What's Working In IT Marketing

If you are not already familiar with the people at marketingsherpa.com, then you should be.  MarketingSherpa, Inc. is a media company publishing useful case studies, results data, and best practices for marketing, advertising, and public relations professionals. They also run SherpaStore, an on-line bookstore featuring "best of" benchmark guides, buyer's guides, and instructional manuals for marketers.

They have just released a free PDF titled: What's Working in IT Marketing: Latest Stats for Software, Hardware, and IT Services Marketers.

Now you may not run a hign tech firm, but the information summarized in this PDF can surely help you in your marketing efforts.  And while you are there, sign up for their e-mail newsletter service.  You won't regret it.

Is your Website Annoying Your Visitors?

An article published in yesterday's E-Commerce Time's website gives us a sneak peak at a survey to be published next week.  Hostway, a Chicago-based Web site hosting service, surveyed 2,500 people and found that website owners had better listen to what visitors are saying about their user experience, or risk losing them forever.

"The results of this survey are a clear warning to e-businesses," Hostway Vice President of Marketing John Lee said. "The Internet has matured to the point where consumers demand an easy online experience. Quite simply, consumers are warning companies, 'you're going to lose my business if your Web site experience is annoying.'"

Among the features that visitors find most annoying are:

• pop-up advertising (34.9 percent),
• registration log-on pages (16.7 percent),
• software installation (15.7 percent), and
• slow-loading pages (9.1 percent).

This is another clear example that your website HAS to be designed for the visitor coming to your site.  Website owners need to put their ego aside here.  Provide them with the information they are looking with a trouble-free user experience and be rewarded with lots of happy, repeat visitors.

Generating Free Traffic to Your Website

Submitting comments on popular forum/blog posts is one of the easiest methods of driving targeted visitors to your website for free.  This really hit home with me this morning when I was reviewing my web traffic stats.

Yesterday I was reading one of my favorite blogs and commented on a post.  In the 24 hours that have past since my comment, my unique visitors and page views tripled!

Here are the keys to making this work for you:

1. Identify forums and blogs which your target audience reads.
2. When you create an account, be sure to add your website address to the signature and ALWAYS add your signature to your posts.
3. Become an active participant in the forum/blog by offering your knowledge and helping other people with their problems.  Do not spam these forums/blogs with blatant sales messages, that'll only turn people off to you.

This will fulfill two goals for you:

1. Being seen as an expert by your target audience.
2. Your link popularity will increase with the signature links pointing back to your website.

If your not sure where these forums/blogs are, go to any Search Engine and type in your industry (or target audience) and either forum or blog.  Read through some recent posts and see where you can add your expertise to the group.

How to Stay Ahead of the Competition

As everyone knows, the key to making informed business decisions is information.  The more information you have about your industry and competition the better decisions you can make.

Our good friends at Google have had a service they call Google Alerts for some time now.  For those of you not familiar with Google Alerts, they are e-mail updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.  For instance, you can set up an alert for any topic you wish to monitor and Google will e-mail you when your topic is found.

But what makes this even more exciting is that Google now allows you to monitor discussions in their Google Groups for your selected topic.  It monitors the top 50 most recent Google Groups search results that relate to keywords you're interested in. Any new articles posted that match your criteria will be e-mailed to you, just like Google News alerts.

Now you can monitor current discussions about your industry and competition and stay ahead of the curve.  Give it a try!

Linking Strategies (Part 3)

For those of us who prefer to be ultra organized before we attempt to undertake anything new, I want to bring to your attention a fabulous resource for implementing a winning linking strategy.  Linking Matters is a free resource that helps web site owners, managers and consultants to run an effective linking strategy. The report contains step-by-step instructions as well as extensive links to workbooks, articles and resources.

The report is about two years old, but is still valid in its approach.  I encourage all business owners to download the free PDF and make link building a top priority for your website.

Linking Strategies (Part 2)

Today I want to discuss several methods for finding web sites that want to link to you.  These methods are straightforward and should be part of every linking strategy campaign.

Contact your industry associations and other business affiliations.  If you are a member of an industry association, chances are that they will have a directory of members.  If they allow links to member's websites, then by all means ask that they link to your site.  Other places to look would be Chambers of Commerce and your local town's web site.

Request links from related businesses.  This should be a natural extension of your regular business networking.  If you are a wood floor refinisher, then requesting links from interior decorators, real estate agents, and building contractors would be ideal candidates.

Submit your website to top Internet directories.  There are literally thousands of web directories out there.  Some are free, some will require a link back to their website, and some will not generate any traffic but will give you a link that will boost your site's rankings.

Here is a great web directory reference site Best-Web-Directories.com to start your search.  In addition to listing the top directories, they also list which ones are free and also give a short review. 

Legally spy on your competition.  Go to any of the major Search Engines (SE) and type in the keyword phrases that you would like to rank highly for.  Then for each of the top 10 or 20 sites, type into the SE search box the search operator link: immediately followed by the competitors web address.  For example, link:http://theblvdgroup.com.  The result will be a listing of web sites that link to the specified web address.  You can use this information to see what other sites or directories you can request links from. 

Search for specialized or niche sites and directories.  Go to any SE and type in your desired keyword phrase followed by "add url" (the quotes are required).  This will give you a listing of web sites and directories that allow you to submit your website.  You can expand on this concept by changing the search qualifier to "add site" or "add a site" or "submit your site" or ... you get the idea.

As you can see, requesting links to your site can take on a life of its own.  It's best to tackle this process a little at a time.  I recommend that you spend 1-2 hours per week requesting links.  Then in a few months you should have begun to dramatically increase your incoming links and your SE rankings.

In my next post on linking strategies, I'll point you to one of the best linking strategy web sites where you can download their free report.

How Americans Use Search Engines

There is a great post at SearchEngineWatch.com that talks about a study recently concluded about American's web search habits.

Among the studies findings:

1. Most people (88%) said they were researching specific topics—specifically, information about hobbies, followed by getting directions/maps - 75%, looking for news - 64%, shopping - 51%, and looking for entertainment web sites - 47%.
2. Google is the most popular search engine, followed by Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask Jeeves.
3. The study also affirmed anecdotal evidence that people are turning to the Internet instead of phone books or yellow pages. 54% indicated they have searched on-line rather than using a phone book.
4. When it comes to shopping, most people (80%) are comparing prices, rather than looking for a local retailer.

Knowing how people search and what they are searching for should help all of us in providing this information to our customers.

Linking Strategies (Part 1)

This week I want to turn our attention to another very important part of your overall Internet marketing strategy - your web linking strategy.  In this series I'll discuss why this is so important, what links should you go for first, and finally how to develop a long term plan for obtaining high quality links to your web site.

Every business owner knows the importance of getting the attention of the Search Engines (SE) and devote a lot of time and money to achieve higher rankings.  Sometimes to the neglect of obtaining quality links to their sites.  It is my opinion that business owners should develop a strategy for link acquisition and commit 1-2 hours per week implementing the strategy.

The benefits of an effective linking strategy are many:

1. Increased exposure for your web site.  Linking provides your site a built-in referral or recommendation from other trusted web sites in your industry. 
2. Higher rankings from Search Engines.  SE today highly value links pointing to your site.  These links will increase your position in the search results compared to your competitors who have fewer links.
3. Insulation from SE changes.  SE come and go in terms of popularity (like AltaVista) as well as changing their ranking algorithms (ranking calculations).  Incoming traffic from your links will not be affected if Google decides to change the way they rank web sites.  This happens more frequently then you think!
   
4. Minimal long term costs for link acquisition and maintenance.  Once a link has been obtained, the costs associated with keeping that link are usually zero.  In fact, you'll find that over time more web sites will want to link to you without you having to do anything.

But before you head out and start the process of obtaining links, you need to answer this one question:

Why would anyone link to me?

Other web sites are not going to give you a link just because you asked for it.  You need to already have a frequently updated web site with lots of quality content and links to other web sites.  Once your web site can be viewed as a resource for others, then you will have a much greater chance of obtaining incoming links.

As with anything in business, developing a web site that others will want to link to is a time consuming process.  It will take many hours to have your site regarded as a resource.  Then many more hours implementing your linking strategy.  But the long term benefits will pay off with increased visitors when you make this commitment.

In the following posts, I'll talk about what web sites would be great candidates to start your link request process and finish with a fantastic free resource for developing your long term link strategy.

 

Site Maps - Your Web Site's Best Friend

Site maps, a one-page index to all your web pages, is one of the easiest features to add to your web site.  This handy reference tool is an absolute must have for all but the smallest of web sites.

One of a site map's main functions is to increase the useability and accessibility of your site.  There are many times that I become frustrated when searching for information on a web site.  If there is no site search box available, then I immediately look for a site map. 

A properly constructed site map will group your web pages into coherent sections and then provide a descriptive link to each of your web pages.

The other main function of a site map is to help the Search Engines find and index your web pages.  Here you have an excellent opportunity to create valuable, keyword rich links to your site's web pages. 

Here are some tips on using site maps:

1. Be sure to include a link to your site map on every web page.  Add this link to your header or footer section.
2. Your site map should not have more than 50 links.  If you have a very large site, then you may have to create a multi-level site map similar to the Yahoo directory.
3. Be as descriptive as possible in the link text and include your main keywords.

The first stumbling block people run into is "what should my site map look like?"  Site Map Pro  has a page offering many site map layouts.  You can also do a Google search for "site map" and take a look at how other web sites design their maps.  Look though them and decide which is best for your site.

Finally, for those of you who are HTML challenged, here are a couple of links to free software products that can produce a site map for you.

eXactMapper Lite

AllWebMenus Create Site Map