Guest Author - Deborah Crawford
If you are going to design and build your own website, there are some programs out there that make it much easier. You don't have to be a computer guru. You will have to spend time to learn.
Whether you hire a designer or do-it-yourself, you need to know some basics about internet marketing. Here are some basic things you need to know before marketing online today:
Content: Your site will do better if you have valuable content. The internet is the "Information" Superhighway, and those sites which provide information will do better in search engines than those which just list products for sale. Tell stories about your company, your products, and your services. Use great keywords (see below).
Search engines and directories (Yahoo, Google, MSN and others) are keyword driven programs. They search the internet and look for specific words, called keywords, to create the list of sites you get when you perform a search. The better your keywords, the better your site will perform in searches. For example, if you search for a very general term, you get dozens of pages listing websites related to that keyword. Most people never go beyond page 3 or 4 of the search results, so the sites which come up higher on the list will get more hits. When you build your site, or have it built, you will put keywords in your website's source code, and in your content.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, means building your site that will perform better in search engines. There are books and courses, and hundreds, if not thousands of companies dedicated to SEO. Basically, this involves how to program your site so that search engines find it and rank it higher than others. It involves choosing the right keywords, including the right amount of content, and the right type of content, so that search engines give it a higher value. Again, you can learn this and do-it-yourself, or you can pay someone else. And, again, be careful if you hire someone. Get references. Comparison shop—check at least five different sources or you could end up paying much more than the going rate or getting no results for your investment!
After you have built and optimized your site, there is still no guarantee that customers will bombard you and make you rich. There are just no guarantees in business, and the internet is no exception. The better planned and executed businesses have better odds, but there really are no sure bets!
If you are confident that you have a great product or service, and you build a great site, there are many ways you can promote it drive more traffic and make more money. Check out PPC (Pay-Per-Click), Goodle Adwords and Google Adsense, Yahoo ads, eBay stores, Yahoo stores, Affiliate programs, link exchanges, and online classifieds to start.
