On the internet there are two main ways to advertise your website. This is a brief introduction.
1. Pay-per-click Advertising
This, in our opinion, is the most accessible method for small businesses.
Try “eco products” Ecotopia is our customer. They have selected niches or suppliers and are doing well through pay per click advertising.
Pay per click is low cost and is highly controllable. You can select a specific range to promote and direct traffic directly to that page. Note: your customer will shop around, so make sure you have something better to say than your competition. Remember, in retail people may have to walk a long way to find a similar item in another shop, on the internet it is 4 seconds away Let’s say you have some great Denby pricing, or have a suite of new ranges in stock, maybe advertise on Google and soak up some of the interest using a Denby promotion. It’s a matter of trying some things out for your specific market and seeing what works.
Sources of pay-per-click. Main one is Adwords (https://adwords.google.co.uk). Another is Yahoo (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com).
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2. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Connect web sites are designed to be read by Google and other search engines. For example, we have text wherever possible, we have the site map and we have Metatags. We have also moved to a new system where we create ‘human readable URLs’ which means that even though the product pages are created automatically by the Connect system, the website page names will be clear to humans and therefore much better for search engines, the majority of automated websites do not do this so it’s a great step forward.
The bottom line is you don’t get something for nothing (or everybody would be doing it). With free Google advertising (which is what SEO is), then everybody is doing it, therefore you have to do it better than them. You can get so far with designing your site correctly.
Achieving high rankings for the popular search terms needs time and resource. And this can get expensive. Intelligent Retail along with 2 other retailers are trialling a company who offer reliable Search Engine Optimisation services, these are services to maintain your web presence in the first page of Google. Most companies we looked at have been very poor value for money. This offshore company who I believe will get very good results, they have skilled but low cost labour.
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Here is some additional information on this subject:
Why Search Engine Optimization?
- Major search engines command over 400 million searches everyday, day after day. Search engine optimization helps you get this piece of the pie
- Search engine optimization can offer a much better return on investment compared to banner campaigns or pay per click campaigns (depending on your budget)
- Just like pay per click, search engine optimization helps you capture targeted traffic… people who are already looking for the product or service you offer
- Search engine optimization is a longer term answer to increase your traffic. Once a website has been optimized for search engines it can stay at the top for long periods of time
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Here is what a typical SEO company will do:
Competition Analysis
Websites of competitors, which have undergone search engine optimization sometimes, offer valuable clues with regards to the right keywords to target. Also studying the competition helps us identify and finalise the SEO plan for your website.
Keyword Identification
Many websites in spite of ranking high, do not get enough traffic. This maybe because the keywords that they are targeting may not be the keywords being searched for, on the search engines. Keyword identification is a very important part of search engine optimization and includes researching keywords using various resources in the quest for finding related yet popular phrases.
Page Optimization
This step in the process of SEO involves the actual optimization of your web pages. Here pages are optimized with regards to tags, link structures, images and body text. Intelligent Retail do this already automatically.
Building Incoming Links
Google will rank your site higher if other high ranked website link to it as a good resource on a particular subject. A good SEO company will help build these links. The should not use reciprocal links as these are largely ignored nowadays.
Analysis and Tweaking
Search engine optimisation is a long-term solution to increase your traffic. A good search engine optimisation package will involve continuous tuning of the website based on traffic trends and ranking trends. Search engines often change their algorithms so a website will need to be tweaked to compensate for the changes.
Unique Information
A good company may also write new copy for your website around the terms you have selected. This will increase the relevance of your site.
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