What is Web Marketing?

What is Web Marketing?

Web marketing is the general term for marketing done on the Internet. It's basically a computer-based version of traditional marketing objectives that involve a product, price, packaging, promotion and place. Marketing is ultimately about propelling a product or service through the proper channels and web marketing uses the Internet as that channel. The umbrella term of web marketing covers a comprehensive range of business activities such as generating sales leads, selling products or services and supporting other business through affiliate marketing.

What is Internet Marketing?

Depending on whom you ask, the term Internet marketing can mean a variety of things. At one time, Internet marketing consisted mostly of having a website or placing banner ads on other websites. On the other end of the spectrum, there are loads of companies telling you that you can make a fortune overnight on the Internet and who try to sell you some form of "Internet marketing program".

Affiliate Marketing:

Affiliate Marketing is a revenue sharing venture between a website owner and an online merchant. The website owner will place advertisements on his websites to either help sell the merchant's products or to send potential customers to the merchant's website, all in exchange for a share of the profits.

There are three ways to earn money through affiliate marketing:

Pay Per Click — Every time a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by "clicking" on the link leading to the merchant's website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate's account. This amount can be pennies or dollars depending on the product and amount of the commission.

Pay Per Sale — Every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate's website, a percentage, or commission, is deposited into the affiliate's account.

Pay Per Lead — Every time a potential client registers at the merchant's website as a result of the advertisement on the affiliate's account, a previously determined amount is deposited into the affiliate's account.

For many website owners, this is a great way to earn some extra money without actually having to "do" anything. All it involves is placing an ad on the affiliate's website. There's no selling or promotion of any kind. The affiliate can just sit back and wait for the profits to roll in.

What Is an Online Merchant?

An online merchant is a person who accepts payment, usually in the form of credit cards, in exchange for goods or services over the Internet. Special accounts, called merchant accounts, are often created with credit card processing companies, to enable the merchant to accept online payments. Sellers generally pay a fee to the processing company for this service.

In the early 1990s, the Internet became accessible to the general public. The web, email, chat rooms, and other online tools swept across the world. In the midst of this new technological frenzy, businesses saw the huge potential that the Internet had for marketing and sales. Small businesses began cropping up all over the web, giving rise to dot-com businesses.

Internet Marketing Components

Setting up a website

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Email marketing

Banner advertising

Online press releases,

Blog marketing

Article marketing,

More details: http://homebusiness.about.com/od/marketingadvertising/a/IMarketing101.htm

Keyword Analysis to advantage your website

7 tips to use Keyword Analytics to Your Advantage to Website

1.       Trend to inside the minds of searchers

Often we as marketers think we know a lot about how people search. The truth is, there are a lot of different ways to search and it varies by industry and from one individual to another. By analyzing the keywords and phrases that are driving traffic and sales to your website, you can find out how your customers search to find your site. What adjectives or other modifiers do potential customers search on? What order do they search?

2.       Which keyword are  working for organic search

If your site is showing up on the first page for some of those keywords, how much traffic are you getting from those organic listings? More importantly, how many leads or sales are you getting from those keywords? You will sometimes be surprised at which keywords drive the most traffic. Often it’s not the keywords you think will be best, and that’s why you have to watch your keyword referral reports to see which keywords are working.

3.       Calculate  which keywords are not driving users

If you’re on the first page of Google and you get zero clicks, it’s time to find some new keywords. Stick with the keywords that drive sales and ditch the keywords that don’t work. There is a huge difference in click through rates depending on the position your site is listed in, but if your site is anywhere on the first page of Google, you should expect some level of traffic, or you’re not targeting the right keyword.

4.       Searching  keywords which works in PPC that can be used for SEO

The nice thing about PPC search advertising is that you can choose exactly which keywords your ad shows up for. The thing that sucks about PPC is that you have to pay for every click. So why not take what you’ve learned from your PPC campaign and make sure you’re focusing your SEO efforts on the right keywords? You’ll usually find that a first page organic listing for the same keyword will send a lot more traffic than a paid listing for the same phrase, and the price per click is way better.

5.       Searching keywords which works  for SEO that can be used for PPC lunching

The same idea for taking PPC keywords into your SEO campaign works the other way, too. Organic search listings will bring people to your site for all kinds of different keywords–including tons of keyword combinations that you never would have thought to include in your PPC campaign. If you notice a particular phrase that drives a lot of sales from a unique organic search keyword, you should try it out in your PPC ads. You’ll usually see a similar conversion rate, or maybe even better conversion from PPC on the same keyword!

6.       Select  keywords to insert  as negative matches

Negative matching with PPC campaigns is when you tell the search engines to not show your ad when certain words are included in the search query. This can come in handy when you’re doing broad matching on keywords that have multiple meanings or connotations. They can also help you eliminate keywords that are driving a lot of traffic without resulting in sales. By watching your conversion metrics on a keyword level, you can identify keywords that drive traffic without sales and add those keywords to your campaigns as negative matches. You can even save yourself some money by looking at irrelevant, under-performing keywords from your organic search that should be excluded from your PPC campaigns before you even spend a penny on PPC ads.

7.       More ideas to get for new content and products

You’ll start to notice that people find your site for all kinds of different, sometimes strange, keywords. Watch the keyword list for new ideas for topics you can write about on your blog or even a new product you can add to meet the needs of your customers. If you’re getting significant traffic on keywords that you don’t have content about, it’s a good indicator that traffic would flow to your site if you create content to match what people are looking for.

Some Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist

1.    Positive ON-Page SEO Factors.

a.       Keyword in URL.

b.      Keyword in Domain name.

c.       Keyword in Title Tag.

d.      Keyword in H1, H2 and H3.

2.    Negative ON-Page SEO Factors.

a.       Text presented in graphics form only
No ACTUAL body text on the page

b.      Affiliate site:  The Florida update went after affiliates with a vengeance - flower and travel affiliates were hit hard - cookie-cutter sites with massive inter-linking, but little unique content. Subsequent updates have also targeted affiliates.

c.       Over optimization penalty (OOP): Penalty for over-compliance with well-established, accepted web optimization practices. Too high keyword repetition (keyword stuffing) may get you the OOP. Overuse of H1 tags has been mentioned. Meta-tag stuffing.

d.      Poison words: The word "Links" in a title tag has been suggested to be a bad idea. Here is my list of Poison Words for Adsense. This penalty has been loosened - many of these words now appear in normal context, with no problems. But watch your step.

e.      Excessive cross-linking: within the same C block (IP=xxx.xxx.CCC.xxx)
If you have many sites (>10, author's guess) with the same web host, prolific cross-linking can indicate more of a single entity, and less of democratic web voting. Easy to spot, easy to penalize.
"This does not apply to a small number of sites" .. (this author guesses the number 10, JAWG) . . . "Hosted on a local server". . Matt Cutts July 2006.

f.        Keyword stuffing threshold: In body, meta tags, alt text, etc. = demotion

3.    Positive OFF-Page SEO Factors.

a.       Page Rank: Based on the Number and Quality of links to you. Google link reporting continues to display just a SMALL fraction of your actual back links, and they are NOT just greater than PR4 - they are mixed.

b.      Anchor text of inbound link to you.

c.       Link from "Expert" site. Google patent - Big time boost (Hilltop Algorithm).Recently reported to give a big boost!

d.      Site listed in Yahoo Directory: Big boost - You can get in by paying $299 each year. Many swear it is worth it - many swear it isn't.

e.      Site Age - Old shows stability.

4.    Negative OFF-Page SEO Factors.

a.       Zero links to you: You MUST have at least 1 (one) incoming link (back link) from some website somewhere, that Google is aware of, to REMAIN in the index.

b.       Link-buying. (Very good IF you don't get caught, but don't do it -when caught, the penalty isn't worth it.)

c.       Cloaking: Google promises to Ban! (Presenting one webpage to the search engine spider, and another webpage to everybody else.)

d.      Penalties - resulting from. Domain Hijacking(work with Google to fix).

Error Handle using PHP code

form.php
<pre>
<html>
<head>
<title>Personal INFO</title>
</head>
<body>

<?php if($_REQUEST['err']) {?>
<br />
<div style="border:1px solid red;text-align:center;width:600px;margin:auto;color:red;">
    <?php
    echo $err=$_REQUEST['err'];
    ?>       
</div>   
<?php } ?>



<?php if($_REQUEST['succes']) {?>
<br />
    <div style="border:1px solid green; background:#00FFCC;text-align:center;width:800px;margin:auto;color:green;">
    <?php
    echo $succes=$_REQUEST['succes'];
    ?>       
    </div>
<?php } ?>


<br />
<form method="post" action="form-action.php">
<table  align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCCC";>

    <tr>
        <td>First Name:</td>
            <td><input type="text" size="12" maxlength="12" name="Fname">
           
            <td>Last Name:</td>
    <td><input type="text" size="12" maxlength="36" name="Lname">
            </td>
    </tr>
   
    <tr>

        <td><input type="hidden"  name="id"></td>
    </tr>
   
   
    <tr>
        <td>Gender:</td>
       
        <td><input type="radio" value="Male" name="gender">Male</td>
        <td><input type="radio" value="Female" name="gender">Female</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>

        <td>Please choose type of residence</td>

        <td><input type="checkbox" value="Burger" name="food[]">Burger</td>
        <td><input type="checkbox" value="Pizza" name="food[]">Pizza</td>
        <td><input type="checkbox" value="Chicken" name="food[]">Chicken</td>

    </tr>
   
    <tr>
        <td>Your comments:</td>
        <td><textarea rows="5" cols="20" name="quote"></textarea></td>
    </tr>
   
    <tr>
        <td>Select a Level of Education:</td>
   
        <td><select name="education">
        <option value="Jr.High">Jr.High</option>
        <option value="HighSchool">HighSchool</option>
        <option value="College">College</option></select></td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
    <td>Select your favorite time of day:</td>
    <td>
    <select name="TofD" size="3">
    <option value="Morning">Morning</option>
    <option value="Day">Day</option>
    <option value="Night">Night</option></select>
    </td>
    <tr>
    <tr>
<td><input style="margin-left:150px;"  type="submit" value="login" name="submit"></td></tr>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
</pre>

form-action.php
<pre>
<?php
mysql_connect("localhost","root","") or die (mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("formexample") or die (mysql_error());


if(isset($_REQUEST['submit']))
{
   
   
        $Fname = $_POST["Fname"];
        $Lname = $_POST["Lname"];
        $gender = $_POST["gender"];
        $food = $_POST["food"];
        $quote = $_POST["quote"];
        $education = $_POST["education"];
        $TofD = $_POST["TofD"];
       

        if(empty($Fname))
            {
                $error="First Name cannot be empty";   
           
            }
        else if    (empty($Lname))
        {
            $error="Last Name cannot be empty";   
       
        }
       
        else if    (empty($gender))
        {
            $error="Gender cannot be empty";   
       
        }
        else if    (empty($food))
        {
            $error="Food cannot be empty";   
       
        }
       
        else if    (empty($quote))
        {
            $error="Quote cannot be empty";   
       
        }
        else if    (empty($education))
        {
            $error="Education cannot be empty";   
       
        }
        else if    (empty($TofD))
        {
            $error="Favorite time cannot be empty";   
       
        }
       
   
        if($error==NULL)
        {       
            $data="";
            $data=implode(",",$food);
   
            $query="insert into form values('','$Fname','$Lname','$gender','$data','$quote','$education','$TofD')";
            $result=mysql_query($query);
            if($result)
            {
            $succes = "Succesfuly added your information";
            }
           
            ?>
            <body onLoad="document.myform.submit(); ">
            <form name="myform" method="post" action="form.php?&succes=<?php echo $succes; ?>"></form>
            </body>
           
            <?php
        }
        else
        {
        ?>
        <body onLoad="document.myform.submit(); ">
            <form name="myform" method="post" action="form.php?&err=<?php echo $error; ?>"></form>
        </body>
   
       
        <?php
        }
       
}

?>
</pre>

How to create Robot.text and htaccess file.

Use of  .htaccess file

The .htaccess file can be used on Apache servers running Linux or Unix to increase your web site security, and customize the way your web site behaves. The main uses of the .htaccess files are to redirect visitors to custom error pages, stop directory listings, ban robots gathering email addresses for spam, ban visitors from certain countries and IP addresses, block visitors from bad referring (warez) sites, protect your web site from hot linking images and bandwidth theft, redirect visitors from a requested page to a new web page, and to password protect directories. Use the information in this article as a starting point to optimize and protect your web site.
More details in htaccess

How to create  robots.txt File

The robots.txt file is a simple ASCII text file used to indicate web site files and directories that should not be indexed. Many webmasters choose not to revise their robots.txt file because they are uncertain how the changes could impact their rankings. However, a poorly written robots.txt file can cause your complete web site to be indexed, gathering information like passwords, email addresses, hidden links, membership areas, and confidential files. A poorly written robots.txt file could also cause portions of your web site to be ignored by the search engines.

More details in Robot.txt

Differences between robot.txt vs .htaccess

The robots.txt file consists of directives to search engine spiders (robots) as to what files and folders you want or do not want to be indexed. However, this will not necessarily prevent spiders from following links into those folders and there are some spiders that do not respect the robots.txt file (all of the major search engines do but there are still quite a few unscrupulous bots to worry about). Additionally, the use of robots.txt directives does not prevent human visitors from accessing those folders and directories if they know they are there (or if they're just hacking their way in via guesses, e.g., looking for index.html or index.php files).

Depending on how you set it up, the .htaccess file, in contrast, actually blocks access to certain files or folders. This applies to both human visitors and bots.

How to Successful Lunch a new Web site

Step 1:  Have a clear call to action and identify your main site objective

When developing a website there are many objectives that businesses want to achieve but it is important to identify one primary goal and establish the remainder as secondary aims.

Do you want to get a user to sign up to a newsletter? Become a member? Book a training session or trip? Or make an online purchase? Once you have identified the primary goal you can create a call to action strategy that will assist in achieving this objective.

Your call to action strategy can be communicated through;

• Links
• News feeds
• Banner and button advertising
• Releasing information from an intranet area in return for a user meeting an objective
• Subscription to RSS feeds
• Form maker

What if my site objectives change over time? Business objectives should change and develop over time so it’s important that you choose a Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to easily and affordably make changes to your site to fit with your changing website objectives.

Step 2: Have a professional, modern look and feel that allows for easy site navigation

Studies have estimated that the average consumer is exposed to up to 3000 marketing messages per day, as consumers are bombarded with advertising they have become experts at filtering out the irrelevant and identifying products and companies to investigate further. 

Once a potential customer has started to research online it is critical that your website reflects the professional nature that you conduct you offline business in. Having a site that is built on old technology with out of date design will be a deterrent to anyone looking to do business with you. 

Along with having a professional look and feel, navigation is one of the main factors in decreasing bounce rate and increasing average time spent on a site.  If a visitor can find the information that they are looking for then they will navigate past the homepage, properly designed navigation will then assist the visitor in finding other valued information and also increasing the average time spent on the site.

Key navigational points include;

•      Use graphical navigation
•      Generate a site tree
•      Keep navigation consistent
•      Ensure navigation is clear and easy to understand
•      Use bread crumb navigation

Step 3: Constantly update, develop and edit the site

One of the fastest ways for your website to lose creditability online is to be obviously out of date, promoting a past event, reviewing an old product or updating users on old news. Out of date content is not only unappealing to users but Google search results will rank updated sites above sites that have stagnant content. Updating content will also increase your repeat visitor numbers as people return to discover new content and your RSS feed subscribers automatically receive updates.

Updating a website is different for every business in each industry but here are a couple of guidelines to follow;

•      Post all relevant business news
•      Keep a blog
•      Use a CMS that can automatically remove past events
•      Don’t update until you have solid content
•      Review entire site content every 6 months
•      Use a CMS that produces a content activity report
•      Avoid changing the visual navigation too often

Step 4: Encourage user interaction

One of the major differentiators of the internet to traditional forms of media is that it allows for interaction with a user and as technology advances there are now more ways than ever to get the viewer involved. The major benefit is an increase in customer loyalty, a rise in repeat visits and a better understanding of your customer that allows you to increase relevance by tailoring future correspondence.

There are a number of tools that you can use to generate user interaction but an absolute must is the form maker tool, this is managed through the CMS and allows you to create a form that can request information on any page; for example;

You run an eCommerce site that sells books – you could place form that reads “Can’t find the book you are looking for? Enter your details along with the book and we’ll find it for you”, this will encourage users to begin communicating with you and stop them from sourcing the book elsewhere.

The amount of uses for this tool is infinite and that is why it’s our number one tool for encouraging user interaction. Other technology that can be used includes;

•      Guest books
•      Blogs
•      Forums
•      Polls and quizzes
•      Notice boards
•      Video content
•      RSS feeds
•      Social bookmarking

Step 5: Create original, keyword rich and relevant content

Taking the time to create original, keyword rich and relevant content is by far the most consuming aspect of a website development project but also the most important. Content is the life blood of any business site and with so many businesses gravitating toward the web it is becoming one of the greatest differentiators. Creating high quality content takes a lot of time and energy, spreading the task over time and throughout an office will help increase the quality of content and allow the writers to cover off all relevant topics, here are some tips to creating original, meaningful and targeted content.

• Tailor a specific message for different landing pages
• Focus on your sites main objective and include a relevant call to action
• Use images to support your text, studies show that visitors are drawn to pictures first
• Include testimonials and case studies
• Make sure that you have enough content to keep the viewer interested

Writing quality keyword content

Choosing the correct keywords to structure your content around is vital to achieving a good search engine results. Performing a Google search will give you an understanding of what your competitors are doing and will help you establish a set of relevant keywords. Another useful tool is the Google Keyword tool; this will give you an idea of the amount of searches being performed for different keywords, other tips for writing quality keyword content include;

•      Use your keyword in your post or article title
•      Add your keywords several times throughout the content
•      Bold or use italics  with your keywords
•      Percentage of keywords to content should be between 2.5 % to 4 %

Step 6: Link your offline activities to your business website

One of the biggest hurdles to having a successful website is finding cost effective ways to drive traffic to the site. Many companies look solely to online to deliver this traffic and often forget that they have a huge captive audience interacting with them every day, their existing customers!  Branding your web address across all marketing material is an obvious start but this can be taken a lot further!
For example offering discounts for ordering online;
A café with a busy lunch time trade could appeal to existing customers to; “order online and receive a free coffee”. This has a number of benefits one being that it opens up your café to an entire office and decreases the lunch time rush, some other examples include;

•      Branding staff t-shirts with the web address
•      Print stickers to post the address on all collateral
•      Having online only promotions
•      Having online only deals
•      Posting photos of customers and events on the site
•      Running competitions where you sign up online

Utilising all aspects of your business to work in conjunction with the website will assist in driving traffic to the site. Self marketing and promotion is a vital aspect of this and along with other marketing initiatives will ensure that your business website from Online Now becomes a pivotal part of your businesses success.

     Step 7: Understand your customer’s online behavior

It’s important to understand your potential and existing customer’s online behavior to tailor you content, calls to action and website navigation. This will help you  to generate best results and achieve your website goals.

One of the most effective tools in understanding your customer’s online behavior is accurate website statistics; these tell you what keywords visitors used to find your site, where they exited your site and how long they spend browsing. Close analysis of competitor’s websites will also highlight areas within your site that require attention and by utilising modern website technology such as guest books or polls to simply ask users about their preferences you can start to understand your customer’s online behavior. 

A Foster Research survey found that only 23% of businesses improve their websites by making use of online data associated with how customers use their website, this figure is very low and the alarming fact is that many businesses aren’t making improvements to their site after it has been deployed. A website is a work in progress, you must be on a platform that allows for free editing and content changes and constantly be asking yourself;

•      What’s a typical visitor to my site doing?
•      How are they finding us?
•      What calls to action are the most successful?
•      Where are they exiting our site?
•      What are visitors telling me about the site?
•      What channels deliver visitors that help us achieve our site objectives?
•      What changes can we make to appeal to the typical consumer?

Conclusion

These are just a few steps that will help you create a web presence that delivers real results, it’s important to plan your website development thoroughly and we hope that this document helps you with the preparation process. Creating a successful web presence is an ongoing commitment and finding a technology and design partner that will assist with affordable solutions is vital, please contact us for further information on how we can assist you develop an exciting, affordable business website today.