How to Market Your Website on the Internet

Internet Marketing commonly refers to increasing traffic to a website or to a particular part of a website.

Just as with any Marketing effort, the key to success is in the overall strategy you employ and the objectives you set out to accomplish followed by great tactical implementation of these objectives. This is a very important first step in a Marketing plan. You first create a reason for the plan (Strategy), and then decide how you will implement it (Tactics).

This document will give you the tools you need to help you create your Strategy and show you a few ways to employ them at the Tactical level. Please understand that both strategy and tactical implementation are very much based on the the nature of business and the possibilities of the imagination. We cannot cover all strategic and tactical possibilities.

The Mechanics – Simplified

Submitting your website to a search engine is not enough to get a decent ranking on Google (and other search engines). There are a number of things you must do to ensure that Google ranks your pages higher than others. There are many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) articles to be found on the Internet that will help you with everything from the description of the site/content and META keywords to the page naming strategy. There are also SEO Consultants that you can hire to help with the increase in traffic. Before you go and do any of that, take a few minutes to read this article. There are two fundamental principles that are overlooked by most website content publishers which we will share with you. Understanding these two concepts may be the key to increasing traffic and the effectiveness of your Marketing plan..

Have something unique and relevant to say

Content is what the web is all about. Spiders and robots from search engines that crawl and index your website don’t care for flash, graphics, or other media types. What they care about are ‘words’. Here are some pointers to keep in mind when writing content for your site.

• Relevancy – Keep the theme the same for your paragraph headings and the text body. It’s a fine balance to let your writing style reflect your character while staying on topic. The more relevant articles you publish on your site the more friendly spiders you will have (that’s a good thing on the web).
• Don’t plagiarize – It’s very easy to find material from the corners of the web and put it on your website. Who would know right? If you do this, you will be penalized by Google and other search engines. They will know. If Google finds a lot of plagiarism on your specific web page, it will reduce the ranking for your site. Only Google knows what ‘a lot’ means. In other words, Google has algorithms to help them decide how much of the content you have on a specific page is plagiarized. The best bet is to have original content on your website that is meaningful and written in your own words.

Have a lot to say

No, seriously. The more content you have on your website, the more you will find search engines ranking you as relevant.

Many web designers and hosting companies charge by the page so this might be an issue. It might also be a reason to search out other providers who don’t care about the number of pages you choose to host.

Get yourself linked in popular websites

This is another basic way search engines decide rank. If other webmasters think your material is worth it for their readers, they will post a link to some specific content on your website. Google and other search engines will rank your website higher should this happen. If the website that links to yours is a popular one, then your rankings go even higher. It’s a simple rule.

This is however a problem for most. It’s sort of paradoxical in that you are trying to get a higher ranking so that you will be known. But, you need to be known to get a higher ranking. Well, this paradox is true for how popularity works in real life too.

Getting around the Paradox

Ok, so how do we do get around this paradox? If you have a new website that you’re trying to promote, or if you’re trying to promote a specific section of your website, the big question is…

How do we create the interest so that people will notice us out of the sea of other websites out there?

The key word here is ‘Buzz’ or better known in the business circles as ‘Marketing’. Marketing is nothing more than promoting your goods, or services. In the case of the web, you will be promoting information about your goods or services. It's a very suble but necessary shift in thinking.

You are NOT promoting your product, you are promoting information about your product - thereby creating awareness.

What types of Information can I promote?

This depends on your business type. But, the general rule is that you want to promote Educative Information. You want to tell your viewer something meaningful.

Many of our Clients look to us to create and market their websites. When we interview them about their needs, we commonly find that they want to ‘put their address information’ on the web so their customers can ‘find them’. To this we normally say that the Web is not a Billboard. It has the potential of driving a lot of new sales to your business and is not a just tool to keep your existing clientele in contact. It is much more powerful than that. Here is an example of how we helped a Florist increase sales:

The Story of The Florist

We cannot speak of the financial increases we have been able to create for the florist, but we can say that it was quite substantial. We used ‘Education’ as the marketing tool. Here is a small list of information that we presented to the viewers of their website:

• What the ‘in’ flowers are this season
• An understanding of the color of flowers in different lighting and space conditions
• What different colors and flower types mean
• What the best arrangements are for specific occasions (including funerals)
• What types of nutrients keep cut flowers fresh the longest
• Gardening and Lawncare tips
• The favourite flowers of certain celebrities
• Other interesting information such as

o Cultural views on flowers - e.g. in some cultures it isn't a very good thing to bring flowers with you when you visit because you're bringing a 'dead thing' to their home.

• Etcetera

As you can see, we spend a long time in continual research to present this information to the client. All this content is regularly updated so that the viewers always have the best and most accurate information available at all times.

Also, all Clients that walk into the store are informed of the web presence and the type of information they can expect to find. These Clients checked back on the web regularly as we became not only their florist but a reputable source of information for them!

The key is to gain reputation by providing excellent information. Our aim was to build the site with excellent information that the florists competitors didn't offer. This made us the clients trustworthy source.

As you can imagine, this increased repeat business and it also created word of mouth (or shall we say word of internet) popularity.

We reached 'Buzz' state.

Of course, as more traffic started coming to the website recommendations increased to view the excellent content we presented. This gained the attention of other popular websites.

I’m sure you see the domino effect. The big question is, what information can you give to your viewers? What ‘REAL EDUCATIONAL VALUE’ can you provide?

To help you with that question, imagine yourself as your potential website viewer and ask yourself these two important questions (from the viewers’ perspective):

• Why should I read this?
• What is in it for me?

The two things to keep in mind

Remember only two things when marketing your website.

1. Have a lot of unique and relevant content
2. Make sure the content has excellent education for your viewers (not just good education, excellent education)

The rest of the SEO methods that you may know of will help fine-tune increase traffic to your site. But, the most important thing for web traffic is great content. After you have great content is when you can start considering SEO methods.

Other things to know

When writing content for your websites, keep in mind this simple slogan:

You always want to tell them about the specs and tolerances of your widget. But you never want to forget to include the ‘why’ they should buy your widget (or why they should consider the value in what you’re trying to say).

Entice your viewers to small experiments they can make with your products that will return a high value to them. Or, give them a small reward for signing up on your website. The reward can be a well written article that will teach them to do _____.

Help them see the ‘Benefits’ rather than the ‘Features’.

As you can see, Marketing requires creativity and time. Notice I didn’t say money. It doesn’t have to cost much at all if you plan and execute your strategy well at the tactical level.

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