Web Site Marketing Strategy

PPC Marketing

Increasing Sales Through Strategic Internet Marketing

The Internet has now become an important medium for advertising products and services. Mostly every company that can afford print, radio and TV advertisements have also begun to place  ads on the Internet. Without it they will be swollowed by the competition.

But with the millions of websites out there, that are being visited by millions of web users, how can you make sure that your ad can be seen by your target customers and that your leads will be followed by these users?  Here are a few rules to follow to insure your web site marketing strategy success

1.  Only place  ads on the websites that are frequented by your target customers.  You will need to define your target or niche before doing this.  Placing an ad on sites that they usually visit will increase the possibility that your ad will gain the attention and will be followed your target customers. 

Consider the website’s search engine placement, traffic, external linking and the other ads placed on it.  External linking will determine if there are other sites that link to this site.  This will mean that people can get to the site where your ad is placed, even if they are browsing a different site.  Check if many of your competitors have ads on this site.

2.  Placing ads on some sites cost some money.  However, there are also sites that can place a link to your site, product or service in exchange of having their link being displayed on your site.  This is also true about the newsletters sent by site owners to its mailing list members regularly.

Having helpful links placed on your site and having sites link to your pages help in boosting search engine ranking.  This is similar to making a statement that your site’s content is important that other sites have links to your web pages.

3.  Pay-per-click (PPC) is also a good method in Internet marketing.  You will only need to pay for the ad if the link is clicked.  If you prefer this method of advertisement, make sure that you are using services that set limits on daily expenses.  There are also services that help you determine effective keywords and monitor the PPC results.

4.  Choose your domain name wisely.  It is still being debated if domain names matter when it comes to search engine placement.  Whether it does or not, having product related domain names help consumers remember your domain, that they can go back to your site even without the links.

5.  Make sure you have useful content on your sites.  While keyword density is important in search engine placement, having useless information or annoying repetition of keywords will not increase your customer’s confidence in your site.  It may even affect your sites traffic and can get your site removed from search engines.  So make sure that keywords are used strategically.

6.  When thinking of keywords, think like your target customers.  What do you think are they going to search so they can get to your site?  Also, use specific keywords or key phrases.  Submitting a single word or a very general phrase to a search engine will not get you to the top of the search results compared to submitting specific keywords that describe your product and services perfectly.

7.  Track your ads.  Always check how much you have spent on placing links on frequently visited sites and on PPC.  There are services that allow you to monitor PPC transactions and how many of these end in sales.  You always need to consider if the ads that you have placed on these websites are getting you to your target consumers and if these ads can lead to revenue.

One final tip on strategic internet marketing products and services, you must sell the benefits.  It will help your web site marketing strategies a lot if you highlight the benefits of choosing your products and services instead of merely discussing the product specifications.  Most customers could care less about product specifications unless they know what they mean (how these specifications affect the quality of the product or service).

Many people say getting to the top of search engine results is difficult since millions of websites exist, which can be using the same keywords.  While this is true, this doesn’t mean that your website has to stacked under your competitors’ websites when presenting search engine results.  Strategic advertising and linking, together with useful content, can also get you to the top of the search results quickly and easily regardless of the competition.

Improve Web Marketing With Sitemaps

 Improve Web Marketing with Sitemaps

Sitemaps 101 – Here are Some Tips and Strategies on Building Sitemaps

Have you ever wondered how a search engine works? It would be great to watch a spyder crawl your site and find its way around by a simple sitemap you left for it to have a successful visit.  You may have even experienced that a link you thought was relevant to your keyword came back completely different than you had anticipated, and you could not figure out why. I bet you were thinking that there must be something wrong with the search engine that it generated irrelevant results or your web marketing plan had failed.

How does a search engine work?

Two things are basically the factors that will result in making search engines work effectively and efficiently:  the first would be an electronic search spider and the second, the sitemap.

What is a sitemap?

When using a web marketing plan that includes sitemaps, the sitemap is a page or pages that serve/s as a directory by listing all the connections or links, to all documents and files found on the website. It is not just a random listing of links, but organized in a way that it gives the web user an idea of how all the information, that can be found in the site,  fits into an outline or framework. It is like viewing the table of contents of a book, or viewing the “concept map” of the site’s content.

A Spider? Will it bite?

In SEO language, a spider is not an insect found in your basement. This electronic search spider is actually a bot which collects data and copies content to be stored in the search engine’s database when keywords are fed into the search dialogue box. The spider reads the content of the site and sends another bot to follow the links and copy the content contained in them.

What is the purpose of a Sitemap?

A sitemap,  like any other map,  gives directions to a navigator. It primarily targets search engine spiders so that they are properly directed to your site and to the links where keywords entered in the search dialogue appears.  As such, it is actually a useful tool in search engine optimization. A well organized web marketing plan with a  site map will guide the spider to find the information it needs when keywords are entered during a search operation.

As an additional beneficial consequence, sitemaps have proven to be useful even to web users. Since a sitemap displays all the links to information found in a website, it helps the user to search for a particular topic in mind. Many users also use the sitemap to navigate between pages in a site.

How Do I benefit from a Sitemap?

1. No page would be left unturned

Going back to the purpose of sitemaps, having one would mean faster and easier tracking and crawling of spiders all over your site. As a result, search engines would surely get to the view all the pages of your site and not just the pages containing random keywords.

2. Easier navigation for site visitors

Once a web user has accessed your sitemap, they need not go back to the search engine page to look for what they need. If what they are looking for is in your site, then they would have an easier and faster way of locating it.

3. Potential advertising value

If it so happens that a relevant product or service company reaches your site, then it would be easier for them to see how best they can position themselves in the different pages of your site as a paid page advertisement.

4. Encourage greater traffic to your site

If your web marketing efforts inludes a sitemap, then potential buyers would have an easier time in accessing your latest products and services. Moreover, they would not miss out on any product that might be off future interest to them since the sitemap would display all information found the site.

How does one format the sitemap?

Currently there are about three major types of sitemaps: an indexed, a full categorical, and a restricted categorical. An indexed site map appears as an alphabetical listing or directory. A full categorical map displays all links classified into categories; while a restricted categorical sitemap displays all links listed in a chosen category at a time. Web marketing plans that include the full and restricted sitemaps, are very similar except that the former displays all links in all categories all at once in a page, while the latter focuses only the links under the selected category for easier and less eye-straining viewing.

The most widely used format is the full categorical. Based on most research, the full categorical format is most preferred by users since it is easier to search for topics within the site and it allows easier comparison between and among categories.

Some tips in setting up your sitemap

1. Link the sitemap only to your homepage.

This is to ensure that the spider starts searching from your homepage down to all the pages listed in your sitemap. In this way, no page would be left unvisited by the spider, although some factors may prevent that at times

2. Do not go beyond 30 pages for a sitemap.

Large websites having 50 or more pages should not go beyond 30 since this adds more pages to the site, and might make search engines think that the sitemap is a link farm.  Also, this prevents overcrowding of links which could be tiring to view. We do not want our little spider getting it’s legs all wound up now do we. This would doom all your web marketing plans for sure.

3. Be Sure You Have checked all the links listed in your sitemap.

It is frustrating to some when you click on a link only to find out that nothing is displayed. Test your sitemap; click all links in every page to make sure that all links are indeed linked to the right page.

4. Give keyword-rich titles to sitemap links.

Keyword-rich titles give your site more advantage in being searched properly under the right category. But be sure to have this sitemap link linked back to the sitemap (e.g. back to sitemap).

5. Provide a short description for the links in the sitemap.

Doing so would give readers a better idea of what to find in the link and save them time on surfing.

6. Be consistent in designing your sitemap with the other pages of the site.

Be sure your web marketing plans include Employing a recurring design and the same HTML template for all pages to establish identity and build character to your website.

O.k. Do you have the picture? They are really not that difficult to put together and in most cases there are programs that will build them for you. That being said get going and build yourself a great sitemap

Should you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us at support@webmarketingstrategysite.com

Cheers,

Manny F.

mannyf@webmarketingstrategysite.com