PPC Advertising (Pay Per Click)
Advertising on Search Engines are very cost effective if you are willing to commit to a budget, this is also one of the fastest ways of getting quick visitors to your site.
Search engine optimization is basically optimizing your website so that when someone enters the keywords that relate to your site in a search engine your website appears as high in the list as possible ( preferably on the first page ).
For example if you're website sells gold watches you would want your site to appear high up in the list of results when someone types 'gold watches' into the search engine. Or if you wanted real targeted traffic from the search engines you could optimize your site for 'I want to buy a gold watch'.
It's imperative to think of the search engine optimization process as a long-term investment for your site, so here are 5 tips to help you invest in your future success:
- Thoroughly research your keyword phrases using the paid versions of Word tracker or Keyword Discovery. Keyword research is completely and utterly the key to everything that is search marketing.
- Make sure your site is not made up of graphics alone, as these cannot be read by the search engine spiders that come a-crawling. (This is especially true of graphics that look like text -- these are often used when a particular font is desired.)
- Be sure to use natural, easy-to-understand language that conveys the message of your web site and includes keyword phrases you'd like your site to rank highly for.
- Make sure your Title tags and link anchor text all jibe with the visible content on the page.
- Be patient! You knew I'd end with that one, but with Google's aging delay in place for new sites, patience is more important than ever. It's most likely going to be a good 9 months before you start seeing much (if any) traffic from Google's natural results. Don't be discouraged, but instead use that time to constantly make your site better than the other guy's.
Advantages of Targeted Email Advertising
Email is a more individual and effective marketing method than selling through an impersonal website. But being more powerful, it also has the greater potential of damaging your reputation and sales. Two things need to be borne in mind:
Research shows that customers don't normally buy on receiving the first email, but somewhere between receiving the third and tenth. Like normal shoppers, they like to think and shop around. You have to be persistent, but also subtle: bombarding readers with exactly the same pitch day after day will only alienate them.
Happily, email management programs exist to allow you to automate the entire process — automatically responding to the replies, sending off the next carefully-crafted sales letter, keeping records and so forth.
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