My SEO Tips – Get Insights to Internet Marketing Tips

The Internet has now become an important medium for product and service advertisements.  Almost every company that can afford print, radio and TV advertisements have also ventured into placing ads on the Internet.

But with millions of websites out there being visited by millions of computer users, how can you make sure that your ad can be seen by your target customers and that your leads will be followed by these users?  Here are a few tips.

1.  Place an ad on the websites frequented by your target customers.  Before doing this, you need to define who will be your target customers.  Placing an ad on sites that they usually visit will increase the possibility that your ad will gain the attention and will be followed your target customers.

Also, consider the website’s search engine placement, traffic, external linking and the other ads placed on it.  External linking will determine if there are other sites that link to this site.  This will mean that people can get to the site where your ad is placed, even if they are browsing a different site.  Check if many of your competitors have ads on this site.

2.  Placing ads on some sites cost some money.  However, there are also sites that can place a link to your site, product or service in exchange of having their link being displayed on your site.  This is also true about the newsletters sent by site owners to its mailing list members regularly.

Also, having helpful links placed on your site and having sites link to your pages help in boosting search engine ranking.  This is similar to making a statement that your site’s content is important that other sites have links to your web pages.

3.  Pay-per-click (PPC) is also a good method in Internet marketing.  You will only need to pay for the ad if the link is clicked.  If you prefer this method of advertisement, make sure that you are using services that set limits on daily expenses.  There are also services that help you determine effective keywords and monitor the PPC results.

4.  Choose your domain name wisely.  It is still being debated if domain names matter when it comes to search engine placement.  Whether it does or not, having product related domain names help consumers remember your domain, that they can go back to your site even without the links.

5.  Make sure you have useful content on your sites.  While keyword density is important in search engine placement, having useless information or annoying repetition of keywords will not increase your customer’s confidence in your site.  It may even affect your sites traffic and can get your site removed from search engines.  So make sure that keywords are used strategically.

6.  When thinking of keywords, think like your target customers.  What do you think are they going to search so they can get to your site?  Also, use specific keywords or key phrases.  Submitting a single word or a very general phrase to a search engine will not get you to the top of the search results compared to submitting specific keywords that describe your product and services perfectly.

7.  Track your ads.  Always check how much you have spent on placing links on frequently visited sites and on PPC.  There are services that allow you to monitor PPC transactions and how many of these end in sales.  You always need to consider if the ads that you have placed on these websites are getting you to your target consumers and if these ads can lead to revenue.

One final tip on marketing products and services, sell the benefits.  It will help your marketing strategies a lot if you highlight the benefits of choosing your products and services instead of merely discussing the product specifications.  Product specifications may not mean much to customers, unless they know what these stand for (how these specifications affect the quality of the product or service).

Many people say getting to the top of search engine results is difficult since millions of websites exist, which can be using the same keywords.  While this is true, this doesn’t mean that your website has to stacked under your competitors’ websites when presenting search engine results.  Strategic advertising and linking, together with useful content, can also get you to the top of the search results.

I know this isnt a SEO topic however as I work on my clients and personal sites, I tend to seek or broaden my mind on how we can generate and get traffic with other marketing channels and means besides SEO or PPC. That’s why I thought it would be good to share these ideas with like minded marketers like yourself.

In this article, I like to cover promoting websites via the granddaddy of social media. What is it? Simple we call them Forums. Forums used to be the social platform where people congigate before sites like friendster, myspace or facebook. These forums are still in existence today and some have good traction that used correctly can help you increase traffic to your site and open up another traffic source. Besides being a traffic source, visitors on a forum can help provide free user reviews and feedback to help increase your site’s usability which helps increase stickness in the long run.

So how should one go about getting traffic from forums?

Step 1 – You have to search and research the forums that serve your niche or website industry. A simply way is to Google for forums that are of use to you. Try “[Your Niche] forums” or “intitle:[Your niche] forums or “[Your Niche] communities”.

Step 2 – Review the top 50-100 results and evaluate which forum sites should you join. Some tips on evaluating to see if the forum site is worth your while – check the lastest post, how recent are they. Are the content in the threads relevant, informative or are they just filled with spam. When was the lastest user registration, is it recent. For forums that are relevant in content and have recency, I would recommend them worth registering for.

Step 3 – Start the conversation, dont just drop your very first post with “Come visit my new site” Do yourself and the community a favour join in the conversation. As a tip your very first post should be at the introduce yourself section or answer a few threads that you are expert in. Do make sure your reply adds value and not put “nice comments”, “I like it”. If you like it, try to explain more about why you like it. By doing so, you wouldnt be seen as a spammer. For sites that allows things like that, you would be better off not posting in them.

Step 4 – Once you have a few posts in your bag, you can stir towards the section that best suits for you to ask questions or promote your site. Some tips would be like “I need your help with a new site that I am launching.”, “Looking for comments”, I have a site that I am launching which has the follow features, feedback would be appreciated”. You can also ask about your navigation, ask about the content, ask about the colours, or whatever else may be bugging you.

Step 5 – Review the comments provided and followup with the thread. Last use the feedback and work into your webiste, also do keep the thread alive as forums tend to push the most recent thread up to the top which is what people normally see first.

With these 5 steps, you should be able to get some forum traffic coming to your site for the initial launch. However don’t expect thousands of visitors from this method as it really is just one of the many other ways web marketers can use to generate traffic to their site. Remember at the end of the day it’s all about getting the ball rolling and anything you can do to proactively promote your web site has to be considered. So best foot forward and get exploring all those forums.