My Top 12 Web Site Marketing Strategies

By Herman Drost
Posted Monday, August 30, 2004

If you don't create a successful strategy for marketing your web site, you can't build a profitable online business. It's therefore imperative to drive thousands of visitors to your web site, then convert them to paying customers.

How do you accomplish this?

Use Several Marketing Strategies

Don't put all your eggs into one basket by only employing one marketing strategy. You could see evidence of this during the latest Google update in which many commercial web sites which once had top rankings, dropped out of existence, thus instantly losing sales.

By creating more than one strategy to market your web site, you can soon see which one works the best by attracting the most visitors.

Market With Consistency

Set up a clear daily, weekly, monthly and yearly marketing plan for your web site and stick to it. It is the lifeblood of your business.

Test Marketing

Continually test all your web site marketing strategies to see which one works the best. Eliminate those that are not profitable.

12 Successful Marketing Strategies:

Search Engine Optimization

Here are the locations where you should include your most important keywords or keyword phrases:
1.Meta Tags(invisible)
Title tag
Description tag
Keyword tag
Alt tag
2.Page Content (visible) Weave your best keywords throughout the content of your pages. Focus on the first 250 words on your page and only use one to three keyword phrases per page of content. Include keywords in your H1 tag (main title) and H2, H3 tags (subheadings) as well as in the hyperlinks on your site and/or in outgoing links.

Search Engines And Directories

3. Google is currently the main search engine to get listed in. If you get listed there, you will also get listed in AOL, Netscape, and Yahoo and it's still free. This may change in the near future as the competition heats up. Other free listings also include directories such as ODP. Do a search on Google to seek out your niche directories i.e. for sunglasses, look for sunglass directories.

Here are the other search engines to submit to:

(http://www.searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156221)
Pay per click (PPC) search engines - if you wish to generate traffic to your web site immediately, set up a Google Adwords or Overture campaign.

(http://payperclicksearchengines.com)

Email Marketing
5. Create a Newsletter - most folks don't buy from you immediately but need to be contacted several times to put them in the buying mood. Place a subscription box on every page of your web site. Send out your newsletter every two weeks to keep in touch with your subscribers. Be sure to include original content (not rehashed content) along with new products you wish to introduce to them.
6. Email Course or Tutorial - set up an autoresponder that will deliver quality information over a period of seven days. This means you have multiple chances of contacting your visitor and to promote your product or service at the same time.
7. Ezine Ads - create an ad for your product and find ezines that cater to your target market. Write several ads and track them until you find one that pulls well.
8. Signature File - include this in all your online and offline correspondence. Set up your email client so that it does this automatically each time you send out an email. Include your name, who you are, what your business is about, a way to subscribe to your newsletter, your web site address and your email.
Link Strategies
9. Write articles - ezine publishers are always looking for original content. You can include a link back to your web site in your signature file. If several ezine publishers (that may have thousands of subscribers) publish your article, you can get hundreds of links pointing back to your web site.
10. Reciprocal linking - get links from other sites that complement yours. i.e. if you just offer web design and someone else offers search engine optimization, you could exchange links with each other, thus adding to the quality of each of yoursites.
11. Forums - offer your help to other forum participants then leave a link back to your site in your signature file. Popular forums are spidered regularly by the search engines, thus giving your site a link boost.
12. Offline Marketing Not all your customers are online. Market offline by including your web site information on all stationary i.e. letterhead, and business cards. Place ads in newspapers, trade publications, send out postcards, fliers and get involved in local organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce. You can even set up your own local club or be a guest speaker for others.

Continuously evaluate, test and refine your web site marketing strategies so that you can apply them to any product. These are the keys to building a successful online business.

About the Author
Herman Drost is the author of the popular ebook: "101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site" Subscribe to his "Marketing Tips" newsletter for more original articles. Mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: (http://www.isitebuild.com/articles)