Web Site Promotion - Search Engine Submission Information

Web Site Promotion

by Allery Scotts Ltd

Very many organisations find that their website attains invisibility status on the Internet. This note guides you through the basics of effectively promoting your web site.

The first thing to consider before even looking at online marketing methods is who do you really want to visit your site and what do you want to achieve? Many companies find that the majority of their traffic is from suppliers, competitors and friends or relatives of employees. This is not necessarily a bad thing of course, but will not help you generate much interest or business with customers.

Having thought about your targeting, the next step is to explore the different options that will help your business raise its profile through the web site. The overriding principle is to treat the Internet just like any other marketing activity - make sure it has clear objectives, is targeted, integrated with other marketing tactics and fits with your overall business goals.

Create a niche. Companies attempting to be all things to all people on the net have generally failed to make an impact - the web is now so vast that there is very little equivalent of the high street "passing trade". Furthermore, the net allows, even encourages, people to search the entire world for "best of breed". Department stores online have generally been disasters, but retailers with distinct specialities, like Italian salami or Scotch whisky, have prospered. Famous Internet success stories such as Amazon.com and Virtual Vineyards all started with a very narrow product focus and a clear idea of how the web would deliver that offering to market.

A small independent wine shop reports that over a third of his turnover now comes from barrels of Scotch whisky ordered over the Internet. This is very good for him as he has incurred no extra cost, and indeed was not previously able to sell whole barrels in the shop. Think about which of your products and services would most benefit by being online? Keep it simple. Look for areas where speed of delivery or additional information can add a lot of value to your offering and where people do not need to touch before they buy, then focus on that.

Get a good net name. Many people will try to find things by guessing at the URL, so see if you can get one they will guess easily. Using your company's name and adding "com" or "co.uk" are the obvious ones of course. But given that most names you register will cost under £200 and you can have them all pointing to the same place if necessary, it is well worth considering registering several. There is a point of view that you should go to the same lengths to protect your brand online as you would in the physical world. For example www.coke.com and www.coke.net are both owned by the Coca Cola Corporation. But try www.coke.co.uk and you will get something that their marketing department would definitely not approve of!

On another tack, think about naming your site by the name of your product or service. It is worth trying to be a bit clever. If your name has already been taken, is the owner susceptible to offers, or can you play with it a bit? For example, British Midland has www.IflyBritishMidland.com as well as www.BritishMidland.com, while the BBC has ww.beeb.com as well as www.bbc.co.uk, because www.bbc.com is owned by Boston Business Computing. The site www.NetNames.co.uk is probably the best source for searching and for registering the UK domain names, but you may prefer to go International for the top level domains - check out www.worldnic.Net and www.desig.Net.

Link with other marketing material. Every piece of literature you produce, be it brochures, letterhead, business cards or advertisements, should have your website address on it. Surely that is where you want existing and potential customers, not to mention suppliers and potential employees, to go for further information or support? If not, why are you bothering to try and promote the site in the first place? This is where the need to ensure you integrate your web marketing activities, with other tactics, to get maximum benefit.

Utilise the press. If you are offering services and goods through the site, then it also makes sense to promote this fact. If you were a supermarket opening a new store, you would be sure to advertise the fact and try to get coverage in local press. This rationale also applies to your web site and targeting the press is probably the number one means of getting people to your site. There has been an explosion of Internet-related publications and many of the magazines are keen to keep abreast of new developments. There has also been a phenomenal growth in the amount of Internet-related coverage in the trade press over the last year, so the chances are, your specific industry magazines would welcome a story. "Website of the Week" is a key feature in most magazines these days, so if you have done something special and innovative with your site, shout about it. Do think a bit about what might appeal to them, though - the fact that you have launched a site probably is not news. But a fact, such as the first 20 visitors were all aged over 50, might be.

Work the search engines. People are going to be able to find you pretty easily if they know your company name or trademarks, but what about if all they know is the generic product category? Appearing in a reasonable place in the search engine rankings - ideally on the first page - has become a lot harder than it used to be because of the massive growth of the web. You therefore need to seek expert help on this issue.

Let customers and suppliers know. This obviously depends on how you are using the web site, but if you can offer a service or section for existing customers and suppliers, you will not only save time on the telephone, but you will probably find that they refer other people to you. Send them an email with a pointer to the site, or include a flyer for the website in their next invoice, payment or other standard communication. Another small but worthwhile tip is to include the URL in your email signature file so that everybody you ever send an email to has a record of it. A five person company sending 10 emails each a day means up to fifty people a day being notified or reminded of your website.

Mutual links. Start by tracking down as many relevant interest group or complementary sites as possible and ask them to feature a link to your site. You could have a links page which features them in return. After all, cross-links are the foundation of many amateur web sites and are practically the reason hypertext was invented. For example, if you had a service or product relevant to knowledge management in some way, you could try to be featured on www.brint.com and www.km-forum.org. Pursuing this approach further, many Internet-focused companies have had great success with "associate programmes". In this model related amateur sites will host banner advertising, or even an actual "point of sale", for a commercial site and will be paid a small amount for each click-through, or each actual customer. This is a great idea for amateur sites but rates are rising as more and more people catch on to the idea.

Incentivise referrals. Catalogue sales operations have had "introduce a friend" programmes for years. It is worth applying the same principles to your web site and considering how you could incentivise customers to refer others? Free products or information for each email address provided could help build a strong database of contacts.

Web advertising (maybe). This has deliberately been left until last, despite the fact that many people would like you to think it should be first. The reason is that, at least so far, the rates being charged have resulted in relatively expensive customer acquisition costs compared to other means of promoting your business. The Cost per Visitor for a targeted banner ad is typically £40 / 1000 impressions - but often this is linked to a high minimum spend, e.g. £3k. Charging is normally CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions) or cost per click-through and the price will rise with increasingly specific targeting. Another option worth considering is banner exchange, whereby you only have your banner shown once for every two others you show. www.hatsoft.com or http://banner-exchange.Net are two of many banner exchanges.

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