This is one of the most often asked questions by people who have realised that the customers will not just come to their site because they have built it, by that they need to aggressively market the site in order to see any degree of sales or success. Getting the word out is vital, and to then end content based promotions are essential. Article marketing, for example, has stood the test of time, and is still used effectively today, often in combination with press releases.

Different types of sites will need different types of internet marketing strategy to promote them effectively. If you are selling an information product aimed at the older generations, video promotions on social networking sites full of modern music and people saying “yo, dude” are unlikely to work. You need to use informative content on the types of site your prospects are likely to visit. If you use video, make it informative and relevant to the content you are selling. For a different type of product aimed at a different audience, the modern high tech videos would be perfect, and you could gain a lot of traffic from them.

Keyword research should always be performed diligently, as it is one of the fundamentals of effective internet marketing. If you can dig deep and find some related long tail keywords which have few competitors, but some reasonable search volume, then it is quite possible to get an article submitted to the directories ranked in the search engines. This will increase the page views for the article dramatically, and, if your resource box is good, it will markedly increase the number of visitors to your own website.

The biggest mistake of all made by beginners in internet marketing is attracting visitors to their site, without giving those visitors any opportunity to sign up to a list. Your database of email customers will be your biggest asset in business, and your prospects database will also be very valuable in that it gives you multiple chances to convert a prospect into a customer. If you offer some quality free content, usually in the form of a free email course, then you can send your sales message to your prospects multiple times, vastly increasing the chance of them buying your product.

Having a list of customers allows you to build on your success. You can send marketing emails to your list whenever you choose to do so, although this must be done carefully to avoid excessive unsubscribe rates. You can develop a range of products, increasing your chances of selling further items to someone who has bought from you once. You are even developing your greatest asset, which one day may give you the opportunity to get involved in joint ventures. When other marketers approach you hoping that you will promote their product to your list, then you know you have arrived. Joint ventures can be the most profitable, in terms of money made for time and investment expended, activity in the whole of internet marketing.

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]]> http://www.internetmarketingclan.com/internet-marketing/priorities-with-newly-launched-website/feed/ 4 http://www.internetmarketingclan.com/internet-marketing/what-to-do-with-website-traffic/ http://www.internetmarketingclan.com/internet-marketing/what-to-do-with-website-traffic/#comments Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:10:56 +0000 James http://www.internetmarketingclan.com/?p=967 Website traffic is great but what do you do with them when they’re there?

Website traffic is great, but what do you do with them when they’re there? It takes a lot of time, effort, and sometimes money, to drive traffic to a website,before you put a traffic plan into place, you really need to give some thought to exactly what it is you want the visitors to do. You need to have one specific target action in mind that you want your visitor to take. If you are selling an ebook, make sure that you are only offering one product at a time, that your sales page is geared towards only getting the prospect to purchase the ebook, and nothing else.

One of the most effective and rewarding actions you can ask your prospect to take, and one which has the most serious potential in building a long term business, is that of filling in an email capture form. Usually this is achieved by the offer of a free product, usually a short report. You can also offer a five or seven part course by email, which allows you to get your sales message across several times as part of the emails. The more times your prospects are exposed to your message, the more likely you are to increase website conversion.

A recent development which is taking the net by storm is online video, and this gives you an easy way of inciting the prospect to action. Clicking on a video is ridiculously easy, and is should not be difficult just to instil enough curiosity to motivate the prospect into doing so. Once they are watching your short, concise online video, you are in a position to put your message across, even by speaking directly to the customer.

You can still use the power of email autoresponders by asking the prospect to enter his name and email address into an online form. Although the golden rule is to only have one logical action which a prospect can take, there is one possible exception to this. This is where you have a sales page selling an ebook, or online audio or video content, and the prospect is only given one view of the sales page. By having an email capture form halfway down the page, you give the reader an alternative course of action, but one which can pay off handsomely in terms of increased website conversion.

Research has proven that you need to get your sales message in front of the prospective customer more than once in order to make sales. This is the important point – you as a website owner must know what you want. Your primary target may be to sell your product, but your secondary target can be to collect the email address of anyone who was not convinced by your sales page to buy the product at first sight.

By following up with some quality email content, you have given yourself further chances to persuade the potential customer into making the purchase. You will also retain the email address for further promotions in the future. This type of email based marketing system can be the most effective way of increasing website conversion.

If you have a business and are looking into increase your internet exposure then there are some things you’ll want to consider before hiring an SEO company to optimise your website for the search engines, Firstly, you will want to make sure that the company is not making any guarantees about specific search engine results. Secondly, you will want get your search engine optimisation service at a price that is not through the roof ridiculous. And last but not least, you need to know exactly what process / techniques the SEO consultant is going to take and what methods they plan on implementing, as there are some methods that could seriously hinder your business long term.

When it comes to SEO, it is impossible to guarantee any specific results, like attaining #1 spot on the first page or second of Google etc. Why? Because Google (along with other search engines) never give away their secrets or formula on how they rank websites. If people could easily find out or if Google unleashed their algorithms, then everyone would know exactly how to get a first page listing so all first page results would be taken by companies who paid for this to be done (regardless of there relevancy, quality or popularity). It just wouldn’t work, there are reasons that some pages rank higher than others and many factors are taken into account. Google wants to deliver the websites that they feel will provide the searcher with the closet possible match to what was search for and if they did not perform that then people would stop using them.

SEO is a process and the results are NEVER guaranteed! In fact, there are things that you can do to get “blacklisted” or banned from Google totally if techniques like keyword stuffing these are black hat methods and must be avoided. The best way to do this is if someone guarantees you a specific result…avoid them. No one can guarantee “organic” search engine results for YOUR website. But a good company will employ sound techniques to build your site up and tick the boxes that the search engines are looking for such as keyword research, link building, articles, on page optimisation, Meta and keyword tag correction etc which will increase your rankings.

Second, do a simple price comparison. There are companies that will charge upward of £1000 just for a simple website analysis and that’s before even staring any work, whereas other internet marketing and SEO consultants (like our SEO service) will give you a FREE and honest analysis of your site and a consultation. And make sure that this is explained in terms you understand, don’t be fooled by loads of jargon all SEO can be easily and simply demonstrated or explained.

Finally you will need to determine what the SEO company will actually DO to optimise your website regardless it it’s an ongoing monthly package or a one off deal. And although you don’t want to get ripped off, the cheapest isn’t always the best value for money or give you the best ROI so make sure you know what you are getting for the money. Get a breakdown of the exact services and tasks that are to be performed for the quoted price as this is the only way that you can make an accurate comparison and therefore make an educated conclusion.   Employ the above three tips when looking for an SEO company  then it is up to you to use due diligence and judgement when choosing an SEO consultant for optimising your business website. Search engine optimisation is not something that can be ignored anymore… The internet is too powerful.

is a term that’s gone from being almost completely unknown to being one that is very often used in the business world in under a year’s time. And that’s no surprise, considering that a massive 80% or more of the market is going online searching Google, Yahoo Bing and other search engines to find their products, services and needs as their first action before they look in the Yellow Pages or anywhere else! This has created a tremendous demand for SEO services as business owners realise that if they don’t optimise their websites for Google etc then their competition is going to beat them to it. SEO is such a basic, fundamental and vital task that no business owner wants to leave money on the table by neglecting to act and perform in this area. The increase in demand is clear to see, as business owners scramble to find professionals who can optimize their websites for them.

SEO is not just for big business

Search engine optimisation is no longer seen as something that only big business does as it is effective for and should be employed by any business of any size wanting to stake their claim in the market place. In fact the internet via SEO and other internet marketing techniques is one way small businesses can often out perform their larger but less active competitors.

If you improve your business website’s Google ranking, you are also increasing the exposure that your business will get considerably. SEO is perhaps one of the most profitable and worthwhile investments that a business can acquire. Search engine optimisation does require an initial investment but it can bring you targeted traffic to your website for years to come. And when people find your site, they will be searching for exactly what your business offers making them very likely to become a customer.

It is true that many large national and international corporations are investing millions in their SEO and other internet marketing services. However, locally it is much more affordable to get these services performed for you, as the target market is not as wide and it is much less competitive.

By acquiring an organic search engine listing and improving your search engine positioning overall your business will gain more online exposure and it will have a fighting chance to compete with the other businesses in your niche market, ensuring the survival of your business in the years to come.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is an important asset to any business and it is an action that business owners worldwide are looking into doing for their websites. As many business owners know it is quite necessary nowadays to have a strong online presence just to survive as a business and employing SEO is very helpful way to achieve this, especially during this economy. Although SEO can be a confusing subject at first if you are trying to learn it all yourself, it is still crucial to educate yourself on the basics of it now and jump on the bandwagon because it is an asset that no business should ignore.

What is SEO?-The basics

SEO is the term used for optimizing a website so that it shows up on the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Etc) when someone searches for a keyword phrase that is related to their website. If you have a website that is for an Italian restaurant in Edinburgh, you would certainly want your site to show up when people search for “Italian restaurant in Edinburgh ” or anything related, right?   If your website isn’t there, then your competitors’ websites will surely be there and then you can lose out on the traffic and therefore lose money. Why leave money on the table when such a HUGE amount of your market is searching online to find practically everything they need? If you are not there you are giving away targeted traffic straight to your competitors.

So how do you get your website showing up in the search engines for your product or service? There are a few different ways to show up on the first several pages of Google, Yahoo, etc. One of those ways is to do “Pay Per Click” advertising where the business owner pays Google every time someone clicks on their websites listing. This allows them to show up on the first page (depending on how much they’re willing to spend) but it can be very expensive and often not profitable. Also, many people prefer to not click on the results that they know are “paid for” and “sponsored” ads (the ones down the right side of Google for example).   The ultimate way to rank in the search engines is to rank “organically” or naturally, meaning without paying a penny when someone clicks the link to your website. This is accomplished by optimizing your website for certain keyword phrases that have been proven to have a decent search volume, building incoming links to your website, formulating the proper META tags and making sure you have clean HTML code, etc.

Getting the SEO correct for your site will take hiring an SEO specialist to come and give you a consultation and analyse what your site needs and what it already has, as well as if there is anything you may be doing wrong that is penalizing you or preventing you from showing up naturally on Google, Yahoo, etc.   SEO is a long term investment with astonishing results and ROI’s. We have helped companies to achieve 1st page position (many a top 3 listing) on Google with 2 weeks from not ranking at all for their primary keyword e.g “plumber Edinburgh” and has in return resulted in exponential growth for many. It is also necessary for any business — large or small — to invest in creating a strong presence on the internet via SEO as well as other internet marketing strategies, article marketing, link building, social media marketing, blogging and more.

Simply get in touch with us to give you a consultation or a basic rundown of what you need done to your website to make it work for you and generate you more business and more money.   By making your website optimised for your target market and more search engine friendly you will be ensuring long term success for your business and SEO is a great place to start.

Exploiting The Power of
Online Video Marketing

If you are looking for ways to economically target internet traffic and promote your business online, launching a YouTube.com video marketing campaign is one of the cheapest, easiest and most efficient ways to generate massive traffic to your website.

Your video can contain just about any content that you wish – within the bounds of legal propriety of course – and YouTube.com along with other video websites will host and display your video for free. While this is exciting in itself, the really exciting thing about online video marketing on YouTube.com and other video sites, is that videos posted on these sites rank extremely well in the search engines.

In short, by posting video on YouTube.com, you can take advantage of the immense size and search engine power of that site to boost your own website and your own business profile on and offline.

YouTube.com recently announced that it shows over 100 million videos each day. Imagine if you were reaching only a tiny portion of that crowd of viewers, say much less than one percent. You could still potentially expose your business to over 5000 viewers a day!

Can you image if 5000 people saw your sales message each and every day?

One of the great things about video marketing right now is that there are many Scottish never mind Edinburgh businesses that have not yet jump onto this opportunity so it is leaving YOU the chance to exploit this for your local market without much competition.

Designing videos for posting on YouTube and.com and other online video services is one of the most effective ways to create highly targeted advertising for your business and services without spending a fortune on promotional materials.

Ask us about our video promotion package and get your message in front of thousands of people today!

Don’t wait too long before you get some video for your website, jump on board now while video marketing is still under used.

Because a business website is so cheap and easy to set up, it gives you the ideal chance to test a market before you make a firm commitment and invest serious money. Websites can be set up in a matter of hours, and tested very quickly if you are prepared to spend money on pay per click advertising. Within a few short days, you will have the results of your testing, so you can decide where to go next. If you are not wanting to invest in pay per click, you will need to put in more work to drive testing traffic to the site. One other possibility which is rarely mentioned is to take articles which you have already submitted to the directories, and change the resource boxes so that they point to the new site. If the articles are getting a reasonable number of page views, you will get some initial testing traffic.

You can test this traffic by selling an affiliate product, which will mean that you have no expenses involved in producing a product of your own,. For a truer test, you can produce your own cheap report in a matter of a few hours. The most significant test will be a test of your opt in rate, as this should be the primary concern of a business website, even above the concern of selling an immediate product. If you want to offset the expense of running a pay per click campaign, you can always make a one time offer of a short report to anyone who signs up to the list. Provided the revenue from the small report covers the expense of your advertising campaign, you are effectively building a list for free.

A business website also makes it easy to split test your sales page and marketing campaign. It is not difficult to direct a certain percentage of your traffic to a near identical sales page, with just one major feature changed, and measure whether or not the change increases sales or opt ins. By continually testing and challenging your control sales page, you can increase your conversions on an ongoing basis. You should keep your control page the same, until it is beaten by another page. That page will then become the new control, against which other pages are tested. This ability to test and track is one of the most significant features of a business website.

Adding new content on a regular basis is one sure way of keeping your site fresh and interesting. New pages optimised for relevant keywords can add another section of people to those noticing your site when they conduct a search. If you choose your long tail keywords wisely, you can get pages from your own site listed in the search engines. A surer method of achieving search engine rankings is to submit the content to other sites already respected by the search engines. The top article directories spring readily to mind.

This form of internet marketing is proven in its effectiveness, and the expense is minimal. If you write your own content, the only expense can be the time taken on the project. By continually submitting articles based on long tail keyword phrases, you can expect to get your articles seen not only by people browsing the directories, but also by people searching for information in the search engines. This will dramatically increase the exposure for your sites. If your site has a blog, which is an easy way of keeping fresh content on the site to draw back repeat visitors, then the blog entries can be submitted to social bookmarking sites to bring in more visitors.

Online video is big now, and can only get bigger. By adding well made, professional videos to your site, you can keep attracting repeat visits from people who will regularly look forward to viewing your fresh content. You can then use these videos as submissions to the video sharing networks which will bring in more fresh visitors. In the current climate, with video sites getting more page views than any other, it is becoming a vital way of getting the word out about your site. Certainly, if your site is targeting a younger audience, producing regular video content is pretty much essential.

If you really want to make your site a success, you should be looking to provide incentives to other people so that they will promote it as well. The most obvious way of doing this is by offering an affiliate program. This need not be difficult, as you can place your product with one of the established affiliate networks, who will handle most of the work for you. What you do need to do is provide good incentives for the affiliates to promote your product, and make it as easy as possible for them. Provide your affiliates with marketing tools, and even viral ebooks which they can give away to earn commissions. Having a dedicated army of affiliates can be an extremely powerful asset in internet marketing.

The first benefit which your email marketing system can bring is that of allowing your sales message increased viewings. If you just have a standard sales letter, with a call to action at the bottom asking for the sale, you are probably not going to get that many attempts to get the order. The prospect may come back to the sales page, they may not. If you can offer a short free email course, you can then follow up several times with your sales message. This should have the effect of increasing conversions from the same sales page, with no expense other than that of maintaining your autoresponder service, and having some short emails produced.

The email marketing system allows you to split your list into effective groups. The most important split will be to separate your paying customers from your non-buying prospects. This is critical, because your paying customers are the life blood of your business, and need to be handled properly. Sending them junk emails so they unsubscribe in droves is insanity. Provide quality content, and go easy on the sales pitches. You want to develop a relationship with these people, and keep them on your list for as long as possible.

You email marketing also needs to be set up to allow you to sell multiple products. Of course, the example everyone thinks of is the upsell, where your prospects who have bought a cheap report are then upsold a full sized ebook, but there are many variations. People who have bought a full sized ebook, or audio and video content, can be more easily sold on a short report if they see it as a valuable addition to the content they already have. Also, people who have bought short reports will often buy further short reports, especially if you have offered quality content and good value for money.

There are other benefits to building a quality list which go even beyond this. You can obviously market affiliate products to your list, but this needs to be done very carefully, and in moderation. It is so easy to annoy a customer list in this way. The biggest benefit of all comes from being approached by other marketers with an offer for a joint venture. If someone has produced a quality product which is a good match for your list, you can accept a deal to promote the product for a percentage of the sales. These joint ventures can make you a lot of money from doing very little, and are the sweetest benefit of intelligent email marketing.

There are so many people competing with each other to sell products which are fundamentally very similar, to the same market, that you need to have an effective method of promotion to make your product stand out. The first step of all is to come out with a potentially effective strategy for getting potential customers to view your site. Unless you have a reasonable amount of traffic coming to your site, you cannot perform the necessary split tests to your sales page to try to increase conversions.

Getting traffic to your site will inevitably involve an investment of either time or money. If you are just starting out in business and have little to spend, a solid, proven internet marketing technique such as article marketing should be your first step in trying to drive traffic. Well written, informative articles can be picked up by other site owners and newsletter publishers, bringing a most welcome traffic spike to your site. Press releases are another proven source of publicity, although the best ones are not free. Even if you just use the free sites, you should still see a significant increase in traffic to your sites.

If you have a new product you are trying to sell, and no established reputation to sell it on the back of, you could ideally do with some help. To this end, you can turn to the army of potential affiliates who love to promote other peoples’ products on a commission. Get your product listed on a major affiliate network, and you will have a chance of enticing some of the most skilled promoters in internet marketing to promote your product in a big way. If you can go a step beyond most of the other product owners, you can keep affiliates satisfied and keep them promoting. By providing ready made tools for advertising, and email promotion, and by giving the affiliates viral ebooks which they can distribute, you can offer your affiliates a better deal than the competition.

The dream of every new site owner in internet marketing is to have their product promoted by a joint venture partner who is a known name to their target market. This known name will not only have a huge subscriber base, they will also have credibility which will add value dramatically to any endorsement they may make. Needless to say, these joint ventures are extremely difficult to come by. Do not make the mistake of assuming that just because you have a great product everyone will want to promote it. Top players in any given market will always have many offers coming into their inbox every day. Yours needs to stand out to even be seen.

However you try to promote your new website and initial product, you should obviously be trying to collect subscribers to your customer and prospect databases. These lists are the greatest asset of your business, and allow you to market future and related products at virtually no expense. Any good marketing system will have list growth and maintenance as its top priority. Make sure you aim your traffic at an opt in form, and make sure that you provide quality content to your list. You will be nurturing the highest value in internet marketing.