Internet marketing tips – the basics

Every week this office is bombarded with requests for internet marketing tips. Questions like, “How do I get onto first page of Google?”, “How do we get more traffic to our website?” and “How do we turn website traffic into sales?” These are obviously the big questions that internet marketers are being asked very day because being found online, getting more web traffic and converting traffic into business is what most sites exist for.

So here are our basic Internet Marketing Tips:

Tip 1: Get your on-site Search Engine Optimisation right

We are constantly amazed at how many sites we see have little or no on-site optimisation. Businesses are wasting serious marketing dollars if they engage a web designer that doesn’t address the basic search engine optimisation, or SEO, requirements. A rule of thumb seems to be, the more “creative” the site looks, the less effective it seems to be for optimisation. (By the way here are 27 web design mistakes to avoid)

In short, your website will have little chance of searching well on Google unless the basics of on-site optimisation have been addressed.

If you’d like know if your on-site optimisation is good, you can get a free report from our Web ANLYZR.

Tip 2: Get your off-site Search Engine Optimisation right

Off-site optimisation has a multiplying effect for your website. Firstly, it can help increase your Google PageRank, helping boost your search results. Secondly, it can seriously increase your targeted traffic. Why? Because off-site search engine optimisation relies on links from other sites. The more links you have from quality, relevant websites the better your site will perform.

Off-site optimisation can be improved by putting great content on your site that others will point to, by submitting your site to industry specific directories or by spending plenty of time visiting and commenting on other relevant sites and forums.

Tip 3: Include a blog on your site

We strongly recommend blogs as a marketing tool. They can build audience and relevant traffic steadily and consistently. Search engines crave fresh content and blogs are content machines.

The individual nature of blog posts allow other sites to point or link to information they find interesting, something they are much more likely to do than pointing to a general website.

Blogs are more conversational and allow your business to show some personality which can be a marketing advantage in itself.

Individual blog posts present great search engine optimisation opportunities, allowing your site to build an armoury of optimised keyword terms delivering traffic to your site on a daily basis.

Tip 4: Use social media to amplify

Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are fantastic for building relationships and a potentially larger audience. Whilst we don’t recommend using these networks for spamming or doing hard sell on your followers, we do recommend that you post news and links to your latest blog posts. This can result in a lot of traffic to your site and the passing around of your message by interested parties.

Likewise, social media sites like Digg and Delicious can introduce more audience to your site and posts.

When used well, social media can amplify your online presence greatly.

Tip 5: Have a traffic conversion strategy

A well-optimised site with tons of traffic is still under-performing if the traffic isn’t being converted into something more meaningful, like an inquiry, data collection or sale.

Depending upon your product or service you should be looking to include tools that help you achieve a stated conversion goal. It could be an inquiry form, down-loadable information, a booking or a financial transaction. There are numerous paths to follow and techniques to employ. Yet so many sites fail to do anything with their visitor traffic. Its like a shopkeeper totally ignoring potential customers in their shop.

Tip 6: Analyse, Analyze, ANLYZ

Anyway you spell it, proper analysis of your site, traffic and conversion is crucial. You will only continue to improve your internet marketing results by studying your site and its results.

Its one of the main reasons we built Web ANLYZR. This allows us to quickly and accurately study a site and measure its marketing effectiveness.

We also recommend spending considerable time looking at which keywords are delivering you traffic and which are leading to goal conversion, amongst many other metrics.

Tip 7: Repeat

The internet, your website and your customers are continually evolving. Once you’ve got your site performing well as a marketing tool, you can’t just walk away from it. You must consistently repeat this cycle to ensure your site is in tip-top shape.

These 7 internet marketing tips address the basics. Unfortunately very few sites have these basics covered and as a result the businesses behind most sites are missing out on significant opportunities.

If you’d like to know more about professional internet marketing and the GetSticky Internet Marketing System you can submit your site to our Web ANLYZR for a free report or contact us.