Website Promotion

A complete internet marketing campaign involves many interrelated items. To begin, your web site has to be ready for the search engines to find it. That involves Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is basically constructing your web pages in a way that makes it very clear what the page is about, and makes it easy for the search engines to understand and agree (which results in higher placement on the search engine results pages SERPs).

SEO begins with analying your market and determing the best keywords for your web site. In addition, it involves an analysis of your competition - what they are doing in terms of SEO, how they are positioned in the SERPs, what types of incoming links they have, and how well their strategy is working. Obviously, we don't copy their strategy, but the business who doesn't analysis it's competition is often passed by the competition.

SEO can be broken down into initial analysis and optimization and ongoing analysis, reporting and adjustments to the optimization. Analysis includes finding the best keywords for your market and constructing each web page to use those keywords without going too far (attempting to SPAM the search engines). We never use any type of strategy that would be considered 'black hat' SEO. We're not trying to beat the search engines, we are simply trying to position your site where it belongs - at the top of the SERPs for your chosen keywords.

Once the keywords are chosen, they are used on each page in the following ways:

• Title tags
• Meta tags
• Description tags
• H1 or header tags
• Throughout the content of the page
• In cross links through out the site
• Alt tags
• If possible, in the navigation system of the site itself.

After this is done, we create a baseline report of your current rankings for our chosen keywords. These reports are posted online for you to view at any time.

Next, we need to get the search engines to find you. Because a large percentage of visitors use the top 3 search engines (MSN, YAHOO, GOOGLE), our emphasis lies on those engines. Your site will be submitted to those 3 search engines and monitored to determine when the search engines spider you. Typically, MSN and YAHOO will spider the site quite readily, with GOOGLE often 'sandboxing' the domain to be spidered later. The DMOZ directory has been around for quite some time and used to provide the results for many search engines. As things change, it isn't as effective as it was, however, it is still a very useful directory to be a part of. We hope to see results within a month.

Other means of internet marketing include:

Pay per click campaigns (PPC): The two major networks involved in PPC are GOOGLE and Overture/YAHOO Search Marketing. This works exactly like it sounds - you PAY to be at the top of the search engine results pages BY THE CLICK. How much you are willing to pay, along with how much the current keyword costs determine how high up on the paid or sponsored results you will place. For example, the term SEARCH ENGINE might cost $5.00 per click. You can decide to pay the $5.00 per click and be the first result, or you can pay less and be further down in the results. PPC Campaigns are very effective at getting the word out about your site.

Directories/Links: There are paid inclusion directories, as well as free directories. Some are rather inexpensive and others are very expensive. Being listed in relevant directories is very important in establishing relevant backlinks, one of the keys to the GOOGLE SERPs. In other words, linking any old place simply doesn't work anymore. Taking the time to research relevant directories and other link opportunities will pay off in creating the type of backlink network that will indicate to GOOGLE that your site is highly relevant and will place high in the SERPs.

Forums/BLOGS: Another very useful source of backlinks, if they are relevant. For example, if you post a topic on a BLOG that is related to your market, then it's highly relevant. If your post is about WIDGETS, when your site does not specialize in WIDGETS, it's not relevant and typically, useless. Good items to post to forums and blogs are short articles about a topic of interest to your visitors. Included with the article is a short bio about your company, along with a link with keyword laden anchor text. For example, if you're choosing the keyword SEARCH ENGINE, your link may be:

This is a very simple example but shows basically the strategy that is employed. Typically, with large scale internet marketing campaigns, we will create 2 - 3 bio 'signatures' to use for article/forum/blog placement.

Email marketing: Typically, a web site should have an easy to see, quick sign up form for people who choose not to stay on your site at the current time. This allows you to collect the lead (email, name, possibly phone number), and send that person a follow up email at a later time. This keeps your business in their mind, even if they don't visit again right away. Also, it allows you to send out information about specials, rebates and other offers that will continue to keep your business in their mind, and possibly result in a download or a sale, or at least, a repeat visit.

Podcasts: These are really gaining strength on the internet and based on news garnered from the recent GOOGLE Jagger update, audio and video are now spiderable and searchable. This makes Podcasts an even more vaulable marketing tools. Podcasts are audio or video files that are downloadable to an Ipod or other similar device. Recently, popular TV shows have become available for Ipod viewing, making Podcasting even more mainstream. We are predicting that video Podcasts will become even more prominent in 2006, and should be considered in an overall marketing plan. The software used for video Podcasting has come a long way and is now both affordable and easier to use. Even audio Podcasts are extremely easy to produce and again, should be viewed as a piece in the overall marketing puzzle.