MASTERING WEBSITE ADVERTISING (PART 2)

In our previous article, Mastering Website Advertising (Part 1) we discussed keywords, hyperlinks and SEO.  This article will focus on Mastering Website Advertising using Business Directories, Video Marketing, Article Sharing and Press Releases. Mastering Website Advertising is an evolving monster. Don't try and cage it.  Let the monster loose, learn from it, train it and be the master of your website advertising monster.

1. Local Business promotion on the Internet. Over 1 Billion searches a month are performed on Google. Make sure your business information can be found all over your website. As redundant as this may sound, you would not believe how many businesses do not put their street address, zip code, phone number or any identifiable information on their website. Claim your business listing for your local business on Google My Business View, Yahoo! Local, and Bing Places. You want your business to show up on maps when people do a local search. There are an additional 20 or 30 additional directories which are just as helpful...take advantage of all of them. The more place you show up on the Internet the more of a chance your business will be found.

2. Promote Your Video, Images, and Audio Content. Google’s “universal search” displays not only webpage content, but also relevant listings for images, videos, maps of local businesses and audio clips. Therefore, consider creating such content appropriate to your business and then optimizing it so it can be ranked high enough to help you. In Global rankings Google, Facebook and YouTube own the top three spots. Make sure to utilize this information to the best of your ability and promote your videos now. For example, if you were to get a top-ranking, informative video on YouTube which mentions your site, it could drive a lot of traffic to your site. Video marketing pays off and if you need a high-quality engaging video, we recommend Visual Impulse.

3. Submit Your Site to Key Directories. Links to your site from other sites drive additional traffic. But since Google and other major search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website (“link popularity”) as an important indicator of relevance, more links will help you rank higher in the search engines. Google has a measure called PageRank that reflects the quantity and quality of incoming links. All links are not created equal. Links from trusted, popular sites help your site rank higher than links from lower traffic sites. A link from a directory will help your ranking — and get you traffic. A directory is not a search engine. Rather, it is a hierarchical listing of sites sorted according to category and subcategory. A paid inclusion can be expensive however a combination of search engine and directory is Viesearch has an awesome annual deal. If you are looking for additional hierarchical listing sites check out About.com.

4. Submit Your Site to Trade Organization Sites and Specialized Directories. Some directories focus on particular industries, such as education or finance. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member directories. Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link from the organization, it may help boost your PageRank. Marginal directories, however, come and go very quickly, making it hard to keep up, so don’t try to be exhaustive here. Beware of directories which solicit you for “upgraded listings.” Unless a directory is widely used in your field, a premium ad is a waste of money — but the (free) link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking.

5. Request Reciprocal Links. Find websites in your general niche and request a reciprocal link to your site (especially to your free service, if you offer one, which we will talk more about in Part 3). Develop an out-of-the way page where you put links to other sites — so you don’t send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door. Your best results will be from sites which generate a similar amount of traffic as your own site. High-traffic site webmasters are too busy to answer your requests for a link and don’t have anything to gain. Look for smaller sites that may have linking pages. One way Google determines what your site is about is who you link to and who links to you. It’s not just links, but quality links you seek. Reciprocal linking as hard, tedious work, but it doesn’t cost you a dime out of pocket! Keep working at this continuously, a little bit at a time. Patience and persistence will get you some good links, so keep at it. There are different available link-building software tools out there, some require a fee and others are free. Highly recommended are two sources one from SEO Unity, and Brian Dean's Backlinko. With Brian's methodology though, get ready to roll your sleeves up and work.


6. Write Articles for Others to Use in Websites and Newsletters. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their email newsletters or their websites. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective “viral” approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time. You’ll find lots of information on how to do this from the most popular article-marketing site, EzineArticles.com. When you create a free membership account, they begin sending you instructions and ideas each week.


7. Issue News Releases. Find newsworthy events and send news releases to print and Web periodicals in your industry. The links to your site in online news databases may remain for several months and will temporarily improve traffic to your site and increase link popularity. Use an online news release service such as PR Web. Placing your website URL in online copies of your press release may increase link popularity temporarily. An available service for press releases can be found at PRWeb.Two additional linking strategies, which we will discuss in Mastering Website Advertising Part 3, are to ask visitors to bookmark your webpage and to develop a free service, which can greatly stimulate links to your site.

Well…there you have it; the second part of a 5 part series on Mastering Website Advertising. There is a lot more information to be given and meting. See you soon.