Open source training & tutorials from experienced, passionate people
By A Web Design
At last, your website pages are Search Engine friendly. You have selected the best keywords, optimized the meta tags and the title tags and have blended the keywords in to the content. It´s time now to go on to marketing your website on the Internet and to the search engines aka "Search Engine Marketing.
Start with our SEM tutorial that introduces you to what Search Engine Marketing is about. After going through each SEM tutorial we are sure you clearly understand the great value add that Search Engine Marketing brings to your website.
Do step through our SEM training, you will be glad you did. Each search engine marketing tutorial will deliver some simple, easy to understand and apply, technique to market your website via search engines.
Many of the ways we suggest in our SEM Tutorial are techniques you can use today to market your website via search engines for free. All it requires is a bit of planning and work.
Of course there are other types of search engine marketing that will cost you a bit like pay per click advertising (PPC) which is also effective if done correctly.
Our SEM training will help you sort through it all and help you decide what the best options are for marketing your website online
Do hop onto our Open source tutorial forum for a quick look while you are here. There are a lot of people who use it regularly, its lively and almost all of your SEM queries would get answered quickly.
Also, remember that every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, between 10:00am and 12:00am Indian Standard Time (i.e. GMT + 5.30) you can enter into live chat with Mr. Ivan Bayross a technical author who has written and published more than sixty seven books, and is still writing.
Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) through multiple techniques some free and some that have a cost attached to them.
NOTE: The Internet’s apex body, Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in its definition of SEM hence, SEO and SEM are intertwined and both work towards increasing the visibility of specific web pages in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)
If you build a website, visitors will come really does not apply to Web sites. Marketing the Web site is as important as designing it. For your website to get a steady stream of visitors you’ve got to constantly focus on how to get people to visit your web site and access its information if they don't know about it?
You need a consistent, planned, continuous, integrated approach to marketing your website on the Internet so that visitors can find it when they are looking for products or services that you provide. Also, you do not just want new visitors, you want return visitors.
There are several tried and tested techniques to market a website on the Internet. In this series of lessons we will take a look at these techniques and determine what you can do to successfully market your website on the Internet, help in getting visitors to come to your website and a bit beyond that.
What’s addressed is:
And stuff like that.
Many of the techniques in these lessons may be doing already, others you meant to do but forgot about in the excitement of crafting your website and adding content, still others you may never heard of. There is a great deal written about website marketing techniques. You'll find tons of links pointing to articles about website promotion if you just Google for them.
I do not believe that any surprising new ground is being broken here, but there definitely is a summarization of the most important techniques for marketing your website on the Internet spread through these lessons.
You can dramatically increase your visibility when you begin to write articles in your domain specialization distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters for their websites.
Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective "viral" approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time.
You'll find lots of information on how to do this from the most popular article marketing site, EzineArticles.com. When you create a free membership account, they begin sending you instructions and ideas each week.
Some of the best online communities for business include Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
In addition, you may want to participate in a social bookmarking community in which members share with each other information about websites, articles, or news items that they like (or don't like). These include Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Google Bookmarks and so on.
Search engine spiders troll these sites looking for links to something new and relevant. You can usually place a link to your website in your profile, but the biggest gain comes when other people mention you (which generates traffic to your site), link to you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic), or bookmark you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic).
NOTE: Do not join a community to spam them or talk incessantly about your business. Like any community you must listen, comment, and make a genuine contribution for the good of others.
If you attempt to spam a community or hog conversation or any other obnoxious behavior then it’s very likely that the community owner will simply boot you out of the community altogether. Self-serving links and comments will always hurt your reputation in any community.
All communities run on trust. Trust takes time to build and can get destroyed in moments. Build connections is a community based on trust and work really hard to keep it that way.
By the way, to get started, why don't you visit my social media pages and become a Facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=613464185 fan
OR
A Twitter follower http://twitter.com/ivanbayross -- please! Thank you!
This does require a commitment of your time, creating a monthly or better yet bi-monthly e-mail publication is a really important promotion techniques.
It could be a newsletter ("ezine"), list of tips, industry updates, or new product information -- whatever you believe your readers will appreciate. This is a great way to keep in touch with your prospects, generate trust, develop brand awareness, and build future business.
It also helps you collect e-mail addresses from those who visit your site, but aren't yet ready to make a purchase.
Email signatures help potential customers get in touch with you. Most e-mail programs (I use Thunderbird) allow you to designate a signature that appears at the end of each message you send out.
Limit the signature to 3 to 4 lines: URL, E-mail address, Gtalk ID, Skype ID and one-phrase description of what your website offers.
If you want subscribers to your e-mail newsletter, you have to work hard at it.
Include an Email subscription form on every page of your website. Promote sign-ups through free whitepapers, e-books, or other products.
If you have a local business, perhaps you can ask your customers to sign up to your e-mail list to get special Internet only offers.
Ask your business associates when they give you a business card if you can send them your e-mail newsletter.
Do personalize the newsletter (and the e-mail subject line if possible) with the recipient's name. It does help when building a relationship.
A transactional e-mail is sent to an existing customer to initiate, remind, confirm, or thank the individual.
Be creative. If you keep careful records, you can send e-mails to customers on their birthday to remind them to return to your site.
Subscription confirmation e-mails can also mention several popular products. You might remind customers that it has been three months since their last order and ask if it's time for a refill.
Thank you for your purchase e-mails can offer a coupon to bring your customer back for a future sale. Use your imagination, but don't pester your customers. You're there to serve them, not the other way around.
Your own list of customers and site visitors who have given you permission to contact them will be your most productive list.
Send special offers, coupon specials, product updates, and so on to them. This often initiates another visit to your site. If you have a regular newsletter, you can include many of these techniques in your regular e-mailing.
People like getting something free. If you publicize a contest on your website, you'll generate more traffic than normal.
Make sure your prizes are designed to be attractive to individuals who fit a profile which describes your best customers. You do not really want to be handling out prizes to just anyone at all. The prizes should in turn result in a modest increase in business or this technique is not working.
The direct marketing industry has developed targeted e-mail lists you can rent -- lists consisting of people who have agreed to receive commercial e-mail messages.
These lists can cost between $40 to $400 per thousand or 4¢ to 40¢ per name. Do a small test first to determine the quality of the list.
A great approach is to find an e-mail list broker (www.google.com/search?&q=e-mail+list+broker) to help with this project. You'll save money and get experienced help for no additional cost. Realize, however, that due to the high cost of renting lists, many businesses won't generate enough business to justify the cost. Run the numbers before you invest heavily in this technique.
Google's "Universal Search" displays not only webpage content, but also often displays relevant listings for images, videos, local businesses, and audio clips near the top of the search engine results page.
Therefore, consider creating such type of content, appropriate to your business and then optimize the page such material is on so it is ranked high enough to appear right at the top of search engine result pages.
For example, if you were to get a top-ranking, informative video on YouTube (www.youtube.com) that mentions your site, it could drive a lot of traffic to your site.
To learn how to optimize images or videos, do a search on Google for "optimizing images" or "optimizing videos." There’s a lot of free software that does this for you even if you have the very modest technical skills.
Links to your site from other sites drive additional traffic to your website.
Google (and most other major search engines) consider the number of incoming links to your website ("link popularity") as an important indicator of how relevant your website is on the Internet. Hence, the more links to your website the higher your website will rank in the search engine result pages.
All incoming links to a web site are not treated as equal by Google and other search engines. Google has a measurement called PageRank that actually reflects the quantity and quality of incoming links.
Links from trusted, popular sites help your site rank higher than links from lower traffic sites. To find out how to build useful links to your website, especially those that are relevant to your website content, simply Google for “Link Building” or “Relevant Link Building” or similar key phrases there really is a ton of information available on the Internet.
Once you’ve found a website or Blogger’s content about link building strategies that makes sense to you, subscribe to their RSS feed and/or newsletter so that you will be constantly in touch with changes in their website content.
Do not forget to search You Tube for Link Building videos. There are a whole lot of excellent videos available, created by knowledgeable people who share their knowledge of appropriate link building freely.
Link building starts with understanding how to build links back to your website. Documenting techniques that make sense to you in perhaps an Excel spread sheet and then systematically applying those techniques to your website one by one.
Link your website to Google analytics and watch how the number of hits on your website begins to grow. This will clearly indicate that your link building techniques are paying off.
A link from a directory will help your page ranking in search engines and get you traffic. A search in Google for directories will throw up a ton. Do not select a directory to submit to at random or go by the marketing content they have on their website.
Check the directories page rank using Google tool bar. Install Google toolbar in Firefox and check. Choose only those directories to submit your website URL to that have a page of at least 5 and above.
A directory is not a search engine. It is a hierarchical listing of sites sorted according to category and subcategory.
Be sure to list your site in the free Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com), overseen by volunteer editors. It is the largest human controlled directory in the Internet today.
If you don't get listed right away, don't be impatient and resubmit, or you'll go back to the end of the queue. A link in www.dmoz.com back to your website helps buildup your website traffic a lot.
Yahoo! Directory (dir.yahoo.com) is another important directory.
Real human beings read the URL and description submissions made to Yahoo! directory. Please be careful to follow the URL and description submission instructions of Yahoo directory to the letter.
Take a little trouble when entering your site description. Create your website description in a word processor first, M.S. Word is an excellent example. Count the number of words in your description, most word processors will provide word count for a document. This will ensure that you are within the maximum number of words that Yahoo permits in a description.
NOTE: It would be a great idea to complete your website description using fewer words than Yahoo permits in a website description.
Read through the description you’ve written multiple times, delete repeated material.
Check to see if you can write the very same material using fewer words. If you can, do so. Often there’s a lot of unnecessary words used in a sentence, with exactly the same meaning being expressible in fewer words. Work hard to prevent Yahoo editors chopping your material.
Yahoo! Directory Submit (ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/) requires a $299 annual recurring fee to have your site considered for inclusion within seven business days.
Other paid business directories that might help are About.com and Business.com.
Some directories are focused on specific domains, such as education or marketing. If you already belong to trade associations that feature member directories, ask them for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link from the organization, it could help boost your PageRank. Remember it’s the page to which the link is connected that goes up in value in search engine eyes.
Be aware of directories that constantly send you Email asking you to upgrade your listing with them for a fee. Unless a directory is widely used in your specific domain, be it education, marketing, real estate or whatever a premium ad is really a waste of money, but their free link will help boost your PageRank and in turn your search engine ranking.
Using Google search, locate websites that deliver content that is similar to your website or deliver website content that is supportive of your website content and request for a reciprocal link to your site.
Do create a special page on your website where you will display the reciprocal link to such websites. This page need not feature prominently on your website. This is to help ensure that visitors do no land on your website, switch to your links page and almost immediately exit your website.
Your best chance to get a reciprocal link will be from websites that generate a similar amount of traffic as your own site. High-traffic site webmasters are too busy to answer your requests for a link and don't have anything to gain by a link from your website. Hence, search for sites that have similar amounts of traffic as your own which would gain from the reciprocal links created.
Do check out Ken Evoy's free SiteSell Value Exchange (sales.sitesell.com/value-exchange/)
Additionally:
Two automated link building software programs stand out, they are:
Both of these search the web for complementary sites, help you maintain a link directory, and manage reciprocal links. Use these programs to identify complementary sites, but please do not to send impersonal, automated, repetitive, e-mail spam to site owners requesting reciprocal links.
When you locate sites, send a personal e-mail using the contact e-mail on the site or to the administrative contact listed in a Whois Directory (http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/).
If e-mail doesn't get a response, try a phone call. If you do not get a positive response or you get a polite or rude brush off, simply move on to the next opportunity that you’ve identified.
NOTE: Only link to those websites whose material is complimentary to your website. One way Google determines the value of your site on the Internet is by checking who you link to and who links to you.
It's not just links, but quality links you seek. Reciprocal linking as hard, tedious work, but it doesn't cost you a dime out of pocket! Keep working at this continuously, a little bit at a time. Patience and persistence will get you some good links, so keep at it.
Build your website for visitors, not for search engines.
Let's take a quick look at this idea. What if you completely forgot about search engines and simply built your website for your visitors. This would mean that you take a great deal of care in understanding who your visitors really are and design your website's look / feel / navigation carefully and specifically tailored to the needs of your visitors.
You have to use several attributes to define / document your visitor domain. Some of these attributes can be as follows:
And so on.
The greater the details and statistics available the more accurate will be your decomposition of your visitor domain.
When you have filled in as much details as possible use these details to determine your website's look / feel and navigation as well as Content.
The content of your web pages is determined by the demographics of your visitors.
If you've got a lot of young, well qualified, technically strong visitors, the content of your website must be attractive to them. Additionally website navigation should be simple to use, i.e. everything should be between a click or two clicks away.
Once your visitors decide that they have a lot to gain by coming back to your website because of its content, your visitors will drive traffic to your website by commenting about it on their social medial networks and encouraging their peers to visit.
This kind of third party marketing, largely value driven, is amazing for driving a stream of repeat and new visitors to your website.
If you ignore search engines and simply craft and deliver what your visitors want, people will do what they’ve always been doing i.e.
Only after all these sources fail do they turn to "Search Engines".
Hence the new mantra for website marketing is go where people that belong to your core focus domain gather, this could be LinkedIn, Orkut, Facebook, YouTube or any other
Internet based social gathering place. It's there you will have to be heard.
When you ignore search engines and turn your focus to rudimentary marketing techniques such as focusing on Internet determined gathering places, and
marketing your website there, would you realize much actual marketing, ( that can drive traffic to your website ), you are NOT doing. This can be a
pretty amazing relevation.
There are a ton of forums, social networking websites, technical blogs, (especially for vertical technical niches ), often created and run by thought
leaders in their domains, that you could be ignoring when attempting to drive traffic to your website.
It's pretty likely that by NOT being active on these online communities that you are losing out on perhaps a few thousand visitors every day.
An intelligent comment, clear and lucid. A well thought through "Thank You" note. Any of this can catch the attention of a potential visitor.
Now if your website URL is part of your signature, your website is just a Click away. You would be amazed at how many people will actually click on
your URL and hop across to your website. That's driving traffic.
Believe me, this sure beats:
The earlier approach is definitely proactive and worth the effort.
Occasionally, the thought leader on reading your comment, may be curious enough to come across to your website ( incomming traffic ) and perhaps leave
a comment there in return. Wow, you've just been endorsed by a thougth leader.
Visitors who are driven to your website from your social networking page ( or from your Comments ), they know more than your page name, url and meta-description.
They have a rough idea of who you are. They know your history of contributions. Your words are in their face before they even click over to your
website. You are already partially presold by making yourself familiar and ( more importantly ) trustworthy.
The whole experience of marketing without search engines is educational.
It forced me to climb out of my shell and represent me ( my brand ).
And so on.
Nothing revolutionary really but when you’re not depending on search engines, its not just how to get clicks but also how to get the most value out of each click?
And so on.
This forced me to work hard at persuading on a social level, to try and understand what the other person wanted, think carefully before I posted
anything. Never to post rubbish. Always focus on adding value. All the while knowing that I was building a strong brand for myself and a reputation.
I would recommend that you believe that search engines don’t exist. Especially if you’ve got a new website. There’s a lot of visitors out there just
waiting for you to show them your site. If you've reached a plateau using search engines to drive traffic to your wesbite why not focus on promoting
your site outside of search engines?
Please wait...