11 Mar
2009
10 important aspects of online marketing
This is the first in a series of short articles that I'll call 'A quick Heads-Up'. Think of them as a series of executive summaries to act as an aide-mémoire for areas that need to be covered when building or managing your company's website.
It doesn't matter whether you spend £500 or £50 000 on your website. If nobody visits, your money is wasted. I've used this statement on many occasions to explain the value of ongoing marketing activities for clients' web sites. It sums up the importance of online marketing to the success of a site.
So here they are, in no particular order of importance, 10 things you should always consider...
1. Traffic Analysis
Use tools such as Google Analytics along with server based logs to analyse in detail what your clients are doing when they visit your site.
2. XML Site Map
Google started the idea of an XML site map that could be used to ensure that a search engine was aware of all the pages within a site. Other major search engines now support the same site map format.
3. Search Engine Friendly Content
Your online marketing activities should start at the beginning of the development of your web site. The planning and writing of the content are vital. Creating a proper structure for your site, with the correct use of H1, H2, bullet lists, bold text etc, will all help search engines rank your site more effectively and at a higher position.
4. Stay in touch with your existing clients
As one of the most obvious sources of revenue for any business, it is important that you keep your customers up to date with products, offers and information about your business. Building up a level of trust is proven to be highly effective in gaining repeat customers AND word of mouth referrals.
5. Get Sociable!
Social networking is not a fad. It's been around in one form or another since the first inception of the internet. Forums, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr & YouTube are just some examples of where you can build a presence for your business.
6. PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising
A properly managed PPC campaign can produce spectacular results. However, 'bid for position' systems such as Google adwords can also require a significant investment.
7. Embrace Multimedia
With more and more people having good broadband connections, using media such as video, webcasts, podcasts and webinars can be a highly effective way to sell yourself to prospective customers.
8. Build Links
Good quality inbound links have been important in search engine optimisation for a long time, but don't be pulled into the world of high volume link building that some SEO companies tout. A smaller number of good quality links can be more effective that thousands of poor quality links from pages with huge numbers of links to other sites (aka link farms). Keep it relevant.
9. Don't be content with your Content
You content can always be improved or expanded upon. Whether it's improving the quality of your existing content by perfecting keyword placement and structure, or adding new content to target new (or existing) key phrases, content is still king...
10. Have a plan and set specific targets
No matter whether your activities are an ongoing campaign or a specific promotion you should set specific activities and targets. Then you'll be able to judge if it is a success, analyse where your best return is coming from and set new tasks to maximise your campaign's effectiveness.
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