If you build it they will come.
Unfortunately that only works in the movies.

On Internet marketing - By Daniel Eaton

This is the first of a series of articles related to Internet marketing and promotion.

New web sites are exciting, especially when they're yours. There are fancy graphics and pictures, moving text and other such eye candy. But what happens after the web site is up and running? A few hundred thousand new websites are placed on the Internet daily. How will any anyone find yours?

First, give your web site readers a real reason to be there in the first place. I have seen too many websites that are merely billboards on the information superhighway, consisting of nothing more than 'call me.'

Provide your readers a reason to come back. Update your web site with fresh information frequently and provide useful tools. For instance, mortgage calculators that offer amortization schedules are a necessity on a financial site.

Market your website effectively. Don't overlook the basics. Be certain your web URL (http://www.mycompany.com) together with your e-mail address (someone@mycompany.com) is on your business cards, letterhead, and even your fax cover sheets.

Get your staff excited about the web site. Place your assistantsÕ pictures on the web site. Many times business is conducted over the phone and your customers may speak to your assistants. ItÕs nice to associate a face with name. Your assistants are sure to tell their friends and family. Who knows? Perhaps one may be your next client.

Promote your site. The basics include adding your web site URL to every search engine you can. A search engine is an index of web sites such as http://www.yahoo.com, http://www.lycos.com, http://www.hotbot.com, and http://altavista.digital.com. There are about 150 key search engines in the U.S. Take the time to visit each one of them to register your web site. There are services available that do this for you. They charge anywhere between $20 to $1,500. Beware of scams. Some of these companies prey off of the naive with blast email messages. If the offer sounds too good to be true it most likely is and the company's intention is to separate you from your money. Typically you can expect to pay about $150 US. It does take a little more work than registering just once.

This is how search engines work. Once you register your site, the search engine spider will visit your site gathering all of the words and pages. It then indexes your web site according to what it finds. For some search engines, such as Yahoo, a real person will visit your site and index it accordingly. It may take anywhere between four to six weeks before your web site actually appears in the search engine. These search engines also periodically purge and update their databases so it is possible for your web site to be dropped entirely. It is wise to resubmit your web site at the very least every other month.

Take a pro-active approach to driving readers to your web site. If you advertise, be certain that your web site URL is in every advertisement no matter how small a campaign you may be running. The more ways you can drive readers to your web site the better. Advertise in online directories. You can expect to pay about $100 per month per directory.

Some directories are becoming more innovative. One innovation consists of pay per click and you determine how much each click is worth. Here is how it works. If you pay $5.00 US per click through (that is when someone sees your company name on the directory and actually clicks to your home page) you may appear higher on the search result list than if you would pay only .50 US. I have seen ranges anywhere between $12.00 to $15.00 us on the high side, to as low as $.10 us on the low. Banner advertising isanother alternative. Banners are ads with links that appear on other web sites.

The bottom line is that a web site is an innate marketing tool and you must market this tool as well. Although this may sound redundant, it isa very important step to building your first Internet project. Next week we will talk about banner advertising and electronic mail marketing.

B L O G SPOT

We need to keep the comments trustworthy. A email address is required but will not be shown.