The importance of web marketing cannot be over-emphasized, but without the basics in place, it may not even be worth the bother. Therefore, to save you many wasted man-hours, not to mention money, I've compiled my own little hit list of must-dos to consider when creating your own company web site and successfully marketing it.
1. Plan
Like with most things, everything is in the preparation! Once you've decided you want to build a site and before you rush in and start developing it, sit down and think clearly about what you want the site to achieve. Consider what the site will be about, who it's for and what it will do? How will the site be hosted? What kind of content it will have? Who will maintain it? And so on.
Naturally, the plan may change during development, but with a clear idea of what the site is all about and what you want it to accomplish, you're far less likely to run into future problems.
2. Choose a domain name
(ie. the bit that follows the www. in your web site address.) Keep it simple, short and easy to remember is a good rule of thumb. Use your business name wherever possible, or at the very least the name should relate to your company's prime business activity or product. Once you've come up with one, you'll need to register it with someone like Network Solutions (www.networksolutions.com). While you're at it, you may want to consider purchasing additional suitable domain names and link them to your main page, thus generating more traffic to your site.
3. Keep it simple
I've said it once, and I'll say it again - keep it simple! A flashy site with loads of graphics may look great, but the reality is people are just too busy! The majority of us just don't have enough hours in the day and the last thing you want is to loose a potential sale because your graphics are taking too long to load! The home page should load fast, so keep graphics small and flashy technology to a minimum. Likewise, keep site navigation simple too. If a site is too complicated to follow, your customer will go elsewhere. Make sure it's so easy for your visitor to find their way around that even a young child could use it! (Second thoughts, make that a baby, kids these days are far more technologically advanced than us adults!)
4. Search engines
Search engines, which use their own unique techniques to crawl the internet and rank web sites according to their content, are what will bring the majority of traffic to your site and therefore the importance of ensuring that your site appears high up on search engine results pages should not be underestimated. The better your site is, based on each of their ranking rules, the higher your chances are of getting listed.
Many popular search engines, like MSN, get their content from another search engine or combination of search engines (Inktomi in the case of MSN). Since 80% of internet traffic comes from MSN and Google, focus on them and you won't go far wrong.
5. Keywords
The trick is to build up relevant keywords within crucial locations on your site to ensure that search engines find them. Locations such as the headline or the first few paragraphs of text are crucial since search engines will assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those keywords right from the beginning.
The most important tip I can give you about keywords is to remember that there are millions of companies like yours trying to get to the top of the rankings. If you choose to optimize for general keywords like "insurance" or "software," you'll have no chance. Being more specific like "Home Insurance in Essex" or "Maintenance Management Software" will give you a much better chance of achieving higher rankings.
Another tip here - with the use of Internet user tracking software you can see what visitors are typing into search engines, and adjust the keywords within your site accordingly.
6. Create Meta-tags
Meta-tags are special invisible html tags which will tell the search engines what your site is about. These tags are vital to some search engines and ignored completely by others, so you're better off with them than without them. For those engines that use meta-tags, the use of two different types of tag (one being the meta description tag which is a description about the site, and the other being the meta keyword tag which explains what key words or phrases are related to your site) can either make or break the success of your site.
7. Links
As well as generating traffic to your site directly, links also help search engines. Search engines often use link analysis as part of their ranking to determine which pages are good for particular topics.
By building links with other sites that relate to your business, you can help improve how well your pages rank in link analysis systems. To find good links, search for your target words within the major search engines and check out the pages that appear in the top results. Offer a reciprocal link to those with a high ranking, you'll find that many non-competitive sites will be happy to link to you.
8. Quality Content
If your keywords aren't reflected in the page's content, having great page titles and meta-tags won't be enough. As I have already mentioned, not all search engines read meta-tags and others may chose to assess them differently. Therefore, make sure that your page is designed to maximise your placement by considering all content, including keywords, keyword frequency, graphics and other web elements. Think about the message that you want to get across and consider the text references that you make - are they appropriate, could you expand on anything, does it relate?
9. Promotion
Naturally search engines provide the most obvious way of promoting your site and reciprocal links with other business web sites also prove beneficial. But these aren't the only way to get your site noticed. Email is a very direct, popular and effective way of attracting interest and it allows an opportunity to send out notices, product information, articles, interviews and newsletters, or even run competitions and announce special offers.
Don't forget that a "call to action" can be directed to your website not just from a link within an email, but also from your page advertising or direct mail communications. The possibilities are endless.
10. Site maintenance
Make sure your site is constantly kept fresh and up-to-date. Products change as do client's needs, so an ongoing management of the site to keep it useful and relevant is essential. Likewise, continue to monitor your pages regularly, ensuring that they continue to get listed with the search engines. It's not uncommon for pages to disappear and links to break down. If you make changes, be sure to resubmit your site as search engines may only revisit your criteria occasionally.
