Marketing a New Website

If you've just launched a new website you are hopefully prepared for the marketing effort that will be necessary to build traffic and sales. Oddly enough we still encounter people who were 'sold' a website and had little or no understanding that the actual design of a website is only step one of a long Internet campaign. And yes, many people come to realize this the hard way and simply quit, after spending $100's often $1000's on the design stage.

At Connect Online Svcs the thing that we work on the hardest at the pre-contract stage is making sure the prospective customer has a clear understanding of what to expect. In most cases this is easy, people nowadays generally come along with some knowledge of how things work, but occasionally we see newbies looking to get online for the first time, and it's imperative that we coach them in the early stages and ensure they know exactly what they're getting into.

Here are a few words of wisdom for people in the early stages of planning a website, not necessarily in any order of importance -

Sandbox and domain aging affect

This is a simple enough concept but it's important to understand what this means. In simple terms, Google will look at any new website and determine how old the domain name is, or how long it has been in use. Aged domains are processed without impediment to ranking, whereas new domains can often see a short-term boost in rankings, followed by a drop then a longish wait in the sandbox. The principal is under some debate but most people consider it a way of filtering people/businesses looking to make a quick kill online, those who haven't really shown any longer term commitment. There are also websites/businesses that try to jump on new trends/ideas as soon as they're released, and sandboxing their domain will result in fewer fly-by-night operations and more stable companies along for the long haul.

So expect to spend time in the SB with any new website, it can be 3-6 months before your rankings start to improve.

Where best to put my marketing effort?

This is a great question that we get asked from time to time. The short answer is really to diversify and cover as many areas as possible. But what if time is critical and you're looking for ways to prioritize your marketing efforts?

A quick way to get traffic, and we've talked about this elsewhere, is through PPC - Pay-Per-Click marketing. For those who don't already know, this is a system operated by Google and Yahoo whereby you -

• Create an account (with either Google, Yahoo or both...and there are a couple others, maybe even some that are specific to your industry)
• Research and form a list of keywords and keyword phrases pertaining to your products/services (both Google/Yahoo provide research tools)
• Write Taglines and descriptions for each of your chosen keywords
• Set a bid amount for each keyword/phrase, which is basically the amount you are willing to pay each time Google/Yahoo send a visitor to your web page.

The amount you pay per click will determine where you rank against your competitors, who may also be bidding on the same keywords. For example, this website www.thenaturalshopper.com sells products with 'royal jelly' amongst other things. Lets say that there are other companies bidding on the search term 'royal jelly' and company A appears in position #1 for the search term and Company B appears in position #2. For The Natural Shopper to appear in #2, they would need to bid an amount higher than Company B, who would then be pushed down to position #3, and lower than Company A, who would remain at the number one position. That's the basic principal. They key is to managing your campaign so that you are getting a positive ROI (return on investment). If your bid amounts are so high that you spend more on marketing than you achieve on sales, then that may not be the right thing for you. If your website is within an industry that has a good repeat order rate, then it maybe OK to loose a little on the first order, since you'll get the repeat order essentially for zero marketing effort, with a net gain over the two orders.

If you find that the ROI isn't working for you with PPC, then before you abandon this strategy make sure that you've researched keywords that are less competitive and therefor cheaper to bid against. They may yield lower traffic, but as long as they convert, and you maintain a positive ROI, then they're going to be good value for money. Here is a more detailed look at how to get more traffic on a budget

So you'll need to experiment with PPC and see if it's right for you.

Much of how you approach marketing your website will be determined by whether you choose the DIY or DIFM (do it for me) route. If you have some basic skills on the web there's no reason why you can't adopt the DIY approach. Let's look briefly at the skills and tools needed. Assuming your website was produced with a combination of HTML and CSS, you're going to need some form of HTML editor to make the necessary edits to your code. You won't be doing anything complicated, just locating the lines of code known as Meta tags and editing the Title, Description, Keywords tags and perhaps one or two more. Then you'll be adding ALT tags to images and Heading tags to page texts. So it's mostly basic and you can get away with a free HTML editor in most cases.Then you'll need some way of loading modified files back to the website, either via your HTML editor (like Dreamweaver) an FTP software like CuteFTP or through the hosting control panel.

If your website was created in a CMS like Joomla or Drupal, you'll need to learn the basics of working with Meta tags within your CMS. If your designer didn't do this already, you'll want to install the SEF module in Joomla, which can be a little tricky depending on how your website is hosted.

So by acquiring the basic tools and skills necessary, and by researching the topic from reliable SEO websites, you can affect most changes and basic optimization tasks quite easily yourself.

PART II