Online marketing is hard. There are so many businesses vying for attention that it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. The upside is that the World Wide Web provides ample opportunity to build your business for free…if you’re willing to put in the time and effort.
Job #1: Search Engine Position
The main goal of online marketing is to drive traffic to your website. More traffic equals more sales. The best way to achieve that goal is to appear at the top of the search engines. That is, when potential customers search for a product or service that you carry (your keywords), your business should be on the first page, the higher the better. Even if your business only serves a local area, your customers need to find you easily on the web. The way this works is that people enter, say, “Pest Control Las Vegas” and the search engine returns websites that are optimized for those keywords. The trick is to get your website to the top of that list.
There is no quick and easy way to get there. You can’t buy your way to the top of (or even in) the search engines. Search engine companies like Google, Bing, and Yahoo use secret, complicated algorithms to determine which sites rank highest. The rules are constantly changing, mainly in an attempt to combat scammers. However, there are legitimate tools, called SEO (search engine optimization), that can be used to improve the status of your site. For the most part, these tools do not cost money, but they do require time, effort, and patience to achieve.
Most people understand that SEO is all about placing the right keywords on the pages of your website and setting the appropriate tags so search engine crawlers will find them. While these factors are important, there is much more you can do by using other existing websites to spread the word about yours. One of the factors that all search engines rely on is the number of links to your site from other well-ranked websites.
Social networking sites and bookmarks
As soon as your website goes live, even if it’s a “coming soon” page with a limited description, start spreading the word. Start with popular social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Users of these sites can create or join professional groups and post business photos and videos. Join forum discussions relevant to your business. Be sure to include a link to your website, where possible, but don’t spam the forums. That is, make sure you respond appropriately to the question or discussion. If you only post your link on every forum, you will get banned from the networking site and develop a bad reputation for your business.
Other users can join your business profile and stay up to date on your posts. Twitter and Tumblr also allow users to keep up with what’s going on with you and your business. These networking sites take time to build, but over time they can be an effective tool for virtual word-of-mouth marketing.
Other websites, called social bookmarking sites, allow you to select and bookmark prominent web pages or news articles for others to see. These bookmarks also allow comments from other users, a great opportunity to market your own business. Of course, be sure to stick to relevant topics and offer relevant feedback. The same rules apply here as with other social sites. Some of the most popular bookmarking sites include Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Mixx, Fark, and StumbleUpon.
content is king
Creating content on and off your site is critical. Whatever your business idea, there’s a lot your target market doesn’t know about what you do. In a strange twist on modern consumerism, your customers expect free information or free samples before they buy. Your site should contain enough valuable, relevant, and free information to get your potential market interested in your product. For most products, tell them why they need it and how they will benefit from buying your product. Write articles about particular features or uses. Write product reviews of the products you sell. Start a blog that discusses relevant news or opinions of interest to your target audience. Then post ads for these items on your social networking sites.
Also consider writing informative articles (not blatant advertisements) to submit to article directories, other free content websites, and even magazines and newsletters that are read by your target market. The articles must be useful to your market: the intention is to make yourself known as an expert in your field. While for the most part you shouldn’t (and in some cases can’t) include links or references to your business in the body of the article, you can usually include two or three links to different pages of your website in your signature. . Make sure these links include the keywords you are trying to optimize for. For example, an article written by the owner of a pet supply company might discuss the health benefits of dog sports. The copyright might read the following, with the underlined words linked to the pages of the website:
Mutt Trainer, owner of DogSportsStuff.com, is a certified dog trainer. During his 28 years in the canine world he has competed in conformation, obedience and agility with his pet Chesapeake Bay Retrievers. His first love is dog sportsespecially dock diving and flying ball.
If your articles are well written, interesting and informative, they may be picked up by other online ezines for distribution through their newsletters and websites. A single article, then, can result in at least two and even hundreds of links to your website. Depending on how crowded your keywords are on the web, these links can make a big difference in getting your site up in the search engine results.
The payoff is worth the time and effort.
Improving your search engine rankings takes a lot of time and effort, but the payoff is significant too. Once your business hits the first page of the major search engines with the right keywords, your business will reach a much broader market base than through any other form of advertising. How long it takes to get there depends on how crowded your keywords are and how much effort you put into SEO. Keywords like “start a business” are especially hard to crack. It can take a year or more of concerted effort to consistently appear on the first page. Less common keywords take less time, but still require the links and content to rise to the top. Beware: those SEO consultants who guarantee that your business will be in the top 5 of search engines. No guarantee the keywords you want. Meaning, if you’re in the pizza oven business, they can’t get you to the top of “pizza oven” searches any faster than you can. However, they can probably get you to the top of “Mike’s Pizza Oven, Inc.” relatively quickly… because you are the only business out there with those keywords.