Online Marketing Chronicle

The most popular question asked by many online marketers is how to drive more traffic to their websites. The answer to this question is easy: "Have your website exposure to as many internet surfers as possible, once people can find your website, there will be traffic flow into your website". But to make your website successfully expose to internet users is not an easy task. Efforts, strategies and techniques need to put in place in order to make it as success.

Below are 8 common online marketing techniques used by most online marketers to drive internet traffic to their websites:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Successful search engine optimization will greatly increase the number of visitors that come to your website since over 60% of people who are looking for products and services use search engines to locate them. If your website is ranked high in the related keyword search by the search engines, you will get tons of free internet traffic to your website. One of the ways to optimize your website to be search engines friendly is by generating back links from other websites to your website. When websites provide a link to your site, the search engines deem your site as valuable and this affects your position in the listings.

2. Article Writing & Publishing Articles are the greatest tool for online marketing. It helps in SEO by generating back links to your website and it also helps in getting exposure for your website through your articles' hyperlinks. By writing short articles on the topic related to your website, products or services, you can offer these articles for other website owners or newsletter publishers to use by submitting them to article directories, forums or blogs. When the publishers use your articles in their ezines or websites, they will remain your bio information which contains links to your website at the bottom of your articles, which means that the publishers will contribute their link from their websites to yours. These back links are counted in SEO. When their visitors who read your articles and if they want to know more about your products or services may click the hyperlinks at the bottom of your articles to reach to your website.

3. Pay Per Click Advertising Pay Per Click is advertising provided by the search engine providers (Google, Yahoo! and others) where you pay for top placement. Most search engines give top positions to the highest bidder. It is a quick way to have your ad on the first page of the keyword search as listed in the search engines. There is a catch: you have to pay for every click to your web site. Make a budget and stick to it and make sure to monitor your account, those clicks add up fast.

4. Affiliate Marketing An affiliate program is another way to drive traffic to your web site. Your affiliates are your commissions-based sales people who make money when they sell your products. They drive traffic to your web site in exchange for commissions on sales. If you don't want to manage your affiliates yourself, you could subscribe to affiliate network such as ClickBank if your products are digital items. ClickBank marketplace is able to exposure your products to thousands of affiliates who are looking for products to sell online.

In Summary Any internet business will die without traffic stream into their website. If you already get started your website for online business, it's time for you to work out a marketing plan to flood it with traffic. The above 4 online marketing techniques are time tested & proven methods to drive more traffic to a website.

If you have a website then you already know the importance of traffic. Traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It's the only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your site, you will not make any sales.
Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it's going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known.

Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a "pretty" website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site…after all, isn't that what you want.

1. Not using keywords effectively.

This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.

2. Repeating the same keywords.

When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites.

How many times have you heard or read that "this is the Internet and it's ok" to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don't do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.

4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.

Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as "sex", the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn't have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.

5. Keyword stuffing.

Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the "alt=" HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text.

You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn't hurt. Wrong…. Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.

7. Relying on tiny text.

This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.

8. Assuming all search engines are the same.

Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Using free web hosting.

Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.

10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.

Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.

This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.

Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the method and enhancement of a web site in such a way to make it search engine friendly, and to increase the number and quality of visitors by utilizing keywords and phrases. If you aspire to have a small business website, you must understand what Search Engine Optimization is before you start designing your website.

Keywords are the words or phrases that an Internet user types in when making a search in a search engine. These terms and phrases are compared against the search engines indexed records. Other characteristics like keyword density, back links and other elements of the algorithms that the main search engines keep confidential are combined into the measurement, and the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is arranged depending on the results of the specifications.

The website developer or content provider must be knowledgeable about the various types of search engines determined by the sort of data desired. There are three fundamental sorts of search engines: spiders, programs that index data depending on what the spider discovers, as the web pages are "crawled", human input indexing, and a mixture of the two.

There are also all-purpose search engines that search blogs, forums and websites for particular content and subject matter (Google, Facebook, Ask.Com, Yahoo, etc.), in addition, there are engines that search maps and merchandise prices (MapQuest, PriceGrabber, etc). Modifying the site based on the distinct search engine technology as a rule will return superior ranking results. This is what SEO is.

SEO ought not to be the only tool utilized to push visitors to the website. Although Search Engine Optimization is essentially no cost, banners, back linking, and Pay Per Click methods could produce superior results since they guide a more targeted client to your website.

Since you can now define the term Search Engine Optimization, you can start creating a valuable website for your business.

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If you want your website to rank well in the search engines, there are certain features that should not be overlooked.  Here are five of the most important aspects:

1. Create your site with a clear and logical hierarchy, and good internal linking structure
2. Build a useful, information rich site, and make sure the content on each page agrees with its place in the structure.  Content should also be useful for your users.
3. Make sure that each page has a unique <title> tag, and it accurately describes the content on the page, and that all images have ALT tags that are descriptive
4. Frequently check for broken links and correct HTML – anything that is broken can hinder the spiders as they try to index your site
5. Use a robots.txt file on your web server which tells the crawlers which directories can or can't be crawled.

Huge Mistake #1: Creating a Website with Flash — Did you know in a recent study, top internet marketers discovered that having a website created with Flash, actually decreased the response from prospects and customers by as much as 370 percent?

Here's why: Your prospects and customers are most likely visiting your website using all types of different computers, connection speeds and internet configuration settings…

What may look great to one visitor may not even appear for another! You could very easily have shelled out hundreds or even thousands of dollars to have a website created using the Flash technology, only to find out that some of your visitors will never see it! (Not to mention the loading times can cause your visitor to close your site, never to return again.)

Huge Mistake #2: The "Internet Catalog" Approach — You see this everywhere. Good, honest and hardworking businessmen and women get online to sell their products or services, and have a site created for them that contains a link to just about everything they offer on one page. Their thinking goes along the lines of, "…well, I don't want to leave anyone out. If they come to my site, I want to make sure I have what they're looking for…" — This way of thinking could not be further from the truth.

Here's why: There's an ancient rule that goes back to the very beginning of direct-marketing on the internet, taught by the richest, most legendary and well-respected internet marketers of all time…

"When you give your prospects too many choices, they become confused and aren't sure what to do next. Confused people never buy anything."

Huge Mistake #3: Optimizing Your Sales Site for the Search Engines — You'll see this taught in nearly every "internet marketing" course, manual or eBook out there… "You must optimize every page of your website for the search engines!" — In fact, this false teaching is accepted as 'gospel truth' so often that most web designers will offer to do this for you at no, or little extra cost…

What they don't understand is that certain words and phrases must be either re-worded (to make it "keyword rich") or taken out completely, just to be looked upon highly by the mighty search engines — and this could kill your sales, literally overnight.

Here's why: When you or a hired web designer optimize your sales page (i.e. any web page designed to sell your products and services) to get a higher listing in the search engines, you're going to have to sacrifice the pulling-power of your sales copy (i.e. written sales material) just to get those higher listings. Sure, this can bring you more traffic — but what good is all the traffic in the world, if your visitors arrive at your website and aren't compelled enough to read why they should order your product?

For years, it has been taught that you should always try to find a "balance" of SEO (Search-Engine-Optimization) mixed with promotional copy designed to sell your products and services…

Wrong Again! — The truth is that you should never optimize your sales page for the Search Engines. Instead, you should create tiny "entry pages" for each keyword related to your product or service, (highly optimized for the Search Engines) and have them link to your main sales site! (We can show you exactly how to do this quickly and easily and get *massive* targeted traffic from the Search Engines – without ever *touching* your sales site!)

Huge Mistake #4: Having a "Graphics-Based" Website — Sure, graphics can certainly help us to visualize a particular situation or circumstance, product or service… But did you know that having a graphically-driven website can actually distract your visitor away from your sales message?

After all, your sales message (or "web copy") is The #-1 most important factor in a website that makes money. If your visitors are paying more attention to your "professional graphics" than your sales message… you've just lost another sale.

Here's why: You've got approximately seven seconds from the time your visitor arrives at your site, to the time they decide whether to buy your product, get more information or leave. If you've got a graphically-intensive website, your website will most likely still be loading past your seven-second time limit.

That's a "customer-killer" in and of itself – however, the real reason lies within the fact that the bigger, brighter and more beautiful your graphics are, the more they will distract your visitor from your sales message. And if your visitor is distracted even for one second, it could mean the difference between getting a sale, and losing a customer.

Huge Mistake #5: Designing a Website with Zero Marketing Experience — Most web designers have no idea how to make money on the internet, with anything other than their design services. It's not their fault – they simply have no or very little marketing and sales experience. After all, they're just website designers…

However, having your website designed by someone with Zero internet marketing experience is like buying a street-car without an engine… it won't go anywhere, and it'll just waste your time and money! 

For help on website design, or to build your own site, please visit www.weblolo.com

The use of descriptive anchor text for your website’s internal links can help significantly with keyword targeting your individual web pages.  The reasoning behind this is simple, the links anchor text, even internal website links, will weigh as an internal link to the web page, building relevancy for the page linked to for the keywords used in the anchor text.

For example, if you have a web page about “red striped ferret mating habits”, you might use a link that looks like:

“Finding out about ferret mating habits can. . . “

This not only gives a solid descriptor to your website visitor of what the page is about, it can help increase that page’s relevancy for “ferret mating habits”.

It’s important to note, though, that just as it’s important to alternate the anchor text for incoming links to your website from 3^rd party websites, it’s important to alternate the text for links within your websites internal link structure as well.  Using the exact same keyword focused anchor text on multiple can be considered spam by some search engines, and that practice should be avoided.

Learn to use search engine optimization techniques when writing your articles. If hiring a writer to write articles for you, you can choose one who already knows about SEO or you can supply them with a list of keywords and let them know where they should be placed and how many times they should be repeated throughout the article.

Optimizing your articles for search engines will help them rank higher when someone searches for a keyword relating to your subject, which means that you will receive more visitors because more people will actually see your URL. It is a fact that most visitors don’t look past the first search engine result page and by the third search engine results page there is practically no audience left for you to promote to. What this means for those on the third or high page is no traffic.

This is why it is very important for you to make sure that your articles are prepared in a way that will eventually get them to that first or second search engine results page. 

Try Unique Article Wizard

For an online company, Internet marketing is important. But for brick and mortar companies, even those who don’t sell anything online but rather cater to local customers, Internet marketing can expand the business and give the company more exposure locally. If you own a small company that relies on local business alone rather than the ability to take orders online from all over the country or all over the world, don’t discount the power of Internet marketing.

For a local company, Internet marketing that gives you exposure to people thousands of miles away is pretty pointless. There’s no need to invest in what can be expensive marketing campaigns like pay-per-click or network-wide banner advertising, for instance. You know your target market—local people. So the only promotion and advertising that will do you any good are promotions which target that market specifically.

If you don’t have a website already, get one. You don’t even have to know any HTML or other programming to get a web presence if you use an easy site builder like Weblolo.com.  If you don’t have time, they’ll  do it for you and optimize your website for maximum results in the search engines. What might seem like an unnecessary expense will actually become a very important marketing tool. You’ll also want to make sure that your website is search engine optimized for your local area, and it’s well worth learning how to do this yourself or paying an expert to do it for you.

When it comes to your company, Internet marketing with search engine optimization won’t be like the SEO efforts needed by an online company. If you run a computer repair shop, for instance, you won’t want to focus your attention and money on very general keywords that might be good for an online business whose customers can come from anywhere. You’ll want them optimized for your local area. Computer repair San Antonio, for instance, might be a good keyword for you.

You might be surprised how many local potential customers use the Internet to search now instead of the yellow pages or simply by driving by and stopping. Most people who use the Internet at all use it to search for items they want to purchase before they buy. Someone who needs a computer repaired in your town might very well use that exact keyword search phrase. Springfield computer repair something similar would be something commonly typed in for someone in that town needing a computer fixes. For your company, Internet marketing efforts that focus on your local area can bring in lots of extra business because people will find you online.

Another advantage is that other small businesses in your field might feel the same way you did, that a website and your company Internet marketing was a waste of time. So if someone from your local area does a search like that above, your site will be the one they see. And if other business are online and you’ve spent some time and maybe a little money on your company Internet marketing, your site will still probably be the one they see first.

When it comes to creating an ebook Internet marketing strategy, identifying your target market is the first and probably most important step to success. No ebook will interest all people online, so vague and general marketing that isn’t aimed at any specific group will turn out to be mostly a waste of time and money. Even if the subject of your ebook is very general and you didn’t spend time doing careful evaluations before you wrote it, you’ll want to narrow down your market possibilities to get the most from your ebook Internet marketing strategy.

Most people who write an ebook have a market in mind when they do so. If you didn’t, don’t worry, you can find your market now. Think about who will benefit from your ebook. Will stay at home moms get the most out of the household management information, or is your ebook filled with info about how to train a parrot, or how to make money online? Picture the person who will best want and need the information you’re providing. Then aim your ebook Internet marketing strategy at that group of people. Continue reading »