How To Increase Website Traffic With Newsletters
There are many marketing solutions out there for your website, but the best way to increase website traffic quickly is writing a newsletter. Writing a weekly newsletter would be ideal but is not required. If you write an article for newsletters from time to time you will notice the increased website traffic. The best thing about writing a newsletter is that it is free marketing that will increase your website traffic.
All that you need in order to write a newsletter is an idea, some writing skills, and someone interested in publishing the newsletter. If you’re concerned on where you actually market your website throughout the newsletter, it mainly comes from the resource box. The resource box allows you to write a small amount of information about yourself and/or your site and then a link to your site. The resource box is the key part to increase website traffic.
Writing a well written resource box is crucial to help increase website traffic. If you have a poorly written resource box, you will have trouble generating more traffic. There are a few ways you can improve your resource box to assure yourself of increased website traffic. The first thing you will want to do is include your website link in the resource box. This free marketing strategy gives people the option to click on your link through your resource box, thus increasing your website traffic.
Make sure to not use any affiliate links in your resource box. Affiliate links are long and tend to turn people off as oppose to increasing website traffic. If you really want to include an affiliate link, create a page on your site that is a _javascript redirecting to your affiliate site link. This will allow you to keep the URL as short as possible and help you increase website traffic.
Trial and error tends to be the best method for anything in the internet marketing business. Try several different resource boxes and determine which one help increase website traffic the best. This will allow you to find the right resource box so that you can stick with it for newsletters, articles, and even blog entries.
Publishing your article in one newsletter will not give you the results you may hope for. In order to increase your website traffic without publishing every week you have to find multiple newsletters to publish one article. Searching for multiple newsletters to publish your article is by far the most important part of the plan. If you can find 10-15 newsletters to publish your article you will see steadily increased website traffic.
Writing an article for several newsletters is one of the best marketing strategies to increase website traffic quickly. If you place a resource box on the bottom and find several newsletters willing to publish your article, you will see increased website traffic after a short time. So get out there and begin researching to find the right newsletters.
How To Choose The Right Website For You
Choosing what you want your website to be isn’t always as obvious as it might seem. There are so many options available to you that it really pays to take time out to think about this question before jumping in. Ask yourself what you are actually aiming for in having an online presence? Do you want a personal website, an online shop, a blog or diary style presence? Or do you want to run a forum related to your product or interest, perhaps an ezine with a back-issue website or if you are an artist, photographer or craftworker, maybe an online gallery would best promote you? To help you decide, try asking yourself these questions.
Do you want to sell physical goods? Items that have to be delivered by post, such as books, toys, clothes, electrical goods etc are ideal for an ecommerce website. There are many options open to you whereby you can catalogue your items by entering them into a database. This sounds more complicated than it actually is. Most shop building software has a simple interface whereby you can enter items in obvious categories, add prices, sizes etc and postage costs. The add to basket buttons are generated for you for each item.
There’s a huge number of companies offering you shop solutions for your website but they don’t all have the same facilities. As ever, it pays to research and find one that does everything you want it to. Most companies will offer you a free trial and I recommend that you select a company that does.
You can choose to buy shopbuilding software to install on your computer, the benefit being that this is a one-off purchase and no recurring monthly payments, apart from your web hosting. Alternatively you can go for the hosted shop option. There are an enormous number of companies offering this. Advantages are that your hosting and website are integral. Everything is done online so you can even update your shop from any computer wherever you may be. These options are usually very simple to use and have good help menus.
Do You want to sell downloadable goods, eg. software, music, ebooks? Downloadable products are very hot selling items on the internet. The reason is obvious and it benefits everyone involved. The buyer receives his/ her purchase immediately payment has cleared and the seller has no stock to buy, keep or deliver. Some product examples are music, images, software, templates and ebooks.
Ebooks are one of the most popular downloadable products. They are very easy to produce and most people have the ability to read them from their computer screen or even print them out. “How to” books are the most popular by far as they provide answers, solutions and ideas. The internet is used by many as a research tool and people are actively looking for information and solutions to problems. If you can provide these on a popular enough niche topic, your ebook is likely to be in demand.
There are several websites which offer you the facility to sell downloadable products, such as Clickbank and Payloadz. A quick google search will give you more options to explore to find the most suitable for your particular needs.
Are you an artist or photographer or craftworker? Firstly, ask yourself what your purpose of having an online presence will be. For example, are you looking to have a classy online portfolio or do you want to set up an ecommerce shop where you promote the sale of your original work and prints? Can you design websites or do you have the financial means to ask someone to build one for you? Do you have sufficient I.T. skills to join one of the many online galleries that allow you to upload your work to your own gallery area on their website? Do you like the idea of being part of a larger online gallery but need someone to do all the techy things for you?There are an enormous number of online galleries now but knowing what you want to achieve will help you narrow your search significantly.
Do you have a bricks and mortar shop? If your business is in the real world, think about what it is you require your website to do in order to promote or give added value to your business. Do you wish it to be simply an online information post so that people can find more about what you offer or find their way to your premises? If so, you may if that your local government will offer you a free web page or mini website on their main council site. If you want something more individual, then a simple site built with Frontpage or a webuilder is probably your best option. If money is no object, then you can hire a webdesigner and achieve something more sophisticated.
Or perhaps you wish to add something extra to your business such as an online, out of hours, ordering system with home delivery. Again, unless you can pay for your site to be custom built, one of the easy web-shop builders is probably your best option. Here are some excellent ones for you to review.
Do you want to sell or promote a service? For example, are you a webdesigner, childminder, photographer, plumber, tutor, dogwalker, typist, financial adviser, mobile hairdresser, decorator, gardener, acupuncturist or beautician? The list is endless. If you offer a service whether online or off you will want to reflect your professionalism in a well designed and easy to navigate website. If you are able to afford to have your website designed for you to your own specifications, then this can be a good choice as it frees up your time to get on with actually providing the service you are involved in.
This is in option which many cannot afford. An alternative would be to build the website yourself. The advantages to this can really repay the time you put in. To start with, you can update your site whenever you wish, so keeping the content fresh and relevant. Software to help you do this is easily obtained. Dreamweaver and Frontpage are amongst the most popular. I find that the latter is an excellent choice for someone new to web design as it is so intuitive and easy to learn.
Having built your site yourself, the only ongoing costs are the time you decide to spend on it plus your webhosting and there are some excellent deals to be had these days. If you feel uncomfortable with building sites, don’t despair. There are some fabulous online website builders on offer these days. with this option, your website and hosting are all inclusive. Typically, you will be given a login area where you can select the template, ie. look and feel of your website and add images and information in a very simple step by step way. There is considerable competition amongst web hosts offering this option and for you, the consumer, this means that more added value is being tagged onto these packages all the time.
Do you want to build a community website? Websites reflecting the interests of a community or group membership don’t need to be sophisticated but it is an excellent idea to have one that is interactive. Being able to post questions and opinions, vote on a member poll or even post photographs will encourage members to participate more fully and can lead to new ideas and renewed enthusiasm within the group. An ideal solution might be a one page website linked to a forum. Some web hosts will offer free websites and hosting for not-for-profit groups and this is well worth looking into. Another idea is to have a community Blog. Again, these are something that permit group participation in posting plus are easy to set up and manage and many are free.
Good luck with your endeavours whatever your aims! The internet is a great place to have your own voice.
How To Acquire Free Web Site Promotion
You have finished making your own website. You have introduced your company and presented your products and services. You have added propositions and promos to catch your target audience’s attention. You have achieved the dos and don’ts of building a company web site. But why isn’t your website a major success?
Maybe you’re not planning the key to the best promotion of your web site. Here are some guidelines on how to acquire free web site promotions for your company’s success.
If you have started to promote your web site, keep it constant. If you promote your site with persistence, it will catch your audience’s attention.
Be patient. Try each method in promotion until you acquire the best, free promotion there is. You have to accept trial and error for your web site to reach the top.
There are many ways for your web site to be seen. Here are some free web site promotions you could try until you find the most effective.
*Free promotions such as search engines and directories would give your web site the deserved traffic you always wanted. Make sure to check your web site’s ranking to know whether or not this type of free promotion is right for you.
*Make a deal with other web sites on trading links which could help both web sites. Make sure to use words that could easily interest the audience.
*Find free classified ads that could boost the promotion of your web site. These ads could be seen by other people who you are not targeting for, but may as well be interested in your services.
*Free and low-cost internet banners are spread all through out the World Wide Web. Banners that pop-up at the top of a page or in a separate window would automatically catch your target audience’s attention.
If your web site and its free promotion did not work even after accomplishing these methods, analyze your web site. Track down all visitors, advertisements, and transactions. Then locate errors in your web site. Upload new files to your web site continuously for audience to return for new products and services. Monitor your own web site if it’s up in the market or down.
Then be ready to try the methods again and surely it will work.
It has always been said that the best things in life are free. Yes they are. And as soon as your free web site promotion proves to the audience its worth, then you’ll believe it’s true.
free traffic, free website, free business, can I succeed
About 6 months ago, I stumbled upon The Surf Craze (Auto Surf and Manual Surf) and I was surprised to see this kind of advertising, So I picked my self a small website or affiliate site and added it to as many surf sites as possible and I would spend hours with as many windows open as possible jumping from site to site trying to surf as many as possible in return for my site to be seen and receive hits (with out much success), then I seen this other site something about these safelists, So I jumped on board the safelist craze, I luckily found some of the better safelists and signed up to about 5 and I was bombarded by offers”make a million” “email 700 000 000 members spam free” “blast 2000 000 blogs” “your ad’ seen by millions” after reading all these great emails I jumped on board a few and purchased a few websites, “I was going to be a millionaire in NO TIME, after all that was “Promised”, so I started using all these great blasters and safelists (surfing was over now).
I am/was a couple hundred dollars down now and had nothing to show, apart from 100s of ebooks, a few blasters and some websites, so I purchased some scripts and set up multiple websites, BUT still no traffic from all these blasters and apparent “millions of emails sent”.
So I stooped and thought what a crock and then came the “email blasters” I subscribed to 5-6 different email blasters (each one bragged a total 0f 2000 plus safelists and millions of combined members) I was spending hours upon hours signing up to safelists and confirming addresses, finding larger email boxes, This time I was set to make money (apparent Millions as promised) after all I was sending apparently close to a BILLION emails and blogs a day, BUT still no response.
So here I am today a little wiser and subscription free, promoting my new website based on all free products, sites, software, hosting, domain names, websites, add ons, scripts and of course a lot of free advertising, trying to see what I can do for free and only using freebies gathered from the net.
Of course traffic is building up and I may have to invest in an upgrade to handle the traffic, so I may have to dip into my pockets after all.
Conclusion:
Safelist Blasters:
End up getting spammed daily or more by Safelist Host.
Most email ends up in trash by auto cleaners.
Assorted “million email blasters”
Go to no-one and waste of cash.
Who are those millions of recipients?
Blog Blaster.
Claimed to reach 2 million blogs, but only reaches 500 max’ per blast.
Most/all blogs require registration and confirmation anyway.
Classified Blaster.
Required the same as above.
Most/all Classifieds require registration.
Written by Jason Godwell.
Five New Trends In Increasing Website Exposure
It is not the same old Internet anymore as far as marketing goes. There are new ways to promote your website that will benefit you by adding extra cash in your pocket. Read about the five new methods of Internet marketing that people are using to drive customers to their website. The basic concept that “content is king” along with correct keyword usage is the way to go. You will not regret using these new ways of marketing.
The number one Internet marketing plan for drawing customers into your website is the use of a blog. A blog is a continual updated online journal on your personal views or news related subject matters. People that read your blog are constantly aware of your ideas and thoughts, especially those concerning your business and products. The benefit of promoting your company through a blog is the fact that the search engines love blogs. Fresh new content and a few good keywords thrown in will push you higher up on the engine rankings. People will see it and more customers will click to your site.
In your blog, be sure to add valuable customer information such as product information, or business advice. This draws customer interest. In addition, other bloggers may wish to link with to your blog site, and you can draw in customers from their blogs. That will continually feed your ranking and over time; customer loyalty backed by trust will drive your website and feed new customers into your email. However, without RSS feeds, Really Simple Syndication, your blog may be doomed to fail. RSS feeds work by aggregating the information and outlay it to the customer. The customer will need to have a web browser or special software that can read RSS feeds. Most any information is fed into an RSS feed. The good thing about using a web blog with a RSS Feed is that often your information gets to the news media. A well-written blog with timely advice and resources lends you as creditable in your business area. Be prepared, you could have a reporter knocking at your door.
Another area in which you can spice up your website is with the use of PHP coding. One of the drawbacks to using an RSS feed is that because it is a dynamic page – the spiders will not catch it quick. For example, if it has to wait too long to index it with the code intact, it will just move on. There are things you can do to work with the PHP language, and it will benefit you to learn how to do it. At least with the PHP, you can make your pages on the site look like HTML files. Do not forget to use the idea of text links too. Links to other great sites is a new advertising trend you can use for more website exposure. With SEO, Search Engine Optimization, companies use text link marketing to get their site into the higher rankings. You can use auctions where you bid only on what you think you need, or through a brokerage, you can buy and sell text links. Just like with banners you can change exchange links too.
Bookmark technology and ways to use them has come a long way. Most agree that getting someone to bookmark your site will lead to future sales. People rarely ask for a customer bookmark their site though. There are software programs that you can use to make book marking a snap. All you have to do is to provide a link and your customers can bookmark easily. Some Java script software will automatically bookmark your site for your customer. There is a small fee involved for you. A simple “Please bookmark this site” button is often enough to get the customer to bookmark. Certain software will also add a special icon when the customer saves the site. This makes it easy to standout from the other bookmarked sites. Pop-ups help you to get your customer to bookmark too. New ingenuous software will remind your customer to bookmark as they are leaving, and even to bookmark with their permission.
The Internet is a dynamic marketing experience. In addition, the better you are at implementing its new marketing tools – the more profits you will make. So learn all you can about these five tips on new marketing trends and go grab some lifetime customers.
Evaluate Your Website Risk for Becoming Obsolete
Small business owners satisfied with the look of their commercial website may be in for a surprise, soon. Some designers have ignored advice from the Worldwide Web Consortium, W3C, the international authority establishing standards for code to create web sites. There are new reasons to reconsider the W3C recommendations.
Browser companies choose what they will support within the W3C standards, and most try to fully comply. Your pages may continue looking okay for years to come because most browsers will support your code no matter what W3C recommends. The impact on search engines may be the real issue, however, and could be more serious in 2 years, or less.
What’s expected to happen? The search engine wars are a constant battle of changing the math algorithms to list search results. Too often the results are loaded up front with nonsensical or unrelated sites because of creative designers who get high ranking with remotely related sites, plus a ton of phone directory lists, or other paid listings near the top. The value to the person using the search engine is diminished, and this trend has not been overlooked by the major search engines. They each want to be the best.
Top search engine optimization experts are predicting that the methods used for listings must and will become friendlier to the real customer, the person searching. Some are suggesting that part of this improvement includes placing higher value for ranking on sites with valid code. Site owners enjoying Google page 1 listing, may very soon find their home page back 100 pages or worse if they do not have zero or near zero code errors. This is especially important for commercial sites designed more than 5 years ago.
When you consider most web designs may never become obsolete because browser companies have too much to lose not supporting older code, why the big fuss?
W3C has other recommendations some designers choose to ignore including XHTML which is a code standard designed for the future, so issues other than favorable placement in search engines need to be considered. There are advantages in XHTML that will sound like a foreign language to the average small business entrepreneur at first. An overview follows.
Having a design for the future means that not only will your pages display properly on devices in use today, each will still look great 10 years from now on new computing devices yet to be invented. Most sites that use HTML and tables for the layout include code errors as a result of changes in code standards over the last few years.
Tables are still a valid technique for true tables of information, however, the code may continue to deteriorate as more tags become obsolete thus increasing the number of errors on a site. Like many web sites done in HTML, redesign may be necessary sooner than expected. Will your web site still look okay 10 years from now? Probably, however, the importance of designing without tables for layout plus zero or near zero code errors is gaining in significance for reasons beyond favorable search engine ranking.
Next, there is an emerging issue that is being ignored by the majority of web site designers, and that is accessibility. In short, equipment exists today that allow people with disabilities to browse the internet with devices specially designed to improve their experience. Voice synthesizers now read content in a choice of voices, and XHTML design techniques allow for this easily. These special devices depend on reading the hidden code used to create each page, and using tables or obsolete tags will mean defects or garbled output as the special reader sorts through the various extra code from the tables. Blind people have devices that print Braille dots on an output device so they can read page content, also. These accessibility issues are solved with a forward looking design using XHTML, yet there’s more.
Handheld devices like iPods and cell phones are another aspect of accessibility that may cause problems for some web site owners. As these methods of surfing the internet gain in popularity, proper display of web sites on these devices may be an issue. The forward looking design assures that pages will display well on the widest range of devices, current and future, thus giving the site owner a broader audience rather than lost opportunity because their pages were not accessible.
There are more benefits to XHTML with CSS, including fewer lines of code to create the same effect as done in HTML with tables. This means pages will load faster, and the real page content is easier to index by search engines because it’s not surrounded by excess code using tables. By comparison on a recent project, the old home page used over 500 lines of code. The revised version utilizes just 170 lines to display nearly identical content.
W3C, the Worldwide Web Consortium, the international body for establishing code standards for web design, strongly recommends that designers adopt XHTML with CSS and avoid tables for layout entirely. It takes less than a minute to check the code on your web site. Search in Google using the quotation marks for “The W3C Markup Validation Service”, and then follow the link to W3C to check your web site for free with instant results.
In conclusion, the future is now when it comes to new computing devices used to browse the internet. Shifts in search engine strategy could be equally important. Plan now and avoid losing sleep worrying about your web site becoming obsolete. As a final tip, it makes sense to have a site review every 2 years with your web site designer to discuss advantages of emerging strategies.
Domain Registration For Great Search Engine Ranking
A solid keyword domain name is the key to establish a strong presence and making the resources of the Internet more reachable. With a great name, it’s always easy to reach new and existing clients. Therefore, a number of companies are ready to spend a large amount of money to get hold of and promote a good keyword rich domain name.
Choosing a keyword domain name can be vital to the success of a website. In order to take advantage of search engine traffic, people choose keyword domain. By selecting a domain that is equivalent to a keyword search, websites are able to rank higher for targeted keywords and thus benefit from added traffic and more potential clients. Whether to opt for a brandable domain or a keyword domain is a choice one must make in accordance with their business plan.
Follow these simple rules to maximize the benefit of a keyword domain, accomplish success in directory submissions, and enhance site keyword density:
Structuring
Order the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) in such a manner that more vital keywords are listed before those that are less important. For example, if he target keyword is “money” then money-online.com would be more effectual than online-money.com.
Length
1. A majority of studies confirms that a number of people use two words or more in a search; as a result phrases are very useful.
2. Always stick to two-three keywords, with hyphens in between.
3. A lengthy, complex URL is more likely to be rejected by directory editors’ sites from which one would like to receive links.
Correct English and Must Make Sense
1. In order to execute directory submissions and link popularity campaigns, the URL should be grammatically correct.
2. When examined by an editor, “money-online-white.com” might sound like a less-reliable resource while “white-money-online.com” sounds more justifiable and is less likely to be questioned.
Put together “power words”
In order to create a distinctive domain name that is still available, one way is to add another less important word to the mix. A few examples include: now, top, just, goto, pro, guide, online and find etc.
Avoid using most popular keyword phrases
There is intense competition for keywords in the marketplace, so stay away from the most popular keyword phrases. It is impractical to think that a new website could rank number one on a popular phrase like “Shop Online”. A number of well-known companies who have been on the Internet for a few years will have the big advantage of link popularity and click popularity.
Try to register a .com domain
Always use “.com”. In case it is a business website, avoid using domains ending with “ru” or “org”. At once, one can consider registering a “.net” domain, but as most people are familiar with “.com”, it is better to stick to convention.
In addition to the above, an understanding of the domain name system (DNS) is also vital while choosing a domain name. The DNS is set up to make regular words map to IP (Internet Protocol) addresses. In order to connect all computers on the Internet, an IP address is used by networks. A domain name can be up to sixty-three characters, comprising of letters, numbers, or the dash symbol. For example, in the world of computer networking, the web address fishing.com becomes the IP address 124.133.1.1. However, it’s the domain name that people around the world use when looking for Web sites or sending an e-mail.
Finally, it is very important to choose a keyword phrase very carefully. This can be considered as one of the most critical decisions one will make regarding the success or failure of a website. One must identify the exact phrase that searchers will use to find a website. The more targeted the campaign is, the more increase in sales will be achieved.
Does Your Website Need Some CAPTCHA?
Many Business website owners have faced this problem: They want to provide a function on their site for visitor’s to send feedback to them without opening the floodgates to spammers.
Posting your email address on your website is generally an invitation for spam. Automated programs better known as “bots” will eventually scan your website and parse out your email address from the rest of the source code and use it for purposes other than what you intended.
There are various tricks and techniques to “cloak” your email address so that these bots do not easily find it. One method I’ve used is to include Javascript in my webpage that pieces together the email address when the page is displayed to the user. With this method there is not a valid email address in the page source itself. It seems to work fairly well, but some “junk mail” does still make it thru.
Another technique is to not post your email address at all on your website, but rather provide a “Feedback” or “Guestbook” type form where visitors can enter comments and then submit using the website form. This keeps the email address off the website completely by making use of a server side script which is activated when the visitor submits the form. Generally this script then formats an email message and sends it to the website owner using an email program on the server itself. The actual email address is encoded in the script or a database and is not available to outside visitors.
These feedback type forms help, but it is still possible to automate the entry of these forms, with the resulting “spam” being received. It does raise the bar, so to speak, in making it more difficult to automate but not impossible.
A better option to use along with these website forms is CAPTCHA. You’ve probably seen this in use on large websites with user signup pages. Before submitting the form, the user is required to read some distorted letters on the screen and enter them as verification. The idea is that the distorted letters or characters cannot be interpreted by computer programs so that the web form being submitted is automatically validated as originating from a human being rather than some automated program.
CAPTCHA is actually an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. The term is trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University and was started in 2000, so it’s not been around too long. In reality a CAPTCHA is a program that can generate and grade different kinds of tests that most humans can pass, but computer programs can not pass. The most common one known is the distorted letters and numbers test. A CAPTCHA must be fully automated without any user intervention, which makes it a reasonable option for website owners.
Adding a CAPTCHA program to your site helps provide a reliable method to validate that the information being submitted is from a real, live human and not from some automated program. The use of CAPTCHA is becoming more widespread and is not just on the major websites any longer. A lot of site integration examples can be found in the common website programming languages.
Some good resources to get started with CAPTCHA can be found at:
- http://www.captcha.net/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha
Designing A Personal Webpage
Creating your own personal space on the Internet can be a great deal of fun. At the same time it can be rather difficult if you choose to create a really elaborate space. Constructing a visually rich webpage with intensive graphics and a multiplicity of options can be very time consuming and require a lot of work. Generating such a webpage will also require you to have a fair bit of knowledge about computers. If on the other hand your webpage has more of a no frills, textual feel to it then it is likely that the process of producing your webpage will take significantly less time and be much simpler to build.
Taking advantage of web hosting services, which vary from provider to provider, can allow you to create a very clean and professional looking webpage with very little difficulty. When generating your webpage with the aid of a web hosting service provider you must consider the function of your space. If you wish to present a website that is rather simplistic and requires very little actual space, then you should perhaps choose a provider offering an inexpensive package with few options. If you plan on expanding your site in the future, then perhaps you should consider a more capable package. Regardless of your needs you will certainly be able to find a provider that caters directly to them.
The cost of maintaining your own personal domain must be a consideration. If you wish to present a very sophisticated website you may need to wait until you are capable of paying for such a design and you will likely have to settle for a much more straightforward webpage. Taking the time to find an appropriate provider for you is likely to result in you uncovering an inexpensive provider that offers a wealth of benefits and services.
Creating A Website Winner
Like many people, you may have been dreaming of the day when you can start your very own online business. You’ve got a great idea waiting to explode, and you know that it’s going to be a winner. The vision is there, as are the enthusiasm and skills. Now there’s just one more thing you need before you can make that dream a reality, and that’s a website–your public face to the world.
Building a website can be an exciting experience. However, when it comes to creating a business website, it is very important to look before you leap. Here are a few things to consider before launching your online presence:
1. COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY
When creating your business website, the most important thing to consider is exactly what it is you want your potential customers to know. Before the first page is prepared, you need to clearly outline the purpose of your business, then communicate that information via your website.
Over the years, I’ve visited countless websites that provide virtually no content at all. When it comes to a business website, lack of information is disastrous.
Imagine for a moment that you need a new pair of shoes. Checking the telephone directory, you find a listing for a shoe shop at the local mall. Eager to find the perfect stilettos, you hotfoot straight over.
Arriving at the store, you are surprised to find that there is no stock on display, no information about what is available, no sales assistant to answer queries, and nothing to indicate how much a pair of shoes is going to cost.
Without a backward glance, you turn on your heels and walk out the door, knowing all too well that there will always be another shoe shop just around the corner.
A scene like this is too ridiculous to believe, right? Yet, it happens thousands of times every single day. Not at the mall, but in the ever growing cyber-marketplace.
If you have a product or service to sell online, then you need to present it in a way that is both informative and enticing. Your homepage, in particular, must communicate your message clearly and grab your visitor’s attention. If it doesn’t, they will click off the page faster than you can say, “Lost opportunity.”
If you lack the confidence to write your own customer-attracting text, it may be worth hiring a writer to prepare it for you. It could make all the difference.
2. POLISHED TO PERFECTION
We’ve all heard that “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” but the reality is that we all do–and the same is true for a business website.
When it comes to a personal website, almost anything goes. However, the same freedom does not apply when it comes to business, where the website should be a polished and professional representation of the business or service, while still reflecting the personality of the owner. Many fail to grasp the importance of that first impression. As an online business owner, you will literally only have seconds to capture a potential customer’s interest.
If your site is sloppy, slow to load, and generally looks like it was built by your grade school child, it is a fairly safe assumption that you will never develop the successful online enterprise of your dreams.
Today, with the availability of online site builders, there is no reason for anyone to have a site that looks unprofessional. Even without any knowledge of programming or HTML, site builders make it easy to create an online business presence that is polished to perfection. It’s as simple as selecting a template and typing in your text. Before you know it, you’ll have a website that says to the world, “I’m ready and more than able to serve you.”
3. THIS LITTLE BUSINESS WENT TO MARKET
It’s amazing how many people go blissfully into business with the notion that they only have to open the door, and the customers will come running. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a common denominator found in the majority of unsuccessful online businesses, and that is a lack of marketing.
No matter how brilliant your website may be, or how clever your product or service, success will be very slow in coming if you don’t take steps to get the word out to the marketplace.
People often tell me that they are disappointed because their new website is not generating any sales. The first thing I ask them is whether they have done any marketing. More often than not, their response is that they haven’t really done anything at all.
Building a successful online business takes time and effort. It can take many months, if not years, for a business to develop a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness. However, once gained, that reputation is more precious than gold. Unfortunately, most business owners give up before they ever reach that point.
When promoting your business, the first step is to make sure that your website is optimized for search engines. To do this, ensure that your website meta-tags include the most important keywords pertaining to your business. Keywords should also be included in the title tag.
Once you’ve done this, and your website is completely ready to be seen by the public, submit your site to the search engines. To do this, you can use the FREE service provided at the following site:
http://www.submitexpress.com
Another excellent site is selfpromotion.com. Here you can gain valuable information on how to market your business. They will even submit your site to search engines if you make a donation to their service:
http://selfpromotion.com
Having your site listed with search engines is essential. However, to get traffic quickly you will need to use a Pay Per Click service, such as Google Adwords and Overture.com (Yahoo search marketing).
Decide on the keywords and phrases that most people would use if they were looking for your service. Then start bidding for those words, making sure that you ONLY nominate the lowest amount available. Google and Overture will suggest a figure, but DO NOT bid that amount. Start small and see how much traffic you can generate. Once you see results and your business begins to grow, gradually increase your bids, if necessary.
When preparing your website and promoting your business, it is very important to remember that every penny and second spent improving your online presence, is an investment in your future.
Ultimately, there are two types of online businesses–those that are website failures, and those that are website winners. Get things right at the start, and your dream business will never become a nightmare.
