How to Start Marketing your Website

Modern website design has developed beyond recognition during the past 10 years. With websites being created using more complex technologies and many free options open to individuals wishing to get online, one would think that the world of Internet marketing would be becoming less of a minefield. Sadly this is not the case, the reverse seems to be true even. With ease of use comes added competition, variety and local supply. In order to compete it is no longer enough to have a good product at a good price with a good network for delivery. Online Exposure has become key to every businesses success online and the markets have become so niche [with the advent of search engine development] that it is no longer good enough to simply sell your products within one marketplace.

Search Engine Marketing

1. Organic Keywords and Keyphrases

Search Engines use a consumer based advertising method. That is to say that the consumer knows what they want and the search engine finds them options within their particular requirements. This method makes it very difficult / expensive for a marketer to find their market and very easy / cheap for a consumer to find the best deal online. This search method is fuelled by the vast array of descriptive text that consumers will use to find the same item.

For instance, a consumer looking to locate a web designer may use any of the following terms to ask the search engine to find a list of viable services:

web design for small business, web design, web design software, creative web design, web design templates, best web design, web design tutorial, web design pricing, web design kent, web design agency, web design examples, web design essex, web design studio, bespoke web design, top web design, affordable web design etc.

This list is only a small fraction of the differing ways that a prospective client might try to search for a web design company to help them with their latest project. However, one of these searches will be from genuine clients, some from marketers who are checking their competition and some from individuals researching the subject. Therefore, not every search carries prospect value and as a result, it is very difficult to decide which search keywords you should target your efforts towards. In order to make educated decisions about which keywords to target we must study historic tracked back data to see which keywords have resulted in payment. If, in the past, a client has used a particular phrase to locate and purchase a particular item or service, we can surmise that it is likely to happen again in the future. Very much as a fisherman will continue to use the same bait, lure and position in the river if it has been successful in the past, so we will learn from our previous successes to attract repeat custom.

Many Keywords are used solely by the SEO industry and will never be used by the buying public. These are phrases that seemingly place your company on top of the world within your industry, they make your SEO feel good ... but they attract no business. Therefore, these keywords are nothing other than an egotistic dalliance and should be considered as nothing other than a waste of resources. When choosing an SEO company to help market your business you should always discuss keyphrase effectiveness with them before letting them loose on your website. Ensure that they understand that your goal is more paying custom and not necessarily massive industry keywords. Spend time developing a keyword strategy with them, finding words and phrases that have historically led to business generation and not time-wasting enquiries or marketing calls.

2. PPC Schemes

Search engines display their results in lists of ten website links. The searching public will generally change their search phrase depending upon the initial ten results, rather than search on to page two in search of more relevant results. This has led to a jealous frenzy for top ten results, to the point where search engines have found that it is very lucrative to sell [more like auction] positions within the first page of search results. Companies will choose their target keywords and will stipulate how much money that they are prepared to pay for their website to appear within the first page paid links section. These companies are presented with 'helpful' historic data which informs them of how many searches have been made for each keyword in their market. This allows them to choose whether to compete for the ultra-popular keywords or opt to chase the not so well used 'niche' keyphrases. As with keyword choice for organic search results, pay per click (PPC) keywords are much more effective when accompanied by historic sales data. A niche phrase may only occur once per week, but if 50% of the users of this phrase result in a sale it obviously makes sense to pay for position on the first page for that keyphrase.

A thing to remember is "5% of something is worth more than 100% of nothing". In other words, if you are one of ten options for a historically successful keyword search, you are doing better than paying for an ego boosting keyword that is only searched for by SEO companies and marketers. You will also find that it is far cheaper to list highly for smaller, more creative keyphrases, than it is to list for highly prized [yet non-performing] big keyphrases.

So, when discussing a PPC campaign with your newly appointed SEO / SEM company, ensure that they fully understand where you are on keyword competition. Avoid competition at all cost and seek out creative methods to use lower frequency searches that are more likely to be used by your customers.

3. What does your Website Say ?

Egotism is a major factor in why a website fails. Website owners and designers are prone to egotism when planning, designing and marketing their websites. It is important to remember that your website should be designed for your customers. The look, feel and function should all make your customer feel at home and help them to buy your services and products. It may be tempting to opt for all of the latest bells and whistles when designing your website, but if they scare away your core clientele ... they are nothing but expensive sale deterrents.

When discussing your site design concepts with your web designer, ensure that they understand who your customers are. Make sure that they have fully investigated the websites of your most successful competitors and that they understand what their customers like about those web sites. Make it plain to your web designer that it is essential that your site visitors can understand how to navigate their way around your site. Your customers should intuitively understand how to use the buying mechanisms available. The shopping cart should be 'bog standard' and not 'New' or 'Trendy'. New and Trendy is just another term for tricky to get the hang of. Your Unique Selling Point should be your products and services, not your Shopping Cart ...

Some elemental points to keep in mind when building a new website:

a) Information should be accessible, plentiful & expandable. Your website is your chance to break down barriers between your company and customers who like to research and consider their purchases. By providing them with easy to access information on your products, company details, contact numbers etc. you are allowing your customer to develop a relationship with your company ... at no expense !

b) Pictures should be clear, professional and enlargeable. They should also be properly Alt tagged, allowing customers that have speaking browsers to experience the pictures as well. As much effort should be spent on the creation of the pictures of staff, premises and facilities as you have spent upon your product images. You visitors will look first and read second, so your pictures should project quality.

c) Navigation should be simple to understand and page titles should be as 'obvious' as possible. Most people will look to the left hand column for a list of site sections, to the footer for contact details and sitemap links, to the logo for a link to the index page and to blue, underlined text for links. This may restrict your design opportunities, but if your customer knows where to look and feels comfortable when using your website they are much less likely to leave before they fully explore your website.

d) Text is good. Never use a picture of words when you could use text. Not only does make it impractical for a blind person to 'read' your website, it limits the amount of information that a search engine can glean from your page.

e) Your content should be handwritten and your own property. Your content should read 'naturally' in both progression and context. You should not 'stuff' your pages with your target keywords. Search engine algorithms are now so technically advanced that they will deliberately ignore words and sentences that they feel you are deliberately targeting.

f) Midway through a design you should always ask your friends and family what they think. No holes barred, let them be as critical as they can. Listen, Appraise and Modify your design where necessary.

g) You might hear that Meta Tags are a thing of the past ... I beg to differ. A good set of meta tags for each page is your main method for applying to a search engine for consideration for listing under specific keyword searches. As long as you design your meta tags with as much care and attention as your website design, they will be an asset to your site marketing. Ensure that all of your meta tags are unique, duplications will be ignored. Also, it is of paramount importance to ensure that your meta tags are totally reflective of your page content.

Exposure

1. Social Networking

The key to successful website marketing is to network. The are many social networking websites to choose from, but they all offer the clever website marketer a prospective market from which to promote their products and services. Admittedly some social networks will not suit your particular products or services, so finding the right ones from which to invest your marketing time is essential to your success.

Some great Social Network Sites that will give your website wider exposure include: Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Focus, Furl, LinkedIn, Magnolia, Ning, Reddit, Squidoo, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Xing, YouTube.

There are many more also.

2. Link Building

Finding quality back-links is one method that you can use to bring interested visitors to your website. The term 'Quality' back-links refers to links that come from interested parties (i.e. websites from within the broad spectrum of subjects that your own site fits in to) and therefore will bring visitors looking to expand their knowledge of a certain subject.

The process of seeking quality back-links begins with research into your own market. It is very unlikely that your direct competition are going to link from their website to yours, so it is up to you to be creative and establish some non-competitive websites that would find your products and services a useful parallel for their clients. It is amazing just how many companies expect to be able to trade effectively by just providing their own niche products and services. The website searcher is always looking for a cheaper, easier and less time consuming way to source what they need and they will always follow the company that offers these over the ones that do not.

Quality link building between complimenting websites not only helps your business to seem more attractive to consumers, it also helps you to gain 'Trust' in the eyes of a search engine. If a search engine sees that your website is so highly thought of by other websites within your own market they will promote your website more readily. This promotion manifests itself in a higher position for your particular keywords and, as a result, more visitors. It is the search engines goal to send visitors to a website that fully satisfies that visitors needs. The warrant that is provided by a quality industry link will convince the search engine that your website can offer that client satisfaction.

There has been a spate of SEO abuses over the past few years that seek to exploit this link trust algorithm. Sadly, whenever something good is created by a search engine to help improve the quality of search results, there are always thousands of SEO Cheats that seek to manipulate the search results by exploiting any loop holes that have been created in the process. In the early days of Trust Rank it was obvious to everyone who studies search engines that a major factor in the development of certain keyword superiority was the text that was used in incoming links ( Sometimes referred to as Anchor Text ). By finding (sometimes buying) low quality links and mass producing the anchor text from these links, an SEO company could manipulate the search results in their favour. Obviously it didn't take long for the search engines to understand how they were being exploited and seal up any loop hopes. However, several thousands of honest companies have been duped in the process by thinking that they were investing in honest SEO techniques and actually paying for underhand practices (Black Hat SEO). Once the loop holes had been plugged, the search engines then started to explore who were the culprits that had been attempting to get higher listings than they were entitled. Although there is no proof that there have been penalties applied against these companies, there has been much anecdotal evidence to at least suggest that this might have been the case.

So, always seek honest 'industry' links for your website. Do not create other websites with the specific purpose of exploiting anchor texts, as registration information will show any search engine that they belong to the same owner (some companies create thousands of websites for this reason).

3. Keep Current

24 hour News, Immediate Public Response to Current Events and the creation of Blogs that cover every angle in the ongoing drama that we can life. Search Engine users expect more from their computers nowadays. They no longer only use their computers for information for homework and to find a cheaper deal on car insurance. Newspapers are losing ground to search engines because by the time they print yesterdays news ... the world has already moved on.

Search Engines have had to make space for the daily breaking news story on their search pages. If their customers demand current information on the latest hot story, it's important that a search engine provide it, lest the customer finds a blog that covers it quicker. With this purpose in mind the major search engines now trawl millions of websites daily, some of those get refreshed every minute !

To stay on top of the search engines these days you have to be current. That means constantly updating your website with your industries most current information, giving your take on the topics to keep your site unique. This is time consuming, but it can make the difference between continual top listings or gradual disappearance in the SERP's.

4. Video Production

Many individuals use Youtube as a search engine for products, services and information. Because of this it is obviously in your companies interest to create some simple company profile video's, introducing your Youtube audience to your business, services and products. A video can quickly break down the emotional barriers between you and your future customers. By showing them your assets you are controlling the first impression that you make ...

5. Google Maps Inclusion:

Google has recently started to include local listings in their first pages. They now assess the location of the searcher and present with local alternatives, in the knowledge that most people prefer to explore the local options before looking further a field. It is therefore a very good idea to complete your Google Profile and submit your details to Google Maps. Local business should be your first priority before thinking nationally or internationally.

6. Good Feedback

There are now several sites that allow your customers to rate your services. These ratings usually manifest themselves in the form of stars. Google has started analysing many of these sites and is now listing the stars next to your website url. It is seriously in your interest to maintain good customer ratings and also immediately address any poor ratings with a full investigation, which should lead to a quick resolution or submission to Google for reconsideration. Google are fair people and I have found them to consider each case on its merits ... and yes, they do sometimes remove poor ratings if you can supply proof that you are in the right.