Download Marketing a Web Site

Marketing a Web Site
Agenda Foil
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The site itself
Search engine optimisation
Blogs
Affiliate marketing
Videos
Social Media
Keyword Research
• Relating to your services, products, business,
brand
• Words or phrases users will type into search
engines to seek services like yours
• Include your location among keywords
• Do not use non-relevant keywords (i.e. don't
try to fool people or search engines)
• Try Google Keyword Planner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQUDE4
K5Mo0
Domain name
• Use search service to make sure it is not
already in use
• Make sure there are no similar names in use.
• Try to include a keyword in your name:
http://johnlawsonbutchers.co.uk/
• Don't use only keywords or search engines will
penalise you:
www.butcherjointsausage.com
Tracking and Analytics
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Use Google analytics (Demo)
Add a few lines of code to your pages.
Many web hosts provide tracking software.
Sometimes this involves analysis of server
logs.
• Monitor click-through of your advertisements
on other sites.
• Keep monitoring – popularity changes.
Marketing a site
• Use multiple channels (web, publications, TV,
radio, street ads…)
• Free advertising
– You don't buy advertising
– But you still need to work at it
– Most effective of the two
• Paid advertising
Marketing a site
• Free Advertising
– Ordinary search engine results
– Directories
– Social media
– Links from other sites
• If possible, focus on references from high
quality sites, rather than many references
Marketing a site
• Paid advertising
– Can give a website an initial boost until search
engines catalogue it.
– Must be closely monitored to see what works and
what doesn't
– Use experience to optimise your campaigns,
based on monitoring
Paid search engine listings
• Not actually search engine results
• Appear on page as paid adverts
– Google Adwords
– www.Bidvertiser.com is poor runner-up.
– Also www.madadsmedia.com
– Also www.chikita.com
• Use keywords to control which pages your ad
appears on.
Ordinary search engine results
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Use search engine optimisation (SEO)
Try to get in first three pages.
Better if can get onto first page.
See later on for SEO.
Web Directories
• Web directories give information on a niche
topic.
• There is a schools web directory
• There is an Edinburgh business directory
• Only use high quality directories
• Make the entries different and tailored to your
product and their directory.
Banner Advertising
• Area of screen ,image or text, advertising your
product or service.
• Pay per click or pay per 1000 views
• Available in a range of sizes (use tracking
software to monitor effectiveness to find
which suits you best.)
• Google Adwords is one of the foremost.
Call to action
• Whatever the medium, a call to action is an
invitation to purchase the product.
• A CTA is an image, QR code or piece of text
which encourages the user to:
• Go to the main web site
• Buy something.
• Can use A/B testing to determine best CTA.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74soDHzALf0
Search Engine Optimisation
(SEO)
SEO
• In the past, search engines calculated the
importance of a site from the number of links
around the web that pointed to it.
• The text of the link was taken into account.
• So people used to try and trick it by asking
their friends to link to their web site.
• Nowadays that doesn’t work so easily
• You need links from quality sites.
SEO
• Optimise your web content to be easily
indexed by search engines
• Create interesting content that users read.
• Enhance usability.
• Minimise page-load times
• Acquire relevant links from quality sites.
Page title tags
<title> Finest pork sausages – John Lawson </title>
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Create unique titles for every page in your site
The title describes the page
The title contains your keywords
Search engines will index your page titles
Use 70 characters or less (engines truncate)
Description Metatags
• There are a number of types of meta-tag.
Description looks like:
• <meta name=“description”
content=“Buy the finest pork sausages from
John Lawson, Broxburn’s finest butcher!”>
• Use less than 160 characters. Remember to
use keywords.
Robots Metatags
<meta name=“robots”
content=“index, follow” />
• Search engines get their content by using
software which crawls around the web, link by
link, and indexes the websites it finds.
• “Robots” is a message to a search engine crawler
to index this page and all pages referred to in the
links
• There are also, noindex, nofollow, noarchive,
noimageindex.
Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
• This is simply the web address
• Keep them simple, short and full of keywords:
http://johnlawsonbutchers.co.uk/pork/sausage.html
http://johnlawsonbutchers.co.uk/pork-sausage.html
Content
• Update your content regularly
• This could mean changing your range of
products
• This could mean writing a blog about your site
• Make sure your content mentions your
keywords.
• Try to give each page 500 – 800 words of text
Link Text
• The link text is what holds your pages together
• Search engines rate your link text. Well
chosen link text is good for usability too. It’s
got to tell users where the link is going to take
them.
• Make the link text match the page it leads to.
• Try to include keywords in links and titles.
• “click here” is right out.
Link Text
• Try not to link to yourself. Search engines
don’t like it. This is easy to do when
producing menus.
• You are also rated on outgoing links to other
websites.
• Use “target=_blank” so that the other site
opens in another window:
<a href=other.com target=_blank>
Images
• <img src=“carrot.gif” alt=“a carrot”>
• Search engines cannot understand images
• They will look at the file name you have given
your image.
• They will also look at the “alt text” describing
your image.
• For good usability and accessibility please use
descriptive “alt text” tags.
• Too many images will slow the download speed
and search engines will penalise that.
Write a blog
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Write a blog on the topic of your site.
Start it off with at least 8 articles.
Each article at least 500 words.
Adopt a warm, friendly tone – don’t make it
sound like an advert.
• Allow comments so your customers can join in
and share ideas.
• Lots of keywords and links to the main site.
Keywords
• Have five or so important keywords or key
phrases. Try to make sure that your keyword is
contained in:
• An h1 tag
• An h2 tag
• An h3 tag
• Your keyword in bold, italic, underlined
(separately).
• There is an “alt” attribute containing keyword
Affiliate Marketing
• You yourself don’t sell anything.
• You run a blog, with frequently refreshed,
interesting content, which has links to
someone else’s commercial site.
• Go to Clickbank: www.clickbank.com
• Choose a topic or market area
• Write about it, at least 8 pages, using
keywords or keyword phrases, eg “grooming
products for dogs”
Affiliate Marketing
• Get a domain name,
www.napiergroomingproductsfordogs.com
• Domain names cost about £10 per year
• In your articles, you recommend products
which use clickbank, while linking to their
websites.
• Whenever anyone clicks on one of your links,
you make a few pennies.
• There is also Google Adwords.
Videos
• Make a video explaining how to use your
products. Explain, don’t sell. (You want to
attract customers , not drive them away.)
• 5 minutes or less (tl:dr)
• Eye-catching title which includes your
keywords.
• Video description: first “word” is the URL of
the page of the product.
Videos
• Video Description: Add the transcript of the
video if there’s space. Use your keywords in
the description
• Tags: These will be your keywords again.
• ... This way the search engines (including
YouTube search) have something to index.
Facebook
• Link everything to everything: website to
videos, video description to website, Facebook
to videos...
• Be conversational.
• Encourage readers to leave comments and
“likes”.
• Give them a reason to come: vouchers, advice,
news
Agenda Foil
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The site itself
Search engine optimisation
Blogs
Affiliate marketing
Videos
Social Media
Sources
• Varndell, D. (2014) DIY SEO & Internet
Marketing Guide, EZ Website Promotion,
Ridgemont, Beds, UK.
• Lazaar, J. (2005) Web Usability, Addison
Wesley, Boston, Mass.,USA
• Bailey, M., (2011) Internet Marketing: an hour
a day, John Wiley & Sons, Indianapolis, Indiana
USA.
Now You!!
• In groups, use the flip-chart paper to design a
site promotion campaign.
• You decide on what the business will be.
• Your plan might be in mind-map form or it
may be a series of bullet points.
• You can add artwork if you have the skills.