Advertising and marketing your website

If your visiting this page of our website then the probability is that you have purchased a web design package from us and as part of the service are wanting to obtain useful and interesting advice on online/offline advertising, correct? Then please read on!

 

The most important factor of any online or offline business other than customer satisfaction is advertising and marketing. Here we go through proven and effective online/offline advertising techniques that you may wish to experiment with.

 

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of modifying your website so that it performs better in the search engines, websites can be optimised using an array of technical methods to get your website found under relevant keywords and search phrases.

 

Firstly its important that your website includes META TAGS in the websites code, the main three META TAGS to focus on are Title Tags, Description Tags and Keyword Tags. All websites provide through Noble Web Design include META TAGS as part of the service, however relying on just META TAGS alone will not be enough to optimise your website to perform well in the search engines.

 

Content is king, the more text content on your website for the search engines to pick up on the better, regularly and freshly updated content is even better! This can be achieved through Forums, Blogging and RSS Feeds. Forums allow users to interact and post their own topics and text content around your website, this is fantastic fresh content that the search engines can pick up on. Blogging is the process of writing your own articles which users can read, again offering regularly updated fresh content for the search engines to analyse. Do however note, the content must be relevant to your business and include relevant keywords in the text, if the content is not relevant to your business your search engine visibility will not be increased.

 

There are many other special SEO methods to take into consideration such as keywords in the domain name, internal and external links and link popularity, image ALT tags, eliminating stop words from your META TAGS, calculating keyword consistency and keyword weight/density, placing specific content keywords in bold and tags can also help. Noble Web Design can provide a full SEO service for your business, please get in contact with us for a completely free no obligation quote.

 

Be sure to visit our Blog and RSS Feed for latest updates, tips and advice on online advertising, search engine techniques and website related news!

 

Submission to the major search engines

The search engines are always the first place to start, they manage millions of online customers actively searching for the content you offer. Its free, fast and simple to make a basic submit to any search engine, directory or linking page online.

 

There are pros and cons when using the free search engine submission service, although this process can get you listed there is no guarantee without heavy SEO and it can be hard to get found under strong relevant keywords like "shoes" or "computers" as there will be to many paying competitor sites. However using this service you can normally obtain a good ranking when just searching for the domain name or company name of your website.

 

What are the top 10 search engines I can submit to?

As it stands Google own about 60% of the online search market, so your primary focus should be getting listed with them. Yahoo hold about 20% and all the other search engines make up the rest.

 

1. Submit your site to Google
2. Submit your site to Yahoo
3. Submit your site to BING (just replaced MSN)
4. Submit your site to ScrubTheWeb
5. Submit your site to GigaBlast
6. Submit your site to AOL
7. Submit your site to WebSquash
8. Submit your site to EntireWeb
9. Submit your site to Alexa
10. Submit your site to Lycos

 

Noble Web Design offer an automated search engine submission service where our submission coverers up to 1050 different engines/directories including the top ones outlined above. You will need your unique keycode supplied in your websites information pack to use this service.

 

So what's Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising all about?

The name says it all, with pay per click you sign up with the PPC company, create your advert and it then gets placed in the sponsored section of their search results. Take a look on Google search results, notice on the right hand side there are sponsored listings. All these businesses are paying a cost per click to be included in the highly visible sponsored search listings. Google Adwords and Overture are the best PPC to use.

 

Firstly when a customer searches on a search engine he/she will use keywords to find what they are looking for. For example someone looking for shoes would search for Nike trainers, high heels or welly boots etc.

 

Once you have created your pay per account and the advert has been setup you will need to select your relevant keywords, its best to use exact match keywords for the services or products you are using. You will be required to enter a maximum amount you are prepared to pay per click sent through to your website. This is similar to an auction, if you enter 5p per click for keyword high heels and another competitor website entered 2p per click you will only end up paying 3p per click for higher visibility.

 

For every click you get on your site via the search engine you will have to pay the search engine the high bid amount (per click). Now you can imagine the traffic you could generate if you where listed on the first page of Google under your chosen keyword. The end result would be maximum exposure guaranteed, using Overture and/or Google Adwords will place you in the featured area of search results broadcasting your business to high volumes of targeted traffic.

 

There are mixed reviews on PPC advertising, some online businesses recommend it and use the service on a daily basis, others will tell you to avoid it completely. We say give it a go and see what results you get, there is no harm in experimenting with your advertising campaigns.

 

So what if thousands of people click on my site, It will cost me a fortune!

Wrong, most pay per click services (Overture and Google Adwords especially) have a feature where you can set daily click limits so you don't send to much traffic on to your website. This will keep you within your allocated budged so you don't over spend, when your clicks reach a max no more traffic will be sent through.

 

When using pay per click its also a good idea to bid on and choose very strong and specific targeted keywords. You don't want to pay for incorrect keywords where customers wont find what there looking for and click away, this will be a waste of money.

 

Be sure to visit our Blog and RSS Feed for latest updates, tips and advice on online advertising, search engine techniques and website related news!

 

Whats the best pay per click to use?

 

1. Google Adwords
2. Overture Pay Per Click (powered by yahoo)
3. Adcommerce (eBay PPC)

 

A guide to using Google Adwords

Using Google AdWords is a great way to drive traffic to yours or an affiliate site.

 

When a user searches on Google, the web sites that appear down the left hand side are those who have optimised their pages to be seen for that particular search phrase. Each page lists ten entries and to stand a chance of making your site pay, you need to appear on the first two pages of search results and, ideally, be in the first ten. There are various ways to accomplish this with SEO.

 

Down the right hand page are the 'sponsored listings' or those sites that are advertising through the AdWords System.

 

There are a maximum of 8 entries per page and you can appear with a bid from a little as 2p. You don't pay for traffic with AdWords unless a visitor actually clicks on and visits your website. In essence, if you do your research and spend time setting up your adverts and related key phrases, you're only paying for highly qualified visitors to your website, or that of the site you are promoting.

 

Check for viability, i.e. how many people are already advertising. Carry out research into what your potential customers are actually searching for. This is a site that has all the search engine statistics and search terms you need to make a success of your marketing campaign.

 

Build your keyword list. Use a good 'old fashioned' text editor to sort and refine your keyword phrases. Analyse and refine your campaign. You need to track your campaign and be prepared to delete keywords, add new ones and edit adverts, repeat the process until you're happy with your monthly income.

 

Quick tips with Google Adwords

 

1. Bid on low cost relevant words
2. Use Ad Word Analyser to find all of those less competitive words that are relevant to your product or service
3. Qualify your title and description
4. Using the keyword in both the title and description can increase your click through rates 40% or more
5. Use unique landing pages
6. Stick to your budget
7. How much will you earn per sale? What percentage of your visitors buy? How much are you paying per click? Set a bid limit based on your calculation of your visitor value
8. 8.Get the CTR

 

There are two primary factors to succeeding at Google AdWords. The first is choosing the right keywords. The second is writing compelling ads.

 

When writing your ads, you need to make sure that you take the time to read through the Google AdWords Editorial Guidelines. You can't hype, exaggerate or lie to entice visitors. Google want to retain their position as the top search engine and won't compromise on relevance. Google will always ensure that the person searching is put first. If your ad is pulled, simply make amendments based on the feedback given and it will automatically be re-submitted. The AdWords team are receptive to feedback so if you feel an ad was disapproved unfairly, email them and state your case.

 

What other online services are available?

Another good place to advertise online is www.Yell.com which is the online yellow pages, low listing fees and high traffic potential make Yell a recommended choice for business and services.

 

1. Download our free search engines revealed & SEO techniques here!
2. Download PayPals 16 tips for growing your ebusiness!

 

Link exchange

Link exchange has also proven to be an effective method of online advertising, look up other businesses selling similar items or services to yourself and see if they are interested in exchanging links on their website. A link to your website via some one else's will allow customers that cant find what their looking for to be directed on to your site, vice versa. Some high traffic generating websites even offer advert placements for low fees. Link exchange and links to external websites is also an SEO technique that will increase your search engine ranking with link popularity.

 

Advertise on eBay

There are over two million UK hits on eBay everyday. Using ebay to advertise your local business and sell products is a highly recommended choice for online advertising, using ebay power selling tools and including detailed images/descriptions you can effectively promote to millions in the UK alone. Providing your ebay customers with discount coupons for your website is a great form of promotion and will bring customers back for repeat sales, the discount/coupon system compatible with our ecommerce package can be located in the additional services section.

 

Be sure to visit our Blog and RSS Feed for latest updates, tips and advice on online advertising, search engine techniques and website related news!

 

Send out newsletters

Send out weekly or monthly newsletters telling people about news regarding your business and services, new products, special offers and promotion etc.

 

Offline advertising

Advertising online is without a doubt extremely powerful, however old fashion advertising offline has also proven to be effective. Depending on what products you sell some ideas are outlined below:

 

1. Yellow pages book
2. Thomson local
3. Local radio
4. Flyers
5. Co-operative advertising
6. Discount coupons
7. Posters
8. Leaflets
9. Sign written cars/vans
10. Advertising agency
11. T-shirts
12. Sponsorships
13. Newspapers
14. Local shop windows
15. Womans magazines
16. Mens magazines
17. Trade magazines

 

We hope that you find these ideas of use, experiment with different techniques to see which works best with your business. Don't always expect to be successful the first time round and remember the more advertising work you put in the more sales you will get out!

 

Be sure to visit our Blog and RSS Feed for latest updates, tips and advice on online advertising, search engine techniques and website related news!

 

When traffic starts to arrive at your website you can begin to market it and make interesting statistics/reports to build on and improve, Noble Web Design customers have special access to advanced online web statistics that will allow you to read up on useful visitor resources like unique visits, hits, most viewed and popular pages, browsers used, search engines referred from and a lot more.