Everyone wants to know what to do 'after' their site is
launched. Well there are several things you can do, and several you should
never do. Let's start with what NOT to do.
DO NOT
1) Unless you are Autozone, PepBoys, Advance A/P, or some other
established brand, do NOT buy a billboard, radio spots, local TV commercials,
buy ad space in newspapers/magazines, etc. It is near impossible to
convert traditional media into clicks at a website.
2) Assume that your friend who is an 'internet expert' can
get your site ranked at yahoo and google with his 'tricks' that he learned from
his friends' friend (you get the idea).
3) Spend tens of thousands of dollars with ANYONE until
you are as knowledgeable as they are in the ART of Search Engine Optimization (aka
SEO).
4) Plan to have an overnight success.
DO
1) Establish a budget of what you can LOSE each month
without it hurting. Consider this a trip to Vegas, start with what you can
flush down the toilet.
2) Diversify your plan into the only two areas of Internet Marketing that
do work.
3) Go to a bookstore and buy a book on PAY PER CLICK marketing. For
example:
http://www.amazon.com/Search-Engine-Marketing-Dummies-Computer/dp/0471754943/sr=8-2/qid=1166577558/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/102-1659674-5193725?ie=UTF8&s=books
4) Surf Google and find an expert in SEO. This will
seem easy at first glance, but SEO is in our opinion the biggest scam in the
Internet business. You need to contact companies that have a high ranking
on both the left and right side of the Google result page, and contact them by
phone. There are companies that charge a one time fee, monthly fee's, a %
of your monthly budget (Sophio did this for the past few years, but has
stopped), and flat fee's by keyword.
5) Consider purchasing ad space on popular Internet Blog and or eZine
sites that have millions of visitors, such as kbb.com, edmonds.com, etc.
6) Read #3 again and study that book.
HOW STUFF WORKS
The term "search engine" is often used generically to describe
both crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories. These two types
of search engines gather their listings in radically different ways.
Crawler-Based Search Engines
Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, create their listings
automatically. They "crawl" or "spider" the web, then people search through what
they have found.
If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these
changes, and that can affect how you are listed. Page titles, body copy and
other elements all play a role.
Human-Powered Directories
A human-powered directory, such as the Open Directory (
http://www.dmoz.org/ ) , depends on
humans for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for
your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A search looks for
matches only in the descriptions submitted.
Changing your web pages has no effect on your listing. Things that are useful
for improving a listing with a search engine have nothing to do with improving a
listing in a directory. The only exception is that a good site, with good
content, might be more likely to get reviewed for free than a poor site.
Getting listed in the DMOZ is very important and very difficult because the DMOZ
is managed by people like you and me, and the people who manage a category often
have an interest in that category (not how it was supposed to work), so you
might have a tough time asking the 'editor' of the auto parts section to take
notice of your site.
So how do I get in the top ten?
Well if the answer was here for free, there would only be ten websites for each
key phrase possible since everyone would use the same technique. The
reality is that each search engine (Yahoo, MSN, Google, and its smaller
competitors) all have different formulas (referred to as algorithms) for ranking
websites. These algorithms are being improved constantly so any 'trick'
you may have read about or heard of may no longer work and may actually hurt
your rankings rather than improve them. I cannot tell you how many people
tell me each day that they have it figured out or know someone that has.
If you were to talk to those with top ten rankings for the keywords you need to
be in the top ten for, most of them would say a little bit of this and a little
bit of that. Few if any know EXACTLY the reason they have a top ten Google
ranking that they are not paying for and surely if they knew for sure they would
be in the SEO business as well.
In summary, you get in the top ten by paying for it, one way or another.
You will either pay the Search Engines directly or you will pay a top notch SEO
company that has verifiable proof that they know what they are doing. You
can pay a lot to get in the top ten 'sponsored' results overnight, or you can
spend an equal amount of money and in six to eighteen months hope to get in the
organic or 'free' side of Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Some more info to get started TODAY.
There are many places to advertise your new or existing website. We recommend the following.
1. Google http://adwords.google.com
Benefits:
- Biggest search engine on the Internet, so you will get the most traffic in the shortest period of time
- Results are displayed on many other prominent websites
- Very fair rotation schedules so that you can bid low and still get good traffic
2. Overture http://www.overture.com
- (owned by Yahoo)
Benefits:
- Biggest AFFILIATE search engine on the Internet, so you will get tons of traffic as your site appears at aol.com, msn.com, yahoo.com and many more
- Many auto bidding features helping to keep your cost per click low
4. ebay.com
Benefits:
- Inexpensive way to bring traffic to your site, as each auction can cost as little as $3.00
- Easy to use and navigate
- Biggest website on the Internet next to amazon.com
5. Email marketing
Benefits:
- free to send messages
- when using an opt-in list your buyers are ready to buy since they asked for email
- can bring a user directly to a page inside your site from a link in the email
- campaigns can be created on your own computer and sent from there as well
