It is a common misconception that if you build a website, the traffic will come.  The process from building to profit making takes a little more elbow grease than that.  Website advertising is important.

Advertising gets the word out about who you are and what you are selling, whether it is goods or services.  On the Internet, your site is one of thousands.  To have a fighting chance, use every means available to you to advertise.

Website advertising can be done online.  The Internet is a virtual reality.  Think of each website as a different store.  Some stores you like to go in and some you haven’t had a need to visit.  But, if you saw some catchy ads for other stores while you were shopping, you might be inclined to visit them. 

Since you want to advertise what you are selling, you’ll need to find a place online where that is possible.  Choose sites that have something in common with your product but are not in direct competition with your market.  Most sites sell advertising space as a way of making extra revenue.

Consider affiliate programs.  You can advertise on sites where you will be noticed and do the same for others.  As you grow, consider Google AdWords for your own site to make some money and promote similar sites. 

Make use of your signature line in emails.  Include your business website address and a tagline in addition to your name.  Now, anyone who gets email from you will know where to find your website.  Your main purpose is to keep your website, and thus your products, in the forefront of everyone’s mind.  Chances are people will visit you if they see the address everywhere they look.

Along that same line, you can advertise offline for online businesses.  When you create your business cards, be sure to add your website address and in the same size font as the other pertinent information.  It is easy to log on to the Internet in the office, at home, or at a cyber café and see what is going on at your website. 

In fact, people would rather have a website address than a telephone number.  A telephone number conjures up visions of someone with an annoying voice trying to pressure you into buying something.  On the Internet, people can satisfy their curiosity without any strings attached.  In that way, a website provides an excellent advertising opportunity.

The competition on the Internet is stiff.  Each website is clamoring for their piece of the market right along with you.  To increase your traffic, you have to stand above the rest.  One way to do this is to advertise your website as often and in as many places as you can.  But, not just any places — appropriate on and offline venues your potential customers will see.

Tweet This Post

When it comes to owning and operating a successful online business there are three very important words – Search Engine Optimization. It’s how people find your website because if they can’t find you, they can’t buy from you and that after all is what business is all about.

Step One: Understand what search engines do.

Search engines are essentially programs which index all of the pages on the internet. When someone enters a phrase into their search engine of choice, that search engine searches their database and displays their results. Different search engines store what they index differently. For example, Google stores a portion of the webpage and Yahoo stores every word on the page. How they store this information affects the results.

Your goal as a business owner is to achieve the highest results possible because people typically only look at the first couple of pages

Step Two: Finding Your Keywords

Keywords are the words your prospects use to find your products, services, and information. Keywords can be one or two words, for example, “Miami vacation.” Keywords can also be a phrase of many words, for example, “Miami Family Vacation On a Budget.” With more than 80% of internet users researching purchases online before they spend a dime, the right keywords make all the difference.

To find the right keywords:

Brainstorm ideas. What words do you think people use to find your website and your products or services?

Take advantage of keyword research tools like WordTracker and the Google keyword tool to do a bit of specific keyword analysis.

Step Three: Placing Keywords

We mentioned in the beginning that search engines scan the internet and index web pages. They look in a few key places including:

• The Title
• The Headers
•  The Body Content
•  The Meta Tags

Step Four: Add Content

Content is what the search engines search. Therefore it pays to upload relevant and keyword optimized content on a regular basis. It’ll motivate the search engines to index your site and those pages thus pushing you up on the search engine rankings.

Here are some of the types of content you might consider using on your site:

• Articles
• Special reports
• Interviews with an industry expert
• Product reviews
• Discussion forums
• Blog posts
• “How to” guides
• Tips lists
• Training courses

Step Five: Get Links

Search engines typically skip listing websites if they do not have relevant incoming links. A link is a website address which someone can click on to go to another site – in this case your site.

There are different types of links.

Standard link – typically considered a direct link which looks like a basic website address – www.yourwebsitehere.com

Text link – link where the website address is embedded in the text.

Deep link – a link to an internal web page, for example an article published on a website, rather than the home page.

In order for a link to provide value it must be both relevant and credible. Meaning, the site linking to you has a lot of visitors and a lot of incoming links the search engine will give credibility and weight to the value of that link and it must also be in a website which shares a common interest or complimentary subject matter to your website.

Take these five steps and you’ll be well on your way to making sure people are able to find your website. It’s one of the most powerful business building strategies available.

Tweet This Post

One of the primary goals of any internet marketing business is to drive traffic to your website.  Traffic means more visitors and more profits.  Here are five ways to increase your internet presence.

Search Engine Optimization
Search engines are a great way to drive traffic to your website.  Search engines, like Google, Yahoo, MSN and so on, look at two main ingredients when indexing your website.

They look at how relevant your website is – how well you can tell the search engine what your website is about. This is called “On Page Optimization.” Keys for on page optimization are keywords, metadata, site maps and your domain name and website description information.  The majority of on page optimization resides in your website content. 

The second main category search engines look at is the number of links which point to your website and how relevant those links are.  This is called “Off Page Optimization.”   If you have relevant and quality links pointing at your website from websites about your topic and your website is well optimized for your keywords, chances are you’ll rank well in the search engines.

Pay Per Click Advertising
Another common way to drive traffic to a website is through Pay Per Click, (PPC). As the name suggests, with this style of driving traffic, you pay for each time someone clicks through to your site. 

With PPC, and with any new marketing strategy, it’s important to start small.  PPC campaigns can get out of control quickly.  Do your research, set your budget, and stick to it.  Test, track, and analyze your PPC campaign for the best long term results.

Article Marketing Article marketing is the process of writing articles and submitting them to involves writing article directories.  Publishers grab these articles and post them on their websites, blogs, and newsletters keeping the links and author information in tact.  This not only produces relevant links to your website (remember SEO) but it also drives traffic each time someone reads your content and clicks through to your website.  This method is a highly effective method for generating traffic.  Although it is free, the downside is that it can be labor intensive.

Social Networking
Social networking is the process of communicating with other business people and/or prospects on social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, or industry specific forums and chat rooms.  Social networking is a very effective method of increasing your presence.  It enables you to build a profile and to connect with a large group of people or friends whom share a common interest.  A social networking profile typically allows you to list your contact information as well as your website(s).  This means when you make connections and provide interesting or beneficial information to other social networkers, they’ll be inclined to visit your website, thus generating traffic and your internet presence.

Affiliates
Getting affiliates to promote your website is a great way to get a lot more traffic and sales.  An affiliate is someone who promotes your product or services for you on an ongoing basis in exchange for a commission.  Commission can be based on click throughs or purchases or a combination of both depending on your business and affiliate model.  Affiliates are an exceptional strategy for broadening your audience and increasing your internet presence. 

You can increase your internet presence using any one of these five methods or a combination of them to really amplify your traffic and increase your internet presence.  Choose your strategy and get started growing your business today.

Tweet This Post