Web Guides 4 U

In a down market it is more necessary than ever to consider how to cut costs. You look at every penny spent and trim the fat so much that sometimes you trim the meat as well. In this case, the meat I’m referring to is hosting your website—or having a website at all. Losing the power a properly designed and marketed site can provide you in today’s marketplace would truly be a tragedy, so before you even think about putting the carving knife to your hosting; consider this.

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Keywords are to search engines what catnip is to cats. It’s true. Keywords aren’t the only selector utilized by search engine algorithms to determine the ranking of your site, but they are a key component…no pun intended. Understanding keywords and utilizing them properly in your site’s content will help make your site successful, and that, my friend, is why we do this, is it not?

In order to understand which keywords will return the best results you need to do a little research. There’s a number of different ways to perform this research, and the good news is that none of them involve a lab coat…unless you want to wear one, and then who am I to question your personal style?

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With three to five seconds to capture your potential customer’s attention, you’ve barely any time to work your magic. This is why it is absolutely vital that in addition to proper site design you take the time to really develop your copy.

Imagine your site’s visitors as wild animals. You’ve set out the bait by marketing your site properly, by submitting your site to search engines, by practicing your SEO training (or paying someone else to do it for you), but a wild animal’s curiosity only takes it so far before its instinct is to bolt. If you don’t make the risk all that much more enticing, the wild animal will sniff at the offering, but they won’t stick around. Before you know it, you’ll be staring at their furry little hindquarters as they bound back into the dense cover of the World Wide Web. This is where igniting their interest comes into play.

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There are two sides to this website debate. On one hand everyone you speak with insists that you need to have a site in order to be competitive in today’s market—even the blue-haired old lady who lives down the street and swallowed a fly has a blog, right? On the other hand, you’re wondering why you should spend the time and money developing a site that you feel will just get lost in the plethora of websites being hosted by millions of people worldwide. After all, won’t your efforts be just another small fish in a big pond?

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What a wild time we’re experiencing as businesses these days, eh? What was strong before—what seemed impermeable—is no longer, but what was once an afterthought, or a tertiary method, is now not only a necessity, but one of the most successful methods for continued success a business can attempt.

Folks, the people have spoken. Oddly enough, even with previous studies indicating that the majority of people don’t believe everything they read on the Internet, the Internet has taken second place in media as the preferred news source (according to an article on eMarketer.com). In addition to this, more business put their marketing money to work through online avenues such as search marketing using services such as GOOGLE AdSense (up by 23.6% in the first half of 2008 according to eMarketer.com). Were you part of that group? If not, you need to reconsider where you’re spending your marketing money.

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When the advent of a website occurred they were simple documents that delivered information to the end user, usually through overkill. There was nothing else to put on the page until people started using BMPs, JPGs, and GIFs, and that’s when the mistakes began to roll in. Everyone was so excited that it was possible to create something fantastic looking on the Web they forgot the actual reason most people needed a website. Caught up in making their site “fancy” they overlook that which will make their site a success, and websites became a place to showcase design skills, get “Flashy”, and again, over stimulate their end users with excessive content.

Well, my friend, most sites are being hosted for one reason and one reason alone: to incite customers to action. Your site is a marketing tool, plain and simple. The development of your site should be focused on this effort, and how you do this will determine your success. There are some tricks to marketing, and believe it or not, most marketers don’t even know how to properly utilize a website in their marketing campaign.

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The art of a brand is age old, but it has never been more prominent than in today’s media-filled age. Branding has become so prominent that often times you don’t even realize you’ve been subjected to it. Spend a day trying to recognize every brand you encounter, and you’ll see what I mean. It doesn’t matter if the business is composed of a single entity, or a conglomerate, without a brand, they are marginally as effective. The long and short of it is: you need to brand.

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If you’ve built a site and have it hosted with a reputable hosting company then chances are you’re concerned about your search engine ranking. After all, you’re paying money to make sure that your offering is available to the public, right? So it stands to figure that you should be concerned with search engine ranking and the popularity of your site. If not, I’d urge you to reconsider.

Being ranked on the first page of any given search engine is a site owner’s dream come true. The problem is that most people view the top site’s ranking as a piece of alien technology they’ve stumbled across: it is beautiful to behold, but impossible to understand. I’ve news for you: it isn’t all that enigmatic.

Sure, it will require some work on your part, but what doesn’t? We can’t all be lottery winners, but you can initiate your success by following this advice.

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Trust is, perhaps, one of the most valuable online commodities. It doesn’t matter whether you are hosting an informational site, or whether you are hosting an ecommerce site; if your site visitors have no reason to trust you they have no reason to stay on your site, purchase from your site, or believe the information detailed on your site. This is especially important when a full 65% of Internet users don’t trust the information they receive on the Web (according to a survey cited by Gerry McGovern of GerryMcGvern.com; the actual article he wrote is found here: http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2001/nt_2001_07_16_trust.htm). Pretty daunting number, eh? This is why it is so important that you pay real close attention to the information you present, your online practices, and your presentation.

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Whether you work in a brick and mortar building, or our business operates solely on the World Wide Web, customers are your life’s blood. There’s no getting around it. Everyone has customers when in business. You’re either offering a service, in which case your customers are coming to you to fulfill a need, or your offering a product, in which case…oh, that’s right, your customers are coming to you to fulfill a need. Funny how that works. The big question is how to keep them coming back, isn’t it? It is a rare business model that operates solely on new customers, and although new customers play a large part in business’ success, return customers are the backbone of the business skeleton.

That’s where mailing lists come in. In a recent study it was determined that 80% of adults in civilized society use the Internet. Eighty percent! That’s huge when you take into consideration the population. With this phenomenon one of the most used methods of communication is email. When radio was invented advertisers jumped on board at the thought of hitting a broader market, and again with television. You’ve seen it: advertisers are even marketing their products at the beginning of movies, and we all know how fickle the Big Screen can be, and the lifespan of a movie in theaters. So, why aren’t you using email to market to your customers?

Well, it could be that for a while there spam was getting out of control. Like me, you’ve probably received thousands of emails for products you’ve never expressed an interest in. Messages that clutter your inbox without impunity: stupid wastes of time. Why wouldn’t your customers view your advertising attempts in the same light?

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