Ok, you have your website up and running 4 weeks ago. You have done the following thus far to promote your site?
- Submission to Search Engines
- Submission to directories
- FFA (Free For All)
- Free Banner Ads
For all that promotion, you are only getting 20 visitors a day. Now you ask the one million dollar question. How can I get more visitors to my site? You have a low budget and you want to know how and where you can promote your website to get more visitors?
Welcome to the real world of Internet marketing. To have 20 visitors per day is not bad for a few weeks old online business. Promoting your website is an ongoing process to improve search engine visibility and increase web traffic.
Search Engines
For a start, it takes months to rank well at the major search engines for competitive keywords. Google, Yahoo and MSN are currently the ?big three’. You may rank well for MSN in a matter of three months but it may take up to a year to rank well for Google and Yahoo. You may not receive traffic from the major search engines for quite a while.
There was a time where you could rank well on the major in a matter of weeks. Webmasters employ html tricks, meta tag spamming, special doorway pages to rank high at the search engines. The scenario has changed. The major search engines have tightened their algorithms to prevent exploitation and their Search Engine Result Page (SERP) from being spammed by webmasters.
So, beware of any SEO company that promises high ranking in a matter of days or weeks. There is a difference between having your web pages indexed and ranking well. Your web pages may be indexed within 24 hours but it may months before they rank well for your keywords. Ranking well at the major search engines can turn out to a long, long process.
This does not mean that you give up SEO altogether. Learn about SEO and subscribe to excellent SEO newsletters to keep up with the latest SEO news and developments. Make adjustments to your web pages but don’t fall into the trap of SEO rat race sapping up all your time and effort. There are other aspects of web promotion that needs your attention if you aspire to grow your business.
Directories and FFAs
What about directories and FFAs? You are fortunate if you have a few click-through from free directory listings. The alternative is to get your website listed in Yahoo! Business Directory. The cost of listing is a tidy sum of USD299 a year.
FFAs are hopeless.
Pay per Click (PPC)
Pay per click (PPC) or Cost per Click (CPC) are text ads placed on websites, advertising networks or search engines. Google Adwords and Overture are the two popular PPC advertising on the Net.
Every time someone clicks on an ad, the advertiser is charged a specific amount. The amount does not exceed the highest bid the advertiser is willing to pay for his or her ad keywords. This kind of advertising drives targeted traffic to your site. A word of caution here though, unless you know the ins and outs, do’s and don’ts of PPC, steer clear or else you may end with a hole in your pocket.
Content Distribution and Ezine Advertising
For a budget conscious online business the best ways of web promotion are distributing content and ezine advertising.
Write articles that are specific to your business and distribute them through article directories. No sales pitch and affiliate links at this stage please. Just include what is called a ?resource box’ with your website address, email link and a short description (3 to 5 lines) about yourself and your business.
Article directories readily make available your articles for others to use in their ezines. This becomes free publicity for your business. Better still if your articles address the situations of your readers and provide solutions to their problems. This will established you as a credible source of information. In turn, you will have people who are predisposed to do business with you coming to your website via the link in your articles’ resource box.
Ezine advertising is another cost effective way of promoting a newly start up low budget online business. It puts your ads into contact with targeted, potential customers for your product or service. Conversion rates tend to be higher, because the people who clicked on the ad link are interested in what you have to offer.
Do the necessary, search engines and directories submission, gather inbound links, but spend the greater part of your time to researching, writing quality content, and developing a quality ezine to promote your site.
Gerrick W
mailto: gw@1stinternetmarketingsolution.com
www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com
Attention Internet marketers: Drive targeted web traffic to your site, and make net profits. Information and software tools you need to effectively market your online business.
Source: High Quality Article Database - 365Articles.com
March 29th, 2006 at 3:23 am
An internet entrepreneur prepares an article, which is centered around their niche and submits it to a submit article directory. This process begins to work when other webmasters visit the submit article directory in search of articles for use on their own websites.
If you are looking to gain exposure and increase traffic for your website, there’s a terrific new way to spread the word about your new spot on the world wide web. A submit article directory is one of the best, free ways to promote your business. The bottom line is that not everyone has the advantage of being able to afford a large marketing campaign, print or television advertising.
If you’ve ever been browsing through a website and found an article with a brief paragraph at the end, which shows the author’s name and a link to their website, then you have already experienced the success of how to submit an article in exchange for free publicity. An internet entrepreneur prepares an article, which is centered around their niche and submits it to a submit article directory. This process begins to work when other webmasters visit the submit article directory in search of articles for use on their own websites. Everyone wants interesting content for their website and this is a great way to find it. They may see this article and decide to add it to their site with the condition that the author is given full credit at the bottom of the feature. The credit will likely include the author’s name, brief bio and link to their website.
For each individual who reads your article, there is added potential for new customers. If they weren’t interested in your specialty, they wouldn’t be reading the article in the first place. So, you’ve already reached someone who has a direct interest in your product or niche. Once they are finished reading the article, they are likely to visit your website if they found the information to be valuable.
Submit article directory services are completely free for writers, as well as webmasters. Consider that you are opening an internet collectibles store and need to gain interest, spread the word and find customers for your new business. Well, you are obviously a collectibles expert since that’s your chosen business, so write about it. Select a topic, write a brief feature, offer advice and submit the final copy to a submit article directory. At the bottom, always be sure to include a brief paragraph with your name, some information about your new company and a link to your website. When other webmasters stop by the submit article directory in search of news for their site, they may be inclined to use your work on their website. If they do, they will also include a link back to your site.
Submit article directory services provide the potential for a large amount of increased traffic and exposure for a new, or existing, website. There is no better way to gain respect in your profession than by being knowledgeable about what you do. If you are, it will shine through in your work and people will be drawn into your site in search of even more information. Submit article directory services are one of the most powerful new promotional tools available to online entrepreneurs and
, best of all - they don?t cost a penny! It’s true what they say - the best things in life really are free.
March 29th, 2006 at 12:00 am
What is a landing page
That’s been a lot of talk about landing page these days. So, what’s a landing page? It’s the page your website visitor arrived at after clicking a link. The link could be on any page on your website or pay per click advertising or banner ads or keyword search.
The goal of landing page is to cause your visitors to take definite action. You don’t want your visitors to leave until you get them to do what you want them to do. To click on the buy button, to sign up for an affiliate program, to download a free ebook or software, to sign up for a course, or to subscribe to your free newsletter.
The landing page is a direct marketing copy. Your visitors landed here through a link on your webpage, an ad, a keyword search, pay per click advertising, banner ads, and now you want to convert them.
Here are some tips to design a good landing page…
1.Content Relevance. Your landing page content must be relevant to what people were looking for when they applied the click through. The closer the match is the higher the chances of conversion.
2.Be Concise. Net writing is different than offline writing. Generally, when people surf the Internet they give short attention span to what they are reading. So be concise. When visitors arrive at your landing page they are already predisposed to buy, or they want to get more information of your product or service. By all means give them information but be concise. Don’t use more than three sentences to communicate a point. Think through and concise what you want to say.
Use bulleted list to communicate the benefits of your product or service.
3.Get straight to the point. The landing page is a highly customized marketing copy for your product or service or affiliate product or service. Don’t distract your visitors with advertisements, links to other web pages. Don’t let your visitors wade through a whole bunch of hosh posh before they get to want they want.
4.Focus. Dedicate one landing page to only one product or service. Don’t try to promote multiple products (unless they are of the same product group) or services on one page. Create separate landing pages and campaigns if you have multiple products or services to promote. Focus on one product or one product group on each landing page.
5.Be Factual. Use facts and figures instead of generalities.
General: Prices Reduced
Factual: Prices Reduced by 20 percent
6.Clear Call to Action. Tell your visitors what you want them to do. Buy now, click here to download, fill in name and email address to subscribe or whatever.
Keep all call to action text in bold.
7.Readable Text. Sure, there’s nothing much to look at a page with white background and black fonts. But it’s definitely easier to read the text than a red background with black fonts. Remember, it’s the words that sell. Your website visitors must be able to read your text with ease.
8.Navigation Links. Not at all, if you could help it. The only link you want your website visitors to click on your landing page is the call to action link.
9.Graphics and Images. Keep visual effects to a minimum unless you are running an online audio or video business, real estate business, or selling holiday destinations. Keep in mind that for direct marketing it’s the words that sell. Graphics and images serve only to enhance your text communication, not cloud it.
10.Grammatical and Spelling Errors. Check through your text and correct all grammatical and spelling errors. Otherwise it gives your website visitors a negative impression of you and the company you represent. Once visitors have a negative impression, it becomes difficult to convince them of the product or service that you are promoting. First impression counts a lot.
11.Make it personal. Make it personal to connect with your visitors. Use a lot of You and Your in your text.
12.Make your text clear and simple to understand. Avoid colloquialism or jargons. Use terms and phrases that people readily understood. Use short sentences. Phrase them in the active voice.
A good landing page will always sport good conversion rate as compared to a poor one. Take the time to think and rethink, work and rework your landing pages.
Don’t make the mistake of just optimizing for the search engines. You need to optimize your landing pages for humans too.
Ultimately, it is humans that give you the sales.
Gerrick W
mailto: gw@1stinternetmarketingsolution.com
www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com
Attention Internet marketers: Drive targeted web traffic to your site, and make net profits. Information and software tools you need to effectively market your online business.
Source: High Quality Article Database - 365Articles.com
