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Simply creating a website and submitting it to search engines
does not guarantee success. In most cases, a marketing plan
and an investment of time, money or a combination of the two
is required. Decide how much time and money you can spend,
come up with a marketing plan, and follow through with it.
Be patient. If you are doing most of the work yourself, part
of the process will be a learning curve. If you pay for professional
help, it may still take some time to see results. Contrary
to much of the marketing hype, building a successful Internet
business and attracting customers is not always easy, especially
if you do most of it yourself.
Search Engines and Directories
- Internet marketing of products and services is similar to
conventional marketing in some respects. Take for instance
the old saying "location, location, location". Apply
this to Internet marketing and it becomes "position,
position, position". With a brick and mortar business,
a prominent physical location will attract customers without
any more advertising than a few signs. Your website search
engine positions, directory listings and affiliate links create
virtual locations. Placement in free search engines can be
a huge source of customers. How well you place depends on
competition for your keywords and how well your website is
optimized for keywords. WebPosition Gold is a very good program
for optimizing your web pages for good search engine placement.
You can purchase the program or hire us to optimize
your pages with WebPosition Gold.
Competition For Your Keywords
- Is your product or service unique? Consider that you are
searching for an elephant veterinarian. Chances are that you
won't find very many listings for elephant veterinarians.
Obviously, an elephant veterinarian will have no trouble gaining
search engine prominence. Now consider a search for a web
designer. This search will return thousands of websites because
there are lots of them and they all have websites. This is
an extreme comparison, but illustrates a point. If your primary
keyword phrases are saturated, focus on other marketing techniques.
External Links - Before
submitting your website to search engines, you must have
a few links from other websites to yours or many of the search
engines will ignore you. Don't stop there! More links to your
site from websites with related content will increase the
popularity factor for search engine placement. After your
website is created and submitted, continue to build link
popularity by seeking reciprocal links from related websites
or by adding informational content or online services that
related websites can link to as a resource. Over time this
will pay big dividends. Be wary of exchange link services.
External links are only beneficial if they are from websites
with related content. Some search engines are wise to link
exchange services and may reduce your popularity rating for
having too many unrelated links.
Directories are collections
of links that are organized by category. Most directories
also have a search engine. There are thousands of web directories
of all different sizes and types. Many are free and some charge
for placement. Listing in directories is good way to strengthen
your position. You will need to seek out the best directories
for your type of product or service and manually submit your
website to each one. Start with the big ones like Yahoo
Directory or the Open
Directory Project. Do some searches using Google. Look
for directories using your keywords + directory (or directories).
Example; Using the keyword veterinarian, search for "veterinarian
directory" or "veterinarian directories".
Paid Search Engine Listings
- Some search engines now charge for placement. In addition
to basic submission, AltaVista
and Lycos
offer premium paid listings. Overture
(formerly Goto) is a pay-per-click directory and search engine
where you can bid for placement and pay only for clicks on
your link.
Affiliate Programs offer
a commission to websites that place a link to your website.
The commission is usually based upon either an amount per
click thru OR an amount based upon purchases that are attributed
to a click thru from the affiliate's site. A software program
or a service is required in order to track the affiliate's
commissions. Affiliate programs are a good method of piggy
backing on the traffic of websites that are already positioned
well with the search engines. AShop
Deluxe is a shopping cart with affiliate tracking and
banner code generation. AShop Deluxe can be added o any of our web hosting plans or it may be licensed by paying a one-time license fee, in which case the shopping cart program may be installed on any web hosting service or dedicated server that supports the software requirements.
Banner Ads - Some websites
directly offer banner ad placement. There are numerous banner
ad services. Banner ad placement usually varies in cost based
upon the number of impressions or the amount of website traffic.
The effectiveness of banner ads depends on the type of product
or service offered, where it is offered, and the quality of
the banner ad. For more information, check out WebReference.com
Mailing Lists - We do not
recommend unsolicited bulk mailing (spam). You can pay to
have advertisements placed in mailing lists, but you should
be careful that they are opt-in lists and not sent to unsolicited
recipients. You can also start your own mailing list to keep
in touch with customers and give them a reason to revisit
your website.
 
Newsletters - Do you have
useful information relating to your product or service? Do
you have the time or someone to write a newsletter? If so,
place a sign-up form on your website. This
is a great way to build a targeted mailing list and will keep
your customers coming back. If you can't publish your own
newsletter, find websites that publish a newsletter that relates
to your product or service and place targeted ads in their
newsletters.
Forums - Are you offering
information? Do you or someone on your staff have time to
mediate a forum? If so, add a forum to your website. Also, you can participate in forums on other
related websites. Whether participating in general discussion
or specific solutions to problems, every forum post has the
potential of creating another link to your website.
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