Internet Marketing

Tips for Promoting Your Website

Here are nine ways to heighten visibility and promote your website:

1. Get your own domain name. It makes your web address easier to remember and some search engines will rank your site higher if the domain has words contained in keyword searches.
2. Include your web and e-mail address everywhere: stationery, business cards, advertisements, newsletters, articles, e-mail signatures, faxes, product packages, news releases, etc.
3. Ask other web sites for "reciprocal links." They add a link to your site and in return you add their link.
4. Contact the top 20 sites that come up when searching for your keywords in search engines and ask them to trade links with you. Links are a powerful method for people to find your site; they can generate lots of traffic and they also increase your ranking in certain search engines.
5. Become an active participant in the Internet Newsgroups that are related to your organization, products and services. Make sure you practice safe Netiquette, do not post off-topic or put up any kind of post that could be considered spam. Make sure your URL and e-mail address are listed at the bottom of each of your postings.
6. Use banners ads! Try the free banner exchanges if your budget does not extend to buying Internet advertising.
7. Find as many ways as possible to offer useful information, tips, and breaking news on your web site. You will draw more visitors and encourage return visits and recommendations.
8. Update your site often, add new content regularly, and promote update pages to the search engines as well.
9. Get professional help or advice for web promotion campaigns. Use caution, as some promotion services may harm your website by employing false or misleading tactics. Use search engine promotion companies recommended to you by people you trust, and check out the analytics and results for their clients' websites.

Plus, a few tips to help people find your website:

People will mainly find your site by searching for relevant keywords and phrases on the popular search engines. The next most popular way of finding websites is from links on related web sites. People will also arrive at your site on the advice of friends (word of mouth). Here is a summary of the eight most popular ways that people will find out about your site, in order of popularity:

1. Search Engines
2. Links on related sites
3. Word of mouth (advice from friends)
4. Directories
5. E-Mail signatures
6. TV Shows
7. Newsgroups
8. Links found in books, newspapers, etc.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM & PPC)

Paid-per-click (PPC) and other inclusion and placement advertising still ranks as the #1 form of online marketing, regardless of rising costs and the highly competitive marketplace.

The reasons are simple: done right, purchased search marketing works. Unfortunately, many sites are not employing good paid-for marketing strategies...nevertheless, if you are selective, you can greatly improve both your cost of customer acquisitions (CPA) and maximize your ROI on your advertising spending.

Benefits of Improving Your Paid Advertising Campaigns:

• Improve conversions
• Attract higher quality leads
• Maximize your ROI
• Reduce bounce rates
• Increase page views
• Gain a competitive edge over the competition

Search Engine Marketing is a major component of Internet Marketing, for the purpose of gaining higher exposure (rankings) in search engines by either of two methods:

• promoting a website online via organic search engine optimization (SEO)
• paying for ad placements (PPC) and inclusions (banners, etc.)

In general, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves obtaining paid positioning on search engines, while SEO is differentiated as being the marketing process for improving a website's organic ranking (non-paid positioning) in search engine.

With over 85% of any website's traffic driven from the search engines, no company can afford to take their SEM efforts lightly.

Contact Superb sales for a personalized consultation on your Search Engine Marketing efforts.

References and Resources:

As a part of SEM strategy, SEO looks at how the various search engine algorithms work and what terms people generally are searching for. SEO considers the web site's coding, unique content, site appeal and structure.

We encourage you to check out a variety of expert sites in this area, including Seomoz.org and [Google Webmaster Central] SEO Glossary

A great collection of of search engine optimization and marketing-related terminology from Epiar Inc. [SEO Glossary] Useful SEO Tools & Resources

1. [RankSense Software Suite] - this revolutionary search engine optimization | SEO management software suite makes it easy and affordable for anyone to get top rankings in the search engines. Sign up today with your SuperbHosting Account and get a 30 Day free trial and 20% discount. Simply login to your myCP Control Panel to get promo code.
2. [SEOmoz Pro Tools] - an excellent collection of free SEO tools to check Backlinks, PageRank, Inclusion, Indexing, Authority, Age, HTTP Status Code, Whois Data, and Outbound Links, as well as guides and tips on getting the most out of your SEO. Every SuperbHosting account comes with free trial and promotional offer.
3. [Google Analytics] - every SEO no matter what level, should use Google Analytics to improve their search rankings.
4. [SEOBook] - has an extensive collection of SEO tools from around the web for measuring search analytics, keyword research, competitive research, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, link analysis, and search engine ranking checkers.
5. [WordTracker] - a free keyword research tool useful in helping to research what key words you should target
6. [Market Leap] - provides helpful online tools and resources to help with search engine strategies, with 3 main tools; link popularity, search engine saturation, and keyword verification
7. [Vertical Leap] - some interesting and free webmaster tools and gadgets to help with broken links, site relevance, and geolocation.
8. [SEO Browser] - let you see your website the same way the search engines do, showing metadata, page load time, number of links and the description and keywords the search engines see.
9. [Compete Tools] - helps to provide useful information and feedback on your site's traffic as well as your competitions.
10. [SpyFu] - lets you spy on your competitions' Adword campaigns, their advertising budget, PPC keywords and organic search engine rankings.
11. [KeywordSpy] - another cool tool to find out what keywords your competition is using and how.
12. [Stuntdubl] - a complete list of really nifty Internet Marketing and SEO tools compiled by the infamous Mr. Ploppy — read at your own risk.
13. [SEO Chat] - has over 40 analytic tools to help you evaluate your website and and improve your rankings including a free Google keyword suggestion tool.
14. [W3C Quality Assurance Service] - the official W3C tools for the professional Webmaster, Web Designer or Web Developer. Includes Markup Validator, Link Checker and CSS Validator. All free and open source.
15. [IP Blacklist Checker] - MXToolBox along with other great tools for the professional Webmaster, Web Designer, Web Developer or Search Marketers. This test checks your IP address against 147 DNS based backlists.

How long does it take to get listed on the Search Engines and start getting ranked?

After you have submitted your website to the search engines or have optimized it, the delay between submission and indexing differs from engine to engine. Some engines list your site immediately while hand-edited directories such as Yahoo may take several months.

Search engines receive thousands of submissions a day. Depending on the type of procedure for reviewing and indexing web sites, it can take some time for search engines to check your site and then categorize it into their database. Some directories take as long as three months to carry out checks of submitted websites and add them.

Another possible reason for delays is that your site is not search engine optimized. To achieve good rankings, you need to have good meta tags, good site structure, and links to other highly ranked sites. To improve your ranking, research the plentiful information available on the web, or hire a professional SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) to prepare and promote your site. See the Search Engine Marketing page for a brief listing of useful websites.

Contact Superb sales for more ideas on improving your rankings in less time!