Ways to Market your Website
Will my website appear on the search engines as soon as it goes live on the internet?
Many people want to have a website and to be found on the search engines as soon as possible. I remember when I build my first website, I was under the impression that if I build it, they will come. Unfortunately, it does work that way.
What is a website?
I'll keep to the shorter explanation.
A website is anything you want it to be. But for most of my clients, who are mostly small to medium businesses, it is mainly a marketing tool.
Compare it to a brochure, a catalogue or a prospectus. You hire a copywriter, a photographer and a graphic designer to put everything together for the brochure. When you are happy with their work, it's of to the printer. As soon as it's back from the press, you send it out to existing and potential clients.
This is one way that most businesses do their marketing.
A website is the online brochure. As with printed marketing material, you need the same expertise to get your website up to speed. A advertisement writer (copywriter), photographer and graphic designer. These fields of expertise are embedded into any website.
To conclude – once you have a website up and running, you still need to send potential and existing clients to you website, just as with a brochure. To make your website work for you, you have to market it.
Why is a website in most cases more effective than printed marketing material?
Budget plays a big role with printed marketing material. The writing and design of the material cost money, the amount of copies that you print influence the price, and the cost of distribution plays a role. I once distributed flyers. Paying the helpers at the street corners took up a huge amount of my marketing budget. At the same time, I also distributed the flyers via the post office (when it was still allowed). Printing the flyer and placing it in a postbox cost me exactly the same (8c per flyer).
The other setback, is that printed material is static. As soon a there is a new product or a price increase, the paper is only good for recycling.
A website is dynamic, and can be update on the drop of a penny. This give you as the business owner complete control over your marketing efforts. New products? No problem – you can have it live as quick as you can type the advertisement. New prices? No problem – set it up that the new pages will start showing on the day of the increase and the old page will stop showing.
With a website, you also save on printing costs. Depending on the web development company you hire, you basically only pays for the graphic design, the copywriting and the photography. Some companies offer all three these services, other offer only one. What you'll typically find out there is that most web developers are graphic designers.
The down side of the industry, is that very little web developers are also online marketers. Just like the printer who don't help you to distribute your brochures, most web developers don't have the expertise to help you market your website.
When looking for advice about online marketing, rather ask a online marketing consultant, than a web designer or a graphic designer.
Marketing of your website.
There are two places where you can market you website – online and offline. OK, let's back up one step, the purpose is to market your business, that is what you want to achieve. Let's back up more, and get the the core purpose, which is to attract new clients and keep your clients at a profit.
Now do the calculations. Don't just jump on the bandwagon to get a website, because everyone has a website. Do the sums – would this investment in a website bring you new clients? More importantly, can you do it at profit? This is up to you.
Offline marketing of your website.
It's good not to stop whatever marketing you are doing right now, continue with it. Just add one twist to it. On every flyer, in every radio advertisement, on every poster – add your web address. Everything that you cannot say on the little A5 flyer, you can say on your website. It is good to encourage your potential customers to visit your website to get all the benefits that you can give them.
Writing articles for mainstream publications, is one very good way to establish yourself as an expert, as well as to become known amongst your target market. Most of the time, larger companies also use public relations officers to get their press releases out. Both these are aimed at the mainstream publications.
Online marketing of your website.
This article started out by asking the question if having a website will bring new clients to you. The shortest answer is no, not unless you send them there.
Online marketing, is still marketing. The only reason why online marketing can exist and does work, is because large numbers of people use the internet and email.
There are two types of online marketing. This is paid marketing and free marketing.
Buying a advertisement from Google, Facebook or Yahoo is a good way to spend some of your marketing budget. People use these websites extensively. Buying advertisement space from the plumber who rarely have people on his website is very ineffective.
This is about the only places where it pays to buy advertisement space on the internet.
Free online marketing can be a misleading term. Sometimes it's not free, but rather cost a lot of money. The reason why it is called free, is because it's simple enough that you can do it yourself. The reason why it can cost a lot of money, is because it takes a huge amount of time and effort to do it. Therefore it's easier and faster to pay someone else to do it on your behalves.
Again, do the sums. If you are earning R500/hour, and you spend two hours a day working on your online marketing, you just lost R1000 per day.
If a online marketing consultant charges R650 per hour, it seems ridiculous. This guy is earning more than you, so your better off doing it yourself, right? If he works 2 hours on your marketing campaign, you're R1300 out of the pocket.
Here's the catch. When you do what you do best, it will take you a lot less time compared to someone who do exactly the same work, but for the very first time.
The online marketing consultant may charge more, but he'll most likely get the same amount of work done, in less time than what you can do it yourself. I bet you that the online marketing consultant can do his own books and fill out his own tax return, but an experienced accountant will do the same work, much quicker.
Free online marketing is centred around search engine marketing and social media marketing. Sometimes affiliate marketing is also regarded as free marketing.
Search engine marketing, or search engine optimisation is the most popular form of free online marketing. It boils down to become better that every other website about your subject. The search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, use various ways to compare websites to each other. In the end, they only want to give the searcher the best matching websites to his search.
Recently I did a little research about renewable energy and generating my own electricity. The type of websites that I was looking for, was those that gave me advice, tips and manuals to build my out renewable energy generating system.
What I didn't want was websites that want to sell solar panels or solar geysers to me.
The search engines know that people are searching for information first, and secondly for products. That is why Google and the other like informational websites better.
The bottom line is that if you want to rank well on Google, you need a large informational website.
The second important factor Google is looking for, is the popularity of any website. When people talks about your website on Facebook and their own websites and blogs, then Google picks it up. This add to your popularity with Google. The more websites that link to your website, the better for your Google rankings.
Here is the work involved:
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Find out what information your target market are looking for. Get the specific keywords.
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Write a lot of articles, using these keywords. Don't use it to often, Google may regard it as spam, don't use it not enough that Google won't know what the article is about. The keyword should be about 3% of your article's content.
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Ask many other website owners to place your website's link on their webpages.
There you are, it is that easy. But as you can imagine, it is a lot of work.
I want my clients to keep control over their websites and their marketing effort. To be frank, I'm passionate about my own business, not theirs. I love to write about my own business, and how it can help other people. Unfortunately, I'll never be as passionate about someone else's business as the owner. If I were, then I would have been in that business.
As the owner of your business, make it your mission to constantly find out what your clients want, what information are they looking for, but cannot find any where. Then give it to them. Write about it. You have that passion to find out what your clients want. The more you give your clients what they are looking for, the more you give Google what it is looking for, which is valuable information.
Information is king when it comes to free online marketing, relevant information.