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Four Powerful Ways to Keep Your Customers Informed

12 2007 Monday

By Scott Oliver in Website Promotion

These days, it’s hard to walk down the street without seeing some sort of news headline or hearing about the latest story. With instant messaging, internet on our phones, and simply talking to our friends, we are constantly bombarded with the latest updates. However, when it comes to your website, you need to act in the same way. Though you might not be able to report on anything catastrophic on your website, in order to be memorable, you do need to start looking at ways to keep your customers informed.

Mailing Lists Do Work

Though many websites have eschewed the use of mailing lists to inform their customers, when done right, these are highly effective reminders for customers. The key to doing these mailing lists well is to get the mailing lists on your own - don’t buy them from marketing groups. While it’s true you will get longer lists from the marketing groups, you might also be getting a lot of negative feedback from people who didn’t want to receive your information in the first place.

On your website, create a way for interested visitors to sign up for a weekly email from you. All they should need to do is to give you their email address and their first name and they can find out what’s new with your site each week. This email shouldn’t be a sales letter, but more of a note about what’s going on and what people might want to stop by your site to see.

eZines are Still Going Out to Customers

To extend on the idea of a mass email list, you might want to look into making a magazine for your mailing list, or an ezine. This piece of information should be longer than your weekly email, but it should also contain some sales language about things that are coming up for your business.

This is the perfect way for you to update and inform your visitors about your market, while also showing that you are knowledgeable about your chosen business. Try talking about new findings in your market, for example, if you are selling nutritional products. Think about ways to give your site visitors something that they might not have learned on their own.

Daily Blogging is a Fun Avenue

Of course, if your business is a little less formal, you might want to opt for a business blog. This can be from the point of view of yourself or perhaps a fictional worker in your company. By simply talking about the latest news and what it means for the site visitor, you can create a modern dialogue that allows you to show your casual side, while still being informative.

You can also talk about loyal customers or about new innovations to products that are in the works.

Try Sending Out a Press Release

If all else fails, the press release is still the best way to rest the maximum amount of potential visitors that want to see your site. However, since these releases are generally send to a larger audience, it’s harder to target the customers you really want to target. If you can, you might want to try to submit the press release to publications that your target audience will be looking at as well as posting it on your website to help spread the word about a new product or service.

When it comes to informing your customers, you need to make sure you explore as many possibilities for doing this as possible. While you don’t want to be the only thing on your customer’s mind, you do want to be one fo the top ten.

Author: Scott Oliver offers free video coaching to help you build a profitable home business FAST. Get an hour of “Website Traffic Secrets” and “Minisite Creation Tactics” for FREE — immediate access here: http://www.InstantWebsiteBusiness.com

The Ten Most Effective Ways To Promote Your Website

12 2007 Friday

By Matthew Gio in Website Promotion

In a nut shell, this is what I’ve found that will help promote your website. These methods are very effective. Keep this blog post as a reference and make sure you are doing all these things. Ok here it goes:

1. Adwords (or any search engine ads at all)

Of course we all know that Google is the top dog but there are many other decent search engines that will get you the same good traffic. For $40 bucks a day I get over 100 unique hits on my website. Every little bit helps

2. Blogging

Even if hate to write, just post relevant information regarding your site just make sure you give credit to who wrote your blog post. Oh and link on your blog post like crazy. I didn’t believe in this method at first but trust me I have learned the ways of the blog.

3. Mailing List

This is a tough area. Its like you need money to make money. But in this case you need email addresses to send emails. Do your best in trying to provoke your customers into signing up for your mailing list. Offer something for free (not a free newsletter) something legit. This will help you by encouraging repeat visits. Its better to keep the same visitor than trying to get new ones, plus it’s easier. Oh and it’s good for word of mouth (which is still the best way to advertise)

4. List, Register & Sign Up!

Spend at least one whole day signing up for every freaking search engine, directory and relevant search site you can. The more you name and website are out on the internet, the better you are ranked by the search engines

5. Links

Ok this is tricky, yes you want your link on as many websites as you can but even better than that is getting your website linked on a website that is really big. If you are officially linked to a big website that will look very good to search engines. Think of your link as a vote to get you to the top of the search engine. And think of a big website and your link like a campaign contribution. That’s right, get the big guys behind you and they’ll help you climb your way to the top. It’s all about who you know.

6. SEO

If you don’t know what this is, then learn. SEO (Search Engine optimization) is very important. The whole point to internet marketing is to get to the top or as high as you can on search engines. They are the number one way people find things on the internet. So in order to help your chances make sure you website is riddled with good keywords, relevant ones. If you are having a hard time with this, follow this logic: If you are online and you wanted to find a website like yours, what would you do? What would you type into a search engine. Ask yourself that question and then ask that question to everybody you know. That way you get a better understanding on what people are searching for.

Also add meta tags like keywords, descriptions and alt tags to all your pages. You can do this all at the end if you want.

7. The No Brainer

Just make sure your site looks good. If you have a crappy looking website then chances are no one will want to stay. For instance if you never cleaned your house do you think new guest will want to sleep over. Nope. And if you suck at making a website look awesome enlist a professional or someone with a clue to help.

8. The Little Things

Do these little things to your site: Add a “Tell A Friend About This Site” Button (For word of mouth, the best marketing), Add a “Bookmark Us” button to your site, give away free stuff, lure customers with contests, make jokes, get an RSS Feed (if you don’t know what that is, then learn, if you are a website designer then you should already know), put some fun things to do on your site to get people to stay. Case in point: Your having guest over for coffee but your TV is broke, all your board games are missing and you just recently started not talking to anyone, your guest will want to leave because it’s boring and it sucks.

9. Get On Myspace or Facebook

If your website is looking for a younger audience then get on anyone of these site and make friends will as many people as you can. Spend hours a day doing this. Make sure your page is chock full of ways to get to your site. This will boost traffic like nobody’s business.

10. Last But Not Least

Be consistent. If you want to have a high traffic website ,then you need to dedicate yourself to the cause. You need to be on the internet doing these things every single day. It’s just like exercising or dieting, if you don’t stick to it everyday, you will fail. But I have faith in you, do as the Romans do.

Author: Matthew Giovanisci - Marketing Director For Niagara Pools & Spas http://www.niagarapool.com

Improve Your Link Popularity With Website Promotion

12 2007 Thursday

By Bruce Swedal in Website Promotion

So you finally started your website. You have updated it with some high quality, unique and relevant content to make your visitors stick around so now what? Now all you have to do is get those visitors to come. So let them know about your website by building links that point towards your website and gain some link popularity.

There are a couple different kinds of links you will be interested in. The first is one-way links and the second is reciprocal links.

One-way linking generally happens for websites that have a lot of quality and unique content on site and these are the type of links that search engines give more weight to. A good technique to build that content is to post relevant articles and information on your site that visitors will want to read.

You can also visit forums related to your niche. Become known there by offering and asking for advice. Make sure that anything you post is related to the topics being discussed. If you post off topic items just for the sake of advertisement you will likely earn a bad reputation there and have your posts deleted. Offer value in your posts and you will gain a good reputation and get free exposure for your website.

Online quality directories are a great source of one way relevant links for your site. Keep your submissions confined to those directories of high quality. Typically there is a review fee associated with being listed there. Yahoo directory has a good impact for the link, but charges $299 annually. Another excellent option for a significantly smaller fee is the Authority Directory.

There are many free directories on the internet also, but the quality of the link you get from free directories is typically not that good. For example the link from one quality directory typically will equal hundreds to thousands of free directory submissions.

Article publishing is another option. You can write and publish unique articles related to your niche with a link back to your website. This is not a one and done option though. If you are pursuing this you must consistently write and publish articles for it to be effective.

Blogging can also be a way of building links to your site. By creating a separate blog and linking to your directory from within the posts you can create a few relevant links to your site.

Using reciprocal linking is another method of building relevant links to your website. To effectively do this you must find other websites within your niche and request link exchanges with the webmasters there. One thing to note is that the search engines have begun to discount the value of reciprocal linking.

Don’t discount link popularity. It is a very important part of building a website that is optimized for search engines. Just know that link building is not a one and done proposition. You must consistently build links over time for it to be effective for the long term. As your links increase so shall your search engine rankings and then your traffic.

Author: Increase your Websites online presence today by getting listed on The Authority Business Directory. Plus, don’t forget to submit link for inclusion while you are visiting.

Growing Your Online Business in Three Easy Steps

12 2007 Tuesday

By Scott Oliver in Website Promotion

Getting your website up and running is an exciting thing at first. You get a lot of people coming to visit your site, they’re buying things and you seem to be doing pretty well. But after a time, the initial excitement wears off and you begin to ask yourself, “Is this all there is?” Before you get to that point, you need to learn the three basic steps to take in order to grow an online business and stay relevant in the ever changing virtual marketplace. Thankfully, most of this information is common sense, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn a thing or two (or three).

Get People to Come to Visit

Your main concern in the beginning year or so of your website is getting people to come to your website. You can do this by employing a number of basic tactics:

1. Learn about search engines - When you begin to learn what search engines are looking for in a site in order to rank it higher, you will begin to get more hits on your site.

2. Tell everyone you know about the site - Put your website address on everything that you can in order to get people coming to your site.

3. Link with other related sites - If your friend has a website, link with them or link with others in the same market as you to increase your website traffic.

4. Make your site exciting - By offering new and fun things on your website, you will encourage new traffic on your site every day.

5. Advertise your site on other sites - By heading to video share sites and posting a video of what you do on your site, you might just drive new traffic to your web page.

Keep Them There

Once you have visitors coming to your website, it’s your job to keep them there and to keep them coming back. There are several ways to do this:

1. Change your content, but not your layout - When you keep things in places where people can easily find them, you will allow the loyal web surfers the ability to easily browse from page to page to find what they way.

2. Introduce new features on your site that are easy to use - Add a video blog or perhaps a few animations that are easy to load up and that change regularly.

3. Include ‘teasers’ on your site - Make mention of things that are coming up on your site (and on the website only) in the coming days. This will keep people coming back to see what’s new and exciting.

4. Offer discounts - By helping loyal customers and visitors buy merchandise with discounts, you are going to keep them coming back and looking for more to buy.

5. Make sure your web hosting is top notch - When your site is always available, no matter what the web traffic is, you will keep people coming back. If you ever have any server problems, fix them immediately and then apologize to those that may have been affected.

Find Ways to Branch Out

You can’t stay exactly the same when you’re trying to compete in the ever-changing world of the internet. You need to find new ways to add to your current business so that you’re always interesting to your customers. Try looking for suggestions from your customers in your comments sections of your site to see what else they might want to buy that would complement or add to their buying experience with you. For example, if you sell sailboats, maybe you can begin to offer instructional videos for sailing so that they can enhance their skills.

10 Useful Tips To Attract People To Your Web Site

09 2007 Wednesday

By Steven Collins in Website Promotion

Combinations of two or more of the tips below are being used by many successful sites today. Use your imagination and see what you can do with them. Because there are so many web sites on the internet today visitors are spread quite thinly and web traffic is one of the scarcest commodities on the internet today. Without it your online business does not exist.

1. Give people a free subscription to your newsletter. Almost everyone is publishing a newsletter nowadays so it is important to give something extra with the free subscription. You need to set yourself apart from the other internet marketers out there. This might be done by offering a gift or free advertising when people subscribe.

2. Provide visitors with new and original content. Your content will be more attractive to your visitors if it is up-to-date or original. You could also offer people the option to reprint the content in their newsletter or web site. You will need to change your content frequently if you do this. But the benefits are worth the effort. The search engines will love your site and keep coming back. Your site will rank highly in their results and your visitors will keep coming back for the latest updates.

3. Use PPC directories. You can advertise in pay per click directories. With PPC you only pay when some one clicks on your link. If no one clicks you pay nothing. This method is very good if you are selling a product at your site. It is easy to assess the cost of each sale and measure you success.

There are lots of PPC sites out there now. Google and Yahoo! are not the only ones. You can often get a better deal at these other sites depending on the competition for the keyword you are using. Shop around. There is probably a site out there with your keyword going cheap. But, Make sure that it can deliver the traffic. You can do this by checking its Alexa rank. If it is not getting much traffic itself, how is it going to direct traffic to you?

4. Give visitors a free ebook. You could write your own and include an ad in the ebook linking to your site and allow other people to sell it or give it away. If you don’t want to take the time to write one, you could ask other writers permission to use their articles and assemble an article eBook. Or commission an eBook. There are plenty of writers around willing to write a fresh eBook for you at a fair price.

5. Hold free online classes or seminars. They could be held in your web site’s chat room. The idea of “live” information will entice people to visit your web site. You will become known as an expert on the topic.

6. Offer free consulting to your web site visitors. You could do this via e-mail or by telephone. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive. Use a separate business line if you use the phone or you will have calls coming in to your home phone around the clock as the world turns. If your site becomes known for this service you may need to employ people to help keep up. If this happens you can bring in a two tier system whereby you have a free service and a paid service offering something extra.

7. Give visitors a free entry into a contest. The prizes should be something of interest or value to your visitors or relevant to your site’s topics. Most people who enter will continually revisit your web site to get the results. Do not be discouraged if the first one or two contests do not set the world on fire. The word has to get out. People will talk to their friends about this site that is running this great contest, and before too long your site will have a name for running contests. There are people out there who really go for that sort of thing and will visit your site regularly.

8. Let visitors download free software. It could be freeware, shareware, demos etc. You could even turn part of your site into a free software area and let other people sell it or give it away from this area. You do not need to produce the free software yourself. There are plenty of sources on the web. All you have to do is link to them. If you gather a significant amount of software of a type relevant to the topic of your site you will make your site a valuable resource for your visitors and they will keep coming back to get more.

9. Offer free online services or utilities. They could be search engine submitting, copy writing proofreading etc. The service or utility should be helpful to your target audience.

10. Give your visitors a free membership to an online club. People like to feel that they belong to something, why not your online club. You could also give away a free newsletter for club members only. The members will very likely want to contribute a large part of its content making it easy to source articles. If you offer them a link back to their own site your members will be queuing up to put content in your newsletter.

It goes without saying that all of the above should be relevant to the topic of your site in order to be of interest to your visitors. Do not keep changing the topic of your site. I see this happening all too often. The webmaster has a site for three months or so and becomes disheartened because his site not taken off as he hoped, so he decides to try a different topic.

Doing so he / she loses the regular visitors he / she had and has to start at the beginning again in the new topic. Also, the search engines will very likely be slow to change to the new topic, confusing everyone who visits from there. It may also affect the PR of the site as the new topic may initially be viewed as unrelated content.

Author: Steven Collins is a senior web designer and SEO consultant at Desktop Web Design who specialize in small business websites. Everyone’s needs are different so we will design a site just for you. When we have a basic design prepared it will be submitted for your approval before it is completed so that you can be sure it is what you were hoping for.

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