When I discuss online marketing, you’ll often hear me mention your “marketing arsenal.” There is no one thing to do, one thing to buy, one thing to set up that can be considered your sole marketing effort that allows you to sit back and watch the dollars roll in as many would like to believe. Online marketing requires ongoing effort, testing, activities, participation — for perpetuity. This is the nature of the online beast.
Your marketing arsenal includes a plethora of activities, from SEO, SEM, to PPC, Blogging, Networking, eZines, Article Writing, Social Networking, ad buys and the list goes on. This is interactive technology after all and the more you interact; the better you will do.
What many overlook is how advertising off-line can be an extremely effective way to drive traffic to your site. Of course your domain, ad text and ad placement and design can all affect how many will remember your ad and go to your site. When done properly, you will see a spike in your site’s traffic and you’d better be ready to convert those visitors!
I read an interesting study on the value of off-line advertising driving visitors to Web sites and thought I would share that with you today.
Print Newspaper Ads Drive Online Research, In-Store Purchases
So with all you do online; at the end of the day don’t forget about all the off-line venues that can help to expose new customers to your site!
At your service,
Judith
When building a new site, you have to think SEO (Search Engine Optimization) before you type a bit or byte of code and then continue SEO efforts through the entire development process. SEO should then be front and center moving forward after your launch for every change and addition you make to your new site.
Even if you buy one of the Web Site Designs in my gallery, you should have a specific plan about what you want to accomplish with search engine rankings before you start your customization efforts. Determining what you want to accomplish is far beyond simply stating “I want to be in the Top 10.” Who doesn’t? The questions then is how are you going to accomplish that? Now, that’s what a plan should include!
You need to do keyword research, market research and product/service research so that you are very clear what is ahead of you. New sites have to spend time in the search engine “sandbox” (sort of a waiting area for new sites to pay their dues). This waiting period can be 6-9 months or more before the indexes will include your site. When you do get indexed you want to hit the gate running!
Search engine rankings can be frustrating and they take allot of ongoing efforts to achieve. In a day when being on that top page can make or break your business, SEO is a topic that needs to be seriously discussed front the start, for the long term which should include an ongoing plan.
A new study just came out that has very interesting details about how folks search — confirming what I say all the time — work to get on that top page (preferably “above the fold”) — or your chances of getting found drop exponentially!
This very informative well put together Search Results Report is available in PDF download. At first, you may find it to be information overload — however, this is information that you would be wise to be exposed to and make every effort to embrace.
Read, learn and prosper!
At your service,
Judith
Online there is this misconception that more is always better. More times than not, more can be ineffective and have a negative impact on what you may be ultimately trying to accomplish.
When does quality outweigh quantity?
- … when it comes to the incoming one-way links to your site.
- … when it comes to all the junk search engines index.
- … when it comes to your Blog postings.
- … when it comes to your per page keyword targeting.
- … when it comes to your Meta title and keyword tags.
- … when it comes to sharing personal information.
- … when it comes to length of pages.
- … when it comes to Web site inquiry form fields.
- … when it comes to the number of clicks to get to a desired point.
- … when it comes to the keywords in your PPC campaigns.
Of course this can all be subjective and include exceptions. What do you think?
Where do you see quantity being served up rather than quality in the online world? And where should quality be considered before quantity?
At your service,
Judith
