Jul
6
A good and solid Internet presence is not something that comes free.
Whether you’re just starting out, or even if you have been online for years, your website will be totally unknown to the Internet masses unless you devote a portion of your marketing effort and budget to online promotion.
On the Internet, all websites, great and small, are just like shops set up in unfrequented side streets on the edge of town. People will not visit unless they are actually sent there. And you’ll need a good online marketing and advertising strategy to draw them in.
In recent years, Pay Per Click Marketing in the search engines and on other websites has established itself as an excellent way to quickly attract targeted visitors to your website.
In fact, the second best thing about Pay Per Click Marketing is that you can have your website’s traffic shoot through the roof almost instantly. And the best thing about it is that you can calculate your cost-per-lead, or even cost-per-sale down to the last cent and see exactly what you are getting for your investment.
Pay Per Click works so well that we would recommend you spend up to 70% of your online marketing budget on this method while your website is still new.
And yet, even such a great thing can be overdone! Many businesses completely give in to the temptation of quick returns that Pay Per Click offers and totally ignore other complementary Internet marketing methods that promise even better results in the long run.
If you want to get the most out of your online marketing, you should aim at ranking high in the free search engine listings related to your business. Although this, so called, Search Engine optimisation is something that will take a considerable time to yield results, it should be your long term goal and will boost your credibility way over that of your competitors who only appear in the paid listings.
So, how do you go about it?
1. Optimise your web pages for the search engines
One aspect of SEO involves optimising your web pages by embedding targeted key words or phrases in the text on your main website. These key terms must be carefully chosen to be ones that your potential clients are likely to search for. The overall design of your website should also be taken into account as it can affect your rankings too.
2. Allocate some of your budget to obtaining inbound links to your site
Many search engines also place a lot of importance on the number of links to your web pages from other websites. This is based on the idea that the more people link to you, the more important (and relevant) you must be. By spending a portion of your online marketing budget on acquiring inbound links from other websites, you work your way towards an even higher ranking in the search engines.
3. Regularly add new information to your website
The search engines tend to notice when you don’t add new information to your website and your content becomes stale, and you will be penalised by sliding down the search rankings. And of course, your human visitors just won’t return unless you regularly add new web pages and interesting articles to your web site.
4. Start a blog
Starting a web log, or blog, where you post news and short articles related to your business is an excellent way to keep your website fresh. But a blog is much more than accumulating relevant content for visitors and search engines. Blogging is a great way to interact with potential clients who can leave comments about what you write. And, if you go beyond pure self promotion and post worthwhile content that people will want to link to, you’ll eventually end up with lots of free inbound links and traffic too. We’re barely scratching the surface of the awesome marketing power of blogs here, so watch out for more in future posts.
There are also other non-SEO marketing strategies that you should seriously consider, including:
Advertising on other websites
Although not usually a cost-effective way to get inbound links, advertising on other websites can be a great way to piggyback on their popularity to spread the word about you. For example, if you sell real estate, you can have your portfolio displayed on web portals related to the country or region where you operate and reach thousands of potential clients that way.
Opt-in e-mail marketing
The key word here is opt-in. Spamming a random e-mail list is not only illegal, but highly inefficient too.
By encouraging visitors to your web site, as well as your current clients, to subscribe to receive interesting information, together with news and promotional advertising by e-mail, you build up a highly valuable mailing list of targeted people who are actually interested in your services.
You can also consider purchasing mailing lists from list brokers, but you have to make sure that the people on the list are not only highly targeted, but are there because they have expressed an interest in receiving info from your kind of business. Otherwise, it’s just a waste of time.
Well, those were a few Internet marketing ideas to consider as you plan your strategy. Remember, the secret is to think long term and, of course, to diversify your efforts for best results.
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3 Responses to “How to Enjoy Long Term Internet Marketing Success”
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View John Beckley's profile
Hi.
Good design, who make it?
Do you know if some company use the same marketing concept as Webkinz?
I’m writing a few articles right now and want to get some info and opinions.
Hi!
I would like improve my SQL capabilities.
I red really many SQL books and want to
get more about SQL for my occupation as db2 database manager.
What can you recommend?
Thanks,
Werutz