Web Marketing

Marketing Strategies

There are a lot of tricks out there to market your website. The web is full of website marketing opportunities, many free, and some for a small price. But when it comes to making your website successful, any price is a small price to pay.

Search Engine Optimization

• When you write your articles, blog, etc always put keywords in your title, leaving out words like “and”, “or” etc.
• When writing your article make sure to put your keyword in the first paragraph a number of times. This helps search engines find your article.
• Insert important keywords in hyper links
• Finally, go to the search engines and submit your URL link. There is always somewhere you can click on their homepage to submit your website to their directories.

Linking Strategies

• Swap URL links with other web pages! Contact similiar web pages and offer to put their link on your web site if they put your link on theirs!

Traditional Marketing Strategies

• Add your website to business cards, literature, closing signitures on email accounts, business directectories like the yellow pages.
• Create flyers or inserts for local papers or magazines
• Make stickers and stick them anywhere and everywhere
• Hold events! Have a wine party and give away little baskets from “yoursite.com”

Optimize the Web to Optimize your Web Page

• Promote your site in forums and blogs!
• Ask visitors to bookmark your site, and in return go bookmark theirs!
• Write articles for online newsletters and promote your site while doing so!
• Start a debate, and have your website as the solution
• Start a business blog and update the content daily

Paid for Marketing

• Purchase PPC ads with Yahoo Search Marketing, or Google Adwords!
• Buy advertising space on other websites

Additional Help

• Make your web page user friendly and trust worthy by using trust-seals and other means to gain consumer trust. A verified page is a safe page as far as most web surfers are concerned.
• Make sure your web site is easy to navigate
• Always reciprocate. If someone comments on your page or helps you in any way, help them right back!

How to Build a Website Basics

So you want to build a website but you don’t know the first thing about the web! The first time I ever considered building a website for my work I was really nervous. I didn’t know the first thing about website basics, or where to begin. It took some time and research, just like the research you are doing now, before I finally felt comfortable enough to give it a shot. I hope I can give you some tips to make your first attempt a little less stressful.

 

How to Build a Website Basics

 

Let’s start out with a crash course in the wonderful world of the web. The web is basically a lot of computers connected by phone lines, satellites and cables. These computers can be connected periodically or all the time. The computers that are connected all the time are called servers. Servers are normal computers with server software that stores web pages and web sites. When a person requests a site through a web browser the server holding the site sends it out. The web browser is the bar usually located at the top of the computer screen where you type in the URL, or website address. Website addresses are created when people register their domain names, which are unique addresses for the web that allows them to be found.

 

Design: Dreamweaver, templates, or HTML code

 

When you build a website you have to figure out what you are going to put it together with. Will you use programs like Dreamweaver, pre-made templates, or hand-code with HTML code? Dreamweaver makes website design a lot like Microsoft word, or other software programs like that. It’s simplifies the process and makes it easy for anyone to use it. A downside is that you can become reliant on the software and you will have less control than using HTML code. Templates are a great way to create a fast and simple site, but you will have considerably less control over what you can do with the site. Hand-coding with HTML code takes a lot of learning, but in the end you will have the most control over your site. 

 

Domain names, web hosting, and uploading your website.

 

When you finish designing your web site you have to register the domain name, and then rent server space. There are companies that will register your domain name in the big black book of domain names for you for as little as ten dollars per year. The fee pays for people to continually update the big black domain name book. To rent server space you have to find hosting companies. Hosting companies are companies with a lot of servers. You pay them to store your website on their server. After you have your domain name, and hosting service you can upload your design onto the web.

 

Getting things from your computer to the web

 

You will use a FTP program to move your website files onto the server. There are a lot of free FTP programs you can find to move your files for free. And some programs like Dreamweaver have FTP abilities, as does recent versions of Internet Explorer.  

 

These are the very basics to putting together, and putting up your first website. I know buidling a website seems a lot more difficult than it is, but in the end you’ll realize it’s pretty simple. This should make the steps clear, but the process will of course take a while. You have to make a plan, and stick to you to make something really great that you can be proud of. After you build your website you can look into further options for optimising it. Later on you can add trust seals to verify your website to raise conversion, and authenticity. You can pay for advertising and do other things to direct traffic to your site once it’s finished. Designing your webpage is the first step, of a long staircase of endless possibilites.

Webpage design

According to Wikipedia, “Webpage design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form of technologies (such as markup languages) suitable for interpretation and display by a web browser or other web-based graphical user interfaces (GUIs)”.

Webpage design is more than a process, it’s an art. With the many free programs available anyone can do web design. But can they do it well? Being ok and being great boils down to experience, knowledge, and the creative abilities of the designer.

An experienced web designer knows to focus on the purpose of the site, the design as it will appeal to a specific audience, original pertinent content, accessibility and of course usability.

Purpose-Without knowing exactly what the site needs to accomplish there is no point in creating one at all. Generic, general sites are a dime a dozen. Anyone who is accomplished in webpage design knows that the function of the site is the most important, and first step to creating a successful site. Know your audience, the purpose of the site in question, and the goals. End goals mean everything in the web design industry.

Content-A webpage is nothing without its content. The content needs to be pertinent to the goal of the webpage, and each page should have engaging images and text. A webpage is nothing but wasted space without something to continually draw hits. Original, organized content is the most important. Nobody wants to wade through a disaster to get to what they want, and they won’t want to read the same content over and over on every site.

Accessibility-Any competent web designer knows that the majority of the world surfing the web are only moderately internet savvy. Providing accessibility to even the most rudimentary of internet users is necessary for the website to function successfully.

Marketing and Advertisment-A webpage designers job isn’t only to create the page, it’s also to ensure the page has marketability options. Suggesting third party verification sites, hacker-safe material, or BBB seals will help the site with conversion, and marketing. Trust Seals are known for being effective, and because they are well known seals having them alone gives the site a sort of “trust-worthy” air to it, and an instant marketing edge.

Webpage design may seem like a job for just anyone, but it’s an art, and like any artist you have to have experience, knowledge, and the ability to bring multiple elements together in perfect synergy for the ideal results and reactions.

Third Party Verification

Website design has become relatively simple with all of the programs and options available to us.  It’s almost to the point where we can click a few buttons and become the boss of our very own web-business…sooo much easier than it used to be!  My grandfather started his own business, and in the wake of walking up hill both ways to every destination he also had to do business the old fashioned way.  What we have access to now is much simpler, something that any web-designer, or web-site builder knows.  The fact that it’s so easy might also be the reason that we over-look a lot of things that might help us when we are designing web pages or creating new websites. 

 

For example, when building or designing websites, we often forget that while we know the website is real, and safe, we sometimes forget that not everyone else knows that.  Customers have no way of knowing they can trust us, or our sites.  One of the most important things we can do for our websites is ensure the public that we’re trust-worthy people.  The problem is that we can’t just come out and say it, we need to have someone else say it for us. 

 

Third party verification is the only way to go.  Having a company that specializes in verifying the authenticity of an e-business is the safest route for any website owner or web-site developer, and the customer.  Some of them can be rather pricey, which is a huge bummer but others are rather reasonable.  I have found one in particular that’s actually really affective, and economical. 

 

Trust-guard is a company that specializes in third party website verification and certification seals.  Trust-seals, are placed right on the website where customers can see that the website is safe.  Trust-guard checks identity, security, and privacy before issuing the seals, so customers can be sure that the website is totally safe before they make a purchase releasing sensitive information like credit card information.  It’s also beneficial for web developers or e-business people because it increases conversion, which is always a good thing.  The good thing is that they really don’t cost very much, and when compared to website conversion increase it’s worth it, or at least so far it has been for me. 

 

 

Anyways, just an idea!  I know a lot of friends of mine who have websites who have third party verification, but not as many as I would expect.  It’s an important and growing necessity in the world of web business and if you haven’t at least checked it out, you totally should.