Internet Marketing
Marketing your product or service online is an investment which is supposed to yield a return. If no one visits the site, all of that money is wasted. Help your customers find you by optimizing your website for the search engines and creating a Pay Per Click marketing campaign. Other ways to bring visitors to your site include: link building, writing articles related to your industry, blogging as well as maximizing the use of print media by placing your website address on all ads, brochures and company materials.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is the manipulation of the pages of a website to be favorable to a search engine. As all search engines are different, what may work in one will probably not work the same way in another. There are, however, basic rules of website design and development that help a site get closer to the coveted first page on a popular keyword search. It takes industry specific research and a knowledge of the website's business and customers to decide which keywords will convert the most sales. Once those keywords are known, the site should be created around those. If it is an existing site, pages must be re-worded around those profitable words and phrases.
Search Engine Marketing
Where Search Engine Optimization is the manipulation of the website in order to get free visitors, Search Engine Marketing is paying for visitors through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns, text ads and banner ads on other sites. The greatest generators of traffic are the Google Adwords program and the Yahoo! Search Marketing program. More than half of all internet searchers go through these two companies to find what they are looking for. Instead of creating the site around keywords and phrases, with Pay-Per-Click (PPC), you simply place a bid on those profitable keywords and your text or banner ad is placed at the top of a search on those words. These programs also allow you to show your ad on affiliated sites that relate to the keywords you have a bid on. For more information on how these programs work and how mellonstock can help manage this type of advertising for you, contact us.
Link Building
One of the more time consuming marketing campaigns, link building is the process of contacting other websites in hopes of them putting a link from their site to yours. To a search engine this represents what could be considered a vote of confidence. If my site has many links pointing to it from large well established sites, the search engines assume my site must be good based on their "recommendations". To get these valuable links you either have to have good content or simply buy them. The process is time consuming because first you must research your industry and establish a long list of sites or pages with similar content then they must all be contacted requesting the link. This not only helps in search engines results but a link on a good site could bring substantial qualified traffic to your site.
Directory Insertion
A directory is a categorized list of websites. Yahoo! started out as just a directory but now the directory takes up about 2% of their home page. Inserting a site into directories is almost as time consuming as requesting links because there are literally thousands of directories, so it's more of an ongoing process and not a task you ever actually finish. It is a good idea to start with the largest, on topic and most widely known directories and work down to the smaller general ones. Most have forms designed to help you insert the title and description you want to use. If your business is Website Related, submit your site to our Website Development Directory.