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Quick Links: Search Engine Optimisation
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Search Engine Optimisation |
For all those people who think their job is done once they have created the website, designed it and stuffed content in it, there is an important piece of information .This is just the beginning, there is still a lot more work left! Your new website might be LIVE on the World Wide Web but it doesn’t really EXIST until it attracts traffic.
Just like any other product, a new website also needs its share of marketing and promotion to be noticed and visited by the web citizens. Usually a website would take over a year for any visible progress but at times if promoted properly it might hit the top of the chart with in a few months..
When it comes to promoting a website, there are various tools and all these tools need to be usedin sync because it’s their combined impact that will take your website higher on the search engine ranking charts. A website is like a normal product that needs to be marketed according to the usual marketing strategies, the only difference is in the tools used to promote websites. Website promotional tools are different from the usual marketing tools. Listed below are some of the major tools for website promotion.
Just like a normal soap won’t sell unless it has the right ingredients, similarly your website should have the right kind of key words and key phrases for it to be listed by the search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the easiest and cheapest way of promoting your website. If you include the right keywords and key phrases in all the fundamental areas of the website the search engine spiders will be able to index your web pages easily and ultimately rank your pages at a higher level in their listings. In most cases unless you take this elementary step no other tool for website promotion will help you get those search engine rankings. It’s like saying that unless you make sure your product is of great quality people wont use it and no amount of advertising or publicity will increase your sales. Another benefit of optimizing your site before using other promotional tools is that it saves your cost and reduces the number of other promotional tools needed in the process. A strong foundation will surely help you build a stronger promotional strategy. Make sure that you start optimizing your website right at the time of planning and building itself or it can be quite a tiresome job later.
Press or media is the best medium to promote any product, so the first thing you do when your website goes live on the web is, issue a press release. The press will work as a bullhorn that will get that first valuable link to the public. While issuing a press release you must ensure that you include a link of your website. It would always be preferable if the target phrase is also hyperlinked.
These days generally search engine spiders hunt for your website on their own. But it is always better to submit your website with the search engines as it helps you get some preference. If you wish to submit your website to search engines then make sure that you do it shortly after it goes live on the web. In order to make the task easier for search engine spiders, the best you can do is to create and submit an XML sitemap. You can find a number of tools that can help you create your sitemap. All you need to do is just Google it and you will get a list of such tools.
After creating the sitemap, you would need to submit it to your Google Webmaster Tools, and then you need to add the complete path to your site map along with the line ‘Sitemap: http//www.domain.com/sitemap.xml’, in order to include a call to your website within your robot.txt file.
Link Building – increase the visibility of your product! The More the visibility of your product; the more will be its recall value. This is a fundamental for marketing and it works the same way on the web. The more the visibility of your web link on the web; the more will be its recall value by the search engines. Links are strategic web marketing tools that would never let your investment go in vain. There are innumerable ways to grow your back links. Higher visibility of your links on the web can help you gain some positive attention from Google. If you have been able to post links on some of the relevant websites that are related to your niche then such quality links can help you attract considerable traffic to your website.
You would have often seen celebrities attending social events and gaining publicity. This works as a great promotional exercise as nothing works better to pull crowds than interacting with them and making them aware through word of mouth. Similarly if you go to social platforms like blogs or forums and make them aware of your website and your products by interacting with them then it can help build a public image. You can visit social media sites such as You Tube or create profiles on networking sites like Orkut and Facebook and enter discussions related to your products or services, to involve the members. While you socialize on these sites, do not forget to drop your back links because that will again increase your website visibility. During social media optimization you need to keep the fire alive and make sure that people constantly visit your profile and your links, so there must be something new for them each time they visit or they will lose interest.
Creating communities on Social networking sites is also a great way of interacting with your target audience and spreading the word about your website. You can create a community for your company, products or the industry that you are related to. By doing this you are already streamlining your communication and hitting the bull’s eye. This is because by creating a specialized community you are attracting people who are interested in that kind of services or products, hence your task in attracting them and consequently increasing the traffic to your website becomes easier.
You can also create your own social media platforms like blogs and forums to attract traffic. But make sure that your social media or your profile on social media sites is not a mirror image of your company. Do not make it to obvious to people that it is a marketing tool. Retain the essence but do not give away the integrity of your social media initiative. If you are able to attract a good number of users then it can result in many people linking to your website and spreading the word. Article writing- Create the need and awareness!
PR is all about catching the audience off guard and informing them about your product without letting them know that you are targeting them. Article writing is quite similar to that. Write generic articles about your products, services and your niche industry and post them on various websites. This will create an indirect awareness about your products and services, without any direct marketing or promotion of your website. Article submission is a subtle promotional tool with great results. Writing relevant articles about your website and pasting a back link to the relevant content on your website will not only help you generate extra traffic to your website but will also increase your search engine rankings.
Pay Per click might not help you make long term benefits, but it can surely bring the initial traffic to your website. Pay per click is like a sponsored marketing strategy where website owners buy visitors or clicks from search engines. The website owners select a particular set of keywords and key phrases and then make a listing that will appear each time someone searches for those keywords. In this strategy, the marketer or website owner pays a specific amount that for every single click on the listings, which in turn leads the visitor to his website. This not only brings traffic but also increases the page ranking but at a cost. As long as you pay you get the traffic, and when you stop paying the search engines, traffic also stops. This is why PPC is far from being a long term strategy. In a number of industries however PPC can do wonders in creating that initial buzz and bring enough traffic, hence it is worth considering an option.
Submitting your website in various online directories is a great way to build your brand, or focus on links for organic rankings. There are numerous online directories out there, some are free, some are paid and some are pure garbage. Before spending your money in directory submissions you must ensure that you submit your website only to the relevant directories. Directory submission is another tool for link building that will help you grow your overall link reputation and ultimately get higher rankings. Google pays a lot of importance to directory submissions. Conclusion
To be concise, visibility is the key to high rankings. Refer your website on the entire web, wherever possible and wherever relevant. The more the visibility of your website URL, the closer will you get to see the improvement in your search engine rankings. Try to get links from every relevant source, do link building exercises, optimize your content and spread the word.
