Tags |
|
|
Links |
|
|
Casual Articles - Building Targeted Traffic for Your Website
I have this website that I have been developing for about a year and a half. It's a very plain looking site with some standard Front Page CSS templates, with no logo, no graphics, no anything. No Web 2.0 in the slightest least.This website is ranked number 2 in Google for what I believe is the most important to its content keyword. It leaves in the dust about 700,000 other pages that Google spits out when you search for the keyword in question. But that's not all: for the very same keyword, my site places first and second (!) on Yahoo! Search. How about MSN Search? The same as with Yahoo! Search, baby!Now, you are probably thinking that I am some kind of SEO uberwizard. Well, if that's the case, then you cannot be more wrong!The only optimization done on the site is accidental at best. Sure, you cannot avoid using the title tags if you want your pages to be recognizable in some intelligent manner by humans, but you will not find here any meta (keywords, description, etc.) tags or anything of this kind. Any H1, H2, etc. tags? Nope, none that you could see in the HTML source.The site has fewer than 10 reciprocal links from other sites thematically related to it and some few dozen more relevant backlin
Structure your site to achieve these results. Take a look at the Marketing Sherpa site (www.marketingsherpa.com) to see a site that does this exceptionally well.
4. Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Pay per click marketing is when your ads are displayed alongside search results on the main search engine results pages. Google Adwords is the biggest provider of these services.
The advantage over organic search listings is that you have control over where your ads appear and how often. This enables you to instantly ramp up your online marketing, or cut back during quiet periods.
The disadvantage is it can cost a lot of money, particularly if you don’t understand what you are doing.
Pay-per-click advertising works by enabling you to bid on what you will pay for every visitor to your site. Typically the price per visitor is between ?0.20/$0.20 and ?2.00/$3.00, although the cost per visitor for some categories reaches ?30/$50 plus.
The
Firework displays are a traditional part of summertime celebrations. There's something about them -- the noise, the color, the pyrotechnic glory -- that resonates with crowds. According to some experts, fireworks as we know them got started in the 10th century. That means that this basic technology has been wowing spectators for a very, very long time. Yet when I attended a recent fireworks display, I overheard a woman saying this: "I don't know how they do it. Every year it's the same thing, but they keep making it better somehow." Wouldn't every exhibitor love to hear that about their booth? It appears that the fireworks companies have mastered what trade show exhibitors often struggle with: presenting the same products and services in a way that's new and exciting. What can tradeshow exhibitors learn from the pyrotechnic pros? The answers might surprise you. You can do a lot in a very limited time Fireworks are not an everyday event. Most people will see only one to two fireworks shows a year, if that many. Performances are measured in minutes, not hours. The vast majority of shows -- industry estimates range close to 70%! -- are scheduled in a two we
Unfortunately a lot of what is written and discussed is rubbish. For new siteowners the challenge is learning and putting to practise what works and leaving the rest to the geeks and fraudsters.
This article provides an overview of what techniques have stood the test of time. This is where your attention and effort should be focused.
1. Focus on the Search Engines
Eighty percent of internet users do a website search once a week. Google undertakes over 300 million searches a day. On average only 20% of searchers go beyond page three of search results.
Organic (i.e. listings you haven’t paid for) is the most cost effective marketing that you can do on the internet ……… but it is not easy.
In this summary article I will just highlight a few very important points.
• There are thousands of search engines on the internet, but over 95% of all searches are carried out on just five of them. This where you should focus your effort. They are Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask. Also list at DMOZ (www.dmoz.org) as the search engines use this as part of their ranking tool
• All the search engines, and Google in particular, are focused on one thing. Providing the searcher with the most relevant and accurate answer to their search query. It naturally follows that your goal should be to provide fantastic content about your subject area. Your site content will them be aligned with the search engines goals.
• Don’t just focus on getting traffic to your Home Page. The most successful siteowners get most their traffic entering their site at the individual specialist pages on their site. These pages are best suited to answering searchers questions. For example if you have a site about fly fishing and someone does a Google Search on “fly fishing travel insurance”, they would be best served if they go directly to a page on your site about insurance, not the Home Page. This leads onto the next point…
• Create a list (and continually update it) of all the search terms that you think people interested in your website will type into the search engines. Your first list should have several hundred words and phrases. Select the most important terms and write a page of content around this term. Put the term into the article title, first paragraph and if your website software allows in the pages metatags.
• Try and put new content on your site everyday to keep the search spiders coming back
2. Get People Talking About Your Site
After search engine marketing, viral or buzz marketing is the next most cost effective marketing technique.
If you offer something new and exciting, the internet, forums and email are the most incredible distribution tool. It is not unusual for a fun, unusual or special offer email to be distributed to over a million people in a single day.
When creating content and applications always keep at the back of your mind what could you provide or offer that your audience would want to send to their friends and colleagues. For example a site about Internet Marketing could create “The Internet Scam Directory” which keeps an updated list of internet ripoffs.
3. Visitors are for Life, Not Just for Christmas
Every visitor that comes to your site is valuable. Often you just have a few seconds to build a relationship with them……………or they’re gone forever.
This is a checklist for you to consider:
• Is the site visually simple, clean and attractive?
• Can the visitor understand what you do within five seconds of landing?
• Is the navigation intuitive and logical?
• Can the visitor get to the Home Page from every page?
Once they are on the site and looking around you need them to take one or more actions that commit them to a longer term relationship. The best result is signing up for membership of your site or buying your products. The second best result is adding their email to a newsletter list. The third best result is book marking your page.
Structure your site to achieve these results. Take a look at the Marketing Sherpa site (www.marketingsherpa.com) to see a site that does this exceptionally well.
4. Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Pay per click marketing is when your ads are displayed alongside search results on the main search engine results pages. Google Adwords is the biggest provider of these services.
The advantage over organic search listings is that you have control over where your ads appear and how often. This enables you to instantly ramp up your online marketing, or cut back during quiet periods.
The disadvantage is it can cost a lot of money, particularly if you don’t understand what you are doing.
Pay-per-click advertising works by enabling you to bid on what you will pay for every visitor to your site. Typically the price per visitor is between ?0.20/$0.20 and ?2.00/$3.00, although the cost per visitor for some categories reaches ?30/$50 plus.
The
It can be really difficult to get people to stop at you booth at an exhibition, especially if you don’t have fun give-away items. This is where exhibition gifts come in. There are literally hundreds of different exhibition gifts that you can consider purchasing for your company to use, but in the end, none of these gifts matter much if you don’t get the chance to talk to the exhibition-goers about your company’s product or service. In order to draw people into your booth, consider giving away the exhibition gifts as prizes.There are a number of ways in which you can have prizes are your exhibition booth or table. These games are fun, and as the person pauses to play, you can do your sales pitch. Wheels are common, easy to build, and work beautifully. With this type of game, you ask exhibition-goers to spin a wheel, which will then land on a prize. As the wheel is spinning, you can talk about your company. You can also have variations on other carnival games as well. Be creative!Of course, never make your game too hard to win. Everyone should leave your booth with a prize, whether it be large or small, and every prize should have your company’s name and logo printed on it. If your game is too hard, the people will
• All the search engines, and Google in particular, are focused on one thing. Providing the searcher with the most relevant and accurate answer to their search query. It naturally follows that your goal should be to provide fantastic content about your subject area. Your site content will them be aligned with the search engines goals.
• Don’t just focus on getting traffic to your Home Page. The most successful siteowners get most their traffic entering their site at the individual specialist pages on their site. These pages are best suited to answering searchers questions. For example if you have a site about fly fishing and someone does a Google Search on “fly fishing travel insurance”, they would be best served if they go directly to a page on your site about insurance, not the Home Page. This leads onto the next point…
• Create a list (and continually update it) of all the search terms that you think people interested in your website will type into the search engines. Your first list should have several hundred words and phrases. Select the most important terms and write a page of content around this term. Put the term into the article title, first paragraph and if your website software allows in the pages metatags.
• Try and put new content on your site everyday to keep the search spiders coming back
2. Get People Talking About Your Site
After search engine marketing, viral or buzz marketing is the next most cost effective marketing technique.
If you offer something new and exciting, the internet, forums and email are the most incredible distribution tool. It is not unusual for a fun, unusual or special offer email to be distributed to over a million people in a single day.
When creating content and applications always keep at the back of your mind what could you provide or offer that your audience would want to send to their friends and colleagues. For example a site about Internet Marketing could create “The Internet Scam Directory” which keeps an updated list of internet ripoffs.
3. Visitors are for Life, Not Just for Christmas
Every visitor that comes to your site is valuable. Often you just have a few seconds to build a relationship with them……………or they’re gone forever.
This is a checklist for you to consider:
• Is the site visually simple, clean and attractive?
• Can the visitor understand what you do within five seconds of landing?
• Is the navigation intuitive and logical?
• Can the visitor get to the Home Page from every page?
Once they are on the site and looking around you need them to take one or more actions that commit them to a longer term relationship. The best result is signing up for membership of your site or buying your products. The second best result is adding their email to a newsletter list. The third best result is book marking your page.
Structure your site to achieve these results. Take a look at the Marketing Sherpa site (www.marketingsherpa.com) to see a site that does this exceptionally well.
4. Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Pay per click marketing is when your ads are displayed alongside search results on the main search engine results pages. Google Adwords is the biggest provider of these services.
The advantage over organic search listings is that you have control over where your ads appear and how often. This enables you to instantly ramp up your online marketing, or cut back during quiet periods.
The disadvantage is it can cost a lot of money, particularly if you don’t understand what you are doing.
Pay-per-click advertising works by enabling you to bid on what you will pay for every visitor to your site. Typically the price per visitor is between ?0.20/$0.20 and ?2.00/$3.00, although the cost per visitor for some categories reaches ?30/$50 plus.
The
The Automobile business has changed forever. I was born and raised in the Car Business. My Family had been involved in the Business all their lives starting in the Used Car Business progressing to the New car Franchised Business. We built a great big new facility on the north side of town and had a lot of good years and some not so good years. My family sold the Business when things got pretty tough. The Economy started to get rocky interest rate went up to 18% we we're having a gas war and so on. After the sale of the business my Parents retired and I went on back to the Business working for someone else.Things started to turn around when the Government Administration changed and slowly the Car Business had some years of wonderful growth! During the early Clinton Administration things we're going really well until "911". From that day forward things began to crumble. The Manufacturers had to find ways of incentivising their products to make them sell. 0% financing, huge rebates, dealer incentives, you never knew what was coming next so the Customer began to wait and see from month to month when the next "Better" "Deal" was coming. Detroit was mass producing big SUV's and making their money off them while the Foreign Au
• Create a list (and continually update it) of all the search terms that you think people interested in your website will type into the search engines. Your first list should have several hundred words and phrases. Select the most important terms and write a page of content around this term. Put the term into the article title, first paragraph and if your website software allows in the pages metatags.
• Try and put new content on your site everyday to keep the search spiders coming back
2. Get People Talking About Your Site
After search engine marketing, viral or buzz marketing is the next most cost effective marketing technique.
If you offer something new and exciting, the internet, forums and email are the most incredible distribution tool. It is not unusual for a fun, unusual or special offer email to be distributed to over a million people in a single day.
When creating content and applications always keep at the back of your mind what could you provide or offer that your audience would want to send to their friends and colleagues. For example a site about Internet Marketing could create “The Internet Scam Directory” which keeps an updated list of internet ripoffs.
3. Visitors are for Life, Not Just for Christmas
Every visitor that comes to your site is valuable. Often you just have a few seconds to build a relationship with them……………or they’re gone forever.
This is a checklist for you to consider:
• Is the site visually simple, clean and attractive?
• Can the visitor understand what you do within five seconds of landing?
• Is the navigation intuitive and logical?
• Can the visitor get to the Home Page from every page?
Once they are on the site and looking around you need them to take one or more actions that commit them to a longer term relationship. The best result is signing up for membership of your site or buying your products. The second best result is adding their email to a newsletter list. The third best result is book marking your page.
Structure your site to achieve these results. Take a look at the Marketing Sherpa site (www.marketingsherpa.com) to see a site that does this exceptionally well.
4. Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Pay per click marketing is when your ads are displayed alongside search results on the main search engine results pages. Google Adwords is the biggest provider of these services.
The advantage over organic search listings is that you have control over where your ads appear and how often. This enables you to instantly ramp up your online marketing, or cut back during quiet periods.
The disadvantage is it can cost a lot of money, particularly if you don’t understand what you are doing.
Pay-per-click advertising works by enabling you to bid on what you will pay for every visitor to your site. Typically the price per visitor is between ?0.20/$0.20 and ?2.00/$3.00, although the cost per visitor for some categories reaches ?30/$50 plus.
The
It is easier to make additional money from your current clients than it is to go out and find new ones! See 21 simple ways in this three part article series.Part Three:15. Follow-up with your customers to see if they're happy and offer them another product.Use your autoresponder script or subscription to send a follow up message 2-3 days after they have purchased and make sure they are happy with the product.Some examples of this type of account or script are: Getresponse or AWeber, for examples of an autoresponder company.Or a self-installed script like a custom version of QuickPayPro, which has the sequential autoresponders plus the shopping cart etc., or a simpler script like Autoresponders Unlimited if all you need is the autoresponder part and not the full shopping cart.Another thing to add in the message to make sure they are using the product (Especially an ebook) is to ask how they liked a specific chapter's information. With software, it could be a specific feature or action the software performs.For example, with an ebook you could say, "So how are you enjoying that tip in chapter 4? Did you save as much money as I did when I used this method?"They will have to
3. Visitors are for Life, Not Just for Christmas
Every visitor that comes to your site is valuable. Often you just have a few seconds to build a relationship with them……………or they’re gone forever.
This is a checklist for you to consider:
• Is the site visually simple, clean and attractive?
• Can the visitor understand what you do within five seconds of landing?
• Is the navigation intuitive and logical?
• Can the visitor get to the Home Page from every page?
Once they are on the site and looking around you need them to take one or more actions that commit them to a longer term relationship. The best result is signing up for membership of your site or buying your products. The second best result is adding their email to a newsletter list. The third best result is book marking your page.
Structure your site to achieve these results. Take a look at the Marketing Sherpa site (www.marketingsherpa.com) to see a site that does this exceptionally well.
4. Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Pay per click marketing is when your ads are displayed alongside search results on the main search engine results pages. Google Adwords is the biggest provider of these services.
The advantage over organic search listings is that you have control over where your ads appear and how often. This enables you to instantly ramp up your online marketing, or cut back during quiet periods.
The disadvantage is it can cost a lot of money, particularly if you don’t understand what you are doing.
Pay-per-click advertising works by enabling you to bid on what you will pay for every visitor to your site. Typically the price per visitor is between ?0.20/$0.20 and ?2.00/$3.00, although the cost per visitor for some categories reaches ?30/$50 plus.
The
Everyone who is passionate about being a business owner or moving up needs and wants a mentor. Maybe there is someone you know or you just know of who can help you to take your life to the next level. How can you get that person to happily share their wisdom with you to help you get on the right path? How can you rise above the rest so that person wants to give you extra help?I've been a mentor to certain people for years, but never more intensively than in the last four years as a marketing trainer and coach and now as a published author of my book, "Testosterone-Free Marketing." This article will help you to know how to approach a mentor in a way that will make that person more positively pre-disposed to helping you succeed. Read these tips and go find your mentor.• Take an interest in the person as a human being. I have an Internet mentor who makes millions of dollars a year. After I ask a question I always ask him about what’s going on in his life, share a joke or tell him something funny that’s happened to me. For example yesterday I wrote him and after asking a question I typed, “Tomorrow I’m speaking in a seminar, so right now I’m sitting in my hotel room catching up on emails with hair dye on top
Structure your site to achieve these results. Take a look at the Marketing Sherpa site (www.marketingsherpa.com) to see a site that does this exceptionally well.
4. Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Pay per click marketing is when your ads are displayed alongside search results on the main search engine results pages. Google Adwords is the biggest provider of these services.
The advantage over organic search listings is that you have control over where your ads appear and how often. This enables you to instantly ramp up your online marketing, or cut back during quiet periods.
The disadvantage is it can cost a lot of money, particularly if you don’t understand what you are doing.
Pay-per-click advertising works by enabling you to bid on what you will pay for every visitor to your site. Typically the price per visitor is between ?0.20/$0.20 and ?2.00/$3.00, although the cost per visitor for some categories reaches ?30/$50 plus.
The art of successful PPC marketing is understanding what words and phrases your ideal clients are typing into the search engines when they are looking for the services that you offer. You can then bid on these specialist (and hopefully relatively cheap) terms. You should also work out how much you are prepared to spend on PPC marketing per sale and track this very carefully.
For example, let's say your site sells designer yoyos:
- If you are bidding ?0.25 for each visitor from the keyword 'yoyo' and your profit margin on each yoyo sale is ?5.00, you must make a sale from every 20 visitors or you will be making a loss.
5. Linking Strategy
Having a good linking strategy is one of the best ways of building long term and sustainable traffic to your site.
It is important for several reasons. Firstly good quality links should generate traffic directly from the other sites. Second the search engines look at how many sites link to yours when working out how highly to rank your site in the search engine results. Their assumption is if a lot of sites link to your site it is because your content is good.
There are two types of link – reciprocal or one-way. Reciprocal links are when you agree with another site that you will link to them if they link to you. This type of linking used to work fine with the search engines, but because so many webmasters abused it, the search engines now discount links that are reciprocal. Having said that you should still agree these links with complimentary sites because the direct traffic is still valuable.
One-way links are when another site links to yours, but you don’t have a link back to theirs. The search engines still rate these links highly.
The following two methods are good ways of generating one-way links.
i. Submit Articles for Re-Publishing
There are hundreds of sites that are always looking for new content. If you are happy to write articles that others can republish it is a great way to get free one-way links.
The idea here is that you write an article that other webmasters and publishers can freely reprint on their web sites on condition they attribute the article to you and include a link to your website at the end of it.
By distributing it as widely as possible, you can end up with hundreds of incoming links to your site. If new articles are regularly distributed this can be a very effective marketing strategy.
ii. Create Your Own Affiliate Program
An affiliate program is where another website puts a link to your site. If someone clicks it, arrives at your site and makes a purchase then you pay them a commission.
There is obviously a cost to this, but other sire owners are highly motivated (depending on the commission) to use your link.
You can setup your own affiliate program using one of the many software packages or join an affiliate network, such as DoubleClick. If you do the latter make sure that the link comes directly to your site and not via a third party site.
6. Good Old Fashioned PR
So many website owners over look good old fashioned PR.
If you have something of interest to say write a press release or phone up a journalist. Having a single article in the national press or relevant trade magazine can give your site a real and instant boost in traffic.
You can also distribute your press releases online via one of the many PR distribution services such as PRWeb or PRnewswire.
7. Blogs
If you enjoy writing about your subject area it is worth considering writing a blog about it, but it is only worth the time and effort if you are really committed to doing it well.
There are over 7.5 million blogs with only a minute fraction of these being read by a reasonable number of people.
8. Contribute to Forums
If your sector or area of specialisation has one or more well trafficked forums, it is a great idea to become a regular contributor. This will get you known as an expert in your field and will also drive people to
HTTP = HTML link (for blogs, profiles,phorums):
<a href="http://www.casualarticles.com/article/82624/casualarticles-Building-Targeted-Traffic-for-Your-Website.html">Building Targeted Traffic for Your Website</a>
BB link (for phorums):
[url=http://www.casualarticles.com/article/82624/casualarticles-Building-Targeted-Traffic-for-Your-Website.html]Building Targeted Traffic for Your Website[/url]
Related Articles:
Things to Consider While Writing a Newsletter
Tips On How To Get Started With Guerilla Marketing Online
Bookmark it:
|