internet marketing Archives - Julian Gooden, LLC

1: Search Engine Optimization

If people search through major search engines, type in their search keywords and your website comes up, chances are you could expect more website traffic than you could handle. Therefore you could aim to rank heavily on the main search engines such as Google and Bing.

This however does not usually happen overnight. It will likely take a lot of time and effort to achieve this. To aim to make your presence felt and known on the internet could begin by becoming one of the top sites in the results page when a keyword query is made. As such, you could try filling your website with articles reflecting the relevant keywords about your product and service. These could be articles or pages that offer potential customers valuable advice and other crucial information.

SEO takes time so this may not be the quickest approach. It is advisable, therefore, to employ multiple methods to generate more web traffic.

You could try buying traffic from vendors to generate website hits.

You could buy traffic with Google’s and Yahoo’s pay-per-click programme.

You could use Facebook advertising.

How this works is that you determine and identify your target market’s possible keywords and bid for these words or phrases. This may be costly, but it would generate hits.

Of course, it doesn’t end there. You will then have to focus on converting those hits into sales. You have to keep your customer’s interest with an interesting website to begin with.

2: Syndicate your site

There are many websites that would allow feed burning. You would have to create Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds that would link your content and blog to other websites.

Make sure that you are providing informative and interesting information on your blog, to appeal to potential customers. RSS feeds may increase website hits but they may not generate profit or sales leads, if your website is boring or doesn’t inspire trust.

3: Create useful, informative and interesting article content

Again, it doesn’t matter if your website is generating thousands of hits. It also doesn’t matter if suddenly, your website is generating more traffic than you could handle. What is really important is that you are earning profit from this traffic.

You need to provide your prospective customers with quality web content. The content should be responsive to their need. Write as many articles as you can or hire someone to write them for you. You must provide your customers information on how to solve their problems. Keep your articles fresh, updated and relevant to your customer’s needs or problems.

Things can sometimes change rapidly online, however to grow your business, you must keep abreast of the changes and continue to grow and learn. Here are 10 ways to improve your online presence.

1. Responsive website – create a responsive website, one which grabs the attention of the user. Images and videos are often very effective at doing this so use them when necessary to tell your story.

2. Branding and Identity – create a brand. You need a logo that is unique to you, one that will readily identify you and your product/service. Create a strap-line also, it is another way of making your band distinctive, like Nike’s “Just do it!”

3. Social Media — create social media accounts and create links to them from your website and vice-versa. Your social media links should be easily seen on the first page of your website. Many of us spend more time on social media than we care to acknowledge, and people might not readily come back to your website, if a link has not been established with one or more of your social media accounts – where they could follow, like, subcribe and keep abreast of your updates. Use social media and other online marketing avenues to build brand identity and consumer confidence. Post to your social media account often; everyday, if possible.

4. Blog – add a blog to your site. A blog will provide a means to post stories and updates.

5. About page – your ‘about’ page should not only say what you offer, but should say something about your team, what makes you stand above the competition and why people should buy your goods or services.

6. Call to action – a call to action should be placed on your site. It helps you quickly engage visitors, whether it is to take advantage of an offer or sign up for newsletter.

7. Content – Content is King. Your website content should be well presented. Your average user should be able to relate to the content and understand what you are trying to present. It should be nicely laid out with enough white spaces to make the content easy to read. Not only should attention be placed on the aesthetics, but practicality as well – use readable, web-friendly fonts of reasonable sizes for headings and paragraphs. Also, position videos and images for maximum user experience (UX).

8. Menus – the position could vary based on the overall design of the site. However, visitors should not have to search for a way to navigate your website.

9. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – wherever possible use SEO techniques to improve website ranking. Use relevant keywords in titles and articles. Create categories and tags that relate to your content.

10. Link building – create backlinks, add your website to high PR directories, make comments on other blogs – especially those that offer complementary goods or services to yours. Approach others who are willing to link exchange. You will probably get offers every now and again – check them out. Make sure when you link, you do so with websites with a good online reputation and also if your site is say a PR0 (which it likely will be in beginning), try to link sites that are PR2 or above.

More could be added to the list, but start with these very important ones. You should definitely start seeing results. It is important to also say – be consistent, work at it. If you do it once in a while you won’t reap the potential benefits.

Have fun building your business!