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Marketing Your Web Site.

So now you have a web site, and the issue is getting likely customers or other people interested in your topic to find your web site.

If you are a membership association, service club, or reunion web site, your audience is small and defined, and an e-mail or (horrors) letter to you special interest group pretty much does the trick.

If you are a business, the issue is more problematic.  You designed the site with the hope that this would bring new customers to your door, and increase revenues and profits.  This may happen, or it may not.  A lot depends on what you do to market your web site.

The fact is that companies who appear on the first page of a search engine have paid to be there.  They may have hired a Search Engine Optimization company to tune their site and submit their site to the major Search Engines.  But the reality is that big, well-known, respected, and popular sites make it to the top.  The more traffic you have to your site, the more likely you are to move up the rankings

As cool as that may be, will page rank improve your sales and profits?  Not necessarily.  The web is a world wide resource.  Are you capable of doing business with someone in Malaysia?  Germany?  Nigeria?  Heck - Wisconsin?  If you personally deliver a service, as I do, I only want customers from the St Croix Valley area.  It does me little good to get a web inquiry from someone in San Francisco.  Well, ok, I can sell web hosting or software anywhere.  But my market, my sweet spot, is the St Croix Valley area of eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

Define Your Market and Ideal Customer

Who are your customers?  How do they find your business now?  What do they purchase?  Why do they buy from you instead of a competitor?  If you haven't spent time figuring this out, you should do so over the next week or two, and continue to analyze this over the life of your business.

Drop Dead Simple Web Site Marketing Methods

Simply stated, whatever advertising or marketing you currently do, add your web site address to it.

• Business Cards - Get new ones made with your web site address, and give them away to everyone.

• Print Advertising - Do you advertise in a newspaper or magazine?  Next time add your web address.  "See or web site at www.mycompany.com"  should be plainly visible in all your advertising.

• TV or Radio - Next time your are listening to the radio or watching TV, notice how often a web address is mentioned.  Isn't almost every time?

• Directory Advertising - If you advertise in anyone's yellow pages, rethink your strategy for the next insertion.  Certainly include your web address.  Get include in their on-line directory, even if there is an extra cost.  Get a link from their on-line directory to your web site.  Inbound links are import, as we will find out later, and here is an easy way to get a good one.

• Flyers, Brochures and Direct Mail - Stock you have on hand of flyers and brochures could have a small label added to them with your web address.  Be sure to include the address in any new print runs.  If you do direct mail, add the web address.  If you don't, at least consider sending a small mail piece to your current customers referring them to your new web site.

• Truck and Vans - If you have a service or delivery fleet, get your web address on them.

The point is to get people to your web site, where you have the luxury of describing in detail, with pictures, what you do and how you do it.

Here is another great article on this subject from Entireweb.

Tips for Improving Search Engine Ranking

There are actions you can take to help your web site appear on the search engines.  Again, don't expect miracles.  When I look for my sites on Google, Yahoo, or MSN, I never find myself under any product categories.  When I look under my name, Bob Weiss, I find lots of information about the NBA coach of the same name, not much about me.  When I search my business name, much more appears, which is about the best you can hope for yourself.

In the next sections, we will be learning about meta tags, and how to use them, search engine submission, and how to develop in-bound hyperlinks.

Each search engine analyzes the location of keywords and evaluates or ranks a Web page differently. However, there are general tips that you can use to get a more favorable search engine ranking for your Web page.

Let's assume that you have created a descriptive title for your Web page, and that the first few paragraphs of your Web page contain the keywords that you think people will use to find this information. The following additional steps can help make sure that people can locate your Web site:

• Create a description for your Web site and add it as a meta tag to your home page.

• Create a list of keywords for your Web site and add it as a meta tag to your home page.

• Analyze the meta tags that you've added to your Web page.

• Register your Web site with a search engine.

• Look for opportunities to create in-bound hyperlinks to your site. 

Special thanks to the Microsoft FrontPage web site for portions page and of the following pages.

Curriculum developed by WyzGuys Computer Tutors

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