Website Marketing Basics – Getting Visitors to Your Website

Posted on November 28th, 2008 by Clare Lancaster

The article below outlines the basic website marketing principals and techniques that you should know about if you own or run a website/online business. It is based on over 8 years experience of website marketing on the Internet.

Information you’ll find in this article:

Attracting Quality Visitors
Website Marketing Secrets
Get to Know Your Target Audience
Website Marketing Techniques
Search Marketing and Google
SEO
Google Adwords
Link Building
Directories
Blogs
Social Media Marketing & Networking
Email Marketing
Converting Visitors to Customers
Links

You need visitors to your website in order for it to achieve any of your goals (i.e. more sales/leads from the Internet).

The question is – how do you get them there?

First Up

Marketing on the Internet is different to traditional marketing in many ways. The most important thing to remember is that the tone of your marketing cannot be directly sales orientated. Don’t talk “at” your target Internet audience, talk “to” them. Be personable, relatable and transparent at all times.

Successfully marketing your website takes time. Be patient, market regularly and you’ll start to see results.

Before you start attracting visitors to your website make sure you can offer them something valuable when they get there – for example, interesting/useful content, a special offer or free download.

Attracting Quality Visitors

Take a minute to consider this first – what kind of visitors do you want?

There are plenty of visitors that you don’t want (those who aren’t looking for what you’re selling) and you don’t need millions of visitors each day in order for your website to be a success.

You want qualified visitors who you are ready for you to convert to leads or sales right?

Website Marketing Secrets

The only secret is there are no secrets.

Sure, professional website marketing consultants will have years of experience developing and implementing advanced strategies across a range of website types (therein lies their value) but ultimately it’s about knowing your audience and how to speak to them.

Fundamentally, the idea of marketing is to find the people you think will buy what you’re selling then ask them if they want to buy from you using the most appropriate communication style.

So how do you do that? Through research, understanding and using right marketing mix to reach them.

Get to Know Your Target Audience

The first step is to define your target audience.

Look at your website plan and what you’re selling then take a close look at your target audience and research to get to know them, who they listen to and what information they want and search for.

Spend time exploring other websites that you think you’re audience would like e.g. forums, blogs, topical directories – this is where you need to be also.

One of the most important things to think about what words they would be using to search for what you’ve got.

As your marketing evolves, so will your understanding of where to find potential customers, and how to communicate with them.

Website Marketing Techniques

Ok. Let’s look at the basics of website marketing techniques that best work on the Internet.

Some are for attracting new customers, others are for building relationships with potential and existing customers – all are essential for you to know about.

Search Marketing & Google

Search marketing delivers website visitors who are actively searching for what you’ve got – making them the perfect website visitor.

Over 80% of research before purchase is done online. 88.14% of those searches are done using Google (July 2008, Hitwise [link]).

Google is a serious player when it comes to sending visitors to websites so it makes sense to get to know what it likes as best you can.

Google offers detailed information for website owners on their website. See their “Site Help” for more.

There are two types of Search Marketing – SEO or Paid Advertising (e.g. Google Adwords). They can be implemented separately or together. Both have similar outcomes –to attract and deliver visitors from search engines.

Choose SEO for a long term consistent stream of free high quality targeted leads from organic (unpaid) results.

Choose Paid Search Advertising to generate immediate high quality visitors that you pay for when they click on your website link.

A note about Paid Search Advertising and Google Adwords
Each major search engine runs its own Paid Search Advertising program but with Google controlling the majority of search traffic I’ll only discuss Google Adwords here.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. SEO involves optimising your website’s content (text and images), structure and internal linking AND attracting relevant links to your website from other relevant websites.

The facts
At its most basic, SEO is all about using keywords to describe what you are offering and prepping your site to be “search engine friendly” according to their guidelines. For example, see Google’s Webmaster guidelines.

What it will do for your website
A website that is search engine optimised well will deliver highly qualified visitors for free. It is a long term investment that can take up to 6 months to show results but will return a consistent stream of free high quality targeted visitors to your website.

By “qualified” I mean they have qualified themselves to be interested in what you’re offering by actively searching for what you’ve got, they have read your descriptive web page title and clicked through to your web page therefore proving to you that they are a quality lead.

Important
There are a few risks involved with Search Engine Optimisation to be aware of if you decide to optimise your own site or hire a consultant to do it for you.

Always follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, don’t be tempted to get too tricky with your techniques or you can risk being booted from Google altogether and never hire an SEO consultant that guarantees you rankings, that’s impossible unless you are paying for them using Google Adwords.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords allows you to place text ads on Google’s search pages. You can set how much you want to pay for your ads and it will bring you visitors who are looking for what you sell immediately.

The Facts

Create text ads and choose keywords you think your customers would use to find you
Place text ads with a link to your website on Google
You only pay when someone clicks on your ad’s link and visits your website
You can set a budget that determines the maximum you want to spend each day

What it will do for your website
Google Adwords will allow you to immediately reach people who are using Google to search for what you’re selling.

Using Google Adwords successfully depends again on researching, testing and tweaking. Using tools offered by Google you can determine the best keywords to spend your money on and determine the right message to use in your ads for best results.

For maximum return build custom landing pages that welcome your Google visitors and provide them with a more detailed message to the one they clicked on from Google. Always make sure the link they clicked on is relevant to the page they’ve landed on.

Link Building

Building links to your website is an essential website marketing technique that will benefit your website in two ways.

By connecting visitors browsing on another website to click through and browse on your website
Links from well trafficked websites (websites with lots of visitors) that are relevant to your subject matter help your search engine rankings

It’s important to be aware that not all links are created equal. The best links are from other websites that compliment and/or are relevant to the subject matter of your website.

If you sell services or have a shop front the first thing you should do is make sure your business is added to Google’s Business Centre.

Directories

Internet directories list websites categorised by topic and/or location.

Submitting your website to directories is a good way to build relevant links to your website. Look for the most specific category that you fit into and add a descriptive website title and short non-sales message as your description.

Add your website link to general business directories, local business directories and topical based directories for your industry. Use Google to search for them.

Must add’s include: True Local and The Open Directory Proejct (powers Google’s directory) you can add your website to both for free.

Blogs

Blogs are a great way to add value to your website, connect with your audience and can help your search engine results.

They are easy to setup, easy to update and can help build your businesses’ identity and personality on the Internet.

Updates to your blog are called “posts”. You can add text, images, links, tables and bullet points in your posts. Always use descriptive text in your post titles and spell check before you publish.

Don’t just use your blog to post updates about your business. Write articles that will help your audience, post news, interesting images/diagrams and link to information that your audience will find useful.

To start blogging you can use a free service like Blogger. If you want to integrate a blog into your website take a look at Wordpress.org (also free).

There are plenty of free templates for you to use, or if you want to build your own to ensure consistent branding take a look at this easy to follow tutorial to build a custom Wordpress theme (template).

Social Media Marketing & Networking

The new Internet marketing kid on the block, social media marketing is not to be ignored. When using this marketing technique let your personality shine through and be transparent about your connection with any business interests.

Sign up to Facebook, use Linked In and connect with your audience or colleagues using Twitter (a micro-blogging website). Look for forums that discuss your topics of interest or business industry and start contributing.

The trick with social media marketing is to keep on it, keep connecting with people and add value to their day and in turn, they’ll add value to yours. E.g. help by answering a question, posting interesting website links or just having a good conversation.

It’s crucial to take time to get to know each medium, how it’s used and the etiquette that is expected of you.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an ideal way to capture the value of your website visitors for later contact.
It’s cheap and simple to set up and if used correctly can help you build relationships with new and existing customers.

Give your customers valuable information and they’ll reward you with return visits to your website and repeat opportunities for maximum sales.

Important
Email marketing is a permission based form of Internet marketing. Australian law requires that you must provide a double opt in process to gain permission from your subscribers. Never send unsolicited mail to a mailing list. Ever. You must also provide a simple unsubscribe method on each email you send.

Some Golden Rules of Email Marketing

Have a professionally designed email template that reflects the branding of your website
Keep emails short – if you want to provide longer information then use a portion of your article and add a “read more” link to link to the article on your website
Give them value for signing up – send exclusive email specials and content that is specifically made for your subscribers
Don’t send too many emails, decided on a schedule and keep to it
Always provide a link back to your website

Converting Visitors to Customers

Ok, so your traffic is building up, you’re repeating your marketing efforts and spending time marketing each day. That’s great.

However, attracting 100’s of high quality visitors to your site per day can mean nothing if they aren’t performing the action you want them to – i.e. making an email enquiry, purchasing a product or signing up to your email list.

Every visit to your website is valuable, whether or not you capture that value comes down to the effectiveness of your website and whether or not it meets your visitors needs.

Make sure you’re giving your visitors what they have come to your site for in the first place. And follow the Good Website Rules.

Final Words

I hope you enjoyed reading about Website Marketing Basics and that it has inspired you to learn or try a new technique.

Thanks for reading. If you’ve got any questions please leave a comment. Next up is a frequently asked questions and answers post.

One Response to “Website Marketing Basics – Getting Visitors to Your Website”

...love Maegan, on December 2nd, 2008 at 7:46 am Said:

great tips!