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Internet Marketing Three Ways to Promote Your Site How to choose a domain name Choosing and preparing content Bringing websites in from the cold |
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Search Engine Optimisation Content That Search Engines Notice 7 Proven Steps to Search Engine Success |
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Three Ways to Promote Your Site You've built a terrific website - the design looks great and the content is right on target. Your next step is to make sure your prospects find it. websites are passive, but Web marketing is not. Here are three tried-and-true ways to create an effective promotional campaign that seeks out your best prospects and draws them to your site.
Source / Author: Kim T. Gordon |
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How to choose a domain name The importance of having your own domain name cannot be over-emphasized. If you are running an online business, and don't yet have a domain name, you are probably losing thousands of dollars worth of business because of this. Why? Simply because, unless you have a domain name, your customers will simply not feel comfortable buying from you. In order to sell on the web, you need to build up your credibility. Having your own domain name is the first step in that process. So, now that you are convinced that you need your own domain, how should you name your domain? Here are a few do's and don'ts regarding this. While the availability of domains which follow all of these rules may have become limited, try to follow as many of these rules as possible.
Source / Author : Sumantra Roy |
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Choosing and preparing content The words, tables, graphs, images, audio and video in a website all constitute the contents of the site. The decision about what content to include should be guided by:
When preparing content for the website the content editor has to resolve the following questions
What to do Inevitably, decisions need to be made as to what content to include in a website. You can use the following checklist to help you decide about each item of content. The more times you can say “yes” to each of these questions, the more appropriate the content is for inclusion in the website
Source / Author : http://www.e-businessguide.gov.au |
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Bringing websites in from the cold Systems integration is a complex task at the best of times. Trying to marry it with web development is even more challenging. Websites were once seen as an extra marketing channel, later as an additional cash register or customer service officer. Today you should think of one as an extension of your entire business. For web design needs as much consideration, diligence and integration as the opening of a new office or store. Ideally, say web developers, a website should be an access point into all the information your customers, suppliers and staff need to do business with you. No more, no less. Neil Wilson, chief information officer at Oakton Computing, a Melbourne firm specialising in database and systems management, says websites must support information management and be part of the overall system architecture. Rather than building a website, an intranet and an extranet, consideration should be given to one site that accesses everything. "Take an architecture that includes database and business applications. Some organisations build private web channels (for different applications) but if you take the view from the top the (information) should be available to every channel. You get more out of existing systems by accessing them," Wilson says. But that doesn't mean unrestricted access to all your back-office systems. When integrating a large insurance company's mainframe, Patrick Cusack, chief information officer of Sydney-based HotHouse, felt that large supply chain systems were not designed for the high traffic generated by the web. "They have a very specific static number of users and are engineered accordingly. SAP, for example, is entirely inappropriate for real-time transactions, especially if using media, as it creates extreme spikes in the traffic," Cusack says. The solution: "You must decouple. That is, broker snapshots of the data and deliver those (to the website) ... You never plug anything into SAP or AS390. A lot of people make a living saying you can but none of my clients are comfortable with that," Cusack says. Synchronisation with the original system doesn't always need to be done in real time either, depending on the line of business. Many synchronise overnight. Today website users expect organisations to offer the same level of professionalism over the web as they do in a store or over the phone. Liz Fulcher, planning and strategy director of Clemenger Proximity, the interactive arm of advertising group Clemenger BBDO, says this is particularly true of customers. "I was around when websites really were stand-alone. Only early-adopters had them and customers were a lot more patient but not any more. A company today that doesn't offer basic information, that doesn't have an exclusive log-in access for customers and update information in real time, is really missing out on a quarter of their ability to touch customers," Fulcher says. Fulcher says having customer relationship management software (CRM) is useless unless a strategy is in place to retain and manage data captured by websites. "You need to acquire (customers), entertain and satisfy them. Unless you have the database collecting the information and the systems that will interpret, report and give the appropriate response to them, you will lose the customers. Worse still, you won't even know you lost them." E-commerce sites require additional layers of complexity, especially in regards to security and the need for crisis management, redundancy and backup, but the most important aspect is still the customer experience. And Oakton Computing's Wilson says mode of access should not determine web development. Whether the information is accessed via desktop, mobile or PDA, it should be an extension of the organisation's information system. "In a lot of ways we shouldn't be distinguishing website design from internal access (to information). It should be all within the same strategy, dependent on the right security being in place," he says. Pulling all the information together is a challenge but that is what content management systems (CMS) are for, says Andy Farrell, managing director of Gravitymax, a web publishing platform specialist. These plug into and select from existing systems, allowing central control of the information displayed by a website, without the need to duplicate data. "But the toughest thing clients have to do now is choose from a plethora of different CMS products that at first sound very similar," Farrell says. He describes the CMS market as a three-tier structure. At the top are the big international products such as Microsoft Content Management Server and the more expensive Documentum, Interwoven and Vignette; in the middle, solutions such as Gravitymax's own .max which run on Microsoft technology but are essentially out-of-the-box programs that allow some tailoring; lastly, custom-built systems which, he says, are riskier because they haven't had as many years in development as the others. "The right approach to take is not to be driven by features but objective and strategy," Farrell says. James Robertson, an independent systems consultant, says there are more than 55 brands of CMS in Australia. Mid-range products cost between $20,000 and $80,000. "The days of multimillion-dollar deployments have passed, with good riddance," says Robertson, who travels the country speaking on the subject. "Even a year ago, organisations spent $1 million to $2 million redesigning their sites. Few still have that kind of money but many more want to spend a lot less." Robertson, whose company Step Two Designs does not sell software or design websites but publishes a tool kit for companies tendering for CMS, says every site today must have one to stitch it together. He says clients should evaluate between six and 10 products before making a decision, to avoid buying a system too big for their needs. They must also engage different suppliers for the overall design and the technological development of a site to ensure results match suppliers' core competencies. 1989 Tim Berners-Lee, later founder of the web's governing body the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), creates a point-and-click program in the form of a hypertext editor. Documents are shared by the physics community over the internet. The open-access program becomes the World Wide Web. Writes the first web client (browser-editor) and server in 1990. Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML) and Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) published on first server in order to promote adoption and discussion. 1995 Commercial websites appear. Also called first generation sites. Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer launch. 1995-1996 (second generation) HTML standards extended. Web developers use more sophisticated "flat" navigation and banners, icons, buttons. Animated graphics introduced. Content update only available through web developer. 1996-1999 (third generation) W3C HTML standards evolve. Multimedia content allows sound and animation in the browsers. Flash emerges alongside Java applets. Server-side technologies mature, simplifying database capture and management. Content management and user-publishing become natural extensions of the emerging facilities for server-side database integration. 2000-2003 (fourth generation) Greater strategic focus. Sites as bridge between business systems and customers. Emerging concerns with transparency, compliance, productivity, as well as user experience and marketing channel. XML emerges and is well established in web services allowing real-time applications. Source / Author : The Sydney Morning Herald |
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Content That Search Engines Notice Anyone who has used the Internet to search for information knows the value of a good search engine. We all have our favorite search engine: the one that magically knows what we're thinking and points us to exactly what we want. There was a time when a website's metatags -- hidden codes, which describe Web pages, that are recognized and used by search engines to compile results of a search -- were believed to determine its ranking in search engines. This belief is not entirely correct. The content of your site is now acknowledged as the key factor toward being recognized by search engines and achieving a prime ranking. This article discusses steps you can take to optimize your content so your site gets noticed by search engines. Take a Keyword Approach Metatags are not as critical to search engine ranking as once thought, but taking a keyword-style approach to search engine optimization is still helpful. Begin by creating a list of the key phrases that describe your business, the products or services you provide, and the geographic areas you serve. Each phrase should contain at least two words, such as "running shoes" and "custom furniture". When deciding on which phrases to use, think about the phrases or combinations of words that your target audience (potential customers) would use to find your site. Be specific, but more importantly, put yourself into the mind of the person doing the searching; think about how you would search for your product or service. Emphasize what your company does over who you are, because the person searching will be looking for a specific service or a product, not necessarily a specific company. For example, although the key phrase, "lawyer boston" might be an accurate job description, the key phrase, "will preparation boston" will probably drive more traffic to a site because the person searching is looking for a specific type of legal service in a specific area, not just a lawyer. Similarly, if you sell products, use the specific names and brands of some of your more popular products as key phrases. For example, the key phrase, "Harry Potter action figures" is more effective than "toys". You might also want to test your key phrases. Go to www.overture.com and use the Term Suggestion Tool. This tool lets you enter a search term to see how many searches were made on the term during the previous month. It also suggests related terms you might not have considered. Strategies for Blending Key Phrases Into Web Text The next step is to work the key phrases into the text. This step can be kept simple by keeping the following guidelines in mind: Use key phrases as often as possible... but be careful. To get the most out of key phrases, use them as many times as you can without compromising the quality of the site. This can be challenging, but it is crucial. The goal is to drive visitors to your site by including numerous instances of your key phrases; however, if visitors get to your site and find themselves reading the same phrases over and over again in sentences that seem disconnected, you will lose them. Write clear, direct text. If you're writing text for your site correctly, your chosen key words and phrases will naturally appear within the text because they "belong" there. In other words, if you write concise text, and the key phrases are accurate, you will use those key phrases. Include an appropriate amount of text on each page. One approach is to include enough text on each page so your key phrases do not draw too much attention to themselves. Having at least 200-250 words per page is a good rule of thumb. Avoid overuse of key phrases. A common mistake made on some websites is overwhelming the reader with too much information. Remember that you are promoting your entire site; don't include all your key phrases on every page. Sprinkle two to three key phrases per page, where they naturally fit in with what's being discussed. Also, it's not necessary to use all of your key phrases in the first paragraph on a page. The bots — the programs that search the Internet for new sites and new content on existing sites; they decide which sites are displayed in a search engine's results — search entire pages, so the location of key phrases within a page is irrelevant. Include variations. Although it's best to fit exact key phrases into your page text, include some variations, such as plurals or -ing endings. Use this strategy only if it improves how the text reads and if you believe the variations will be used by searchers to find your site. Don't optimize for one phrase. Another common mistake is to optimize for just one phrase. For example, if the same phrase appears twenty times in one page, the search engine might think you are trying to "cheat "to get a prime listing, which can get your site banned from the search engine. If you have a very important search term, devote a separate page to it. More Tips Although it's good practice to refresh the text on your site regularly, keep your keyword-optimized text stable, so the search engine bots keep finding it. Search engine bots attach more importance to headlines and boldfaced text. If possible, place key phrases in headlines or in bold, but do not sacrifice readability. Search engine bots also attach more importance to key phrases that are part of a link. If you link to another page, use a key phrase in the link, rather than using a generic phrase like "click here" or the page title. For example, rather than using the text, "See our Services page," with the word "Services," linked, use a phrase like, "Our services include will preparation, estate planning, and probate law," with each specific service linked to the Services page. The Bottom Line Source / Author : Linda Woods |
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Proven Steps to Search Engine Success Having a good website isn't enough — you need to help people find it. The most commonly used tool for finding sites is the search engine. Unfortunately, how to get search engines to recognize and include your site on results listings isn't always clear. In fact, getting a prime, "natural listing" in a search engine is more an art than a science; still, there are some steps you can follow that will take you a long way toward improving your chances.
The Bottom Line Source / Author : Linda Woods |
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