Promoting your website through Inbound Marketing

E-BUSINESS CONSULTANTInbound Marketing

INBOUNDMARKETINGMagnetize your website


TRADITIONAL MARKETING

Outbound marketing techniques become less effective as savvy consumers inundated with over 2000 marketing interruptions per day, figure out creative ways to block unwanted messages.

becomes less effective


A NEW APPROACH

Inbound marketing is about creating and maintaining a network of connections to your website. Setting up numerous signposts that drive interested customers to your company’s website. Enabling these prospects to discover your proposition naturally through search engines, directories, the blogasphere and related websites.

INBOUND marketing


BENEFITS What can it do for my site?

Higher ranking on search engines making your website more visible

Increased traffic to your site

A greater proportion of interested and highly targeted visitors

Improve brand awareness online

Benefit from new business contacts and inbound links (people linking to you)

Website gains in reputation and authority

Can be implemented within every organizationwith minimal training and limited resources


TECHNIQUES How to get results

Apart from being able to write good copy non of these techniques requires any great skill and they can be mastered by any organizations.

Any and all of these techniques will have an incremental effect on your website, but when combined their cumulative effect is significant.

YOUR WEBSITE

Weblogs• Fans• Content• Inbound links

ArticleMarketing• Authority• Awareness• inbound links

Search engineoptization• Content• inbound links

Social Media• Friends• Content• Inbound links

ContentSyndication• Authority• Awareness• inbound links


Finding the needle in a haystack!...or why Search Engine Optimization is important

• The top 30 results on a search page get

over 90% of search traffic.

• The top 10 results receive nearly 80% more

traffic than those in positions 11-30 achieve.’

• According to a 2004 survey from Marketing

Sherpa, in the six months after search engine

optimization, clicks on organic search results

increased an average of 73%.


Search Engine OptimizationEssentials for improving your sites search ranking

Content is still king: How dynamic, relevant and well constructed a websites content is influences its reputation with search engines.

Link building: the number and quality of links to your site is like a voting system. These inbound links are seen by search engines as recommendations. As in most things quality trumps quantity.

Meta data or information about information: Webpages contain unseen information that search engines use to identify your content. Namely Title tags(describe what a specific webpage is about) and Meta tags (keywords focused on your site).

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WEB CONTENT Writing for two audiences

Internet copy has the twin objectives of satisfying the search engine as well as the visitor. Writing copy for the internet must combine both creativity and analytical insight.

• Lay the trail with keywords: The placement of keywords is crucial as they create a trail for search engine spiders to follow.

• Add signposts with keyword phrases: Expand your base of keywords by adding relevant keyword phrases e.g. executive coaching where coaching would have sufficed. Using different forms of important words avoids repetition and optimizes the page for keyword variants.

• Related keywords are important: Google’s ranking algorithm uses 'Latent Semantic Indexing' to gauge the relevance of a webpage to a keyword. Which simply means that when analyzing your web page for a keyword Google's ontological analysis expects to find words that are related e.g. golf, sport, tee, clubs.

• Back to basics: Writing for the web is not just about keyword enrichment. Eventually it boils down to drawing the visitor's attention, holding his interest and persuading him to act.


LINK BUILDING sign posting your website

Search engines equate link quality and popularity as a part of their ranking algorithms. A link back to your website from another site suggests to search engines that they trust you and promote your site. The more back links you have throughout the internet from respected websites the better.


HOW DOES IT WORK understanding linking

All major search engines equate link quality and popularity as a part of their ranking algorithms, but what does that mean?

refers to the number of hyper-links pointing to a page on the Web. A popular Web site tends to have large numbers of these back links, and obscure Web pages have very few.

evaluates the relevance and value of a link in reference to the web page where it appears. It takes into consideration elements such as layout, relevance to content and most importantly authority.

LINK POPULARITY

LINK ANALYSIS


Recommended website

Internal webpage

Outbound link

Inbound link

LINK BUILDING seeding your website


Inbound link

Inbound link

Inbound link


ARE YOU LISTED? Register your site with web directories

There are 2 main types of directory:

1. General website directory - a broad listing of websites separated into broad categories e.g. dmoz.org or yahoo directory.

2. Specific website directory - dedicatedto a particular business, topic or industry and broken down into specific sub categories. e.g. Accounting web.


WHICH DIRECTORY?General Web Directories Rated by Inbound Link Quality (ILQ)

This list of Web Directories contains the Top Directories rated by the quality of inbound links each directory has (April 2009). The ILQ Score is taken from the number of inbound links each directory has from dir.yahoo.com, DMOZ, EDU and GOV sites.

Courtesy of The SEO Company website

http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/top-web-directories.html%23info

http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/top-web-directories.html%23info


META DATA Information about information

Choosing the right keywords and phrases for your website is an important part of the search engine optimization process, making your site visible to search engines and searchers alike.

Points to consider:Select keywords that describe your company, its servicesand website from your target audiences perspective. People search using plain language not jargon! To get a clear idea of what keywords people are actually searching on you can use online tools such as Word Tracker or Googles keyword tool.

If you have not targeted specific and precise keywords for your website, then you will not be easily found.

A good title tag is like a well crafted blog title namely descriptive, provocative, concise and above all clear. As title tags are displayed in search results they play a crucial role in deciding which link a user selects


CONTENT SYNDICATIONPromote your content

One of the best ways to attract visitors to your website is by providing related sites and social media sites with quality content (editorial, video, presentations etc.) relating to your subject area.

Benefits:• Creates awareness• Positions your organization as experts in a given field• Indirectly aids search engine ranking via link popularity

What to do:• Distribute your content via RSS feeds to other online resources• Write and participate on blogs• Write and distribute expert articles• Share presentations• Provide press releases to popular blogs within your field• Share videos on YouTube etc.


WHAT TO PROMOTE? and where to publish

VIDEOS

PHOTOGRAPHS

BLOGS

PRESENTATIONS

IDEAS/OPINIONS

EXPERT ADVICE

PODCASTS

PROFILES


SOCIAL MEDIA creating a buzz

One of the most effective methods to increase sales and gain new customers is to get the right people talking about your organization - creating a buzz. To gain the attention and trust of people who could start the conversation with prospective new customers. Social networks are ideally suited to this task allowing you to market your organization more intimately, communicate directly with your customers and receive honest and frequent feedback.


BLOGGERS Rise of the super advocate

"super advocate" - the corporate organization's biggest ally or enemy. Highly influential figures, outspoken and with a loyal following, super advocates will have the power in the Web 2.0 world to make or break a brand's reputation at will.


WHY ARE BLOGS IMPORTANT?Given that only a small percentage of Internet users regularlyread blogs why are they important for inbound marketing?

Simply put, the information doesn’t remain in the bloggers’ domain; it is fed through search engines towards mainstream users and 40% of Internet users say search engines are the first place they go when researching products and services.

Blogs consistently rank high in search engines due in part to the their high concentration of keywords. Blogs fill search engine databases with relevant keywords. Relevant, because most of us search for words and phrases we use every day, the same words and phrases used in a blog post.

Each posting has one subject and is invariably concise and to the point, consequently their keyword density is extremely high.

Exponential effects

Increased traffic

More links

More content


THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT YOU!but who should we be listening to?

Not all bloggers are equal, in the same way search engines rank your site, organisations such as Technorati and Nielson’s Buzzmetrics rate and monitor blogs. Start by researching which blogs and social sites are talking about your company and its products and then join the conversation.


FOLLOWING THE CONVERSATIONConversation Tracking

When a blogger publishes a post and other bloggers link to it, the original post (or "seed") becomes part of a conversation. From those seeds sprout other links, and so and and so on, until it creates an entire conversation. Conversation Tracking provides a snapshot of weblog "conversations" by creating a threaded view of the conversation.


WHAT NEXT 10 ideas to get you started...

Publish your ideas. Distribute and market white papers, presentations and articles etc. on relevant websites such as Slideshare. Contribute to a blog.

Join the conversation. Use technorati to find and asses blogs talking about your business and link to them, write comments, offer content e.g. press releases or exchange articles.

Social Networks. Build your online network on sites such as Linked-in by connecting with professionals you know or with whom you share interests. Join discussions where you refer (link) to your website or blog. Join or start an appropriate group in your area and/or industry.

Use Several Domains. Consider using more than one domain if you have topics that warrant their own websites. Search engines typically only list one page per domain in their results. Another reason is that directories typically accept homepages. Having more than one domain means that you can get additional directory listings.

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Ride Coat tails. Contact representative websites that align with your business and ask them to link to your site. Create a directory page on your site with links to sites relevant to your business offering.

Use Directories. Ensure that important directories and portal sites within your field have descriptions and links to your site and products.

Create RSS feeds from your site.

Link Deeply. Inbound links should point to as many pages within your website as possible. This lets search engines know that you have numerous pages of relevant content.

Don't overlook the basics. Ensure that your web pages have concise, clear descriptions and make use of popular keywords in their meta tags. Give titles to your links, this can result in search engines giving higher rankings to your page.

Anchor text optimization. The inclusion of important keywords in your anchor text can make a difference in the final ranking of your site’s pages. All search engines that matter, give significant weight to the anchor text on your web pages.


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WHAT NEXT 10 ideas to get you started...


THE ENDIain Davenport, March 2009©

Business

Promoting your website through Inbound Marketing