Web Site Promotion Tactics Tend to Change Frequently
Promotion Produces Great Results When You Monitor and Adapt
Web site promotion tactics tend to change quickly in the fast changing Web scenario. Time was when all you had to do was to include a lot of keywords in your Web page. That tactic is absolutely useless these days.
With millions and millions of websites, many of which are using the same keywords as you, the scenario has changed dramatically. You now need a mix of tactics to become visible, some still free as in old days and some paid.
First, an Overview
You want your web site promotion exercise to produce results, typically in the form of increased sales. Web sales are influenced not just by the traffic that you can manage to bring to the site. It is also influenced by:
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- The impression a visitor gets when that person lands on your site. If the visitor gets confused, that person is quite likely to click away to another site. So design your site in a way that the purpose of the site is immediately clear.
- The purpose of the site might be clear. Is it also easy for the visitor to do what is necessary to achieve that purpose? If the site navigation is confusing or irritating, the visitor is likely to give up soon. Make the navigation through, say, home page->product sales copy->order page->checkout page quite easy.
- You might have a clean layout and easy navigation. Now the remaining key issue is your sales copy. Does it create a desire to buy? Does it answer all likely hesitations on the part of the prospective customer? Work on your sales copy if you want to get results.
- Your traffic-building website promotion exercise will produce results only if the above issues are tackled effectively. Implement the promotion exercise in a gradual manner, and use Web analytics to monitor visitor behavior, understand any problems with the above issues and keep on testing and improving.
We do not say that the above program is an easy one. However, if you follow it, particularly the final analytics-testing-improvement component, you will see results. With that said, let us now look at the issue of building traffic through Web site promotion.
Web Site Promotion
Free Search Engine Promotion
Most people land on websites through search engines. You could expect such visitor landings only if your website appear near the top of search engine results. This requires search engine optimization.
Unlike in olden days, stuffing your web pages with keywords does not work any more. It can even make your site look bad to search engines. Instead, a mix of tactics is needed to look good to search engines. These include:
- Build Search Engine Friendly Pages: People mostly use words to search for things. So search engines can serve pages that contain these words more easily than make sense of pictures and relate them to words. If you use Flash to develop your Web pages, search engines might not be able to index them at all. Another issue is providing links from your home page and home-page-linked pages to all the substantial pages of your site.
- Research Keywords: Research actual words people use to look for your kind of products. Use these words in the title, description Meta tag, heading, subheadings, link text and body of your page. Use synonyms of these words also in the page.
- Get Links: Get your website listed in reputed directories such as Yahoo, Business.com, DMOZ and others. Write articles with a link back to your site. Write a blog on a topic related to your business and again include links pointing to your site. Submit a few press releases about newsworthy aspects of your business, with links to your site. Participate in relevant forums and social networks and draw attention to your website in a non-irritating way.
Paid Search Engine Marketing
You can get your pages to the top of search engines in another way. In the advertising model known as Pay-per-click or PPC, you can bid for top positions to display your pages when someone uses your keyword to search. This can get expensive and so you would have to select less competitive, yet relevant, keywords to bid for. Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing are examples of PPC.
PPC needs some experience and expertise to get best results. You can seek the help of professionals who help small businesses to run PPC campaigns.
Email Marketing
Instead of waiting for visitors to come to your site, you can go to them with your sales message by using email marketing. How you do this is briefly outlined below.
- Get Email Addresses: Get your site visitors provide you their email addresses. Offer them something of real value in return.
- Start a Newsletter: Maintain regular contact with these email subscribers by mailing news of value to them. For example, you can help them with tips and tricks that enhance the value of your products.
- Send out Special Mailers: Occasionally, send out special mailers to your subscribers announcing a new product or a related product.
Other Promotional Avenues
There are other avenues for promoting your website, some of them expensive and others free and even easy. Some examples are listed below.
- Include your website address in your business card and all promotional material. Include it as a live link in a "signature" that you can automatically add to all your emails.
- Advertise on newsletters circulating among your prospective clients, and at Web portals - such as Yahoo, MSN and many smaller ones - frequented by them.
- Provide an RSS feed at your website. Visitors interested in the information you provide on your pages will then be able to subscribe to the feed, and keep up-to-date.
Promote on a Continuing Basis
If you attend to the key issues mentioned at the beginning, and use the methods of promotion outlined above, your business could indeed produce great results. Do it on a continuing basis, and use analytics to monitor which works best and which do not. Focus on the best, but don't neglect the rest. In the changing scenario of the Web, what does not work today can work tomorrow. Keep a sharp lookout.
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