Marketing My Website

Marketing my website can be a lot of work. But what a lot of people don't realize is that it isn't always a step by step procedure. Depending on your site there are different avenues you can take to get traffic to your website.

Keyword Research

The most important information you must know before marketing your website are the words and phrases your customers use to find you on the Internet. Surprisingly, they are often times not the words and phrases you think they are. Once you've identified this information, you can begin your Internet marketing campaign with a vengeance.

Keyword research is one of the most important components to marketing my website. If I want organic search traffic I need to know the highest searched, lowest competition keywords. If I'm looking to send traffic to my site via AdWords I want the high "click-through, high-traffic" keywords but I also want niche keywords so I'm not spending a fortune on every click. Using the right keywords in your text, ad's and links is critical to your sites success.

Search Engine Optimization

When marketing your website a great source of free traffic will come from the search engines. But before the search engines can send you visitors, they need to know a few things about your site. Once your site is organized properly; Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, AOL and all the other search engines will be chomping at the bit to tell the would about your website.

Search engine optimization is important to any websites organic search success. I like to think of SEO as the "technical" side of internet marketing. Using the right keywords in the right places on the right pages and of course building links back to your site are critical to your sites success (though I include link building in another step.) In this stage I want all my sitemaps, xml sitemaps, RSS feeds, tell-a-friend pages, affiliate scripts, tracking code, per-page keyword usage and density setup and optimized.

E-Mail Marketing

Getting a potential customer to visit your site once is easy. Getting them to come back a second and third time and make a purchase takes work. According the the most recent Internet marketing research, you must have between seven and eleven positive contacts with a prospect before you can expect to convert them into a customer. Email marketing allows you to do just that ... and do it in your sleep.

Video Marketing

Over 70% of all bandwidth used on the Internet today is video. On average, American Internet users watches 28 minutes of video every day and that number is growing. Better yet, Google and the other search engines are starting to give video a front row seat on their search results pages. This is the marketing wave of the future and you can take advantage of it today.

Podcast Syndication

You can find a podcast on any subject on the Internet. Just go to iTunes, or one of three dozen different sites scattered across the Internet and search for a topic you find interesting. Once you find it you will quickly discover that the podcast host is an expert in his or her field. You may want to add a podcast to your marketing mix. They're relatively easy to produce and syndicate and they'll give you instant credibility.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

There is no quicker way to get in front of your target market than through pay-per-click advertising. It is also a fantastic way to test an ad for pennies before you invest in print advertising. Here's how it works. You simply start by writing four lines of ad copy. You tell the search engines where you want your ad to show and how much you're willing to pay every time a customer clicks on your ad and is taken to your site. Then it's a matter of writing better and better ads and learning from your experience.

Social Networking

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Linked In are examples of Web 2.0 at it's finest. They are also some of the best tools on the Internet to generate leads and traffic to your website. Social networking is the digital equivalent of attending a chamber of commerce meeting, only better. Imagine being able to access thousands ... sometimes tens of thousands of people who are interested in what you're selling? Compelling isn't it. But you had better do it right or you'll be verbally whipped behind the woodshed.

Social Bookmarking

Some of the more popular social bookmarking sites include: DIGG, Propeller, Technorati, Furl and hundreds of smaller sites. They allow you to create a virtual bookmark of the websites you find interesting and give the rest of the world an opportunity to see what you find interesting. After a short time, you'll garner a loyal following of people who are interested in following your every move. Be careful however, because once you have a fan base you could easily have more people visit your site than your site can handle ... a problem we would all like to have:-)

Article Marketing

When you write an article describing how your product or service solves a problem for your target market, an amazing thing happens, you're instantly seen as the recognized expert in your field by the people who read your article. But how do you get your potential customers to see and read your article? The way to do that is to have it published on as many websites and newsletters on the Internet as possible ... with a link back to your site of course. And when it comes to generating links back to your website, nothing beats article marketing.

Blogging

Today it seems like everyone is blogging, and they are. Unfortunately, most business people don't have a clue as to how to use their blog to generate leads. Truth is, if you use a blog properly you won't need a separate website. Blogs allow you to do things that websites can only dream of. They allow you to easily add new content to the Internet without the help of a technician. They allow your readers to comment on your content. They allow you to easily syndicate your content directly to your customers through RSS or Atom feeds and much more.

Those are just 10 of the many methods I use when marketing my website. Be sure to listen to the experts of Internet marketing before you get started!