Why Internet Marketing is a Non-Stop Process

by Theresa Cahill
Copyright 2006 - All Rights Reserved


Creating your first (or 10th) website is always an exciting time! You work hard to ensure your web site is alluring to your potential customers. Your images are up and your content is first rate. Now you ask yourself, "How am I going to get people to notice me? How can I promote my website?"

Marketing is an age-old process. Most likely even the first humans strove to market themselves or their goods to each other. It's a basic human instinct to want to tell others what we have, what we've created.

To effectively market your web site takes persistence, determination, and the ability to do repetitive tasks over and over - daily, weekly, and monthly. The central theme when approaching marketing (versus advertising) is to strive for the flood of potential customers typically found in the search engines. This type of traffic is considered "warm marketing," because those doing the searching already have a basic understanding of what they intend to find.

Even the big players on the net, like Wal-Mart, Amazon, and others actively seek the traffic derived from search engine searches. During the holiday season, a 2006 statistic shows Wal-Mart relying on 12% or more of its own traffic to come from active searches online. You may be thinking, "But I'd just type in their url myself." You would be wrong. Many a looker-turned-buyer start their way to your online business using a search engine.

Getting into the search engines is one thing, however, getting to the front of a search-returned result is the ulimate challenge all business owners face.

Knowing the value of keyword and keyword phrases designed specifically for what you are offering is invaluable. Many business owners make the mistake of going for "broad" terms, words and phrases they have no hope of getting decent search engine placement for. Pick too broad a term and you are going up against the biggies online. Their sites are at the top and at the top for a reason. Don't optimize for a word that is out of your reach.

Be picky. Be specific.

Once you have determined how you are going to go about your battle to the top, you must use a variety of methods to get there. The most difficult task a web site owner faces is sticking to a system. Haphazard marketing results in haphazard sales (if any).

Be diligent. Be wise. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Often outsourcing tasks can be the wisest option for those without the skill level, resources, and time needed to effectively promote a website.

With that in mind, the following are just some methods that have stood the test of time in terms of promoting your web site:

Article Writing

Writing is an extremely effective way to gain search engine recognition. You must be willing to write articles (or have someone write for articles for you) on a weekly basis (at a minimum). Once written, your articles need to be distributed to as many directories as humanly possible - each and every week.

Setting up an onsite article reference area of your own is also a good internet business marketing strategy. But don't stop there... create a blog and/or rss feed and post your articles to them, too.

One Way Backlinking

Search engines love authority sites. To have your web site recognized as an authority means that everyone on the net points to you, without you having to "point back." The greater the number of incoming links, the higher your online business appears to the eyes of search engines and their spiders. Ineffectively done, backlinks can cost a small fortune and take up a huge chunk of your time to create. Gaining backlinks from high-ranking sites (in the eyes of the search engines) is very important. Backlink by linking forward whenever possible.

Reciprocal Linking

Once upon a time the be all and end all of having an online web site meant finding as many other web site owners as possible to link to your own site. Most of the time this meant, "I'll post yours if you'll post mine." Reciprocal linking is still advisable, but in the correct proportion. Your web site needs to have more incoming links than outgoing. In addition, for any reciprocating arrangement, you want to swap with complimentary sites, not competitive ones. Being selective is the name of the game with reciprocal linking.

When it comes to promoting your website, marketing is a non-stop process that must be executed wisely. Internet marketing also must be approached aggressively to rise to the top of the search engines for terms relative to your online business.

Too often when someone thinks, "I will promote my website!" they fail to realize just how non-stop that process really is. Gaining the first foothold and moving to the front for returned results is just the first step. Keeping and holding that position means never letting down your guard. Never give your competition the edge to move right past you.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Theresa Cahill and her business partner, Jeff Greer, specialize in helping internet business owners effectively market their websites. Submit your business for a free evaluation. Find the best methods to promote your web site at Market-For-Me.com

Theresa Cahill is also the owner of My Wizard Ads, Online Advertising Co-Op, a true one-stop spot for ezine ad advertising, solo ads, targeted traffic, and more!

Keywords: advertising, marketing, classifieds

Do It Yourself SEO: Ten Search Engine Optimization Tips

By Donald Nelson (c) 2006

Using a professional search engine optimization service can sometimes be expensive. However, if your budget is tíght and you have a basic understanding of web page construction it is possible to optimize your own website without hiring an SEO specialist. For those who would like to give it a try, here are ten "Do it yourself" search engine optimization tips:

1. Think about SEO right from the start.

Many people plan, design and build their websites without giving any thought as to whether their site is search engine friendly or whether it will be capable of attracting traffíc in organic search engine results. At the last minute, after most of the site has been built, they try to optimize their site, not realizing that this work should have been done throughout the planning and building process.

It is far better to think about search engine optimization in the earliest stages of the project. For example, if it is at all possible, choose a domain name that will allow you to include your most important keyword or search term in your URL. If you are selling bicycles then you would do well have to a domain name like www.xyzbicycles.com . And don't stop with the domain name; include your keywords in your file names as well. For example, a sub-page of this hypothetical site might be www.xyzbicycles.com/road-bikes.html

2. Design your site with both search engines and users in mind.

Your site should be easy for your human readers to understand, but it should also be easy for search engine robots as well. If you want to see what a search engine robot will "see" then view your site in a notepad document or use the html view of the popular web editing programs.

If you have used gif images to represent your headlines or other important text, then this text will not be picked up by the search engine robots. In addition, if you have designed a site that is entirely in a flash format, you will not be providing the search engine spiders with much "food," or searchable text.

Furthermore, if you have long strings of java scrípt and complex style instructions in the head section of your html page it is better to put the java scrípt in an external file and the style instructions in a separate CSS (cascading style sheet) file, in order to give prominence to the actual text of your web page.

3. Write individual title tags for each and every page of your website.

From the standpoint of search engine optimization, the single most important sentence on any web page is the title tag. The title tag gives the search engine a good indication as to what your page is all about. Incorporate your main keywords or search phrases into your title tag, and keep them at the very front of the sentence. These keywords are more important than your company name (unless it is Coca Cola!). So our XYZ Bicycle Company might have a title tag that looks like this Bicycles: Racing Bikes, Mountain Bikes, Road Bikes, Bicycle Accessories from the XYZ Bicycle Company.

The title tags of each of the sub-pages of the site should reflect the main content of those pages. Nevër use the same title tag for all the pages of the site.

4. Write a concise description tag for each of your web pages.

Just as the title tag is the most important sentence or phrase on any page, the description tag is the most important paragraph on any page. Summarize the gist of your page in two or three sentences, again incorporating the keywords and search phrases for which you think people will use when searching for your site. A description tag for the home page of the XYZ Bicycle Company could look like this: "The EXZ Bicycle Company manufactures mountain bikes, racing bicycles, road bikes and bicycle accessories. Our bicycles are distributed and sold around the world."

5. Put your keywords into headers and headlines on your page.

Your human readers and search engines alike need prominent headlines in order to understand what your page is all about. While a human reader only needs to see the headline in a large bold text, search engines distinguish the headlines, which they regard as important indicators of the page, by noting which phrases are encased in header tags such as H1, H2, H3, etc. H1 is considered most important and your first headline should be labeled with this tag. If the header tags make your copy look too big, then you can change the size of the headers by creating style instructions that will render the headlines into sizes that are consistent with the look and feel of your site.

6. Write copy that includes your keyword and search phrases at the beginning, middle and end.

If you want to write website copy that is search engine optimized, then you only have to follow good writing and presentation procedure. State clearly what you want to say in the opening paragraph, elaborate on your basic ideas in the middle section of your text and at the end summarize what you have said, reminding your readers with text that is similar to the opening paragraph. Be natural; don't try to stuff your page with the keywords. If you read the page out loud and it sounds funny, then you have overdone the repetition of your search phrases and keywords. A density of 2% is considered to be OK. Thus in a 400 word page of text your keyword might be repeated eight times.

7. Place your keywords and phrases in the link text of your web pages.

So far we have placed the keywords in the strategic places of the web page: the title, the description, the headlines and the body text. Now we have to see that the keywords are included in clickable link text on the page. Whenever you are linking to sub pages or other pages of your site, make sure that your keywords are included in the clickable portions of the links. Thus, instead of making a link that says "clíck here" for more information about bicycle accessories, it would be better to write: clíck here for more information about "bicycle accessories," with the keywords "bicycle accessories" being the anchor (clickable) text.

8. Install a navigation system that can be easily followed by search engines.

One of the most important steps in getting more traffíc to your site is to ensure that all of the site's web pages are included in the search engine indices. Normally a search engine robot will visit the main page of a site and follow links to the other pages. If your navigation system is based on java scrípt, or on images, there is a possibility that some search engine robots will not be able to follow the links and thus they will not pick up the interior pages of your site. One simple remedy for this problem is to build an additional text-link navigation bar and place it at the bottom of the page. This additional navigation bar will serve multiple purposes:

a. Help the search engines to reach the interior pages.

b. Put your keywords in link "anchor text".

c. Remind the user to go deeper into the site by repeating the navigation options again.

9. Build a site map page or use the Google sitemap option.

Getting all of your pages indexed is so important, that it is also prudent to take another step that will ensure that all of your pages are visited by search engine robots. A site map is a page that has text links to all of the pages of your site. As with a text link navigation bar, a site map serves multiple purposes:

1. It helps users to find what they are looking for on the site by providing an outline summary of all of your pages.

2. It helps search engine robots to land on the interior pages.

After you build your site map page, be sure to make a link to it from your home page and the other important pages of your website.

In addition to a normal site map page, you can also make an XML site map, upload it to the server and then register it with the Google site map tool. You can use a free online utility to create your XML site map at: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps for more information. This process is easy to accomplish, and registration with the Google sitemap program will supply you with important statistical information from Google as well as help to get all of your pages indexed.

10. Once your website is up and running concentrate on off-site optimization.

So far all the steps that I have outlined are concerned with on-page factors, the parts of your website that are under your control. But your ranking in Google and other search engines will also be heavily dependent on off-page factors such as how many high quality sites link to your site. Unless you obtain a good amount of high quality links to your site you will not be able to compete in highly competitive search categories.

By far the best way to get links to your site is to build a site that has valuable content. You should endeavor to build a site that is so "cool" or so unique, that other people will link to you without even asking you. Of course this is easier said than done, but it should be what you are striving for.

The next best way to get high quality back links to a website is to write informative articles and get them published on other websites with a link back to your site. This process is known as article marketing and it not only helps to build incoming links, but it also builds your online reputation as an expert in your field.

Other common methods of increasing incoming links include submissions to important directories, participation in forums and careful trading of links with respected websites.

If you follow the ten "do-it-yourself" search engine optimization tips that I have described in this article, you will have taken a big step towards guaranteeing the success of your online enterprise.

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About The Author

Donald Nelson is a search engine optimization specialist. His company, A1-Optimization.com offers affordable search engine optimization, website copywriting, article writing and link building services.

Keywords: advertising, marketing, classifieds