Sunday, August 2, 2009

Promoting A Website For Free

When you have a website, one of your most difficult tasks is to figure out a way to get people to come visit your site. If you are selling something, it becomes vital for your business that people will come and take a look at what you have built. The easiest way you can get more traffic to your website is to promote. Promoting a website is not a difficult task. In fact, it doesn’t even have to cost any money. Take a look at these ideas of promoting a website and bring more traffic to your site right away.

The first thing you can do to start promoting your website is start trading space with other websites. You can find websites and offer them space on your website to advertise their site. In return, you would get a free space on their website. Many times you will be able to earn more money if you make deals with sites who offer products that are related to yours, without being in competition. You might have to talk to fifty website owners to get a few to agree, but if you can do this for free, it will be worth it.

Another way you can go about promoting a website for free is by utilizing blogs and message boards to your advantage. When you post thoughtful comments on random blogs and message boards that somewhat relate to your website, you will be reaching more potential consumers. For example, if you have a fish hook website, you could post about your website on a fishing blog or message board. Those who came there would be most likely your targeted consumers and you could earn more money this way.

So, as you can see, to earn money online you do need to learn how to promote your website. However, you don’t have to pay an ad company a ton of money to do it for you. You may have to put in some time and effort, but you will be able to take on the task yourself.

How to Get Traffic To Your Site

One of the most popular questions I get when I speak about online marketing is how to drive more traffic to a web site. Eight different techniques for doing just that are outlined below. Save this article, and refer to it for additional ideas whenever you try to expand your online marketing campaigns:

- Business Blogging. Start a blog for your business and update it on a regular basis. A business blog is an excellent tool to toot your own horn, let the world know about your new products, and tell your target customers why they should do business with you, rather than your competitor. A business blog is also a great tool for attracting potential customers to your blog and your web site.

- Search Engine Optimization (or SEO). SEO is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Successful search engine optimization will greatly increase the number of visitors that come to your web site since over 70% of people who are looking for products and services use search engines to locate them

- Article Writing and Publishing. This is another great way to drive traffic to your web site. When you write and publish your articles, other web site owners pick them up and publish them on their web sites, while giving you a link back to your web site.

- Newsletter Publishing. Keep in touch with your clients and potential clients by sending out a newsletter on a regular basis. Every time you send out a newsletter, don’t forget to invite the subscribers to visit your web site.

- Online Networking. Mention your web site address in your signature when networking online. Make sure that your web site is prominently displayed on the page, provided to you by every online networking service that you participate in, so that your fellow networkers can visit your web site.

- E-mail Signatures. Every time you send out an e-mail to one person, you have a chance to get an extra visitor for your web site. When you send an e-mail to a mailing list, you have a chance to spread the word to even more potential customers. All you need to do is to append a signature to every outgoing e-mail message. Make sure that the signature contains a powerful tagline that invites the readers to click on the link and visit your site

- Pay Per Click Search Engines. Here you can control exactly how many new visitors you want to get. There is a catch, though --- you have to pay for every click to your web site. Make a budget and stick to it an make sure to monitor your account – those clicks add up fast.

- Affiliate Marketing. An affiliate program is another way to drive traffic to your web site. Your affiliates are your commissions-only sales people who make money when they sell your products. They drive traffic to your web site in exchange for commissions on sales.

Today I have discussed eight different ways of driving traffic to your web site. Which techniques are you not using yet? Take one of the techniques and incorporate it into your marketing plan. You will get a whole new pool of web site visitors coming to your web site.

Article Submission As An Organic SEO Techniques

There are no doubt that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays very important role in the internet marketing field. If you are someone who is looking to take part in internet marketing, chances are that you may want to consider article submission as an organic SEO technique. Here, through this informative article, we will take a much closer look at how article submission works, as well as some of the ways that you can have the most success with this SEO technique.

Article submission is also referred to as article marketing. The way that this SEO technique works is when you decide to pay a company to have articles written for you, or if you decide that you have enough knowledge on the subject to write them yourself. Once you have the articles written that you are interested using for your company or whatever area you are interested in trying to promote, you will then submit your articles to directories. The entire concept of article submission is very easy to understand.

Keep in mind that there are a number of different things that you can do to improve the overall success that you have with article submission as the SEO technique that you are interested in using. The most important thing that you will want to take into consideration is that you will want to make sure that your articles have the right amount of keyword density. It is typically recommended for you to have articles which offer two to three percent keyword density. This will help improve the overall search engine, or directory, ranking that your submitted articles will have.

Another one of the most important things that you will want to take into consideration is the fact that your articles should be much more than just keyword dense. While this is very important to the amount of success that you have with article submission, it is also important to keep in mind that the content of your articles is very important as well. Not only should they be well written with perfect grammar, but your submitted articles should also be relevant to the subject which they are about. Although you may have thought about offering the information that you want included in your articles in a playful manner, chances are that you will find that you will have the most success when you decide to present your information more professionally. This will help you gain the credibility that you need to gain the most success for your company or product.

One of the main benefits that article submission has to offer you is the fact that it is known to be very successful. If you are interested in getting the internet marketing results through one of the best SEO techniques which is out there, then article submission can really do a lot for you. Another one of the main benefits of this marketing solution is the fact that it is known to be very cost effective, which is great for anyone who has a low marketing budget to begin with.

A New Automatic Linking Software For Reciprocal Links

Would you like to know about a new robotic software that works for you even when you are asleep?

Let me tell you about Zeus. . . he is a simple, intelligent, internet robot that builds a link directory and creates reciprocal links for your web site.

Zeus is the first of a new breed of innovative, robotic software products for webmasters.

Zeus is a smart internet robot that traverses the web, spidering sites and creating for any webmaster, a vertical themed link directory.

Train him to find web sites, matching your unique themes or subjects, and he will zoom off to find thousands of them. Zeus then helps you to review and organize them into vertically-themed categories and possible inclusion within your link directory.

Zeus creates qualified traffic to your web site in numbers you have always thought to be impossible. This is quickly accomplished through a series of steps utilizing dynamic website content, increased search engine activity and genuine, match-each-other reciprocal links.

Content is quickly added to a website with dynamically changing, Zeus-generated, link directory pages. With a single click, your Link Directory is built and uploaded to your web site. These themed pages are keyword-tuned to score high in search engine rankings. Search engines give higher rankings to websites with themed content that match each other through mutual reciprocal links. It is now possible for your directory pages to place in the top 10 search engine listings with a single search word! Imagine having hundreds of these pages, each page built around a single keyword or phrase. As a possible added bonus, re-submission to search engines is a forgotten chore once reciprocal links point towards your site. Robots will visit your site more often because they will find links to your website more frequently throughout the internet.

One good reciprocal link can give you the same amount of traffic as a major search engine and with a Zeus internet robot; you can have hundreds of reciprocal links. The best qualified visitors to your site are from reciprocal links. Zeus simplifies the tedious task of reciprocal link generation by providing, from your link directory, a pool of qualified, theme-matching, reciprocal link prospects, organized by themes or subjects. A contact manager is included allowing you to email an individually-personalized reciprocal link request to each website's webmaster. Everything is easy to edit, organize and maintain. Link Partners receive a preferential graphic and listing at the top of each directory page providing a compelling reason to reciprocate the link.

Your link directory will also ensure your website's visitors stay longer and bookmark it into their favourites for a speedy return. Zeus is non-invasive to visited websites and follows all the Robotic Guidelines as described throughout the Internet.
Zeus is not for everyone but if you are a moderately to expertly skilled webmaster, with limited time on your hands, who could benefit from a vertical-themed link directory and increased website traffic, Zeus will automate almost every aspect of creating such a directory.

Friday, July 31, 2009

$60,000 Mugging

I was referred to a prospective client recently that had their website redesigned. They paid $60,000 for a site that really does nothing for them. It is a simple brochure site that provides visitors nothing and it certainly does nothing to convert traffic into sales. Since all their budget went to design, they have no money left over to properly market the site. Mistake #1, don't pay $60,000 for a branding exercise.

A corporate website is about supporting the business. The beauty of the Internet is there is no guessing. You can measure pretty much anything. What are you trying to accomplish? Increase traffic? Generate leads? Increase sales? If it is yes to one of these questions, then a $60,000 investment should get you another $600,00 to your bottom-line? Can a brochure site deliver a 80-95% ROI?

Web design is a commodity today. The cost of design should represent about 25% of your total spend. Design costs are competitive today, so spending more than you have to should be the last thing you do. There are excellent open source Content Management Systems (CMS) that give you the power to manage your own content. The cost of the software is $0 to you. We recommend using either Plone or Joomla. Both of these platforms provide you with Web 2.0 compliant back-end at low cost for setup and maintenance.

The value in web design is working with companies that can properly market what you do. To properly market the site, you should be spending 10-12x what you should spend in design. So, it is possible to get a Web 2.0 website at an affordable cost. If you are a small company that is spending $4,000-$8,000 on a basic website, you should plan over 12 months to spend an additional $30,000-$80,000 on marketing. The dollars spent on marketing brings the traffic to the site. Simple rule, more traffic through the front door means more business.

Unlike other advertising, you can control your spend and measure your ROI pretty quickly. You can turn your marketing dollars on and off depending on the performance, it is all measurable.

DeFabis Photography is an example of a client that went through the redesign process. We built a Search Engine Friendly website that allows him to manage content on the site. Prior to working with us, his website was not listed in the top 100 on Google for the popular keywords. Since working with us, his visitors and page views have increased. But most important, he has doubled his bookings from this time last year. And, he did not spend $60,000 on his web design.

If you need help in evaluating a prospective vendor, here are some question that may help you understand their knowledge:

1. How do capture visitor traffic off the Internet? Can you track their movement through my site? If so, how?
2. How do manage pay per click advertising dollars to ensure I am maximizing my spend and not wasting money?
3. How do you measure whether my site is friendly to my users?
4. How many page views would you estimate my site would get to determine the right level of hosting?
5. What things will you need to change on my website? What things can I change on my own?
6. If I want to change the look, does it require changes to the backend scripting on the site?
7. What will it take to add a new page to match an ad we are running to the new site? For instance, I want to advertise a special and build a page specific for it, what will it take for us to do this?
8. What do you anticipate the average cost per lead for the website to be?
9. Who owns the source code to the site?

So, think about your objectives. Think about what you want to accomplish and spend your money according to the results you want to achieve. A pretty website just does not generate the type of results you should and can get using the Internet. Don't get mugged for $60,000. It's bad for your business.