Step 5: Web Marketing
Tired of Your Site Being Lost in Cyber Space?
by James Voymas, The Internet Expert
by James Voymas, The Internet Expert
The way things move so fast online these days you must keep up with the current web marketing trends or become as irrelevant as yesterday's news. Start with a well optimized site to allow the search engines to rank it as highly as possible. Next get it listed on quality directories that your site's visitors would expect to find it listed on. Increase your site's exposure on trendy social networking sites. Ask your colleagues, associates and related businesses to add your site's link to their sites. Start a blog related to your business or site content. These steps will help your site traffic and make your site more relevant to search engines.
- Search engine optimization on your site
- Local Internet Directories
- Other Internet Directories
- Social Networking Sites
- Blogging
1. Search engine optimization on your site involves making your site appealing to your visitors and as a result also to the search engines. You do this by adding fresh content often; naming your pages, images and files so that they match well with what you would expect your content to be called when looking for it online; adding keywords and phrases to your page text and meta tags that are used on search engines to find what your site is about; including as much detail in your content as people would want to find out before contacting you or bookmarking your site for another visit; and organizing your site navigation so easily there's never any confusion where to find something. Think of this web marketing step as keeping a well kept, inviting home.
2. Depending on what type of content and purpose your site is designed to serve, list it on local and other Internet directories. Avoid the mickey mouse directories nobody has heard of as these may hurt your site's reputation and probably won't help your page ranks on Google and Yahoo!. Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, Yelp, and Angie's List are the most popular and helpful local directories right now, but keep up with what's trending. They let you add descriptions, photos, directions with map and contact info, plus they're a great place to encourage your satisfied customers to give you a stellar review! This step is like being listed in the Yellow Pages.
3. Other Internet directories like the largest called DMOZ can be helpful in keeping your site connected online. DMOZ in particular is hard to get listed in even after the long review waiting period as it's very selective. There are others that are designed for niches that may expose your site to its targeted audience. Be careful not to list your site on any directories with a lower Google PageRank than your own as these will probably not improve your page ranking. Google calculates the quality of every web page linking to another web page/site and determines its quality ranking (0 not listed - 10 best) based on this and all the other page connections. Yahoo! also ranks web pages in a similar way, but both companies keep their methods secret. Your site's page ranks may not bury your search engine rankings, but the page rank is one of many ways search engines rank sites. This step is more like being in the encyclopedia.
4. Admit it, you know you can't stay away from those social networking sites. Use this highly sticky attraction to your site's advantage. Twitter (general), Facebook (general) and LinkedIn (business, professional) are the best known and most widely used in the USA, but many others exist for niches. Try YouTube (videos), Flickr (photos), Classmates (college, work, and military) and deviantART (art). Foursquare (mobile locations) only has about 10 million users now, but networking among smart phone users is a growing trend. Google+ (general) is making a major run at facebook's dominance with 200 million Google users. Avoid MySpace's meltdown except to promote creative topic sites like entertainment, music or art. Be sure to add widgets for all the social networking sites to your own site. This step is going to where your site visitors are hanging out.
5. Blogging about something you're an expert in can improve your credibility and build a loyal following of visitors. You can develop one on your own site or set it up on a popular blogging site like Blogger or WordPress. The main advantage of a popular blog site is the high traffic which may improve the page and search engine rankings when your main site is back linked. On the other hand, fresh content on your main site blog may raise your search engine rank due to their preference for frequently updated sites. You're probably better off back linking from a blogging site when your posts are compelling enough to get viewers to click to your main site. The last web marketing step is being the go to guy or gal for your expertise.
2. Depending on what type of content and purpose your site is designed to serve, list it on local and other Internet directories. Avoid the mickey mouse directories nobody has heard of as these may hurt your site's reputation and probably won't help your page ranks on Google and Yahoo!. Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, Yelp, and Angie's List are the most popular and helpful local directories right now, but keep up with what's trending. They let you add descriptions, photos, directions with map and contact info, plus they're a great place to encourage your satisfied customers to give you a stellar review! This step is like being listed in the Yellow Pages.
3. Other Internet directories like the largest called DMOZ can be helpful in keeping your site connected online. DMOZ in particular is hard to get listed in even after the long review waiting period as it's very selective. There are others that are designed for niches that may expose your site to its targeted audience. Be careful not to list your site on any directories with a lower Google PageRank than your own as these will probably not improve your page ranking. Google calculates the quality of every web page linking to another web page/site and determines its quality ranking (0 not listed - 10 best) based on this and all the other page connections. Yahoo! also ranks web pages in a similar way, but both companies keep their methods secret. Your site's page ranks may not bury your search engine rankings, but the page rank is one of many ways search engines rank sites. This step is more like being in the encyclopedia.
4. Admit it, you know you can't stay away from those social networking sites. Use this highly sticky attraction to your site's advantage. Twitter (general), Facebook (general) and LinkedIn (business, professional) are the best known and most widely used in the USA, but many others exist for niches. Try YouTube (videos), Flickr (photos), Classmates (college, work, and military) and deviantART (art). Foursquare (mobile locations) only has about 10 million users now, but networking among smart phone users is a growing trend. Google+ (general) is making a major run at facebook's dominance with 200 million Google users. Avoid MySpace's meltdown except to promote creative topic sites like entertainment, music or art. Be sure to add widgets for all the social networking sites to your own site. This step is going to where your site visitors are hanging out.
5. Blogging about something you're an expert in can improve your credibility and build a loyal following of visitors. You can develop one on your own site or set it up on a popular blogging site like Blogger or WordPress. The main advantage of a popular blog site is the high traffic which may improve the page and search engine rankings when your main site is back linked. On the other hand, fresh content on your main site blog may raise your search engine rank due to their preference for frequently updated sites. You're probably better off back linking from a blogging site when your posts are compelling enough to get viewers to click to your main site. The last web marketing step is being the go to guy or gal for your expertise.
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