February 22, 2012

Marketing Your Business Online: An Essential Checklist

Are you just getting into the marketing game? Marketing can be an incredibly difficult concept– so difficult, in fact, that people complete online Bachelors programs in internet marketing alone. However, you don’t have to have a degree to start marketing your business online. Here’s an essential beginner’s checklist to start marketing your business on the internet.

  1. Get a website. No one uses the phone book anymore. In fact, most modern customers get frustrated by businesses that don’t have a website for them to easily see hours, menus, specials, etc. No matter if you hire a professional website designer or you pay someone $50 to set it up in their spare time, you need to get online.
  2. Get a Facebook business page. This is a simple and easy way for people to keep up with your business. You can build brand loyalty and advertise at the same time. Interested parties will “like” your page. Your updates will appear on their “news feed.” Setting up a Facebook page is a simple and painless process– and one that you can’t afford not to start.
  3. Get a Twitter account. Twitter is a place for you to post specials, articles, questions, or polls in 140 characters or less. Tell your customers why they should come into your business today. Advertise what you’re doing for the weekend. Rather than the “forced” world of advertising, where viewers are forced to sit through your commercials, your customers can willingly follow you. Just remember not to over-tweet by posting a dozen tweets a day!

 

Share

Browsers and Search Engines

Browsers and search engines play an integral part in the internet experience. The way that these two things work hand in hand is what drives the information from the fingertips of users to the actual result. Browsers use a URL to locate information that is being requested. Search engines are a compilation of that information, and can be combed through to find the perfect match.

Search Engine Process

A search engine works like a factory. You put in a word, and it produces everything related to that word, or words. For instance, typing in “UFX Markets Trading” will result in all of the information necessary to locate and contact a trading broker, as well as education and information regarding this type of person.

Search engines will also rank information based on demand and popularity. Some sites can even pay to make sure that their link it higher up on the search than other sites. This helps to boost profits and direct more traffic to their site. In the world of internet traffic, this is an important competition between websites.

The pay per click event has caused many companies to jump in and join the money making results. It is so popular that some search engines firms have a negotiated rate so that they can still profit from the traffic as well.

The advancements in the searching technology have helped to make companies and users easy to find each other. As a result, the internet is streamlined and extremely user friendly.

Share

Submitting your Website to Search Engines

Image representing Yahoo! as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

The Internet is a popular place and many people are starting their own website or blog. Having a popular site could be pretty lucrative for many people. One of the best ways to improve your website’s popularity is to send it to all the search engines.

Submitting your website to search engines is completely free and unbelievably easy to do. Thanks to kissinsights.com, here are some helpful tips to submitting your website to search engines like Yahoo and Google.

Submitting your Site to Google

There isn’t any type of membership fee when submitting your website to Google. You will, however, have to put in a description about your website. It doesn’t have to be long, just a short description of what people can expect when going to your website.

Submitting to Yahoo

Like with Google, it’s completely free to submit your website to Yahoo. While submitting is free there isn’t a section to put in a short description about your website. This can either go really great or horrible for your website.

Submitting to Other Search Engines

In order to submit your website to AOL, you’re required to be apart in the Open Directory. Before you had to pay to submit your website to ASK.com, but now your submission is free. It’s not easy applying here either, there’s a strict guide to the application process.

Submitting your website to search engines is getting easier and easier. In just a matter of minutes your website will end up on popular search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Share

Tracking Traffic for your Website

The Internet is a growing industry and many people want apart of it. This is why you see so many websites and blogs out there. One of the things many website owners do is track the traffic that’s going to their website.

There are multiple ways you can track your website’s traffic. Website tracking is something that websites like kissinsights.com will recommend doing. The traffic will let people know just how popular your website is. It will also be a determining factor in how much money you can make off your website.

Here are tips for tracking traffic for your website.

Install Visitor Tracking Code

Since you own the website you can include a visitor tracking code like Google Analytics to your website.  Google Analytics has always been the most popular choice for website owners. It will let you know how many page views, hits and unique visitors that are going to your website each and everyday.

Another popular choice is WebTrends and this site is more than just measuring visitors. It also offers tips to improving your website’s usability, which will help bring in more visitors to the website. The only downside is that it’s not free and is pretty expensive for many people who just started their website.

Non Website Owners Tracking Traffic

Unfortunately since you don’t own the website there is no way of being able to fully track the traffic hitting the website. Unless the owner has a counter there is no real way of figuring how much traffic is going to the site.

While you can’t get the real numbers you can get an estimate on a website like TrafficEstimate, which is completely free. Put in the website address and you can get an estimate about how much traffic the site has gotten during the past 30 days.

Share