well for your search terms in the search engines than a year or three ago. And time and effort = money. It takes specific techniques and strategies to get your website to the top of the search engines, most of these techniques are labour intensive and labour = time + money. So even though "directly" yes, the traffic you get from the search engines are "free", indirectly you are paying for that traffic through the time, efforts and techniques you follow to get those top listings.
There Are 2 Factors To Consider When Trying To Rank On The Search Engines
# 1 On Page Factors
The first factor is to design your website with the search engines in mind as they will analyze your website content and will index you accordingly.
First and fore most you will have to identify the keywords that people use to search for your particular products and services and incorporate them into your website. I do this when I design your website for you.
Search engines also LOVE fresh and new content to be added to your website regularly. This show them that your website is actively providing new industry specific information and is adding to the Internet's knowledge base.
The search engines make use of a robot script called a "spider" to visit your website daily and check your website's content and index it accordingly. If you can offer new and fresh content to the "spider" every time they visit your website, you will entice it to visit more often.
The websites with the most search engine spider activity wins! The more they crawl your website the more the search engines will love your site and give it higher priority.
Off course your website should also be technically correct with no coding errors and search engine friendly structure and HTML coding. I build this into your website when I design it.
# 2 Off Page Factors
The biggest part of ranking well on the major engines has nothing to do with your website itself. It depends on outside elements or "Off Page Factors" as we talk about in the industry.
The most important of these is to have as many relevant incoming links from other websites to your website with your keywords in the anchor text.
For every link that you receive from another website that is relevant to your industry / website topic, you will receive a vote of confidence from the search engines. Every vote helps to establish your website as an "authority" on your topic and will help to rank your website higher accordingly.
Getting these links or "votes" is typically done through a reciprocal link exchange where you exchange links with other websites in your industry or related industries and getting one way links from internet directories.
Side Note >>> : I cannot over emphasize the importance of incoming links. I have seen websites with nothing other than 1000's of links rank in the search engines for their chosen keyword. In some cases it is THE ONLY factor that allows a website to rank well. In my experience, having good quality incoming links is almost 70% of the success of high rankings.
Finding those link partners and directories and exchanging links with them is a full time job, and depending on how competitive your keyword is, you could need thousands of links just to rank on the first page. I can tell you from experience if you want to rank on the first page for something as competitive as "cape town accommodation" you will need a lot of links, patience, time and elbow grease...
Sadly this is where most website owners fail. You need BOTH on page factors such as search engine friendly website design, fresh content AND off page factors off page factors such as relevant links to your website from other websites to have any chance of ranking highly in the natural search listings.
See my solutions to this problem below.
What Use Is The Most Beautiful Website In The World If No One Can Find It On A Search Engine?
(Above is PROOF that I do know a thing or two about website design and what works to get traffic to your website. I am ranked at times (rankings change all the time) @ the #1 spot on Google, Yahoo and MSN for the term "website designer". Click on the image above to see for yourself. Or do a search on those 3 main search engines and you will find me there...)
Pay Per Click Search Engines
Then there is Pay Per Click Search Engines. My ULTIMATE favorites! These search engines work like an auction house and you bid for "keywords". The higher your bid the higher your listing in the search engine. You only pay your bid amount when someone clicks on your website link.
Its my favorite form of Internet Marketing. With the competition out there it is becoming more and more difficult to get good listings in the free regular search engines like Google and others. Most of them are starting to charge for their listings now in any case and you are not guaranteed a good listing.
Pay Per Click is instant, (yes it costs you money, but if you sell products where you make R500+ per sale it's WORTH it!) and you can TARGET your market like nowhere else on earth. As long as your ad copy, website copy and ordering process is streamlined and ready to make sales, you will make sales with Pay per Click Engines. I love them!
Google runs a PPC engine alongside the regular listings called Adwords. Google's Adwords are Fantastic. It's the largest Search Engine in the world and you can have your website up and running within 15 minutes. It's fun and you can Launch your website TODAY and start making sales TONIGHT!
How I Can Help You Market Your Website
Google Indexing And Ranking Link Service
(What I Call A Link Run)
Getting links or "one way" links from relevant Internet directories is the most valuable "off page" thing you can do to increase your chance of ranking on the search engines.
By getting incoming links from respected and trusted Internet directories and articles will increase your website's own "trust" factor with the search engines. Every link from a directory or article is a "vote" for your site and will help your site to gain rankings in the search engines.
* Note : This is a long term strategy, so if you are serious about your website's performance in the long term on the Internet, you will take the long view with this option. It takes time and hard work to get good quality incoming links to your website and it takes time for the search engines to credit you for those links. Getting incoming links to your website is a continuous long term process.
I have more than one option when it comes to Link Runs and it may take several to acquire sufficient links to rank well.
I also offer advanced marketing advice and services for people serious about search engine rankings and services. I suggest you email me with the details of your site for further advice. Please Click Here for More Information On Link Packages
PPC Campaign Management
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on the largest search engine in the world. Includes keyword database for your industry, make up of adds and management of ad campaign. Allows for excellent target marketing.
You only pay for the clicks. You specify your budget (I suggest minimum of R500 pm) and I will market your website for you. You can start attracting traffic immediately.
When someone types in a search for your keyword, your advert will appear alongside the natural search results. Click Here For an example and note the little text adds on the right hand side and at the top.
Note: Pay Per Click advertising on Google is both Art and Science as you need to know a bunch of things about keywords and marketing on the search engines if you want to be successful at Google Adwords. You can lose a lot of money if you do not know what you are doing. Google looks at a myriad of factors when it comes to advertising your site Google Adwords and many of the factors present in normal Search Engine Optimisation need to be present in pages used on Adwords as well. I also suggest you combine a PPC campaign with an Advanced Web Stats install so you can track and monitor your add spend and effectiveness closely.
Read this page for more of an overview of PPC advertising and then talk to me if you want to start a Pay Per Click campaign on Google to get maximum ROI.
Advanced Web Stats And Analytics
Without proper statistics to watch and monitor your site's performance and rankings, you will never really know how well your website is performing. If six months down the line you want to improve your conversion because you are not getting enquiries and you are not satisfied with the site's performance, how are you going to know which metric should be adjusted?
Where is your site ranking? What is your site's bounce rate? What Keywords are being used? What pages are being surfed by your visitors? How many visitors are you getting? Where are they from? There are hundreds of metrics that you would want to know once you start to get serious about your website and do not just treat it like a hobby. Without these stats it is almost impossible to measure your site's effectiveness and we can only guess where we have to improve your website.
Do we have to create more links? Do we need to change the text? Do we rank for the right keywords? We will not know unless we have decent website statistics to work from.
I combine two to three different stats packages to get a clear picture of what is going on. I combine two external trackers with on board statistics like awstats to get a clear image of the who, what and where of your site.
I can install and configure both sets for you @ R850 and start tracking your website's performance so we can adjust and improve later on. Often, improvements can be seen in the website as soon as we can establish via the stats what is wrong and make corrections. Your website marketing efforts need a decent stats package, trust me, your site is lost without it.
I can also add even more in depth analysis for you via Crazyegg.com whereby we can physically track and see what pages are being clicked on. Talk to me if you are interested in advanced services like this.
