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BEGINNERS GUIDE TO
WEBSITE MARKETING
Why
should I Market My website.
Lets
imagine you are setting up a real world store. You are given 2
options. You can either have a store on the outskirts of a
small village or you can have a store in the center of the
city mall. What one would you choose? Of course it would be
the city center location but lets think why. The sheer volume
of people who would see your shop for a start. Website
marketing is in many ways the same. You want people to be
aware of your existence. Before people can enter your site
they need to know it is there and have a way of getting to it.
Ok lets imagine you are working on a website. Sorry to have to
say it but right now you are the equivalent of the village
store. People don't know you exist. No one passes your store.
Website marketing is the most effective way of addressing this
problem. But like the real world village store you may not
have a massive budget to spend on advertising. Lets see what
can be done on a minimalist budget.
Start
as you mean to continue.
The best
time to start marketing your website is during it's
construction. You can make a very big difference to your
websites chances of success if you plan it right from the
start and work everything out very carefully. Imagine you are
standing outside that city center store. What makes you want
to walk through those doors. Do you feel welcome, are items
easy to find can you get assistance easily etc. These aspects
are not entirely marketing related. They are to an extent
related to design and usability. They are however something
you really need to look into. From the marketing point of view
your initial aim is to get people through the door. What you
need to try and do is build a page that has a good balance
between design and search engine friendliness. When building a
search engine friendly page many people forget about the users
who are going to be finding their way there. If a page has
been built with only the search engine in mind very often the
users find their self on an ugly page filled with large text
and no clear user understandable navigation. You should try to
avoid this. Build your page with the user as first priority.
You may find this to be slightly less effective at pulling in
the visitors. But you will find your users aren't as likely to
press the back button as soon as they arrive on your page.
On
page optimization
On page
optimization is a very important subject for any website
promoter. What you are doing it pointing out to the search
engine what your page is about and pointing out the vital
information you want the search engine to take back to base
camp. Lets start from the top...
Title.
This is an html tag that goes within your
<head></head> tag. It is a very short summary of
the page.
Lets imagine you are writing a page about car information you
may use the following title tag
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<title>Car
information</title>
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This is
very short and to the point, it is a good overall description
of the page and it gives the search engine spider something to
take home. On the other hand..
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<title>Mack's
cool site all about cool cars</title>
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This
title doesn't really hit the nail on the head. It leaves the
search engine confused about the nature of the page. We need
to remember search engine spiders are pretty dumb. We need to
help them out as much as possible.
Keywords.
This is a meta tag that is used to specify a list of keywords
that describe your web page.
This list is a pretty short number of words that are directly
related to our page about cars.
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<metaname="keywords"
content="cars, automobiles, automotive,
vehicles,">
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this on
the other hand will once again succeed in confusing the search
engine. This list of keywords are way to varied to help the
search engine analyze your page.
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<metaname="keywords"
content="cars, lorries, roads, cool site,
click here">
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Over the
past two or three years the meta keyword tag has been greatly
depreciated by many of the top search engines. Now it is
mainly used by the secondary engines and a few smaller search
engines. I however feel it is still good practice to add this
tag to keep your pages prepared. Lets face it the search
engine world changes so fast that we never quite know when a
depreciated tag will make a come back.
Description.
This is another meta tag. This is placed within the head of
your html document.
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<metaname="description"
content="offering information and articles
about cars">
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The
description tag should be a fairly short description of your
web page. Try and keep it as related to your real page content
as possible. In the good old days it was possible to put
pretty much anything there and that is what the search engines
would display on the results page. Those days are long since
gone and search engines now rely on the true content of the
page to work out their descriptions to be shows on the results
pages.
The
description tag (like the keywords tag) have also been
depreciated by most of the top search engines. Descriptions
are however sometimes used by some smaller web directories. I
have came across quite a few that only ask you for a web
address after you have selected a category. For this reason I
still use the meta description tag, although I very often
reserve it for the homepage.
H
tags
h1 tags
these are very often used to good effect for letting the
search engines know exactly what a page is about. The h1 tag
is used to specify a page heading. For example on our cars
site we might use the following..
h1 tags
should be used with caution. No more than one per page. The h1
tag was intended to be used simply as a heading. Excessive use
of h1 tags is frowned upon by most search engines.
In
effect the h1 tag is saying this
is level 1 heading
h2 is
slightly less important than h1 h2 is a
secondary heading
h3 again
is even less important (third
level heading)
The
correct way of using h tags is to use your h1 as a heading
only. You can then use your h2 tag as a sub heading within the
same page. You could then use h3 tags you set up various sub
heading below your h2 area. In this case the search engine and
the user are both happy with their use, if they are used
correctly. For example a user would always expect the
important header to be at the top. But a search engine will
always class the h1 as the most important text no matter where
it is on the page. For this reason it is important for you to
nest your h tags properly.
On page elements in practice.
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<html>
<head>
<title>Car information</title>
<metaname="keywords"
content="cars, automobiles, automotive,
vehicles,">
<metaname="description"
content="offering information and articles
about cars">
</head>
<body>
<h1>Car information</h1>
<h2>Car makers</h2>
<h3>ford</h3>
</body>
</html>
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Keyword
density
Earlier
on we spoke about certain tags that have depreciated by many
search engines (meta keywords and meta description) To an
extent search engines have become a lot smarter and now read
the entire page to try and work out what your page is about.
In terms of search engine optimization all we can do it help
the engine by trying to point out the content we want it to
take from each page. The most important aspects it will look
for is title, h1 tag and popular words that appear within the
body of the page. By achieving a good keyword density we end
up having a word or phrase that occurs quite a lot within the
page. This is where things can go very wrong. If you write
your content purely for search engines it will make little or
no sense to your user. You need to try and find the balance
where-by you have a nice keyword density but a page that ready
very well to a user. If a search engine is able to find a good
relevant title, a suitable h1 text and reasonable on page
content they you really have done all you can do in terms of
on page optimization.
The
grand opening.
Ok you
now have a website up and running and are all ready to start
taking orders. you wait, you wait, you wait a little longer.
Where is everyone? The truth is you are just getting started.
You now have to start getting your message out and pointing
people in the direction of your website. Before you even start
trying to actively promote your site you need to be 100% sure
that you are ready to go main stream. Do all your links work
properly? Have you had your copy proof read? are you happy
with your choice of domain name? are you happy with your
hosting arrangement. If you are not happy with anything or if
you feel you want to change anything then please do not start
promoting yet. Wait until everything is exactly as you want it
to be and more importantly as your users will expect it to be.
Doing business on the web has one major difference to being
business in the real world. If someone doesn't like your store
they wont even pretend to be polite, they will simply click
the back button and be gone forever. In the real world when
you open a business people know you are new and will be a
little more understanding to things that don't work quite as
planned. On the web it is very difficult to tell the
difference between a problematic start up and a failing
internet business.
Press
release.
A press
release can very often be used to great effect to give your
online business the kick it requires, but this is one thing
that really needs to be done properly. If you are not a
content writer then I would strongly suggest you hire someone
to write the release for you. If the release doesn't read as
being totally professional then you are again loosing out on
potential users and/or customers. The press release if written
and distributed correctly can do wonders for any start up.
There are many resources on the web who offer press release
services. Many offer a free service as well as a paid service.
To be honest the free services give you as much as you pay for
them. The initial press release needs to be done properly.
Very often this will involve a layout of a few hundred dollars
to have it written and published. A press release is one
situation where it is good isn't good enough . It has to be
great. Within your press release you should offer information
about your company, explain your products or services and in
effect sell yourself. I cant emphasize enough that the quality
of the copy will be what sells you to potential customers, as
well as publishers who may want to use your feed in other
media forms. A well written press release with a compelling
topic could end up anywhere from yahoo news to the New York
times.
Web
directories.
Web
directories are a very important aspect of website promotion.
They not only send you traffic directly but they also create
paths to your site that search engines can use to locate you.
Think back to the store in the village. New roads are now
being build. As more roads are built more users are able to
find you.
When submitting to web directories it is important to follow
your progress. What I tend to do is have a list of directories
where I attempt to add my site. Then when I get listed I put a
"x" next to them. This method is a very simple way
of saving you time as you work through the list. Very often
web directories may take some time to add you. What I tend to
do is go through my list from start to finish, most
directories will email you if they add your site. This will
allow you to mark them off as "mission
accomplished". What I do is go through my list once a
month. and resubmit to the directories that have not yet
accepted my site. If you follow this method you will find that
eventually you will start to work your way through the list.
Do not however expect to get listed in all. This just doesn't
happen. Many directories have different criteria for
inclusion. it would be unlikely to find a site that is
acceptable for all web directories. When you are working
through your list you should always have a look through the
terms and conditions for the directories you wish to be added
to. If you discover your site does not comply with a
directories tos then there really is no point on proceeding to
add it. This only serves to waste your time and that of the
directory owner. If a directory rejects your site to be honest
the best thing you can do is forget about it and move on. You
can't make them list you. It is quite demoralizing to receive
a "your link had been rejected" email but hey, life
goes on.
When
adding your site to directories there is an important factor
that you may be able to take advantage of. This is called
anchor text. Anchor text is the actual text used to create the
link to your website. You can do this by choosing a desirable
title for your website. thinking back to our cars website.
lets assume the site is hosted on the domain example.com
(where example is the company name) when adding this site to a
directory many people would simply place "example"
as the title. It would be far more beneficial to you if you
used "Car information site" When a search engine
follow a link from one page to another the text it finds
within the actual link is called anchor text. If the search
engine finds similar content on the destination page then this
anchor text can do wonders for a sites ranking within the
results.
Most directories will also want you to supply a description.
Unlike the meta description tag this section is very
important. This is what the directory will display to it's
users when your site is displayed on their results page or
within a category. Within the description you should try to
keep it short and simple but it should contain enough
information to make the user want to click through.
Here are
2 links to Dmoz and Yahoo from these 2 links you will be able
to find a great selection of web directories for you to work
through.
DMOZ
Yahoo!
If you
work your way through both of these lists you will be well on
your way to getting some good inbound links from the
directories You should also try if possible to get listed on
the two majors yahoo.com and dmoz.org. Dmoz is free but yahoo
charges for listing to commercial categories.
Directory
listing will benefit you in 2 main ways. You will receive
direct traffic from them and it will provide a way for the
search engines to access your site. In theory you really don't
have to add your site to the search engines. If you get good
quality directory listings your site will find it's way into
the search engines. Never the less it is important to keep a
track of your sites progress in defusing into the search
engines.
Search
engines
In terms
of search engines I tend to more or less check first to see if
my site is already listed. If it is then I do not re-submit.
It makes sense to wait at least one month from your first
round of directory submissions until you start checking up on
the search engines. When checking for your site you can just
type your site title in the search box and click search. If
your site is listed then there is no reason to add it again.
If your search doesn't find your site then it will do no harm
to add it . Most search engines have an add url link either on
the homepage on from within the results page. Normally it is
simply a case of typing in your url and pressing submit. Some
search engines have become abused by automated services and
now use a "ransom note" submission process. A ransom
note is simply an image of a word or series of characters that
you need to type in a form to proceed. This type of submission
processhas been designed to prevent people from being able to
make automated submissions.
When working through the search engine I strongly suggest you
use the list idea again that I suggested for the web
directories. This helps you keep track of your progress as you
work through your list.
You can
find a list of search engines from Dmoz and Yahoo here.
Dmoz
Yahoo!
Post
directory and search engine submission
Through
time if you continue to work on your directory and search
engine submissions you will start to see an increase in
traffic from both the web directories and the search engines.
There is a relationship between search engines and web
directories. To an extent search engines rely heavily on web
directories to point then in the right direction for finding
content. Search engine spiders love web directories because
they are literality staked with links to other websites. As I
mentioned before you could simply choose to ignore the search
engine submissions and just let the search engines find you.
To be honest I can't remember the least time I actually added
a url to a search engine. I tend to focus my efforts on
getting listed in as many directories as possible. Directories
are a great place to get links to your site because lets face
it the entire point of a directory is to point the users to
other locations. Web directories and search engines have to be
the only sites on the web that actually have a business model
based on loosing users. Once you are happy with your director
listings it's time to move on to the next level and actually
go looking for links from other sites.
Topical
and local directories.
Almost
every industry has directories related to it. They can be a
little difficult to track down although using a search engine
with the query "Add url [your industry]" may well
throw up quite a few options. Another options is go promote
localy within business directories that are related to your
area. You might want to try a search for "[your city]
business directory" again this may offer you a few places
where you can list your site.
Link
building.
There
are 2 main types of link. The first one is the direct one way
link where a site links to you. The second type is a
reciprocal link where two sites exchange links. The second
type is generally a lot easier to achieve.
Generally speaking direct link is preferred because you do not
have to link out. The best way of getting good quality inbound
links is to have great content on your site that makes people
want to link to you. On the web content is king. If a site
offers top rate content that offers a good information to your
users then you are very likely to find that over time sites
will link to you due to this. In many cases with a fairly new
site though, this is not the case. It is at this point you
need to think carefully. "Do I want to exchange links or
go only for one way links?"
To start
off I would tend to try exchanging links with a few carefully
chosen link partners. Try to seek out sites that are related
to your site, but are not in direct competition. Very often
this can be very beneficial for both sites involved. Once you
have chooses the sites you are interested in exchanging links
with it is simply a matter of emailing then with your link
exchange proposal. When doing this to be honest you cant
expect much more than a 1-10 success rate. The key is to seek
out sites that you feel are realistic exchange partners, so
don't bother emailing a link exchange request to Nasa.
When writing the email try to keep it short and sweet but get
across the basic advantages of the link exchange. Try to put
yourself in their shoes and think., "how would I sell
this to me." If you can stay within the 1-10 success rate
you are doing very well. When you are doing a link exchange
request it can sometimes help you actually link to the other
site before you send the email. Sometimes this can be enough
to just swing it in your favor. When I email off a link
exchange request and I receive a "Not interested"
reply I just deal with it and get on with it, although I think
it is good practice to reply with a "thank you for your
time" type email just so the other person knows you are a
person and not an automated tool sending out
"canned" messages.
Why
go after links.
The more
links you have pointing to your website the better. Not only
do search engines find your site easier but you start to build
up your link popularity. The most important reason though is
traffic. Not just through the direct clicks you get on your
links but from the search engines. This is where the
relationship between web directories and search engines gets
very complicated. The Google search engine uses a system for
ranking called Page Rank. "Page rank" in simple
terms is a score awarded to every page based on it's link
popularity.
What
is page rank
Page
rank is a system used exclusively by the Google search engine.
When we think of a link we think of a link from site A to site
B. Google classes this as a vote for site B from site A. When
a page links to another page it doesn't only pass a link, it
passes some page rank value from one page to another. When
Google updates it's page rank it takes into account the total
score your page accumulates from all it's inbound links. But
this is not just based on the actual number of links. A page
with a higher page rank will pass more value to your page than
a site with lower page rank.
Up until about a year ago the Google toolbar used to display
what was classed as an accurate portrayal of page rank. Today
The Google toolbar is very much out of sync with the true
value. I guess it makes sense for Google to keep this
information private. By doing this they have removed a lot of
the seo value from the toolbar. For a while Page rank was
becoming a commodity. Now we really have no true way of
knowing the true Page rank vale of a page. To be honest Page
rank is far from being the end all of Google promotion. It it
just one of many factors that Google uses when ranking pages.
For a while Page rank has though of as "ego rank".
The best possible measure of how your site if doing is the
actual user figures. Given the choice of a Page rank 6 with
little traffic or a Page rank 3 with lots of traffic, the high
traffic site seams a better option in my opinion.
Further
promotion
If you
have followed through with all the relevant steps you should
slowly start to see a marked improvement in your websites
performance. Do not expect things to suddenly change over
night. Web promotion is a very gradual process. As your
promotion sets in it's only then that you will start to see
the benefits. It doesn't end there. You still need to work
very hard to secure good incoming links, work on your
directory and search engine inclusions. There are also a
number of options open to you.
Banner
exchanges
Banner
exchanges are not as popular as they used to be. They are very
often run as free services where-by you display banners for
them and in exchange they will display your banners on other
members sites. To be honest the main benefactor from a banner
exchange is the exchange operator. Generally they will offer
you a 2:1 ratio. This means that they will display one of your
banners every time you display 2 of theirs. To have any
success through banner exchanges you need to be creative.
Don't simply have a banner saying "click here" it
will not work. You need to be artistic and design banners that
make a user want to click. This is very similar to the real
world store scenario, they now see your store but how do you
make then walk through the door. You need to really think
about this. If you intend to use banner exchanges or banner
advertising it may well be worth your while hiring a graphical
artist to produce the artistic media for your campaign.
Pay
per click advertising
Pay per
click advertising is probably the most successful method of
advertising on the web. Advertisers love it because they only
pay when a user actually clicks on an advert. Pay per click is
still pretty popular within the banner ad industry , although
it has come on in leaps and bounds within the search
advertising industry. Pay per click search engines allow you
to place your ad so it will appear when a user carries out a
search that is targeted at your service. The engine will then
present the user with a link to your site within a certain
area of the results page. The pay per click listings are
usually very visible. Most advertisers agree that pay per
click is a very good converter. This is because the user who
clicks on the advert is within the advertisers target group.
Another feature of pay per click that had really taken off in
recent times is contextual adverts. The most popular service
within this field is Google adwords. They provide adverts for
the Google search engine, but advertisers can now opt in for
their ads to be displayed on partner sites. Contextual adverts
are also great converters, because the advert that is shown
has been targeted to the page content. This has opened a whole
new field of opportunity for pay per click advertising.
The
small things that matter.
There
are many small things you can do to drive people to your
website. So far you have worked your way through the major
points, but now you have to start thinking for alternative
ways of bringing in a few more users.
Email
signatures: Have a link to your website within every email you
send.
Letter heads: This can work very well. Simple have your url on
company stationary
Tell people about your site: Start your own word of mouth
marketing program.
There
are many things you can do to let people know you are there.
In many cases you need to put on your thinking cap an think
out-the-box on this one. Very often it is the little thngs
that make a difference.
Website
promotion is never going to be a quick and simple task. In
involves a lot of work, a lot of reading and very often a lot
of sleepless nights. Nowever if you are willing to see it
through you it may well be very worth your while.
Give it
your all, and one day you will have that city centre mall.
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