There are so many individuals and businesses that are not really sure what to do once they get their website up and running. Most people think you can just let it sit there and traffic will start pouring in if it looks nice. This is so far from the truth and people need to be aware that if you want website traffic to be successful, you must have a search engine and Internet marketing plan. It’s hard work and it takes time but with the right ingredients, you too will watch your website grow and succeed.
Utilized correctly, web marketing can be a very effective and cost efficient method of business development. Given the large number of web users and emerging technologies, your business must implement a comprehensive web marketing plan and strategy to build its user base and keep a head up on the competition. With the nature of the web user, you have to first gain trust of the user. Once you can gain trust, user action will follow.
Web marketing is all about numbers. If you can increase traffic, you will increase business as long as you can improve your conversion rates over time. Conversion rates will increase with continual testing of advertising campaigns and accurate reporting measurements via analytics.
Areas of Web Marketing Focus
You must focus on six primary areas of web marketing in order to build a successful online identity. There are many other areas to explore once these are all up and running successfully.
- Search Engine Optimization
- Pay Per Click Advertising
- Website Content and Resources
- Social Media Marketing
- Web Analytics and Reporting
- Other Web Marketing Ideas and Strategies
Search Engine Optimization
Priority SEO Tactics and Strategies
1. You must create unique and valuable content. You need to update content continually and it must be unique content. No matter what kind of website you have, content is vital to SEO and link building. Without it, you don’t really have a chance organically. There are also many freelancers that you can utilize for customized content if you do a search on Google.
2. On-going link building campaign. The main focus for improving organic results should be a comprehensive link building campaign including backlinks, reciprocal links and even paid text links in some circumstances. Ideally, you want people to link to you without having to link back to them. In order for you to achieve this, you must provide value to the linking site. This means providing something of value to the user so they want to freely link back to you. This involves unique content. Without it, there is no reason for someone to link.
Having a list of all websites (industry related) that you would like to build link partnerships with is a great start. Then it’s time to go out and get the links by technically “cold calling” and creating a partnership with them. This will be the most time consuming aspect of the SEO strategy but one of the most beneficial. Email like websites asking for a link. It can’t hurt to ask.
Another great link building strategy is to become active in the blogging community as well as forums. Create profiles and post comments regularly to leave links back to your website. Provide valuable answers and not just fluff or you can be banned from the forums or blogs.
You should strive to get 5-10 quality links per month on non-blog and forum sites. For newer sites, 5 will probably do. The older your site and domain grow, the more you can get without being penalized.
Note: You must have a good reason for someone to link to you. They won’t do it freely. There has to be value.
3. There are free classified sites that can help your organic search results. You would regularly post optimized ads relating to your products on sites like Craigslist and Backpage with optimized anchor text linking back to your site and the appropriate page. These sites get indexed well and high in the SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages) and can provide instant website traffic if utilized correctly. Do a search on Google for “Craigslist Competitors” and you will find a list of sites like this that are free.
4. You need a blog and you have to actually utilize your blog. Posting in it once a week is not going to do it. Your should write anytime there is a worthy reason to write being an industry event, news, new product launch, ANYTHING you can write about. If you can’t do this, it might be a good idea to find bloggers who charge per post or hire a college student who is studying in the area of your blog topic. You should even have a “Misc” category to write about whatever you like. Ramble about your day….people like to get personal and if they feel like you are trying to communicate with them, they will be more responsive.
5. You should also submit your website to directories and search engines. This should be something you look at every 3-6 months to make sure you are being indexed. The important ones are below. There are many more but the initial focus should be on these to start.
6. Incorporate XML and human readable sitemaps that will ping the search engines when we update. This will get your pages indexed much quicker. Sign up for a Google Webmaster account to submit your sitemap and you can also get statistics on your site such as spider crawls, search phrase analysis, link information and much more.
Pay Per Click Advertising
PPC campaigns are a great way to drive instant and targeted traffic via search engines. This is a web strategy that should always be utilized and always be tested for improvements. PPC is a bidding system that let’s you put an ad on a search engine such as Google or MSN and each time someone clicks on your ad, you are charged for the click. The more competitive your industry, the higher cost per click you will pay. This is a GREAT strategy to drive instant and very targeted traffic and to get your site going. The long term goal is to increase CTR (Click Through Rate), while lowering average CPC (Cost Per Click) and increase conversions. Google is the main player so funds should be focused on Google while also maintaining an identity on MSN, Yahoo and related search engines and directories. Landing page optimization and split testing must be utilized to continually improve campaigns.
You might also want to consider paying to get listed in directories. This is usually a pretty minimal fee that can generate great traffic. For more information on Pay Per Click Advertising follow the link.
Website Content and Resources
Content falls hand in hand with SEO and link building. Content can be anything from a short 500 word article to a white paper focusing on your industry to tutorials on how to do something or even videos and podcasts. You have to think outside of the box when it comes to content and how to create something different than your competitors. The key though…is to just write, write, write and create as much unique and valuable content as you can.
Social Media Marketing
Social networking should be one of your biggest awareness and traffic building avenues. This includes not only creating profiles and microsites on various social networking related websites but also participating on a regular basis. If you participate regularly, people will get to know you and in return will start to trust you. If you don’t participate, you just another account who signed up and dropped off the face of the earth. To be successful with social media, you must be and remain active in the community. There are probably several related social media outlets in your industry but you should not limit yourself to these. Also utilize the more robust and popular networks such as:
There are many others but this is a good list to get you started. Create an identity on these first to get going and then expand. These are great for getting traffic and also for creating links to your website. Utilize social networks to the max.
Web Analytics and Reporting
Web analytics can be your most valuable player. A great free analytics package is Google Analytics. This will tell you where your users are going on your site, what their behavior is, what they like and don’t like and what you need to adjust. If you are not currently looking at your Google Analytics every single day, it’s not enough. This should be a regular routine that you look at a minimum of each morning and each night before bed. You should also be looking at your Google Webmaster account each morning to check your rankings on Google. You don’t necessarily need to run reports but you do need to check this daily. How can you improve your site if you don’t know what the users think about your site? Dig into analytics and find out who your web traffic is.
Other Web Marketing Ideas
- Affiliate programs such as Amazon, Adsense, CJ.com, Clickbank etc – this truly shouldn’t be monetized until you have the traffic.
- Create an electronic newsletter that goes out monthly, quarterly, etc… This can have industry news, product launches, whatever you like. Email marketing can be VERY valuable if you have the right target list.
- Video tutorials or podcasts - Interview industry people and put them on the site. They don’t have to be mega-superstars. Just having video content is valuable.
- Webcasts – Not sure how this can be implemented on your site but it’s a great way to create awareness…could be a webcast roundtable for people in your line of work and the industry. It’s great to get people together to discuss things that they are all interested in. People love to talk when they have a passion for something. This could turn into a GREAT revenue generator if utilized correctly.
- RSS Feeds and syndicated content – This means that you have to have content on your site that other people want. Just like you can pull data feeds from other sites that you like, you can have people pull your feed if you have quality and unique content. This can generate massive amounts of traffic if you have a large enough readership.
Internet Marketing Plan Summary
This is the core of what you will need to do to become successful and have a website that builds traffic on a regular basis and continually grows. If you can stick to this plan and truly do everything described, it’s a recipe for success. There’s no way around it. Just like anything, the hardest thing is sticking to it. It’s so easy to not see instant results, get frustrated and fall off track. You will have to build some sort of routine so you don’t let things slip through the cracks. The web marketing industry does change often but these things above will likely not change for a long time, and most of them will always hold a high impact on your success.
Web marketing is definitely not a race but more so a marathon. The sites and webmasters that can keep pace and not give up will be the ones who succeed. Nothing happens instantly with web marketing. If it does, then most likely it was done illegally and will come back to haunt you and is too good to be true. Hard work, dedication and not giving up will be your biggest supporters in your Internet marketing journey. Good luck.
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