Online Marketing Resources
The following tips both help to increase your popularity with search engines and increase avenues for your customers to find you.
- If you are targeting a specific area, submit your site to the three popular local search engines:
- If you are selling products, list them with relevant shopping sites. You may also want to create an Associate or Affiliate program to encourage others to market your products.
- Add your company listing* and website address to the following free directories (the first is the most important - other directories pull information from DMOZ). Several directories ask for a reciprocal link from your site and/or your street address:
- dmoz.org
- sfstation.com (Bay Area)
- insiderpages.com
- local.com
- merchantcircle.com
- superpages.com
- yellowpages.com
- telli.com (Marin)
- marin.org (Marin)
- califdir.com (California)
- sterba.net (North Bay)
- localwin.com
- resourcelinks.net
- uscity.net
* ShortKeys Lite is a great tool that you can download for free to help with re-entering the same company information repeatedly.
- Do a Google Search on your business name and update any existing company listings with your website address.
- Add your company listing and website address to industry specific directories (e.g., search on "yoga directory") and directories of industry specific professional associations. Join your local Chamber of Commerce and other local or national networking, business-referrel, trade, and community organizations and add your company listing to their online directories with a link to your site. If your company is green, add your site to local green business directories.
- Include your website address (and logo) within your automatic email signature. Offline, add it to your business cards.
- Ask suppliers, family, friends, and employees who have websites to link to your site. When they add a link to your site, ask them to include your keyword phrases – including location information - within the link text. For example: Flamenco-R-Us: Flamenco Dancing Teachers of the Bay Area, California. Use different keyword phrases for each link (search engines don’t like it when the same wording is always used in links to your site). Getting keyword phrases added to link text is one of the best ways to increase search engine popularity for those keyword phrases. Also, where appropriate ask people to link to a page on your website other than the home page. This is called “deep linking” and search engines see it as an indicator that your web site is useful and, as a result, will give it a higher ranking.
- Search online for related resource websites (e.g., a local website focused on providing information about your industry) and ask them to link to your site. Where possible, ask them to include various keyword phrases in their link text and, where appropriate, to link to a page other than your home page. Try to find websites that get a lot of visitors. The more popular a website is that links to yours, the more popular you will become with the search engines. Google has a “Page Ranking” system that calculates a PageRank for each website. If you have installed the Google Toolbar, you can set PageRank to display. Look for websites with a good PageRank (4 or higher out of 10 - hover over the PageRank bar to see the PageRank number).
- Enter the website address of competitors through Link Popularity to see which websites link to them (Yahoo's link listings are the most helpful). It may give you some ideas for finding additional websites to request links from.
- If you write online press releases, articles, discussion group entries, or Blog entries – all great ways to increase exposure for your business online – include a keyword-rich link to your website. Resources:
- Add press releases at pr.com with a (keyword rich) link back to your site. Find other suggestions about submitting press releases at: Press Releases.
- You can write and submit articles to Ezine Articles with a link back to your site. You can also find additional e-zine sites to submit articles to at Online Publications (search especially for online magazine/newsletters that are specific to your targeted market).You can post your articles at article archive sites like Yahoo Groups Article Announce and Yahoo Groups for Publishing.
- Participating in Discussion Groups, Social Media Websites, (click on your industry category in the left sidebar) and/or Email Discussion Groups (a.k.a. Newsgroups) are additional ways to promote your site.
- Starting a Blog – and updating it regularly – is a great way to attract attention to your site and establish yourself as an expert in your industry. Google has a free Blogger tool that you can, optionally, incorporate into your website. You may want to read a how-to book first for suggestions on effective blogging for promoting your business.
- Send out informational newsletters regularly with links back to pages on your site. A good newsletter service can help with newsletter creation, signup, and email management. Newsletter services (a.k.a. application server providers) are listed at: Application Service Providers (Constant Contact is one recommended service). You can list your newsletter at New-List and Yahoo Groups Email to draw potential customers to sign up to receive your newsletter.
- Add informational pages to your website that draw people in who are interested in learning more about your field. Add a links page and link to other sites as a resource for visitors and to encourage others to link to your site.
- Adding your site to relevant Web Rings is a way to band together with similar sites and increase traffic to your site.
- Creating a Pay-Per-Click program or Banner Advertising are two additional ways to draw people to your site. Where possible, track 'conversion rates' (e.g., the number of times a visitor sends you an information request or purchase a product) to determine if your ads are drawing relevant visitors to your site.
