The
term Internet Marketing is commonly used to mean
marketing your web site over the internet. It is
important to remember, as well, that your web site
is marketing your products or services over the
internet. In order to be successful at marketing
a web site, you must first create a web site capable
of successfully marketing the products or services
offered.
While design considerations will vary depending
upon what you offer and the demographics of your
target market, many traditional advertising rules
still apply: Stress benefits ("Save Time And
Money!"), not features ("Available in
Red and Green."); Include call to action statements
("Don't Wait, Order Now!"); Make your
product easy to order; Contact information should
be prominent; and so on.
Good Results Require Good Content
Content is very important to the success of marketing
both your product and your web site. The content
of your site should be interesting and compelling,
with one or more "call to action" statements
to interact with your visitors. At the same time,
the content of each page should focus on one area
or topic, allowing for a greater concentration of
the search terms you are using to market your site.
Properly written, your visitors will be unaware
of your optimization efforts.
Keep Your Message Focused
Optimization refers to the process of placing the
focus of a page on specific terms for Search Engine
results. Utilizing "Meta Tags" hidden
in the page header in conjunction with the copy
on the page, focus should be kept to two or three
key phrases. Attempting to optimize a page for too
many terms will result in poor search engine positioning.
Directories And Search Engines Are Different
Directories are much like the telephone yellow pages.
You submit the information and, if accepted, your
site is listed under a category with a title (or
site name) and short description. Directory searches
return results for matches within the title and
description. Searchers can also view all listings within
categories and sub-categories.
Search Engines "crawl" the internet, going
from one page to another by following links found
in a page, and indexing the textual content of each
page. Search results are determined by algorithms
and the content of indexed pages. Search algorithms
vary from one search engine to another, and are
continually evolving to prevent abuse by the unscrupulous.
Attempts to "trick" the engines into ranking
a site higher eventually backfire.
Buying Web Site Traffic
There are still many free Directories and Search Engines. However, many of the larger, better known search sites are going to some form of a paid model: Pay for Submission, Pay for Inclusion, and Pay for Performance (better know as pay-per-click or "ppc").
With Pay for Submission, you pay the Directory/Search Engine to review your web site. They do not guarantee to include your site. Yahoo, perhaps the best known directory, charges $299.00 to review your commercial site. Once included, you will need to renew your submission annually, paying the then current submission fee, again without any guarantee that your site will be included once reviewed.
Pay for Inclusion guarantees your web site will be included in the search site's database. Inktomi, another well known search engine, uses paid inclusion, and they spider the paid URL at least weekly. They also index sites their crawlers find, and still have free submission available. Pay for Inclusion sites generally charge an annual maintenance fee.
Pay per Performance sites allow you to choose which keywords or phrases will return your URL in search results and, using a bidding process, how much you will pay for each click-through. The different sites have different features. Overture, for example, allows you to set up a maximum monthly cost so that your monthly billing never goes over your budgeted amount. At $0.10, they also have the highest minimum bid rate. Google Adwords is a variation which combines factors such as bid price and popularity to influence results.
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