Creating a well-designed website is the first step in your internet marketing strategythat must be backed up with techniques designed to drive traffic to the website forsuccessful, long-term results. You wouldn't consider opening a retail store in amajor shopping mall without signage and you shouldn't consider having a nicelooking website designed without expanding your web presence in order to befound on the internet. The following strategy overview is designed to bring aboutthese results:

* An attractive website that is complementary to your company image andprovides your targeted audience with information about you, your company andyour products and/or services
* A website that creates a call-to-action in the form of purchase, contact,subscription or other commitment from your viewer
* Create a successful marketing arm for your overall business promotion andmarketing campaign to promote your business, products and/or services
* Become competitive in your industry and marketplace by meeting or exceedingthe industry marketing standards and attracting a qualified audience for yourproducts and/or services via the internet
* Generate and maintain or grow internet traffic to your website resulting in aconversion of traffic into sales of your products and/or services

This search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is composed of several processes inthree stages.

Tier I

Website design is the foundation and beginning of a successful internet marketingstrategy. It is true that several websites exist on the internet that are unattractivebut seem to work. If there are aspects of these websites that work, imagine how wellthey could do if they simply followed basic design implementation tactics thatresulted in a good image as well as simply pushed information out to the viewer.These basics are essential for Tier 1 success:

* Good web design that complements the company image and offline marketingcampaign products
* Easy, logical navigation that leads the viewer deeper and deeper into the web ofinformation provided by the website
* Attractive but quick-loading graphics that are pleasing to the eye andmeaningful to the website.

o Keyword usage that is search engine-friendly:
o Utilization
o Placement
o Frequency
o Relevance

* Coding that is lean, clean and without errors
* Relevance of content to the theme of the site
* Changing content that changes frequently
* Content is king -- it's all about content, content, content

Tier II

Once the website has been created and published, many new website owners thinkthat the project is finished. But in reality, the real work is just beginning. In order tocreate a money-making site, traffic must be generated and driven to the website.There are several effective methods that can be implemented in Tier II for this tooccur. While all methods may not be required to see successful traffic generation,some combination of most if not all will probably be needed to create traffic,maintain traffic and finally, grow traffic to our website with long-term results.Consider implementing these strategies:

* Dynamic content is necessary and by updating the website frequently thesearch engines see your website as active, not stagnant. How often should changesbe made? At the very least, monthly. But the more frequent the changes, the better.There are some tried and true methods you may want to employ:

o Monthly newsletter (or weekly)
o Tip of the day that rotates to the page using a script from an existing databaseof information at your site
o RSS feed to public news feeds that update hourly or daily at the least
o Changes to contact information, staffing, clients, etc.
o Checking the links frequently to make sure that they are active and valid
o Simple modification of content from time to time should be done in betweenthese regular maintenance tasks which will update the website

* Good links management results in a positive weight given by the search enginesfor search positioning. The algorithms used for weighting one page over anotherrequire link popularity assessment for successful traffic to your website. Linkpopularity is also one of the main contributions to Google and Alexa Page Rank.How do you achieve link popularity? It can be tedious and requires careful attentionto the selection of the links, but there are several means that can be employed:
o Reciprocal Links - Search for relevant and desired web pages with which totrade links
o Purchase Page Rank-based links to boost your relevance and weight in the eyesof search engines
o List with directories, paid or unpaid that will give your website additionalexposure
o Create the links with link text in mind, designed to utilize relevant keywords
o Link only with websites that have decent PageRank (PR); i.e., PR of 3 at aminimum, PR of 4 would be the ideal minimum
o Blogs - web logs linked to your site or posting to popular blogs with your linksincluded to point traffic back to your site; a good strategy is to employ pinging withthe blog posting

* Forums -- forum participation that allows you to leave your link with the intentof attracting traffic back to your site
* Listing with the few free search engines and directories is essential althoughyou won't see any results for months
* Develop an email list subscription function on your site with the intent ofsending e-newsletters and announcements on a regular basis. This subscription listcan be used for several other campaigns, including the sale of advertising space onyour newsletter.
* Purchase sponsorship on other email lists where you can promote your productand/or services as well as get your website promoted in the process.
* Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns with Google and Yahoo Search Marketing whereyou purchase advertising space for keywords that are popular for your industry ifyou are not in a saturated market. If your business operates in a saturated internetmarket, seek niche keywords for your PPC advertising. Determine your budget firstand from there, you will know how much you can afford for the positioning yourdesire. It's all mathematical:

o Price Per Click = monthly budget/number of clicks or
o Number of clicks = monthly budget/price per click

Some combination of price and number of clicks will result from a well-designedand constantly monitored campaign. The important result to watch is the conversionrate. How many paid clicks convert into the desired result; i.e., new contract, sale ofproduct, sign up for e-newsletter, etc.

Tier III

Finally, after the hard-core efforts that are directly related to generating traffic toyour website, you will want to create follow-on, additional traffic that is under yourcontrol. Several methods exist for this strategy:

* Taking the large list of ancillary keywords that relate directly or indirectly toyour website, begin purchasing keyword related domain names that will be used tocreate traffic driving websites that point to your money site.
* Setup satellite pages using the keyword domain names that are heavilypopulated and geared toward keyword designed to develop niche market traffic. Asyou develop niche markets that create new customers, you are going to be able tocapitalize on those customers for the other products and/or services that yourcompany offers by focusing on information sites that link back to your money sitewhile informing and attracting these new customers.
* Create links, backlinks and cross-links between the satellite pages and yourmoney site, improving your link popularity for all websites, especially your moneysite.
* Display articles or e-books related to your industry and place these articles onyour websites being aware of the best location based on keyword dominance.
* For long-term, viral marketing results, create articles or e-books that you willeither sell on your website or offer to public domain websites where your linkinformation must be retained for use by anyone else on the internet.

Monitoring

In order to determine if the SEO efforts are successful, you must monitor results ofbacklinks, PR and web trend statistics. There are many sources for generating thisdata as well as programs that will assist in these analyses. Whatever method youchoose, whether it is using specific programs or setting up a spreadsheet for entryof data, be consistent in tracking the data. There will be fluctuations from day-to- day. You are looking for general, overall upward trends. Upward progress followedby maintenance of a strong position with slow, steady growth would indicate asuccessful SEO campaign.

Article written and copyrighted by Chesa Keane, TAO Consultants, Inc. All RightsReserved.

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