Marketing

Most success literature advocates hard work - the long road

Marketing your business and your website ?

It is my belief that for a quality result,  the best method is the lasting ethical authentic but long road (also known as “white hat” methods) .   If a method seems silly, gimmicky, tricky, a fudge, junky, “black cat”, or non-ethical…. well then it is.

Recipe for Success:

Ingredients:

1. A plan - know what you want your website to do,
   • it’s mission or tag line,
   • it’s target market (narrower is easier often),
   • it’s competitors (and who links to them) and
   • the keywords you expect – brainstorm every possible variation
2. You or someone who knows your business and is interested in it, preferably passionate about it to work on this organic growth side of it.
3. The ability to write good content and present it well
4. A quality obsessed technical person who has an appreciation of standards and usability, as well as an interest in your business
   
5. Time and patience – it’s like watering the garden (ok so I am mixing my metaphors) and requires regular attention
   

While I am mixing metaphors, here’s a few more: a good dish always has quality ingredients, and my father’s favourite:  If you pay peanuts you get monkeys.

Method:

1. Start early and simple.  It can take a while for search engines to index your site, the sooner something decent exists the better. Get the domain name, load the cms,  use a standard template and design rather than agonising about how it should look.  The  look can be changed later without impact.   Get at least one page of decent content up there.  It will give you a placeholder at least for other sites referring to you, to link to. Much harder to get an etry updated than if it goes up right the first time.
2. Build the technically good website to hold the content. A good solid website:
   • Validates. It adheres to W3C standards for HTML and Css.
   • Uses XHTML, not table based code
   • By default produces the necessary declarations and tags for search engine optimisation.
   • facilitates classification and tagging of your articles (blog posts)
   • does not interfere with the content, but presents it.
   • does not interfere with the browsing process – keep it simple.
3. Developthe good content and keep doing it – you know your business – tell the world about it – share your knowledge.  Make sure you use your keywords early in the text.   But beware – make the content
   • Useful,  (add some value)
   • Unique  (do it differently, a different perspective) and
   • Up to date. If something becomes out of date, flag it as such or delete.  Post regularly in whatever your pattern is – once a month is fine, but don’t “abandon” it for a year.
4. Test it, don’t just assume that the developer or designer has tested it.  You test it, ask your mother to test it, a friend you know who will be honest.   Listen to what they say – make notes.   Whenever you update content, refresh your browser and test the published page.
5. Tell people about your website once you have some interesting content.
   • Generically, by submitting to search engines or community organisations,  professional bodies, or your existing clients and friends.  If the information is useful, they will pass it on, add to a website and you are on your way.  This organic route can be slow, but it is the most authentic and will last longer than other methods.
     • Find yourself on google maps, and the google local business center, claim the entry if it is already there.  If it is not there, create a place, make it public, validate it.
     • Submit to any local search engines – see what comes up on google when you add a location to the keyword and/or choose the location search -  often the local search engines will make an appearance there with your competitors details and not yours.
     • Submit to the open directory
   • If you really have something to say – issue a press release. There are a number of sites like prweb
   • Use an a good email signature with your web address on all your emails – people are curious and you may catch them in an inquisitive mode.
6. Know your target market and find people who may be interested in what you have to say.  Offer it up gently (no force feeding please ) How do you feel about banner ad’s, pop-ups, pop-unders, voices that start talking from nowhere, and please no mewing cats ….
   • Think tangentially, participate in indirectly related forums or comments on websites genuinely and gently with truly useful input.  Note: since many of these have a “no-follow” on the links, you are essentially looking for the interested human, not the search engine benefit of the links.
   • Write articles or guest post  for other sites ensuring that
     • the credit/author line has your main url.
     • the article offers more good information at one url on your site.
   • a good link from a quality website has serious long lived effects – adwords only work while you are paying…
7. Make it easyfor people and their friends to find you again.  Essential are RSS feeds and subscription forms (with confirmation).   Consider also
   • bookmarklets – these essentially allow your audience to add your web to lists of  links.  Addthis.com is an easy neat way to handle the multiple sharing and bookmarking websites.
   • a “tell a friend” form if your audience may not have easy access to their own email tool.
8. Stats- Measure it – what gets measured gets done….
   • Test your keyword status every now and then – be a newbie and try to find yourself using uninformed keywords, not your special terminology for what you do
   • Have a method of checking your web statistics, what’s working, what’s not, any “not found” pages or dead links, where are people coming from etc?

Avoid:

• Useless link exchanges or link farms,
• doorway pages,
• keyword stuffing,
• hidden or tiny text,
• unnecessary duplicate content or appearance of it,
• search engine submit scams,
• guarantees of top ranking etc

Some References and Resources:

• http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization
• A list of very useful references and tools from seomoz
• more to come…..

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