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Five Easy Ways to Promote Your Website | Print |

Promoting your website can be a daunting task: it feels like there are thousands of ways to do it, but all of them take a lot of time or money for no guaranteed return. To help solve this problem, I've compiled a list of ten easy ways to promote your website.

1. Advertise in the Media.
Now, you might have already ruled out advertising in newspapers and the like as too expensive, especially since the chances are your audience doesn't live in any specific local area. That mostly rules out radio, too, and TV is even more likely to be out of your reach. What you might not have realized, though, is that you should stop looking at the general media and start looking at the specialist media for your area. For example, if you run a house-buying website, you could advertise it in specialist property magazines, and even on 'lifestyle' cable channels that show programmes about moving home.

2. Go to Specialist Events.
If there 's some kind of trade fair for the industry your website is in, turn up to it and promote your website. While there might not be all that many people there, the ones who are there will be influential, and can get your site talked about.

3. Keep a Good Blog.
While more and more businesses are starting blogs, few of them are doing it right. If you're using your blog to publish product announcements in corporate-speak, it’s useless. You need to remember a simple mantra, 'views not news' make sure your blog has something interesting to say.

4. Buy Search Engine Ads.
 Many people seem to think it’s some kind of admission of defeat, but search engine advertising can work very well, especially with keywords that aren't already cluttered with ads. If you do it right, you can get much targeted ads very cheap. Indeed, ironically, the more targeted the ads, the cheaper they tend to be.

5. Start an Affiliate Program.
Finally, if you're selling something, don't forget that old standby of web marketing: the affiliate program. Offer visitors a cut of the profits if they can sell your products for you, and all of a sudden you've got a crack sales team raring to go. The only trouble with this plan is that everyone is doing it, so you'll need to offer a high percentage of your profits to your affiliates to make the offer attractive to them.

 
Pay-Per-Click | Print |

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid promoting that most search engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires a bid for a "per-click" basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a newcomer to your site. There is the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your website traffic, your site often comes up in the results of other paramount search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are blessings and disadvantages. If you seize the meaning the process and monitor your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effectual. One of the best conveniences is that you never have to tweak your web pages to alter your position in search engine results, as you must do in a regular SEO campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click campaign is pay a price.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you're up and running. It doesn't demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier - and more effective - the process will be.

This type of marketing is very cost effective. It involves placing an advertisement on a search engine or another website. As visitors read it and take an interest in the advertisement, they will click the link. You only pay the host a set amount for each time the link is clicked.

The more popular and in demand your keyword or keywords are when it comes to PPC advertising the more you will pay for each click. Many of the main search engines have you bid on the maximum amount you are willing to pay for these keywords. Make sure you carefully analyze you budget before you decide to pay too much for these types of advertisements.

The PPC concept has become a huge tool on many of the large search engines. If you take a look at the right hand side when you enter keywords or keyword phrases into a search engine you will see a list of advertisements. They are ranked by relevance to the search criteria of the user rather than by the amount of money the PPC will earn the search engine. This is because the search engines have to provide the best information to the users to keep them from turning to other search engines for their needs. As a result the search engine will reward those PPC ads that match what the visitor is really after.

To get the most out of PPC advertising it is important you have your advertisements set up on quality sites and search engines. The more of them you have available the more traffic you will get. However, to keep the cost down for the advertising you want to make sure you are getting clicks from potential buyers in your target market. Make sure you have analysis tools in place so you can track the number of clicks from a particular source as well as the conversion rate coming from that source.

 
Choosing Web Hosting | Print |

With such an overwhelming number of web hosting companies offering such a wide variety of services, it is very difficult to find the best web-hosting package for you. So try not to take a hasty decision and sign up with any web-hosting provider. Instead, first find out what web hosting features are essential so that you have a better idea of the web-hosting package that's best for your needs.

In the current scenario, free web hosting is gaining more popularity. But at times it fails to match the clients' requirements. Majority of the free web hosting services are reliable, but sometimes they tend to disappoint. Various web-hosting companies provide minimum free services and compensate by charging for the expanded services. If your company is amateur and requires only a home page then this it is the best option to go for. Before selecting a web hosting company it is sensible to do a market research about the company's reputation and reliability.

 When choosing your web hosting package, you want to know about disk space. If you're going to be building a big site, they you will need a lot of disk space. The range is usually from 5 MB up to 300 MB. So even if you're starting out small, make sure your web hosting provider has the ability to grow with you as large as you want to go.

You also need to take into account email accounts when signing up for a web-hosting package. Make sure you have enough email addresses to get started, and that you aren't being charged for more than you need. Again, know how many you need, but choose a web hosting service that can offer as many as you need as you grow and know what the charges for additional email accounts will be.

One important factor that should be kept in mind while selecting a web hosting company is the support provided by them. Majority of the people having websites are not aware of the latest technology. So they require a superb technical support in all the technical issues. You should be aware of the fact that the chosen web hosting package provides you a 24/7 support. It is sensible to check their downtime reputation too.

So for a final look there are few important web-hosting features, which can be included in your package, or you may require them at the time of expansion.

FrontPage extensions
FTP directory
Daily backups
Hit counter
Website statistics
Redirect URL
File manager
SSL
Shopping cart
Auto responder
Access logs
Mailing Lists
Customized error messages
Unlimited bandwidth
Your own CGI-BIN
Site search engine

 
Marketing Basics | Print |

Building a business requires an in-depth knowledge of the product, competitors and customers. Market research provides the business owner with a method for gathering timely and specific information on both your customers and competitors.

Q.What Topics must be addressed?

Q.What do customers need?
Q.What do customers want?
Q.What do competitors offer?
Q.What is the estimated loyalty to old suppliers?
Q.What is the reluctance to change in this field?
Q.How suspicious will people be of a new business ability to compete?

Customers do not change companies for value only; they sacrifice good will an intangible commodity that may be worth thousands and take years of effort building. This is not something consumers want to give up easily.

Analyze the Market

Critical analyze of the product or service sold, and an honest appraisal of the product and service, will ensure it is able to meet the demands of the customers. Remember, the product must focus on the needs of the customer. One customer may value price over quality. Another may value service over quality. The third customer may not consider service, price, or locality in their quest to find a product that meets their individual needs.

If the customer does not need a cheaper product, but do need a smaller one, manufacturing a cheaper one that is a bigger is a drastic mistake. If an area has several people who offer daycare in their homes, but no one offers this service to disable children, or gifted children, or parents who work late at night, then focus on these needs before opening a daycare.

The customer may become annoyed because they want a toaster that makes toast in half the time, but that does not mean they will pay double for this toaster. A business may market toasters that prepare an instant breakfast is doomed if the consumer views this as a luxury they are unwilling to pay for
To stress this point one only needs to look at the infomercial market.

Thousands of items sold over the television, to an impulse consumer, which would never sell in a store. The consumer in the local store is a different type of buyer than the one who sits up until three a.m. looking for something different that hits an emotional nerve.

In this case, marketers are appealing to the buyers’ self-esteem. They want to convince the consumer that all the beautiful people own that item, and if they want their friends to think they have the complete kitchen, they will buy the toaster that makes breakfast in half the time.

 
Is SEO Better or Is PPC? | Print |

The online community is definitely a large market place that you cannot ignore, especially if you have an internet business. There are thousands if not millions of consumers that you can tap in the internet.

1. SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Some researches indicate that 60% - 70% of internet surfers and users actually resort to using the Google search engine to find and locate web sites and pages, for any topic they desire. SEO is the process taken to make sure that the internet uses will find your website when ranked among the top results of a search. This way you can make sure that you will be visible and can clearly stand out from the rest.

To get a search engine optimization, you will have to build on your own internet site frequently hit internet links to web site pages. The process will involve IBLN or Independent Back-Linking Network, wherein hundreds or even thousands of pages will be utilized to promote a particular website of a client.

In SEO, there is no need for you to pay for the clicks although it will require you to spend time doing research to get a favorable combination of ads and target audience. The SEO process is a long term one. It requires months, 6 months at the least, before the proper outcome is fully achieved, but once the goal is accomplished, you will definitely get a steady source of profit.

2. PPC

PPC means Pay Per Click. It gives way advertising on a search engine. These are sponsored listings that you see whenever you make a search. There will be a charge whenever a visitor or web surfer clicks on any of your ads. There will first be a bidding process. The highest bidder for the price per click will definitely get the chance to be first listed in the search engine.

With this kind of advertising, you can still basically control your campaign as you get to create your own ad. You will also manage the target audience and still stay within the bounds of your budget. Most of the providers of PPC advertising will allow you to specify the target market, either by topic, industry or geographical location. You can also very well check if your ad gets to be shown at all and if it is competitive with the rest.

 
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