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e-Marketing 4

There’s a sense of urgency about getting people to your website in these cash-strapped times. Once you’ve got them there – a tactical and detailed exercise in itself – you have to keep them there, make them buy something, anything.

The innocent browser will have little idea of the almost-science behind getting any website to sit at the top of the search engine list. If it’s not there, looking as though it’s the biggest shop in the street, browsers won’t bother to search far for it, will get bored and amble off through cyberspace. Opportunity lost.

So how do you get to the top? Like any shop, it’s not enough just to be there, however great your products, your prices, or however smartly you’ve dressed your metaphorical shop window. Reputation counts, having a recognized name, a trusted history.

Beyond that it’s necessary to get yourself noticed by the search engines before the customers can find you. There are things the search engines like, such as links from your website to other top-ranking sites. This gives your site some ‘reflected glory,’ whether or not you are worthy of it. You just need to know the right people. Ask them to place a link back to your site. If they won’t, it’s never going to be much of a romantic partnership, so delete them and move on, find another cyberpartner to boost your ranking.

You can advertise on other people’s sites, on GoogleAds, facebook ads but these will cost. So, if you need to achieve that desirable top-of-the-list celeb glow, you’re going to have to get yourself a web-savvy copy writer. Keywords, that’s the thing.

Forget reams of text, pages of waffle, fluffy descriptions of your stuff. If you want to shift the gear, select a few well chosen words, put them in the right place, and you’re away. (Discovering the weird and random words web browsers type into the Google search box can lead you to a strange world but you’ll never have to meet them.)

Remember that search engines have some old fashioned values, such as preferring honesty, clarity, simplicity, and ethics. Tell it like it is. State what you’re selling, build your website so visitors can nip round it in a trice, find exactly what they want, hit the BUY NOW button, and be off - result. Every visit and every click monitored, recorded and analysed for your statistical satisfaction.

Oh, and another thing, the buzz word these days is ‘interactivity,’ so connect your site up to facebook and twitter and let your customers tweet away to each other about you, and your products. Sweet talk or scandal, get a dialogue going, entice them back to your cyberlovenest, seduce them with your special offers, and clinch the deal.

Comments

Unknown said…
thanks for mentioning us Amanda.

There are some errors in your document unfortunately, mainly the fact that links "from" other sites are more important than outbound links.

Also, Niddocks is based in The Lizard

cheers

Rob

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