Marketing on the Web

           Marketing on the web, unlike marketing otherwise, has one great advantage:  you can do it without spending a dime.  It took me quite a while to learn that lesson, which was a costly and time-consuming one.  So, let me now share with you some of the most important elements I learned in regard to effective web marketing.

            Having a website up and running will not get you any notice.  There are at least a million of them, if not more, on the worldwide web.  Each is scrambling for its place in the sun; consequently, competition is fierce.  Whatever category or niche your website falls into, you can be sure that at least a few thousand others in that same category are competing with you for attention and sales.  Not a comforting thought.

            We all know that it is crucial to be listed on pages 1 and 2 of the search engines in order to attract traffic to a website.  Page 3 may still be pretty good, but beyond page 3, you are lost way out in cyberspace.  That is because most people searching in a particular category or subject do not bother looking beyond page 3.  And frequently, they won’t even look that far.

            People are impatient.  As soon as they see the name of a website that sounds like it has what they are looking for, they click on that link, and away they go.  Also, they may purchase whatever is being sold there.  Obviously, you want to get these people over to your website to do their purchasing, and away from the  others. 

            Let me explain a little about how the search engines evaluate your website for placement on their lists.  A search engine’s crawlers, or `spiders’ as they are sometimes called, crawl over the internet on a monthly basis.  The more often your website’s link appears, the higher you climb in the search engine’s ranking.  Therefore, promoting your website becomes all important, but especially promoting it correctly.

            Google, which accounts for over fifty percent of all search engine searches, takes into account how many links come into your website from other sites, as well as such factors as:  quantity of the links, relevance of each link, the text in the links, the page rank of the sites you received links from, and whether the links are one-way or reciprocal.

            The complete explanation of how search engine crawlers rank a website is much more complicated than that, but I want to keep it simple for my purposes here.  You are welcome to go ahead and do some research of your own on the subject.

            The bottom line is that the more often you exchange links with other approved websites, and particularly if they are highly ranked on the search engines, the higher your ranking.  This means creating links that advertise your website and pasting them into other websites.  In turn, those websites will likely want to paste their links onto your site. 

            Another effective way of creating links back to your website is by writing articles.  This has recently become a very popular method of promotion.  If you like to write and are an expert, or at least are quite knowledgeable on whatever your website is about, then this is a good way to go.  For example, if your website sells pots and pans, then writing articles on pots and pans will get your name and the name of your website a higher ranking on the search engines.  You can write about all kinds of matters concerning pots and pans.  Put yourself out there as an expert.  Write lots of articles.  www.ArticlesBase.com is one of the more popular websites for publishing articles on a wide variety of subjects at no cost to the writer.

            Another method of promoting your website is purchasing pay-per-click.  Obviously, this is not a free method, but it can be made to fit into anyone’s budget.  However, I want to add a couple of warnings here.  Google has found that 72% of searchers prefer to click on a natural listing rather than a pay-per-click advertisement.  Also, your competition on ppc can get nasty and start clicking away on your advertisement’s link.  They can do that quite a lot and really run up your costs. 

            I had a bad experience a few years back where I had to pay over four hundred dollars during a long, holiday weekend, and only received a couple of small sales from all that clicking.  A few years later, I came across an article on the subject of ppc’s, describing how the competition clicks away on your link, driving up your costs, in order to discourage you from listing on that particular ppc website.  I have never bought into ppc since.  So you may want to consider this downside to ppc’s before buying in.

            Blogging is another popular method for attracting traffic to your website.  Almost everyone is blogging these days.  It can be very good for keeping people up-to-date on what is happening in your business.  You might even permit others to add their own blogs along with yours.  Maintaining current blogs about your particular subject or business can generate a substantial amount of content over a period of time, which, in turn, can generate traffic to your website.

            These are just a few ways of helping to generate more traffic over to your website, but they are by no means all the ways of doing so.  Also, you may need to educate yourself some more on the specifics of how the search engines operate, so that you can more effectively promote your website.  I hope what I have stated here will help in getting you started.

            Here’s wishing you much success from your website business.  Stay focused and stay determined.

Sandra L. Lerner is the author of Connecting with Your Guardian Angel for Comfort, Protection and Guidance.

See http://www. Connectingwithyourguardianangel.com