How to Get People to Your Web Site

Recently, I helped a relative get started with an online marketing strategy. Here’s a copy of what I emailed her, hopefully useful for others who may wander here.

1. Start with a User Traffic Monitoring Service To Establish a Baseline

Before you do any of the items listed below, follow this important step. Go to Google Analytics, sign up for a free account. Then you’ll be asked to insert special Web page code into your existing Web site (the code is not visible by people visiting your site) that allows Google to track who is visiting your Web site, where are they coming from, what keywords are they typing (if coming from a search engine), and other interesting trends. Any Web developer should be able to do this for you. Google provides a slick Web-based interface that you will then use to view data as it’s collected on a daily basis.

2. Be sure your Web site is indexed by the major search engines.

Go to each search engine and enter “site:www.yoursite.com” — the “site” keyword “tells” the search engine to look for results just on the subsequent Web address. [Phil's note: this works for Google, Yahoo, MSN as above; for Ask, you'll need to enter another keyword before the query, followed by a space, to make it work properly.]

If you do not see your site come up, then go to each site submission page:
Google
Yahoo
MSN

3. Sign up for one or more “Pay per click” advertising programs.

These work on a keyword bidding basis. You choose specific keywords, you’ll see their “market rates” (per click), set your target bid price (the higher, the more likely your ad will be in a more prominent spot), and a monthly budget, and then run your campaign. Google also provides useful tools which allow you to estimate costs and potential click-through rates.

Google AdSense
http://www.google.com/adwords/

Yahoo Sponsored Search
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_ss.php

Microsoft AdCenter
http://joinadcenter.com

Which one works best for you is a trial by error effort. Run a campaign for a month or so. You can see which ones perform best.

If you want to know about other advertising systems, check out this resource.

4. Maintain a Corporate Blog. Drive Traffic to your Site.

Create a corporate blog and use it for marketing opportunities. You can discuss trends in your industry, how you’re tackling major issues, summarize what you learned at a recent conference you attended, even mention your competition. The goal is to maintain a following of readers, even if they are not necessarily customers. Why? This is one of the most powerful ways to leverage word-of-mouth marketing. Someone reading your blog may recommend it to someone they know when a related need comes up during a conversation or email. Or they may reference your blog in their own blog, which inherently gives you even more readers.

You can sign up for a free blogging tool such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com and either use their pre-built template or hire a Web designer to make it look like your existing Web site for a more integrated approach. You can even setup something like http://blog.mywebsite.com and have it point to the blog (even though Blogger.com is hosting it) and then add a link to the address from your existing Web site.

The drawback is that a high quality blog can be a considerable time investment. If you have an existing marketing resource on your team, maintaining the blog should be something they own.

How to Track Your Blog
Use Google Analytics, Technorati, FeedBurner.

5. Participate in Industry-Specific Online Discussions to Get Your Name Out There.

Find all the blogs and message boards related to the industry you’re in. Spend time reading to figure out which ones seem to be a good fit and sound legitimate. Become involved by responding to posts (most blogs these days allow anyone to “comment” on them). Be sure in every post you have a signature line that includes your Web site address. But be genuine when you participate. People can usually tell when you’re simply posting a message for the sake of advertising your business (”spamming”).

How to find blogs:
Google Blog Search
Technorati

How to subscribe to blogs:
1. Sign up for a Web-based “feed reader” (aka “RSS reader”) - my favorite one is Google Reader. Or use a desktop feed reader (Windows’ Outlook 2007 and Mac Leopard’s Mail have it built-in). The advantage of a Web reader (vs. desktop version) is that you can then go back to pull up items using any computer, mobile device, etc. Either way, a reader pulls in feeds from different places, analogous to receiving emails from different people in your inbox. Think of it as a way to get stuff “delivered” to you instead of you going to dozens of Web sites and finding if new information has been posted.

2. When you visit a blog, look for the “RSS” icon in the browser’s Web address box. It means the Web page has a “feed” you can subscribe to. Click on the icon and it should give you a choice to “subscribe” to it. BTW, if you happen to have the Google toolbar installed in your browser, it can be setup to automatically subscribe to feeds using Google Reader.