Internet Marketing 101

By Jason Shpik
Posted Friday, October 29, 2004

Believe it or not, internet marketing isn't nearly as expensive as many may think. Throughout this article I'll be going over many tactics for marketing over the internet. Some are free, and some are a little more costly.

Internet Marketing 101

We'll start off with search engines, it is by far the most important method. Getting a higher ranking in search engines can lead to a dramatic increase in your website traffic, also, people that search on search engines are more likely to purchase. The first thing we need to understand when dealing with search engines is how they rank certain sites. Why are some in the top ten, while others don't even come close? Factors that a search engine takes into consideration are: click popularity, link popularity, prominance of the keywords in the title and description, presence of the keywords in the URL.

We can easily improve click popularity by including more content in your website. What should you include that your competitors don't have? The whole purpose of click popularity is to keep users in your site as long as possible, this leads the search engine or directory to believe that your site is suiting the needs of the user better than others. Another method of improving click popularity is by having an attractive title and description, without the use of hype. Link popularity is a little more difficult to improve upon, but it can be done. The purpose of link popularity is by having as many sites as possible linking to your site. Sites that are similar to yours and have a heavier weight, count more than sites that don't have revelant information to your site. We can improve link popularity in a number of ways, and I would suggest using them all to get the best results. The method that works best with this is by having an attractive and well advertised affiliate program. Nothing's better than offering money to link to your site. Be generous, those buyers wouldn't even be there if it wasn't for those affiliates. Another method of improving link popularity, that works well also, is by publishing articles. Be sure to state that this article may be redistributed and republished if it is not changed. Negotiate reciprocal links with partners that are related to the service you're offering. This also helps to improve traffic, although not very much. Prominance of keywords in the title and description are easy enough to improve upon. Here's an example FortuneHosting.com would use for their title and description. "(FortuneHosting.com): offering website hosting, free domain name registration, website maintainance, and a host of other solutions." Note that it's not just web hosting, or free domain registration. This is because users also type website hosting and domain names, and search engines will pick up on the extra words when used. Presence of keywords in the domain name is also easy, just register your domain, and be sure it relates to the product you're selling. Most companies will have a name that tells a little bit about the company anyway.

Some of the major search engines and directories that you should definitely get listed in are: Google, Yahoo!, The Lycos Network, and DMOZ. Many of these search engines provide the backbone network of other large and smaller search engines (AOL uses DMOZ and Yahoo! uses Google). One of the major downfalls of the search engines is the length of time it takes to see some real results (around 6 months), but the cost per visitor is usually free if not very inexpensive. This is where we come to pay per click search engines.

By far the largest pay per click search engine is Overture, just for the record they cover 80% of all search engines traffic. Unless you have a very large advertising budget you'll have to play it smart here (last time I looked it was about $6.20 per visit for the keyword "web hosting"). Before you purchase keywords determine exactly how many visitors it takes to pull in how much in sales. Another thing to keep in mind is that you want to be in the top three results for your keywords, anything else is all but useless. The best tactic to get your money's worth is to purchase a larger number of keywords, rather than the more important ones. Example, FortuneHosting.com might choose: free domain names, domain names coventry index (yes, people actually search for that), website maintainance, and a few others. These keywords might generate close to the same results as web hosting, but for a whole lot less. Choose carefully, this is all that matters in a pay per click search engine.

Brand recognition is vital to any company online. This is where banners and buttons come into play. I'm sure we've all noticed the millions of banners and buttons at Yahoo!, well those companies may not be looking for direct sales. What's the first companies you would think of if you were to look for books online? Probably either Amazon or Barnes And Noble. This is because they have the strongest brand presence in that particular field. How about internet access? Probably AOL, again, brand presence. Having a strong brand not only enables you to sell at a higher price than competitors, but also enables you to sell more. Now we come to the question, how do we build brand presence? This is online advertising at it's finest, get your name out there more than your competitor does, that's all there is to it. That's why companies are actually spending $6.20 per visitor. Negotiate contracts with companies like Yahoo! and Google. As your sales increase, so will your advertising budget, so then we'll have money to spend on brand management.

Another very inexpensive method of gaining additional traffic is through the use of expired traffic. If you aren't familiar with this it is purchasing expired domains that already have links to them. This way you're able to gain targeted traffic, at a very low price (about $9 for a domain). The downfall of using this method is that it's very risky, watch out not to damage your brand image. Some people register expired domains that have nothing to do with the service they offer. This can be condsidered "spam" and should be avoided at all costs! There are tools out there that find expired domains, that are close to what you offer, and can also tell you the ranking. By knowing the ranking it's possible to estimate how much traffic you might get.

Depending on your company, the use of mailing lists may be beneficial. If you plan to advertise through email, this is the way to go. Offer your potential customers something of value in return for getting your name out to them. Some things to include to keep potential customers interested are: select a few people and give them something of value and be sure to announce it to the other readers, have jokes to start it off, have fun-filled surverys to gain additional knowledge about your customers, and then of course the content. In the majority of products and services that you might sell, customers usually come back to buy. By using mailing list you're able to make sure they don't forget your name. Another method that goes along with mailing lists is the use of discussion boards. Most of the time your response will be looked at a few hundred times, anything less than that is useless. This way you're able to gain leads, and a loyalty as you develop new relationships with other users. Be sure to include your signature at the end of ever posting. See the bottom of this article for an acceptable signature. Don't just throw a pitch about your product, people don't like it and most discussion boards don't allow these types of postings.

In this article I've covered many topics on how to get your name out there, some may be well known, some may not be. However you choose to market your product or service, I wish you luck! Nothing brings more satisfaction than success.

Article distributed by FortuneHosting.com. This article may not be sold, it may be redistributed or republished in anyway you choose as long as it is not altered in anyway and all URL's remain intact.

Jason Shpik
Internet Communications
(FortuneHosting.com) - offering affordable and reliable web hosting and maintainance solutions.

About the Author

Jason Shpik Internet Communications FortuneHosting.com (www.fortunehosting.com) Offering affordable and reliable web hosting and design solutions.