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five simple internet marketing techniques
Five Simple Internet Marketing Techniques
By Scott Buresh
Each of the following five internet
marketing techniques can be implemented without a
considerable investment (except perhaps time). While
some of them might be more accurately described as
internet marketing advice rather than internet marketing
techniques (most notably #5), each of them can have
a positive impact on your internet marketing initiatives.
- Track and analyze your
web site traffic.
Most web hosts offer traffic analysis data to their
clients, and it is arguably the most important tool
at your disposal in measuring the effectiveness of
your internet marketing techniques and overall website
performance. By taking the time to understand this
data, you can begin to understand the motivations
and interests of your audience. Are many of them leaving
on one particular page? Perhaps you should make some
changes to keep their interest. Are most of them looking
at one particular part of your site? Perhaps you should
make it a more featured area. Since this data updates
on a regular basis, you are also able to gauge the
effectiveness of any changes that you make. These
are the most basic examples, as there are many more
useful bits of information available- what search
terms your visitors are using to find you, what sites
are bringing you the most traffic, how long your visitors
are staying, etc. Maintaining a successful website
is an ongoing process, and visitor data is crucial
to getting optimum results.
- Request links from non-competing,
quality companies related to your industry.
This is a simple but effective piece of internet marketing
advice. Links allow you to get quality traffic while
increasing the prestige of your business. Visitors
that enter your site from a link that they find on
another site are predisposed to believe that they
will find something of value there (if not, why would
the site take the time and effort to link to it?).
The added benefit to link building internet marketing
techniques is that they can give a tremendous boost
to your link popularity, which is a major factor in
determining how your site gets ranked in search engines.
- Write informative articles
about your business or products and make them available
to online publications and webmasters.
There are numerous sites that will allow you to offer
original informational articles for others to publish.
In fact, our own company routinely publishes articles
containing internet marketing advice. Such an exchange
benefits you in several ways. First, all of these
sites require anyone who is reprinting your article
to provide a link back to your site, which can provide
highly targeted visitors (visitors that most likely
already have a good impression of you from your article).
This is also another way to boost your link popularity,
which is vitally important to your search engine rankings
(as discussed above and in our last issue). Moreover,
if you offer a service, a reputation is your most
valuable asset. Widely distributed articles can help
to establish you as an expert in your field and help
you to gain credibility with your future clients.
Although internet marketing techniques such as these
may require a considerable time investment, the payoff
can be well worth the trouble.
- Give your website visitors
a clear call to action.
If your site isn't intended to sell a product or gain
a customer, then what is it for? Your internet marketing
techniques should have a clear purpose, meaning that
every page on your site should focus on getting the
visitor to take an action. This could be purchasing
something online, filling out a form or sending an
email, making a phone call, or even simply moving
on to the next step in the process. Your website should
be more than a static billboard proclaiming that you
are open for business- it should compel your visitors
to follow a specific path that leads to a sale. The
answer can be as simple as placing a prominent offer
on your pages.
- When it comes to your
site, don't overlook the obvious.
As previously mentioned, this might fall better
into the category of internet marketing advice,
rather than internet marketing techniques. However,
it is important that you compare your website to
an actual store. Is everything clean and organized,
or is everything messy and cluttered? Many websites
give bad first impressions with issues that could
easily be avoided. Broken links are a sign of sloppiness
that are fairly common. To combat this, there are
several websites that will automatically scan your
site and identify any broken links. Seeing little
red "x's" where a graphic or photo should
appear is another common problem that is easily
addressed. Does your site maintain its look and
functionality with most browsers? People are sometimes
dismayed to learn that their site (which looks great
in Internet Explorer) doesn't maintain its look
or functionality with other popular browsers such
as Firefox. The time and resources required to fix
these problems are small when compared with the
cost of tarnishing your professional image.
© Medium Blue 2007
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