To Web or not to Web?

Do I need a web site? That is the question often asked by business owners.

The answer will usually depend upon the type of product or service offered and what the business is trying to achieve. Some products/services are more suited to the web than others. Plus, a well designed web site can be a superb tool for communicating with customers, prospective customers, suppliers and the wider community.

For most service businesses, I'd say "Yes, you do need a web site."

There are many ways to be 'on the net', with ISP's, web designers and web hosting companies offering businesses many options in how this can be achieved. However there are also advertising and sponsorship opportunities that may be cost effective for businesses, either through web sites or email communication.

Is the web for you?

As use of the Internet matures it appears that company/branded web sites are particularly important for products and services that are high-involvement purchases. Examples are cars, finance, computer equipment, and professional services where a buyer will actively seek details for comparison prior to making a purchase.

Conversely, for products that are typically low-involvement or commodity purchases a dedicated web site may not be the best answer. It may be more cost effective to concentrate on building brand awareness via advertising and sponsorships on web pages (or email newsletters) that have content relevant to the target audience for the product.

But the Internet does lure businesses with the potential of trading on a larger scale. It is up to individual business operators to decide how important this opportunity is for them. If you are thinking about creating or expanding your web site it is suggested you focus on being either a major force in your local/regional area, or gear up for servicing a national or global market.

If you decide to join the growing number of businesses using a web site, you must also give thought to the type of site you will use. Apart from the 'look' of the site, content and functionality must be considered.

Your options

Web site options range from a single page (long or short) with contact details, to information sites and brochure-ware layouts that incorporate basic product images and descriptions. At the top end are full scale ecommerce sites that process credit card payments online, track your previous purchases, allow interactivity with the site and other customers, and provide personal login facilities to access data.

In many cases the development costs for hand-coded web sites with custom built shopping carts, custom product database and online payment capability starts at around $8,000. For larger sites requiring complex coding and special functionality it's easy to go over this figure.

However, there are now less expensive options available, including the use of Content Management Systems (CMS). A CMS makes it easy to create a site and make changes. No special programming knowledge is required. The CMS interface is very much like using a word processor. And you usually pay by the month. It's like renting your web site. Depending upon your level of skill, you may still need help to create your own graphics or pictures for use on the site. An example of a CMS is www.sitezero.com.au.

Another option is to use a "virtual" web site designer. These are simply web designers that work on a remote basis (i.e. virtual). The virtual designer will create a site to your your individual needs dealing with you by phone, fax and email. They often offer low-cost monthly update services so you never need to worry about learning the technical side of your web site. An example of this type of service is www.bizmagic.com.au.

Some major web directories (e.g. Yahoo) also offer a do-it-yourself online store facility.

Online payment systems

There are numerous options for accepting online credit card transactions that can ecommerce-enable existing HTML web sites. One example of these internet based payment systems is the Australian service www.gopay.com.au. Major banks also offer payment facilities, as do international services such as www.worldpay.com.

Marketing your web site

Once you have your web site up and running, you also need to make sure it is found on search engines, such as Google. It's a fact that for many businesses traffic from search engines is extremely important, with up to 80% of internet users finding sites through search engines.

Online marketing includes: Optimising your site to achieve high search engine rankings Pay-per-click ad's on search engines (e.g. Google and Overture) Listing in directories - Yahoo, DMOZ, industry listings etc Banner ad's on other sites Newsletter (or e-zine) advertising Reciprocal links with other sites And much more, like: - Affiliate programs - Having articles published online - Educational webinars - etc etc...

About the Author: Stuart Ayling runs Marketing Nous, an Australian marketing consultancy that specialises in marketing for service businesses. He helps clients to improve their marketing tactics, attract more clients, and increase revenue. For additional marketing resources, including Stuart's popular monthly newsletter, visit his web site at www.marketingnous.com.au.

SEO 101: Should I Put my Business Name in the Title Tag?

The html title tag of a web page's html header is the single most important "on page" element when it comes to search engine optimization. That being said, is the best use of this valuable real estate served by including your business name in the title? Chances are the answer is a resounding "no!"

The title tag is an html tag which occurs in the header of a web page's code. The first thing I look at when I get a call from a prospective client is their title tag. More often than not, this tag is being used improperly, to the extreme detriment of the client.

Recently SEOMOZ.org released its rankings of the ten most important factors in search engine rankings. The title tag came in at number 1, and this is no surprise to any SEO that has been around for awhile. Google especially pays a lot of attention to title tag content, and uses title tag information heavily to ascertain the relevant keyphrases for which to rank a site. The opinion of search engine experts is unanimous on this one - keyphrase use in the title tag is the number one "on page" factor affecting search engine rankings. This is not disputed, theorized or subject to professional debate. It is a fact.

Given this fact, we must look at how to best use the title tag to optimize our site for search engines. Many sites place the business name in the title tag (or even worse yet leave it blank or with default content such as "untitled document" or "home page"). Any of these variations can be disastrous!

Let's use an example of a company that manufactures widgets. The primary keyphrase for that company would be "widgets", this being the phrase for which the company would like to rank highly for in the search engines. Now let's assume the company name is "ACME Manufacturing Company, Ltd.". Notice that the word "widgets", which is the desired keyphrase, is not extant in the company name.

So the company goes out and builds a wonderful web site to promote their widgets. However, throughout the site the title tag contains the following content: "ACME Manufacturing Company, Ltd." What is the effect of this?

First off, the effect of this is that the site will likely rank highly for the search query "ACME Manufacturing Company, Ltd.". The problem is that nobody is searching for the company name, they are searching for widgets. So all of ACME's competition shows up in the search engines for a widget query, but poor ACME is nowhere to be found. How do we help ACME rank highly for the search query "widgets"? We must optimize the title tag for the search engines by replacing the current title tag content with the desired search query: "widgets".

Generally speaking, the company name should never appear in the title tag unless you actually expect to derive most of your traffic from searches involving your company name. As this is a rare situation, avoid the temptation to put your company name in the title tag - save it for elsewhere on your page. Put your desired search keyphrases in the title tag, and leave it at that.

Following this methodology throughout your site by optimizing title tag content for each page according to the desired search query for that page will be a major step in the right direction for high search engine rankings.

About the Author: Matt Foster is the President of ArteWorks SEO, a top 5 search engine optimization company in the world. For more information on search engine optimization, please visit http://www.arteworks.biz.

Search Engine Marketing Technique

Search Engine Marketing (SEM), is a form of Internet Marketing that try to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the Search Engine results pages and has a proven ROI (Return on Investment).

There are some technique of SEM, including;

Search Engine Optimization (or SEO),

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design.

Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a search results page from top to bottom and left to right, looking for a relevant result. Placement at or near the top of the rankings therefore increases the number of searchers who will visit a site. However, more search engine referrals does not guarantee more sales. SEO is not necessarily an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be much more effective, depending on the site operator's goals.

A successful Internet marketing campaign may drive organic search results to pages, but it also may involve the use of paid advertising on search engines and other pages, building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, addressing technical issues that may keep search engines from crawling and indexing those sites, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure their successes, and improving a site's conversion rate.

SEO may generate a return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.


Paid Placement,

Advertisers bid on keywords they believe their target market would type in the search bar when they are looking for a product or service. When a user types a keyword query matching the advertiser's keyword list, the advertiser's ad may appear on the search results page.

"Product" engines let advertisers provide "feeds" of their product databases and when users search for a product, the links to the different advertisers for that particular product appear, giving more prominence to advertisers who pay more, but letting the user sort by price to see the lowest priced product and then click on it to buy. These engines are also called Product comparison engines or Price comparison engines.

Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0.01 (up to US$0.50). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Arguably this advertising model may be open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and other search engines have implemented automated systems to guard against this.

Paid inclusion.

Paid inclusion is a search engine marketing product where the search engine company charges fees related to inclusion of websites in their search index. Paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies, the most notable exception being Google.

Each search engine is different. Some sites allow only paid inclusion, although these have had little success. More frequently, many search engines, like Yahoo!, mix paid inclusion (per-page and per-click fee) with results from web crawling. Others, like Google (and a little recently, Ask.com), do not let webmasters pay to be in their search engine listing (advertisements are shown separately and labeled as such).

Paid inclusion is a search engine marketing method in itself, but also a tool of search engine optimization, since experts and firms can test out different approaches to improving ranking, and see the results often within a couple of days, instead of waiting weeks or months. Knowledge gained this way can be used to optimize other web pages, without paying the search engine company.

Online Business Ethics

Very simple: Be a source of integrity. Don't be phony, people will know and not come to visit your site again. Even worse, they will post a bad review somewhere on the web and others will not even come to see for themselves. If you don't know about something, don't pretend that you do.

Respect your customers, or prospective customers, and offer them something of value. Give good information that will draw your customers' attention and this will help to build trust. It also gives them a reason to stay or come back again for more. Follow-up with your customers, but don't be a pest. Basically, don't spam, don't steal, and don't lie.

Just as in an offline business, there are ethics and standards that should be followed. If you are starting an online business, you've probably spent some time online already and can see that there are hundreds of thousands of businesses trying to sell their products and information and services to you. Study how they do it. Spend some time visiting the websites of your competitors, much like you would when preparing a business plan for an offline business. Look for and evaluate the following characteristics to determine the integrity of the business as a whole:

What are they selling?

When you first come to their index page, can you quickly and easily figure out what they are selling? Is it a real product, an information product, a membership or a service? Do they offer something of real value right off the bat for free such as informative content or a related ebook? If you cannot determine within the first 30 seconds what they are selling or why they are in business, chances are that they are just a hodgepodge of links put together to make the owner affiliate revenue. However, if you do see something of value, stay a bit longer and evaluate further.

Can you contact them directly?

Look on the main page. Contact information could be in the top nav bar, on the side nav bar or at the bottom of the page. Also, look for a direct link such as Contact Us. Click this link and see where it takes you. Do they provide a physical address, a contact name or email, and a phone number? These three things are a must for a legitimate business. If an owner is not confident in his business enough to put an address and contact phone number on his site, he must be hiding something. The final test is to send an email to the company and see who responds and how long it takes to get a response. Most one-person web businesses should be able to answer your email within 1-2 business days.

Is the content valuable and correct?

One of my biggest pet peeves is spelling and grammar. If the owner has done his research and knows what he is talking about, this should show in the quality of the information on his site. A professional image depends on attention to details. Presentation is everything. If you are going to put out information, it has to be presented in an organized fashion with no mistakes. When I see more than one misspelled word or grammar mistake on a website or page, I move on. If the owner has not proofread his own material or verified the information on his site is correct and presented professionally, I won't be trusting that his products are much higher in quality.

Is there a free trial or guarantee on the products and services being offered?

Those businesses that have developed a quality product or service and are confident in it will not hesitate to put a guarantee on it. They will stand behind it 100%. Even better are those companies that let you try the product or service for free. This way you can test it out to see if it is indeed what you need and meets the quality standards of a legitimate business.

How do they advertise?

Look at the other links on the website. Visit some of them to see the quality of partners associated with the first business. Do the links take you somewhere valuable and helpful? Is the business partnered with other legitimate businesses? Also, how did you find out about the website in the first place and what in their ad drew you in? Did the ad lie to you? Make sure that when you advertise that you don't misrepresent what you are offering. In addition, don't be a spammer. Make sure to develop a double opt-in email list that you can use to send valuable follow up information to your customers. This will help to build loyalty as well as word of mouth referrals.

Visit forums and pay-per-click sites to see the companies who are advertising the same products and services that you are to find out what promotion methods they are using. Use them as a starting point and try to set your standards of quality and honesty a step above when developing your ads.

The bottom line is, there is good karma and bad. Even though we all know those people in life whose bad karma hasn't caught up with them yet, don't join the crowd. Be a leader, be a source of integrity, and provide a quality product or service that you can stand behind. In the long run, this will help you build a profitable, long-standing business rather than a fly-by-night get rich quick scheme.

About the Author: Ruth Harris is a real entrepreneur who has helped many others start and promote their online business. Visit http://www.iprofit.viral-business.com to get over 170 best-selling eBooks and software titles with Master Resell Rights and ready made profit-pulling minisites all for one low price.