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Good internet marketing

Online business can boost impact on brand and sales - Deborah Collier

Businesses building an online presence need to ensure that they invest their time and money in the right kind of Internet marketing. They not only need to ensure that their web site engages customers to buy, subscribe and interact, but also that it can be found before their competitors. In an age where the average Briton spends more time on the Internet than watching TV, boosting search engine ranking with tactics such as link building, are becoming even more essential. E-business strategist Deborah Collier of Echo E-Business delivers some valuable tips that businesses can employ to build online footprints to their web site.

Search engine optimisation is an essential element to any Internet marketing strategy. SEO, as it is known for short, is the science of coding and writing content for a web site, so that it gains a good position in the search engine rankings. However SEO really isn’t enough! Google, the ‘big daddy’ of search engines, along with its competitors, need to know that a business is credible. Credibility in the digital world is measured by ‘votes’. A link from one web site to another is counted as a vote, and votes increase search engine ranking.

The quality of a sites inbound links is essential. Many businesses and agencies make the mistake of registering to hundreds and even thousands of directories, which can actually be damaging. Google will even penalise web sites that suddenly have a large number inbound links from irrelevant web sites.

Top Tips for Link Building Success
At Echo E-Business we are interested in strategies and tactics that really work for web site marketing, so here are my top tips for making friends with Google using link building.

E-Lesson 1: Submit to around 20 top ranking Web directories
These should be directories that are relevant to your business or audience. ‘Dmoz.org’, ‘Dir.yahoo.com’ and ‘Business.com’ are the top 3.

It’s very difficult to get into Dmoz.org, but if you become a site editor, it can help speed up the process. The Yahoo and Business.com directories offer premium positions which are chargeable, and worth the investment, if you do not wish to wait weeks to get accepted. Many directories offer a link if you link back to them. Create a links page on your web site especially for this purpose and use it.

E-Lesson 2: Building directory links
Beware of companies or tools that submit hundreds or thousands of directories within a package. It’s important to submit links over time and ensure that they are relevant. Experts suggest that 75 relevant links per month is a maximum. Another important pitfall to avoid is submitting to directories with the same link title and description. Try to vary these. I usually create 5 variations.

E-Lesson 3: Create themed links
Themed links are the most cost-effective links that can be procured and are highly regarded by Google. They are related to the content and theme of your website, giving your site a greater authority and a higher ranking. These search engine keyword links are positioned just below a relevant industry article, and point to an appropriate page on your web site.

E-Lesson 4: Write search engine friendly articles
Articles are an excellent way to increase search engine ranking and boost traffic to your web site. There are 3 types of article submissions:

i) Article Directories –low cost traffic building articles
These are generally 500 – 1000 word articles that contain one search engine optimised link back to your web site and can sometimes be reused or varied for other article sites.

A valuable benefit to high-ranking article web sites such as ezinearticles.com, is that it will drive visitors from their web site to yours. The downsides are that your links do not appear within the content of the article, and it may have competing Google Ads alongside it.

ii) Link review articles
Link review articles of between 500 – 1000 words, are written by expert copywriters about your industry, or search engine ‘keyword’ or ‘keyphrase’. (A ‘keyword’ or ‘keyphrase’ are essentially the words that are most used by search engine visitors to find a product or service that you offer). Optimised links are placed within the article pointing back to targeted areas on your web site and are the only outbound links on the page. As a unique expertly written, search engine optimised article, Google will accept it as a vote and authority. It’s important to understand however, that as a brand new page, it may take some weeks to register in the search engine, depending on the ranking of the article directory.

E-Lesson 5: Online press releases
An excellent and low-cost way to drive traffic and potentially gain interest from journalists and third-party publications is to post press releases on specialist top ranking press distribution sites such as PR.com. Third-party web sites may feed the release into their own web site, or use the content for an article. In many cases they will link back to you. That’s great viral marketing!

E-Lesson 6: Social media marketing
Social Media Marketing – the use of tools and networks such as Twitter, Facebook, forums and book marking, is not only a great tool for building relationships with your customers and sales, but if implemented well, can be used as a search engine optimisation, link and traffic-boosting tool. To demonstrate the power of social media, lets look at a real life example. I put an add on my site, someone read that and put a post on twitter. The tweet had boosted traffic to my ad, which forwarded links back to my web site.

Online presence, is no longer solely about a web site, but also the footprints that lead back to it. These links not only drive traffic and boost search engine ranking, but also have a massive impact on brand and more importantly, sales. ●

 

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