Sierra Tel Internet - Central California's Internet Provider

Marketing Your Website

It frequently surprises people that in addition to having a website, they must market it. Quite often, the drive to have a web page is based on sensible thinking such as:

My competitors are on the web, so I should be there too!

My product is better than most out there on the web.

I want to tell the world about my business enterprise.

I want to add to my current "bricks and mortar" business by selling on the web.

I want to sell things on e-Bay.

I want to have a web page giving information of value.

If your website is for commercial purposes, then marketing your website - letting the public know about it - is the same thing you'd do if you opened a business on a busy street. Somehow you need to let people know your doors are open, the stock is on the shelves, and you're ready to provide a service. You have to tell the public why your business is better than those similar to yours, or why your products are better, or more varied, or that you have better prices - just as you would with a building housing your business. It's all about marketing...and with several BILLION web pages "out there" your marketing effort becomes critical to your success. On the web, success is eyeballs. Viewers. People seeing - and perhaps even reading - your web page.

Click for
Microsoft's bCentral Marketing Primer.

HOW DO YOU MARKET YOUR WEB PAGE?

As with any marketing project, you first decide your goals. They will probably be one, or a combination of these:

Increasing sales;
Providing information to my target audience;
Generate a data base providing you with information on your visitors;
Enhancing relations with your current customer base;
Creating an awareness of your product for future sales.

SOLVING THE MYSTERY
OF SEARCH ENGINES

A search engine gathers website addresses by using talented software called a "spider" or "crawler" that visits all known websites and makes note of their web address, and all the text parts of their website. (NOT pictures).

Search engines no longer make use of hidden "Meta tags" or "Alt" tags associated with photos or other ways website owners have found to "spam" search engine results and to massage them in the website owner's favor.

The search engine's spider will scan through your website's text and will determine from that text what your website is really about. It will lift keywords from your site and store them as indicative of what your site is really all about.

You put a couple words in a search engine like Google and within seconds you have a huge choice of web sites to satisfy your curiosity.

Behind the scenes, though, a lightning-speed, organized, carefully crafted set of circumstances falls into place once you have clicked that "SUBMIT" button. At google, this happens:

Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and software. The speed you experience can be attributed in part to the efficiency of their search algorithm and partly to the thousands of low cost PCs they've networked together to create a superfast search engine.

The heart of Google's software is PigeonRankT, a system for ranking web pages developed by Goggle founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.

PigeonRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. (Now read carefully:) In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. (More on this below). Google also looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; (More important stuff:) it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." (Hmmm. They're trying to tell us something.)

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PigeonRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PigeonRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content - and the content of the pages linking to it - to determine if it's a good match for your query.

Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with the results extremely difficult. A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search. Which is why they're number one.

INTERPRETING WHAT YOU JUST READ

You might have understood all that material above if you're a "power user" of the web. If you're not, what we're trying to tell you - mostly in Google's own words - is that primarily search engines are popularity contests. The most popular web pages are listed at the top of results, and the least popular web pages are listed at the end of the results.

They determine popularity of your website by how many other web pages link to yours. If many websites contain links to your website, you will be high on the search engine results page. If nobody links to your page, you'll be among those also-rans at the bottom.

Try it yourself. See who links to your website: type
link:www.youraddress.com
putting in your own web address, of course, in the Google search box below.

If you don't see your website on a search engine - particularly if you've put your domain name in the search, then you probably don't have anyone else linking to you and your results are at or near the end of the results. It is nearly impossible that the search engines have not stored your web page since their spider/crawlers visit every known host of websites in the world on a daily, if not hourly basis.

Another reason websites aren't listed on search engines is that one way or another, they might have been "spamming" the search engine. Such clever tricks as a whole bunch of links to your site all from the same web page is considered "spamming the engine." Another problem is people purchasing multiple domain names, then having the Service Provider (web host) merely point those multiple domains to the content on a "main" domain. Bad news, and a sure way to get removed from search engines. Too many domains all with the same content is not clever marketing, it's search engine suicide.

Your goals related to your website will tell you where your marketing emphasis on the web should be.

People will visit your website when they find out about it. Your job is to make them find out:

Is your web address easy to remember?
Is your web address & email on your business cards, stationery, brochures and other material you use to market your business?
Is your web address on company-owned vehicles, exterior advertising signage?
Have you checked to make sure the Search Engines have found your website and "crawled" it? (see sidebar)?
Is there a "Signature" on every email you send out containing your web address?
Do you mention your web site and address to people you talk with?
Do you promote your website when you give speeches, talk over lunch, sermonize?
Have you hired a skywriter to emblazon your web address over your town?

Think creatively. Market your website. Get people going to it.

LETS TALK ABOUT LINKS

Our friend Henry has a web page. It's address is www.henry.com. Henry has a friend named John and he asked his friend to put a link on www.john.com pointing people to Henry's page. So John added the HTML code,
<A HREF="http://www.henry.com">Henry's Page</A>on his web page and thereby established a link (a place the user can click on) to allow his friends to visit Henry's Page. (To John's web page visitors it looks like this: Henry's Page )

In return, of course, Henry placed a link to John's page on his site as well. Neighborly, eh?

This is called "reciprocal links" and they pack a punch as far as search engines are concerned.

In doing this, both guys enhanced their listings on search engines. Multiply this process by hundreds of friends, or business associates, web directories, and by exploring all the linking possibilities, and you're rising steadily up in the results of search engines. It Doesn't End with Search Engines

There is so much more marketing you can do than to waste time worrying about search engines. At best, all a search engine can do is point someone to your website. They may have no interest in what you have on your site, but they got there because of a keyword they inserted in the search engine. They may be totally disinterested and may stay on your page only long enough to find out it isn't what they want.

To get QUALIFIED users to your website is another aspect of your marketing effort. A qualified user is one who has already been determined to have an interest in what your website is about. How do you get qualified users? You find them. Seek them out and let them know your website exists to serve them. This involves looking at websites used by people who may use your service or product. Use the email contact address found on almost every website to suggest they put a link to your page on their page, or let their members know about your website or product, or write to individuals known to use services or products like yours.

Write, write write! Daily. Every person you contact via email is a potential visitor to your website. You may even want to offer some people a reciprocal link on your website to their page in return for one on their page linking to your website.

VIRAL MARKETING

A new buzzword around the Web Marketing business is "Viral Marketing". It merely means you do something that causes others to spread the word about your website. A concise description of how you can put viral marketing to work for your website is found at Visicom Media's website. Check it out. Perhaps it's a fit with your goals.

IT ALL BOILS DOWN TO...

Always keep this in the uppermost levels of your mind: Having a website is only 1% of the equation. Letting people know your website exists is the other 99%. The latter must be a continuing, singleminded, ongoing, sometimes ruthless effort!

Marketing your website is not a daunting task. You take a little step each day, and after a few months you don't have to work so hard. Our advice? Go to the next page and get started on building your website's popularity.

Here are some ideas to get you started
in your website marketing effort:

INDUSTRY SITES

If your website is related to a business category, look up on a search engine, sites pertaining to that industry. Get yourself listed on their directories. Some suggested search engine keywords DIRECTORY +WIDGET +MANUFACTURERS (Note: quotes and plus/minus signs are part of most search engine lookups. Read the "Help" or "How To" on your favorite search engine site for more search tips.)

YOUR CUSTOMERS

Get your customers' email addresses. Keep track of who visits your webpage by including a form allowing them to ask you questions or to learn more. Send them occasional promotional emails. Find out how your customers found you. If a website keeps popping up as a referrer, contact that website about enhancing your listing there. Have your employees informally ask people how they happened to visit your business. It's great information to know how people are finding you.

DOMAIN ACTIVITY REPORT

For $20 per month, STI offers domain owners a complete Domain Activity report. If you have a domain name (www.yoursite.com), this report is available to show busier websites how many visitors you've had to each of your pages per month, as well as where they came from, whether they nosed around your site, what search engines were used to visit your page, whether they came from AOL, Netcom or other providers, and most important: what your site's most (and least) visited web pages are. The report contains graphs and charts as well as summaries to digest the information into more palatable chunks. The report is intended for websites garnering large numbers of "hits" per month.

You can check your current web page hits for free. Just your web address into your browser and add /usage to the end of your URL (such as www.mysitename.com/usage). You'll be asked to enter your dial-in username and password, and then you'll see your usage statistics charted by month. Click on any month's results and you'll see a day-by-day breakdown of your hits. If you are noticing your daily hits number in the hundreds or thousands, you might be ready for the full monthly Domain Activity Report. (See our Services & Pricing Page.)

PRINT MARKETING

Your web address should be on business cards, stationery, brochures, and any other literature you publish. Some businesses even print their web address on cars, trucks and even airplanes (United Parcel Service www.ups.com) NOTE: Don't trust printers to know about the web. Make sure they get the address right. It's critical. You don't need to have them print the "http://" part of a web address. Just www.yourwebsite.com or www.sierratel.com/username will do.

ADVERTISING

Include your URL (web address) in your display advertising in newspapers, magazines, directories, or anywhere else you publish information about your business. Don't forget that most telephone Yellow Pages will include your URL, and some telephone books will even put a URL in their white pages, as well.

VALUE-ADDED FREE SERVICES

Give visitors reasons to come to your website. It is one thing to say you build homes. But value is added to your website if you include some Plans, drawings, or even a square footage calculator. If you are a lodging service, a map to your location from a full day's travel away can drive people to your website for the map, even though they may not be wanting a place to stay. The point is to divulge a little of your knowledge at the same time you're selling people your product. It makes your website "sticky" - meaning people stay around on it longer. Here's a simple formula: "Time spent on a website = familiarity. Familiarity = loyalty. Loyalty=repeat visits. Repeat visits = customer."

RECIPROCAL LINKS

"You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" is a phrase that all business people have heard. It is quite helpful on the web as well. If you see a website on which you're just dying to have a link to your webpage, simply use the email address published on the page to contact them and ask. You never know until you ask. Compliment the owner on his website and ask to be listed there. In return, they may wish you to place a link to their page. It's only fair, and frequently done. It's called "reciprocal linking" and is an accepted part of the free and open society we call "The Internet". SOME SEARCH ENGINE KEYWORDS: reciprocal +linking or link +exchanges

NEWS RELEASES

Find newsworthy events (such as the launching of your website), and send news releases to print and Web periodicals in your industry. You may want to use a Web news release service, such as one offered by Eric Ward's URLwire.

SMALL BUSINESS SITES

On Yahoo, and other directories, you can easily find lists of sites listing small businesses, trade associations and other pockets of potential visitors to your website. Perhaps you'd qualify to be linked-to from one of the business or association member directories. SOME SEARCH ENGINE KEYWORDS: directory +"small business" or "small business directories"

EMAIL NEWS

Have you been gathering email addresses of your customers? If so, start a monthly newsletter via email, letting them know what's new in your neck of the woods. Sometimes your business may not be enough motivation for someone to visit, but if they knew some of the goings-on in your neighborhood, they might. To be safe, send these mass emails out in groups of 50 or less because most Internet Providers' "spam" filtering software will block too many emails to the same domain (i.e. @sierratel.com).

EMAIL SIGNATURE

Almost all email programs allow you to make and store a text "signature". This is lines of text that are automatically attached following the last line in your email. Make it simple:


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jerry and Mike's Lube Shop
49720 Highway 41
Oakhurst, California 93644
559-555-5466
Fax: 559-555-9803
Email: jerrymike@Sierratel.com
Web: http://www.jerrylube.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

MAILING LISTS AND NEWSGROUPS.

The Internet carries much more information than just World Wide Web pages. Newsgroups are a great source of publicizing your business. Use DejaNews to find appropriate sources. Don't bother with news groups constituted of pure "spam." Instead, find groups where a dialog is taking place. Don't use aggressive marketing, even if you see other jerks doing so. Rather, join in the discussion and let the "signature" at the end of your email message do your marketing for you. People will gradually get to know and trust you, visit your site, and do business with you.

CONTESTS

People like getting something free. If you publicize a contest or drawing available on your site, you'll generate more traffic than normal.

BANNER & LINK EXCHANGES

Visit websites using the keywords above and seek out sites specializing in reciprocal linking and banner exchanges. If you wish, you can agree to show a rotating banner or link on your site for members, and they do the same for you.

BUY BANNER ADVERTISING

Banner Ads on other people's sites are usually for sale. You will probably pay $10 to $40 per thousand people who see your ad, and achieve a click-through rate of 1% to 2% (number of people actually clicking on that ad to visit your site. As an example. Sierra Tel Internet's main page receives 4,000 visitors per day. At 1% you would get 40 new visitors to your web page each day. Advertise on yahoo.com which receives 4,000,000 hits per day, and perhaps 40,000 people per day would visit your website. Of course the cost differences between the two examples above would be enormous, too. Cost-per-Thousand is what the advertising world runs on.

TRADITIONAL PROMOTION

If you already do direct mail, classifieds, display ads, etc. Be sure to add something that drives people to your website. "See our website for a special one-time offer" might work. "Full details on our seasonal specials are on our website at ..." or "Special Discounts on our Website" may also work to increase your hits.

Please note: websites come and go. If you find a link on this page that does not work, send us an Email and we'll try to find a suitable replacement.

SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION SERVICES: There are companies who will submit your website to search engines. They are, however, a dying breed as most search engines are smart enough to have already crawled your web page. Put your web address in a search engine and see if they already have your page. Don't type "Yosemite" in a search engine and expect to find your site - Google has 980,000 listings under that key word. SAMPLE SEARCH ENGINE KEYWORDS: "search engine" +submission (the part in quotes means "search this exact phrase". The Plus sign means "show listings that also mention the word 'submission'".

RESOURCES AND INFORMATION
Things that may help you know more about your website as well as random information we thought might be of help to you. Keep in mind, STI has no affiliation of any sort with any of these organizations and cannot be responsible for information on their websites. These are merely recommendations for you to browse to add to your marketing knowledge.

CLICKZ.COM Everything you'd ever want to know about website marketing is here in this powerful resource.

WEB MARKETING TODAY is a site about doing business on the Net--hundreds of articles and thousands of links to resources on e-commerce and Web marketing.

THE INDUSTRY STANDARD Newsmagazine covers the people, companies, and business models that shape the Internet economy. Lots of good Net stats, too.

Visit this ONLINE MARKETING website for some valuable marketing information that could save you time and make you money.

Mail Form Problems: If you have a website that contains forms that are emailed back to you when the user fills them out...and sometimes they arrive blank, here's a website that lists all the web browsers and their compatibility with forms mail. Approximately 80% of browsers currently in use are able to handle the automatic email of forms with no problem. This list will show you the other 20%.

Search Engine Watch - keep up to date on how search engines list results, and how search engines determine who gets listed first. Be careful though, sometimes this site has old information mixed in with the new. Ascertain that you're getting newly relevant information before taking it to heart.

Tucows Website Promo - A catalog of website promotion programs for your computer, with a short description and rating from Tucows.

WebPosition claim it can check and improve your ranking on the major search engines using their software program. A Trial version is also available.

Virtual Search Engines - a place to look into niche-market search engines on various subjects.

BANNER PROGRAMS
Put their ad on your website, and they'll put yours on theirs - or variations of that idea.