How to get more hits!

How to market your website. What it takes to get more hitsAfter you finish reading this page, make sure to read Mitch's latest article on how to promote your business websiteBy Mitch Cohen, Webmaster SiteRightNowWill anyone find your Website? Not unless you put some work into it. I think one of the most common misconceptions people have when they build a website is that people will miraculously find you.

This is just not the case.I have been thinking about writing an article on “how to market your website” for the past several months. As hundreds of customers continue to signup and build websites on SiteRightNow, I thought we should give our customers the benefit of our own marketing experiences. After all, the more success you have with your own website, the longer you are likely to stay with us as a happy customer.In this article, I have nothing to sell. There won’t be a “1000 tips for getting more hits” kit available for $19.95 at the end of the article. I am going to try to outline what I think is necessary to build a successful site. I want to stress that unless you are willing to put some work into marketing your site, you might as well stop reading now. Marketing does not have to be expensive, but it will involve a desire to be successful and a willingness to do some work.

The Dot Com MemorialI was watching the Super Bowl last year thinking to myself how can a dot com company afford to spend millions of dollars on one commercial? Will enough people see their ad, visit their Website, and purchase their service to break even? How can Priceline.com run commercials every few minutes on radio and TV paying William Shatner as their spokesperson? Do they really make enough money on bargain airline tickets? Well, the answer was a resounding no. Many of the hot dot com companies have disappeared over the last year or so. Others, like priceline.com have shown huge losses. These companies were great at raising money from investors and spending the money very quickly. Once the money ran out, the investors were not quite so quick to give them a new bankroll.

Slow and steady wins the race... I think steady consistent growth is the key to an on-line businesses success. I would advise firms that have the funds to avoid the tempting flashy ad campaign that may give you a brief spike in traffic. The traffic soon disappears and you are left with no customers and a large bill to pay.We decided to build our site, SiteRightNow.com, from its profits instead of relying on money from investors or banks. This approach is not easy and takes patience and time to succeed. If you have a regular business or job, you can continue life as usual while you steadily grow your new on-line business.We have been profitable from just about day one, because we were able to do most everything ourselves without paying outside services, and we didn’t spend a fortune on marketing. We decided to start the site with a minimum investment of our own money and expand using money generated from the site. We are the Tortoise in the classic Tortoise and the Hare story. Slow and steady wins the race. We have established a steady consistent stream of new customers. As our exposure grows through our own low budget marketing efforts, this stream increases. We strive to keep our customers by providing the best customer service we can.

TIPS: We think customer service is the thing that makes us different than our competitors. People can reach us quickly and we do everything possible to help them. I think it is important for any business to identify why customers will use their service or product. Do you know what makes you different from your competition? Do you talk about this on your website? Let your customers know why they should use you!Even though we have the funds available, we still do not run expensive short-term marketing campaigns that have little hope of breaking even let alone generating additional income. These campaigns may produce a large splash for the day or month that they run, but what happens when the campaign is over? With a Website, I think you should be more concerned with daily marketing. Don’t expect a huge short-term campaign to make any difference, other than wasting your investor’s money. New people will be looking for what you offer everyday.

These people may have missed your expensive ad campaign that finished last week. What are you going to do to stay in front of people every single day?
TIP: If you are planning an expensive ad campaign, do you know how many customers it will take from the campaign to break even? Forget about esoteric concepts like Brand Building or Name Recognition unless you have a bunch of investor money you need to get rid of. I think the purpose of your advertising has to be to generate new immediate business. The ad needs to pay for itself or you should stop running it immediately!

Get Listed on the Search Engines!Where are people going to start looking for your site? I think most on-line business need to concentrate their efforts on getting good listings on the major search engines. About 95% of our customers find our site through one of the search engines, such as MSN.com, Yahoo, Hotbot, Altavista, Google, and others. They sit down at their computer, bring up their favorite search engine, and type in a search phrase, such as “create your own website”. If we come up on the first or second page of the listings, people might visit our site and see if they like our service. If we’re not there, they choose someone else. It’s pretty much as simple as that.

Getting listed on the search enginesI suggest following these steps to get listed:1) Figure out your key search phrasesTake time to think about what people might type in a search engine to find you. Write down a list of keywords or phrases you would use if you were looking for what you offer. Then, go ask one of your friends, who doesn’t know as much about your service, what he or she would type in. In my case, I found myself too close to the business to come up with phrases that people really typed. I asked friends and business associates to send me a list of phrases they would use if they were looking for our service. Don’t Guess! After you get this list, try out some of the phrases using this free website to check their popularity. (Take the free trial!)http://www.wordtracker.com/New!Try Overture.com's premium listing suggestion tool. It's even easier than Wordtracker.2)

Use Your Keywords on Your Site!Work on your Website and make sure you use the phrases you picked out. Without being obnoxious, try to include the phrases you are targeting throughout articles on your home page. Be careful not to repeat the key phrases too many times in a row, or some search engines will think you are trying too hard, and they will not index you at all. Just write your page naturally and make sure you include the phrases a few times.You don’t want to work hard targeting a particular phrase only to find out no one ever uses it! This site will check the phrase you type in against its database and let you know how many people actually typed it in. (I included this link again, because I think it is such a valuable tool. Sign up for the free trial.)http://www.wordtracker.com/New! Try Overture.com's premium listing suggestion tool. It's even easier than Wordtracker!

TIPS: If you are selling products or parts, try to include a list of some of these, so people might find them when searching. Many people will search for a part number. I suggest creating an article at the bottom of your home page with the headline “here are some of the items we carry”. Type in a long paragraph with a list of all of your parts and part numbers separated by commas.3) Use our Meta Tag featureAt the bottom of your control panel, you will see a Meta Tag button. Meta Tags are special codes that many search engines use to help index your site. SiteRightNow will create these codes automatically based on what you fill in on the form.
TIP: I think the most critical part of getting seen on the search engines is to start your title, description, and key words with your most important phrase you are targeting. Most search engines pick up on the first words you use. If you are a Michelin tire dealer and are targeting the phrase “Michelin tires”, your Meta Tags form might say something like this:Title: Michelin tires at discounted prices from Bob’s TiresDescription: Michelin tires are available online. We carry popular Michelin tires such as the X24, X53, and X55Key Words: Michelin tires,X24,X53,X55,Michelin,tires,discounted tires, discounted Michelin tiresYou don’t want to repeat the same phrase too often in your Key Words section, but you can include different forms of the phrase (plurals or upper/lower case), and you can also break the phrase apart into separate words.4) Submit your site!Now you should be ready for your first try at submitting your site. ANNOUNCING THE GRAND OPENING OF OUR NEW WEBSITE: HitsTalk.com.To submit your web site to the search engines, visit our new web site dedicated to helping you get more hits.

You will find a FREE auto submission tool to announce your web site on the search engines along with advice on how to get more hits! Add your own comments to the discussion. Visit HitsTalk.com5) Re-submit if you aren’t high enoughTo see if I am listed, I usually visit a search engine, such as HOTBOT and type my company name (SiteRightNow). If nothing comes up, I try pasting in the exact URL that I submitted, such as http://www.siterightnow.comIf you still don’t come up, then you are probably not indexed yet. If you do come up, then you should go ahead and try out your targeted phrases. If you show up on the first two pages of the search results for your targeted phrase, you did pretty well for your first submission! If you don’t show up, it’s time to start again. You need to go back and change around your Meta tags. If you chose a phrase that was too broad and had too much competition, maybe there is a phrase you can use that is more specific to your site. Sometimes these specific phrases will actually generate more targeted visitors, who will be more likely to purchase your product.

Buy Your Way to the Top!New!You may have noticed the "featured listings" that show up at the top of your search results on Yahoo, Hotbot, Lycos, AltaVista, and other search engines. You can now pay to show up at the top of the search engine search results for the phrase or phrases of your choice. This can be a great way to get immediate traffic. It is one of the best marketing tools we are currently using for our own website. Buying "featured listings" can be very profitable, but it can also be a quick way to lose money, if you don't keep a few rules in mind.Overture.com offers their Premium Listing service. These listings are seen by almost all Internet Users who use search engines. The listings show up at the top of popular search engines, such as AOL, Yahoo, Lycos, AltaVista, Netscape, Cnet, Hotbot, Ask Jeeves, and others.The way that it works is that you bid on how much you want to pay "per click" for the search phrase or phrases of your choice. Overture.com provides you with the current bids. Bidding starts at 5 cents per click and goes up as high as the market will bear. Overture.com provides you with a way to check to see how many people actually typed the phrase for the previous month, to give you an idea of how much traffic you should expect.To do this, you give Overture.com your credit card, and they charge you for each time someone clicks your listing. They will bill you $50 at a time or more, depending on the billing method you choose.Shop Smart and Don't Waste your Money!I would suggest a few rules to keep in mind before you find yourself owing Overture.com thousands of dollars and getting nothing in return. When placing your bids, I suggest following these rules:
You need to figure out your conversion rate. Figure out how many qualified visitors it takes before someone buys something from your site. You may need to get a month or so of history before you know this. You can use your hit counter to average how much business you received for each visitor to your site.

Figure out the amount of your average sale. How much does a typical customer buy from you. Again, you may need a month or so of history for this.
Once you know the two figures (conversion rate and average sale), you can figure how much you can bid in order to make a profit. If you can predict that it takes you 100 qualified visitors to sell $100, you could afford to bid up to 1 dollar per click to break even.
Make Sure You Pick Highly Targeted Phrases! This is critical. Don't be enticed by general phrases that may bring you thousands of clicks, but may not bring you a customer who is ready to buy. Spend time picking phrases that only people who would be looking for your product would type in. This should help lower your cost, since many of these specific phrases will be much less expensive than the broader less targeted ones. If you don't do this, you could be paying your money for people who are just looking!Comments from Mitch: I wanted to add a few comments to this section of my article. Keep my cautions in mind, but don't let this stop you from trying the Overture.com service. This is currently the most effective marketing technique we have found for on-line businesses. You get almost immediate results, and you only pay when people actually visit your website.

This is unlike most other advertising I have found, where you have to pay whether someone clicks your ad or not. If you are the type of person who does not like taking risks, you can put yourself on the "monthly limit" plan. This will prevent you from being billed more than the amount you choose during the month. Your listing will disappear from the search engines after you reach your limit, but you can experiment this way without much risk. If you have a business website, and want to get customers right away, I think that this is definitely the way to go. You can get near the top of virtually all of the search engines, including Yahoo, within a week. Also, to save money, you can use Overture's self-service plan. The main difference with this plan is that you have to write your own listings.

MSN.com is the second most popular search engine next to Yahoo. Yahoo also offers a similar service, but we have not tried it ourselves. With Yahoo’s site, I have trouble going through their categories to place our listing, so I have opted not to pay them $200 yet.With the Looksmart service, they do not guarantee where you will be placed, but I think you can expect to be placed high for the words they end up using in your title to describe your company. You can help this by doing a good job on your home page explaining what you do. When the Looksmart staff visits your site, they will use the information on your home page along with what you type on the order form to describe your site.Two days after using the service, we showed up as the second listing for “create a web site” on MSN.com. Looksmart's staff started our description with “create a web site without a designer…” If there is room on the order form, it doesn't hurt to request that they start your description with the phrase you are targeting, but there are no guarantees. Most likely, the Looksmart staff will properly identify some of your key services, and you will show up well.Here is the link for the Looksmart service:http://submit.looksmart.com/info.jhtml?synd=US&chan=looksmartComments from Mitch: When I originally wrote this article, the Looksmart service was one of the best ways to get noticed. Since then, I have had more time to use the Overture.com premium listing service that I discussed in the previous section. For those of you who have a limited marketing budget, I recommend that you put your money towards the Overture.com Premium Listing service. The Looksmart service is still a valuable tool, but if you had to choose one method, I would condider Overture.com first.

Guerilla MarketingHow do you compete with companies who are spending a fortune on ads on the major search engines? Well, you could wait until they eventually go out of business (after they keep spending their investor’s money on the expensive ads). Or, you could sneak up on them with a little guerilla marketing! Instead of running an expensive ad on a search engine, why not run a reasonably priced ad instead that will get you better results. Do a search for your favorite phrase, and see what sites come up on the first page of the search results. With a little luck, you might find a site on the first page that isn’t a competitor and doesn’t look like a huge company that will want you to spend thousands on an ad. If you can find the right site, I suggest e-mailing them and asking them if they will let you run an ad on their site. In your e-mail, offer them something you think is reasonable that will work for your budget and see if they agree. Many of these smaller sites just happen to show up high in the search engines for your target phrase, and they are happy to get the extra money you want to offer them!This technique has worked very well for us.

We continue to look for new small sites that may let us run an ad. As our long-term strategy, we plan on showing up on the first page for all of the key phrases ourselves, but for the short term, you can get some immediate business sneaking up on the big guys.If you need to create a quick banner ad to use, here is one place to visit:http://www.animationonline.com/
Google’s AdWords Google.com is another popular search engine that just started offering relatively inexpensive advertising. For as little as $15 you can get listed on the first page of the search results for the key phrase of your choice! You can fill out a simple form and submit your ad and immediately show up in the search engines. You buy 1000 impressions of your ad for $15. I put a limit of $50 on my campaign, which resulted in 3355 impressions and generated 114 clicks. That’s a 3.4% click through ratio, which I think is pretty high. Depending on the service and the ad you create, you may only generate a 1% click through ratio.This is a pretty inexpensive way to try out an ad to see how it does, but it can get expensive in the long run. I recommend this type of advertising for companies with higher ticket items. You want one sale to more than pay for the price of the advertising. If you have a lower ticket item, I would stay away from this sort of advertising. With a popular search engine like Google, my $50 went by in only 2 days! I recommend sticking to campaigns that you can at least get a month’s worth of exposure.Here is the link to Google's AdWords:http://www.google.com/ads Note: Check out Google's new AdWords Select using the same link shown above. This is their new Pay Per Click service that competes with Overture.com

Banner exchanges, 1000+ site submissions, etc.There are a number of other hit generating vehicles out there that you could try, such as banner exchanges and opt-in e-mail campaigns. I think that most of banner exchanges look unprofessional on your site and really don’t do much for your business. Don’t be tempted to signup for the offers that submit your site to 10,000 search engines. Only the major 40 engines make much difference. Most of the other directories are “free for all links” sites where your listing will be lost among the other million and never be seen.Opt-in e-mail is the new vehicle that is getting popular. As opposed to SPAM e-mails where e-mails are sent out unsolicited, opt-in e-mails are supposedly sent to people who included their names in various databases. We have not tried this technique ourselves yet. If anyone out there has a success or a horror story with opt-in e-mail, go ahead and e-mail me at mitch@scentral.com. I’ll see if I can find your message buried in the middle of the 50 or so opt-email messages I received today (and I sure don’t remember signing up on any mailing lists!).
Search Engine Positioning ServicesWe are currently trying out a few “Search Engine Positioning” services that charge a fee for guaranteeing they can place you high up in the search engines. So far, none have worked any better than our own techniques that I described in this article. I will let you know if I find one of these services that are worth their fees.
My Best AdviceWhen starting out, here’s what I would like to see every SiteRightNow customer do:

Figure out your target phrases. Ask others what they would type to find you. Use Overture.com's suggestion tool. Create a good descriptive home page that talks about what you offer (make sure to use the target phrases!)
Use our Meta Tag button!

Submit your website manually to the major search engines. Click Here For Submit Links.
For business websites, consider Buying Your Way to the Top of the search engines , If you have a small budget for running ads, try sneaking up on the big guys with Guerilla Marketing
If you have a larger ticket item product and want some immediate attention, give Google's AdWords a try.If you have any comments or need help marketing your site, please email our help line at help@siterightnow.com.. We will be glad to take a look at your site and give you some suggestions on how to get noticed.
Include articles like this one on your Website and get more hits!Although this definitely wasn't my original intention for writing this article, I am delighted that this page is getting a good number of hits per day from new people searching for marketing ideas. As another tip for getting more hits, you may want to try including articles on your own site that visitors might find helpful. Announce the link to your new page on the search engines using the techniques I outlined above.

I invite visitors who are not already SiteRightNow customers to use my marketing tips. With the extra visitors finding this page, I thought I should go ahead and give SiteRightNow.com a not so subtle plug so:Please feel free to browse our website before you leave. Learn how you can build your own website without programming on SiteRightNow.com

I wish all of you much success,Sincerely,

Mitch Cohen

Webmaster

A well designed site is a pleasure and a money maker
One of the most critical steps in creating a new web site is the design phase. Many people skip this phase entirely, and it's easy to tell when you look at their site. The signs are everywhere and easy to see: site difficult to navigate, purpose of site difficult to discern, too many graphics and not enough text, bad colors, and other obvious errors.
Designing a web site is easy. Sit down at a table with a stack of paper in front of you and think. Just think for a while. What is the purpose of your site? What do you want a visitor to do? Buy something? Send you emails? Join an association? Whatever your purpose, that's what your site should be designed around.
If you want your visitor to purchase something, then you must make it easy and convenient. Everything must flow to the purchase, and nothing must stand in the way. If you want them to join your association, then flow your site to that.
Now, get your stack of paper and a pencil and storyboard your site. Draw it out, just like you were designing a house. Design each page, paying particular attention to navigation, color schemes and, again, tying it all in with your primary purpose.
When you have your entire site drawn out on paper, sit back and look at it for a while. Go for a long walk. Go to sleep. Do something else for a while. Then come back and look at it again, paying particular attention, yet again, to ensuring it is tied to your purpose and that the navigation works.
Some rules to follow:
ALWAYS link back to your home page. Remember other web sites may link anywhere, and you want to give your visitor a way back to the rest of the site no matter where he lands. This is critical.
Put a button on every single page which allows your visitors to send you an email. A form is better than going to the email program because you have more control of the format and what questions you can ask. (Remember though, you MUST answer your emails if you allow visitors to send them).
Make sure your color scheme works. You don't want to hurt your visitor's eyes.
Pay attention to load times. Don't include big graphics, or if you must then thumbnail them to be kind to your less patient visitors.
Stay legal - don't steal images, text or bandwidth.
Stick to the point. You want your visitor to do something - don't wander around or you may lose him.
Design for search engines. Include meta-tags, ALT tags on images and you MUST be sure to include a descriptive title.

The Secret of Success
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Success is an unselfish goal, while failure is a selfish goal.

It is impossible to succeed without helping a lot of people along the way.

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Personalized marketing (also called personalization, and sometimes called one-to-one marketing) is an extreme form of product differentiation. Whereas product differentiation tries to differentiate your product from competing ones, personalization tries to make a unique product offering for each customer.
Personalized marketing is most practical in interactive media such as the internet. A web site can track your interests and make suggestions for the future. Many sites help customers make choices by organizing information and prioritizing it based on the individuals preferences. In some cases, the product itself can be customized.

4Freebie.com is a new revolutionary marketing concept giving consumers free hot products such as Xbox 360 and Ipods thanks to sponsorships with reputable sponsoring companies.
(PRWEB) December 10, 2005 -- 4Freebie.com announced today that they have just launched a new internet site that gives consumers an opportunity to receive cash and high quality free products, while advertisers get instant access to hundreds of thousands of potential new customers. Through a cross promotion strategy with large businesses, retail outlets and online stores, the company’s unique business model works in such a way that the advertisers like Blockbuster, Citibank and BMG pay for the products that get sent to the consumer. These sponsors are looking for new customers and in exchange for trying their products and services the consumer receives high end, and totally free products. The sponsors pay 4Freebie.com referral fees for helping them acquire new customers and this money in turn goes towards the cost of the free items sent to the consumer. In order to participate in the program, consumers must first visit www.4Freebie.com and fill out a simple registration. Secondly, the consumer must complete an online offer. These are special online offers from well-known advertisers, and can be found on the "Offers" page once a person is logged in. Once a member tries one of these offers and completes the referral requirements they receive a free product. In order to receive the free products, each consumer must refer friends or business associates to the site and have them click on their referral link. Once that new person has joined, they must also complete one online offer from their account. The more referrals a member makes, the more credits they receive that can be used towards free products. Once the consumer has completed the above steps, 4freebie.com will ship their order out promptly exactly the same as ordering through any other online store. The difference is that the consumer doesn’t pay a dime. 4Freebie currently offers Apple 30GB Video iPod, Xbox 360, Digital Cameras, a $500 Wal-Mart Gift Card, PayPal Cash & more. The company plans on offering numerous high quality free products as more advertisers begin to participate in the company’s unique advertising model. About 4Freebie.com 4Freebie.com is a unique way for advertisers to access potentially new customers while giving consumers the opportunity to receive cash and high quality free products.

West Hills, CA (PRWEB) December 12, 2005 -- Cyber Monday is quickly becoming Cyber December as online sales continue to grow at astounding rates this holiday season, expected to reach $18 billion before it’s over, according to Forrester Research, Inc. But in a world where offline commerce still accounts for 95% of all retail sales, innovative business marketing strategies that bring the e-shopper back home must be used. Your Hometown Marketplace, an online directory of small businesses in every city and town across the United States and Canada, is doing just that. That’s a good thing since The Conference Board predicts that 34% of all consumers will buy gifts online this holiday season. Cyber holiday shopping officially began on the first Monday after Thanksgiving, when people got back to their fast Internet connections at work. Last year, according to Shop.org/BizRate, 77% of online retailers said that their sales increased substantially last year over the preceding year on Cyber Monday. Visa reports that online customers spent about $505 million on the Internet on Cyber Monday, the highest spent thus far in one day this shopping season.“Your Hometown Marketplace caters to people who are surfing the Web and doing their holiday shopping online. We provide a haven for e-shoppers overwhelmed by the special promotions, discounts, and sheer number of websites vying for their attention and their dollar. If you choose to focus your buying power in your own local area, Your Hometown Marketplace is the place for you this holiday season,” states Your Hometown Marketplace owner, Sara Hoos.Your Hometown Marketplace is designed to maximize the presence of home-based businesses on the Internet. The advertising directory cross lists on- and offline small businesses by category and by city, making it simple for socially conscious shoppers to locate and support small businesses in their own communities. “Small businesses should realize that the purchasing momentum generated from Cyber Monday can continue by advertising throughout the year in Your Hometown Marketplace,” suggests owner Hoos.Sara Hoos, designer and owner of Your Hometown Marketplace, is a work-at-home mom. Visit Your Hometown Marketplace at www.YourHometownMarketplace.com