Web Design, Development and Search Engine Optimisation UK from AliveWalls
Search engines are the number one way people use to look for websites. Google being the search engine of choice by over 80% of internet users. So Google should be where you put most of you efforts.
There are two ways to get listed on Google, the natural listings and sponsored links. Natural listings are the listings on the left hand side. See the screen shot below. The section circled in red is the natural listings.
The second way is to the Sponsored links. See the screen shot below. The sections outlined in red are the sponsored links.
To get listed in the natural listings you will need to get your site optimised. This takes time and over the long term is usually more cost effective and generally will drive more traffic to your site. To find out more about this click here.
To get your site listed in the sponsored links is very quick and easy. It is a marketing technique which can start driving traffic to your site straight away. Sponsored link advertising is also known as Pay Per Click advertising or Cost Per Click advertising.
Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay Per Click advertising is where you pay to be listed on the search engines under certain keywords. You pay for every person who clicks on your ad. This sounds expensive and you are probably thinking well what if a 1000 people click on my ad and I could end up with a ridiculously large bill at the end of the month. Well to stop this you set a daily budget which you are happy with. This can be changed at any time, increased or decreased. When you reach your daily budget your ad is pulled until the following day.
The beauty of Pay Per Click is that unlike advertising in newspapers or magazines you have a great deal of control over it. With pay per click you choose which keywords your ad is listed under. You can stop ads running under certain keywords that do not make you money and add other keywords instantly. You can pause and resume your ad campaign at the drop of a hat.
Track which clicks convert to sales. So when you make a sale you can track which keywords the customer typed in to Google to see your ad and how many of those clicks led to sales. This is useful if you find some keywords get you lots of clicks (people click on your link and look at your site), but do not lead to many sales. You can stop these ads and put more money into ads that have a high conversion rate. This is called conversion tracking and is available on Google and Overture. If you are not capable at coding HTML you will need to get your website designer to set this up for you.
If you were selling furniture for example you might have several sections. One might sell tables and another might sell chairs. So you might have “tables” as one of your keywords. Rather than have this ad link to the home page you can have it linked directly to the page that sells tables. So customers can see exactly what they are after straight away. This is proven to increase sales.
Also you can have a different ad for each set of keywords. So for the keyword “tables”, rather than have an ad entitled “Fine Hand Made Furniture” ,you would have an ad with the title “Hand Made Tables”. This makes your advertising very targeted and precise to the market you are advertising to. Remember if someone types in tables into a search engine that’s exactly what they are after.
The way you get listed is to sign up with Google and Overture or just one or the other and then you design an ad campaign. With Google where you are listed under your chosen keywords depends on how much you pay per click and your click through rate.
When I say where you are listed I mean what position so if you were listed on the first page 4 th from the top under the keyword “tables” this is your position.
Click through rate is how many people click on your ad. As for how much you pay per click, you choose. If you pay more, then you go further up the search engine. Pay per click ads on Google are listed on the right hand side and sometimes they have 2 pay per click ads in blue at the top of the listings. Depending on how popular your keywords are, effects how much you have to pay to get to the top.
Tips on constructing your Pay Per Click ad campaign.
Sometimes being at the top of the list can be to expensive and you can get a lot of time wasters. Being half way down the first page might get you less clicks, but a higher conversion rate. Conversion rate being the number of clicks that lead to a sale. Remember you can check this via conversion tracking.
When you first start your campaign, choose a lot of keywords and pay a minimum amount for each click. Keep a close eye on the positions these keywords get, conversion rates and then eliminate keywords that are not working for you. You can then increase your pay per click on words that you think are going to be more profitable to you so you can climb to a higher position in these keywords to getter a bigger slice of the market. Experiment, you can always lower and increase your cost per click in an instant.
If you are on a tight budget and you want effective keywords that will not cost you an arm and a leg, try using your local town or county in your keywords.
Many people are looking to buy a particular product or service from someone in their local area. For example, if they were looking to buy a table from some one local and they lived in essex, they may type in “tables in Essex”. If your keywords were “ Essex tables” then your ad would appear. These are good because a lot of people search for things this way, but not many traders utilize these keywords, so you are paying a lower cost per click to get to the top position. Often you may only pay 4p per click and be at the top position for keywords such as what you sell + your local town.
Be specific with your keywords rather than just have “tables” as your keyword have “French tables” or “glass tables” . There is often less competition for these keywords making them cheaper and web surfers often use them to find exactly what they are looking for.
Design different ads for different keywords. People can then see at a glance that you sell the specific thing they are looking for. If they type in “football boots” and they see an ad that says, “Great Sports Equipment at great prices” and they see another ad that says “Football Boots, Nike, Reebok, Umbro.” Which ad do you think they will click on first. Also make the ads link to the particular page that sells the advertised product rather than the home page.
There are two major Pay Per Click search engines. These are Google, which is the main one and Overture. When you advertise with Google your ad will appear on Google. When you advertise with Overture your ad appears in many search engines including Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos, Wanadoo, MSN and many many more.
For exact instructions on how to set up pay per click and how it works on Google and Overture click on the links below. If you are not very technically minded get your website designer to help you.
www.google.co.uk/ads
http://advertising.yahoo.com
https://adcenter.microsoft.com
There are of course companies that can help you with managing your pay per click accounts. If you do a search on Google for pay per click management you will find dozens of them listed. If you have problems getting your ppc to pay dividends then these companies can often get a hell of a lot. They can often get your bid prices down and improve your positions with competitors.
Permission Marketing
The term permission marketing was coined because of spam. Spam is unsolicited emails sent to people to try and sell something. This is now illegal. Permission marketing came about by legitimate businesses that wanted to promote their products and services to people who are likely to be interested in them.
If you want to send a sales letter, catalogue or both to a potential customer you mail it to them through the post. You don’t need to know them, have sold to them in the past or even had them request information from you in the past. You can just mail them.
Not with email. If you send unsolicited emails it is illegal. Plain and simple. European regulations brought into action in 2003 made this an illegal activity and for good reason.
This is why permission marketing came about. You need permission to email the person. You ask why would anyone give you permission to send them junk emails they are not interested in. Well the reason is simple. They are interested in them and therefore they are not junk.
This is how it works, legally to send an email to someone they need to have either bought from you before, request information about your product or given you there email address for another reason, but been given the option of being put on your mailing list to be sent promotional material from time to time. Also when ever you send them emails you must make sure that at the bottom of each email you give them the option of being taken off your list. For example, If you would like to be removed from my list at any time please send me an email back saying so. Some companies have this automated so the customer just clicks a link and this removes them from your list.
How To Use Permission Marketing To Make A Fortune
First , Collecting email addresses. The first one is the most obvious thing of all, but very over looked by most businesses. Amazingly it is not new. Businesses have been doing it along time before the internet came about. It’s not exciting like running ads or getting to the top of Google but most successful mail order companies have been doing it for years because it makes them more money than any other form of marketing.
Asking previous customers to buy from you again. That simple. Remember if someone trusts you and know you do a good job then they are likely to buy from you again. But what happens if they forget your website address, forget your email address or other contact details or forgets about you. That’s right they’ll go to someone else and spend their money. So remind them that you exist and many of those customers will buy from you again. It’s a lot harder to bring in business from people who don’t know you than from previous customers who know you deliver to them so quickly.
Next Directory, Littlewoods, Kays, Innovations (gadget catalogue, advertise in Radio Times), JParkers (gardening catalogue, advertise in Radio Times) and these are to name just a few who have been doing it successfully via the post for years.
Now ecommerce businesses are making a fortune out of doing it with email. The difference being, it’s free to email your old customers. So collect all those email addresses from previous customers and type them into you address book in Outlook Express.
If you sell different categories of products then separate your list up. For example a client of mine sells stamps. He sell King Edward VII stamps and Victorian stamps. Now people who collect Victorian often don’t collect King Edward VII stamps and vise versa. So he separates his list up into two groups and King Edward VII and Victorian. Then he can tailor the emails he sends to each group. He can talk about particular King Edward VII stamps to people who are interested with a link not only to the site but to the particular part of the site that has King Ed VII stamps on it. This way the customers get directed to the exact part of the site that is important to them rather than getting lost along the way.
You can input the email addresses and send bulk emails using Outlook Express in the following way.
First, open Outlook Express. Click the addresses button at the top. Click new and select new folder. Then give it a name. Then highlight the folder and click new again and select new group. Give this a name and add your first contact. When ever you want to add another name to your group select addresses from the top and double click on the folder and double click on the group. Then add your new contact. You can also drag and drop names from else where in your address book into a group.
Only put 45 names in a group and more than this cannot be sent at any one time. Start a new group when you get to this limit and separate your lists by putting your groups in different folders.
Ok, time to send some emails out. Write your sales email. Put a heading with a benefit to buy your product at the top. Highlight the heading and make it bold. Include your domain name.
To send a mass emailing first select the view menu and click All Headers and BCC will appear under To and CC. Once you have done this you should not have to do it again when sending bulk emails again. From now on BCC should always show. If it doesn’t then select View and click All Headers again.
Then you click BCC and find your folder in the address book and select your first group and click BCC. Then click OK. Then spell check your email and click send. This will send an email to everybody in this group. But none of your recipients will be able to see who else got sent a copy of the email as well. BCC = Blind Carbon Copy. Do this for each group you want to mail.
Second , you must explain how visitors can easily be taken off your mailing list whenever they want. You must treat them with integrity. If people want to be removed from your list. Remove them immediately.
It doesn't mean they won't buy from you again it just means they no longer want your emails filling up their inbox. But to ignore their request and continue to send emails, will generate a negative response and they will never do business with you again. Also don't bombard them with emails, once or twice a month is sufficient.
Third , Your emails should be concise and interesting. Don't just send the same old email every time. Put yourself in your customers shoes, what would you want to hear about.
Fourth , You can collect email addresses in 3 ways which are then legal to email.
Collect email addresses by offering a free prize draw and collect their email addresses that way. You can make the price draw dead line 6 months from when you start so that you get plenty of names for every prize you give out. The prize could be £50 or a crate of wine. It may cost you, but just think of all the money you can make from the extra sales you generate from selling to theses people. Put the prize draw emails in a different folder from your previous customers as you will probably want to write a slightly different email to these people.
Be sure to ask them if it is ok to email them with other promotional material and reassure them that you will not pass on their details on to a third party.
Collect emails from people who enquire about your products. These people have shown interest, just because they have not bought off you doesn’t mean they won’t in the future.
Collect your customer emails, these are the most valuable of all. And just because people haven’t bought off you for a while doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. They could have a thousand reasons for not buying off you. Hard up for cash this month. Just paid the mortgage. Haven’t go time to look at your site at the moment, wife won’t give them permission to spend money, don’t need one at the moment but might need one next month, want to but I’ll buy it tomorrow and then they forget and there are thousand reasons, so keep mailing it cost you nothing and can make you a lot money.
This strategy can help build repeat sales and boost profits.
Affiliate marketing is a system where by other websites advertise your website on theirs. Every time someone clicks on your ad, it directs them to your site. If this then leads to a sale then you pay the affiliate an agreed percentage of the sale.
You ask how do you know how many sales are a result of the affiliate ads. This is simple you join an agency like clixgalore and they give you a piece of code which you give to the affiliate. This piece of code is the link to your site plus a tracker. You place another piece of code on your successful transaction page and this tracks all the sales that come from an affiliate and which affiliate they come from.
Agencies such as clixgalore will also help you to find affiliate marketers. Affiliate marketers often go to these sites to find new opportunities.
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