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By Jeff Kear
"If you build it, he [or she] will come." It may have been true for a baseball diamond in an Iowa cornfield, but it certainly doesn't apply to your Web site. Merely building a beautiful and robust site with e-commerce capabilities or lead generation tools does not guarantee you will get sales or leads.
To get the results you want, you also need visitors, and usually lots of them. (The visitor-to-sale or visitor-to-lead ratio of Web sites can vary dramatically based on your industry and your products/services. For example, one of our B-to-B clients runs a thriving e-commerce site that generates one sale every 425 discrete visits, a 0.2% close rate, whereas many B-to-C sites would probably be disappointed if their conversion rate dropped below 2%.)
To drive this kind of traffic and sales, there are a few methods you can employ, but they all require some combination of persistence, patience and money. These include:
* Search engine optimization
* Pay-per-click advertising
* Banner/display advertising
Both pay-per-click and banner/display advertising are fairly straightforward. With both, you are providing the ad content and/or imagery to a third party (such as Yahoo! Search Marketing or Google's AdWords) and are paying for your ad or text to be placed in predetermined places on certain sites and/or search engines.
Search engine optimization is anything but straightforward, as it entails trying to tweak a Web site's copy and code (as well as other sundry things that we will discuss later) in order to improve its rankings in a search engine's organic listings.
(What are organic listings, you ask? In a nutshell, when you conduct a search on most major search engines like Google, Yahoo! or MSN.com, you will get a few top listings that are named Sponsored Links or Sponsor Results - these are pay-per-click listings. The organic listings appear below these sponsored listings and are called "organic" because they are the results a search engine gives you based on a match between their catalog of Web pages and your keyword query.)
The most misunderstood method is easily search engine optimization, so let's tackle that one first.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Any discussion on SEO should start with how search engines rank Web pages.
Think of a search engine as a big database for Web pages. Search engines scan and catalog billions of Web pages so that when you type in a keyword to search for a topic, they can immediately reference this database and give you links to relevant pages.
To be able to sort through this many pages instantaneously, they need to establish rules about how to rank these pages according to relevancy. This set of rules is called an algorithm.
Search engine algorithms are typically based on a few key rules, which include:
* On-page factors like frequency and location of keywords
* Off-page factors like number of external links pointing to a page
This is a gross oversimplification of how search engine algorithms work, as each search engine's algorithm is unique and includes other ranking factors as well as penalties for spamming. However, it is a good jumping-off point for discussing the elements for optimizing your site so search engines rank it favorably.
1. Keyword Usage
The optimization process starts with determining which keywords people use to find your particular products or services.
Note: Yahoo! Search Marketing - previously called Overture - has a handy keyword suggestion tool that allows you to see the number of searches conducted for that keyword over the last month as well as related searches; just go to http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Wordtracker also has a similar tool you can use on a trial basis at http://www.wordtracker.com/free-trial.html.
Once you have narrowed down your targeted keyword(s) (the fewer, the better), you should include these in the title tag of the page you are trying to optimize, in the main headline of the page and in the body text of the page. However, be careful not to overdo it, as search engines will penalize you and maybe even blacklist you for overusing keywords on a page.
2. Content
Search engines love sites that have lots of relevant content relating to your targeted keyword(s). So if you have written relevant articles on a particular topic or have legal access to content on these topics, put it all on your site in an organized way and try not to place it more than 3 navigation levels deep so most search engines can find and scan these pages.
In addition, search engines appreciate sites that are always posting new content. This is because posting new content shows them that your site is timely and current, giving them more incentive to rank you higher. (Constantly updated content is a good idea anyways because people tend to return to sites that have new information and fresh ideas.)
3. Links and Linking Strategies
Search engines assume that those pages and sites that have a large amount of outside links pointing to them are popular and relevant, and so the engines use external links to help them gauge how highly a page should be ranked.
There are several ways to persuade webmasters at other sites to create links to your site. One is to exchange links with other relevant sites by trading your link on their pages in exchange for their link on your pages. Another is to gain permission to post articles on other sites and negotiating with those sites to allow you to post your link in the article.
Be careful when soliciting for outside links, because some people have tried to trick the search engines with artificial linking strategies and now the search engines are wise to these tricks. Just remember ... a few high quality links from sites that are relevant to yours are better than dozens of links from irrelevant sites. Note that links on .gov and .edu sites are especially attractive, as search engines usually deem these as highly reputable sites.
4. Directories
Submitting to directories used to be much more important than it is now, but you still need to be in the major directories like Yahoo! (which is a yearly fee; https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/) and the Open Directory (which is free; http://www.dmoz.com/add.html).
In addition, you should submit to any directories that are relevant to your industry or business. The two benefits of doing this are 1) people who are looking for your products/services may actually find you through these sites, and 2) the links to your pages from these sites can help your search engine rankings. Sometimes there's a charge for submitting to these content-specific sites, but often there is not.
Now let's briefly cover pay-per-click advertising as well as banner/display advertising.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Remember earlier when I discussed the Sponsored Links or Sponsor Results listings that appear at the top of Google, Yahoo!, MSN.com and numerous other searches? Well, in most cases these are pay-per-click advertisements.
Pay-per-click advertising is an apt descriptor, as the people who place these ads only pay when the ad is clicked on.
The two largest pay-per-click services are Yahoo! Search Marketing Sponsored Search (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srch/index.php) and Google's AdWords (https://adwords.google.com/select/). With each service, you create an account and then create text ads for your targeted keywords. Then you bid on how much you wish to spend each time someone clicks on your ad.
What's convenient about these two services is that they both partner with many other sites to provide their search results on those sites. For example, if I conducted a search at MSN.com, the Sponsored Sites links at the top of the results page are actually Yahoo! Search Marketing pay-per-click ads. So by using these two services you can actually get exposure at many, many other sites.
There are quite a few differences between these two services, with the main one being how Yahoo! and AdWords rank their ads. With Yahoo!, your ad is ranked solely on your bid amount (i.e., the highest bidder's ad is at the top of the first page, second highest bidder is in the second position, and so on). With AdWords, your ad is ranked based on a combination of three factors: your bid, your ad's click-through rate and the content of your ad. According to AdWords, if you have a high bid and your ad has relevant content and gets lots of click-throughs, it will be ranked higher.
When deciding whether to use pay-per-click advertising, I would advise you start by dipping a toe into the pool, as you can spend a lot of money in a hurry if your bids are high for competitive keywords. Try out variations on your keywords and try listing them at different positions; you may get more clicks in the first position, but your ROI might be better at a lower position where the clicks are fewer but the prospects are better.
Banner/Display Advertising
I saved this category for last because it is typically the worst return for your money when it comes to marketing your site online.
When the Web's popularity was growing in the 90s, banner advertising was all the rage, probably because it mirrored the familiar print advertising world. However, as people began to use the Internet less for entertainment and more as a way to find information, pay-per-click advertising became a better-targeted way to reach interested customers.
When contemplating placing a banner/display ad on another site or collection of sites, make sure to get very specific demographic information on the people who frequent those sites and make sure you can measure the click-throughs to track your ROI.
Hopefully this overview has given you a good idea of how to begin marketing your site online. For more in-depth information, consult the articles on these sites:
http://www.clickz.com/
http://searchenginewatch.com/
http://www.marketingprofs.com/
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/
About the Author
Jeff Kear is a principal at Kear|Stevens, an integrated marketing communications firm in Denver, CO. During his career in marketing and advertising, Jeff has created revenue-generating marketing communications for nationally recognized brands such as Budget, MetLife, Moosehead Beer, Qwest and Toyota. Before his work at Kear|Stevens, Jeff served as a senior-level creative at a few well-respected Denver ad agencies as well as a marketing and communications specialist for a Fortune 500 company.
This article © 2006 Kear|Stevens All rights reserved
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