Website promotion and search engine optimisation
Speak To People About Your Website
First and foremost you should tell
people about your website. Tell people you meet about your website;
friends, family, customers and tell them to tell others. Word of mouth
is one of the most effective methods of promotion as a referral from a
friend, work colleague or customer creates a highly qualified prospect
who is much more likely to view your website/buy from you than anyone
who wasn’t referred to you.
Put Website On All Printed Materials
Your website address (and email
address) should be on all printed materials including business cards,
letters, invoices, faxes, envelopes as well as all outgoing emails and
press releases. It could be on promotional items such as pens, mouse
pads, refrigerator magnets and perhaps on your product itself.
Newspaper Article (Press Release)
Send a newsworthy story about your
business to a newspaper (local/national) or a relevant trade
publication. The public are more responsive to a news story than a
plain old hyped up add. Make sure you have your website address and
contact details on the press release. The story could be about your
website launch or it could be about some other aspect of your
business, using the opportunity to publicise the address of your
site. Remember that the story must be of value to the journalist and
readers.
Newspaper and/or magazine adverts,
including classified ads may be used to promote your website address.
Other Methods
Posters within own business
premises, posters placed in local supermarket/business centres etc.,
flyers handed out locally, address included within answering machine
message, sign on van or car, mailing to customers via traditional
mail, ads in bus shelter, billboards, TV, radio or cinema. Promotion
at trade shows, markets, fairs, sporting events where there are large
congregations of potential customers. Traditional newsletters,
e-newsletters and email marketing campaigns.
Search Engines
What are Search Engines?
The vast majority of Internet users
find what they are looking for (products, services or information) by
using search engines. Because of its high use and the acceptance of
search engine results, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a most cost
efficient and rewarding means of generating site traffic and activity.
Those who are actively searching for products or services are
qualified prospects who, in the most part, have already made the
decision to buy/find out information.
If you want people to find your
site you need to get it into search engines. Typically a person will
visit the website of their favourite search engine (www.google.co.uk,
www.msn.co.uk,
www.yahoo.co.uk)
and type in the keyword or keyphrase they are interested in, e.g.
‘cheap flights to spain’, ‘global climate change’ or ‘tigers’ and then
press the ‘submit’ button. The search engine will then return search
results that it feels best matches the search term entered, according
to how their own internal systems have ranked pages found on the
Internet.
It is interesting to note that the
top 4 or 5 search engines provide 80% to 90% of all search results -
Google, Yahoo and MSN. You may have heard of software products that
will submit your site to hundreds, if not thousands of search engines
in an attempt to get high rankings, such solutions are not available
and even if they were they would be pretty pointless, rather it is
necessary to target the key search engines that supply the vast
majority of results.
What is Search Engine Optimistation?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is
the process of promoting a website online to achieve better search
engine ranking for relevant, targeted keywords and keyphrases. SEO
refers to optimising the HTML (HTML is the programming language used
to create and design web pages) and content of a website for both
search engines and visitors in order to attain higher rankings than
competing websites. SEO will increase qualified traffic and generate
interest/enquiries. SEO brings the searcher and the supplier together.
Top
Search Engines and Directories:
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