Signal to Noise
Editor’s Note: Getting noticed by users is priority one for publishers who want to be successful. We’ve already discussed various ways to bring users to your site, from simple SEM strategies to using Site Submit, and of course, Sponsored Search. But there’s even more to marketing your site than those essentials. In the first part of our series on marketing for small and mid-sized publishers, veteran marketer Lee Odden, president and founder of TopRank Online Marketing and the author of Online Marketing Blog, offers a round-up of low-cost marketing tips that can help you get your site noticed by the right users.
Getting your web site noticed
With billions of documents indexed on the Internet, small- and medium-sized businesses can sometimes be overwhelmed by the prospect of getting their sites noticed online. Here are five basic tips for attracting visitors and keep them coming back for more.
1. Market offline, as well as online
This piece of advice is as true today as it was in the 20th century. Publish your web site address everywhere you publish your phone number, including signage, print advertising, direct mail, business cards, hold music, brochures and other collateral.
You can also promote offline using a little old-fashioned public relations:
- Research relevant local business and industry publications.
Find out who the editors and journalists are who write about topics related to your business and industry. - Write your own articles about the thing that is unique about your web site or business, and the solution or information you provide.
- Suggest the article for publication to the editors of local newspapers and related publications, as well as to writers for relevant industry newsletters, journals and magazines.
Other article and print promotion ideas include:
- Interviews with high-visibility members of your industry
- Lists of suggestions, such as “5 Ways You Can ____ With _____”
- Letters to the editor
- Contests and promotions
2. Announce your site
There are many ways to let people know that you’ve launched a new site, including press releases, emails to friends, clients and prospects, commenting on blogs and communities with similar interests, and targeted pay-per-click campaigns. If you issue a press release, be sure to include keywords in the title and body copy. Use a wire service like PRWeb.com to distribute your press release, and for visibility on the major news search engines like Yahoo! News. Also send links to the press release, along with a few story ideas, to your local newspaper and any industry publication contacts you have from following the suggestion above
To learn more about how you can optimize your press releases, here’s an article on my TopRank blog that you may find useful.
3. Market with a blog
Speaking of blogs, one of the most productive things that small and medium businesses can do to help attract and increase traffic is to start blogging. Blogs are inherently well structured and search engine-friendly. By posting at least a few times a week on topics that are relevant to your audience, you can build up a sizeable subscriber base. It is ideal if the blog is part of your web site, such as www.mydomainname.com/blog or blog.mydomainname.com. There are lots of free and low-cost blogging options available.
Here is a list of 25 tips to market your blog that you may find useful.
4. Optimize content and links
A substantial amount of traffic is available to your site from search engines provided that the search engines can understand, categorize and rank your content. Be sure to use unique title tags on all pages of your site. Also include keywords in the on-page headings, in the body copy, and in links between pages.
Don’t overdo it, though. A good rule of thumb to follow is that if it sounds good when you read the content out loud, then it will likely read well for your visitors. Seek out opportunities to gain links to your site from topically relevant and authoritative web sites. Examples include industry associations, special interest groups, community organizations, as well as directories like Yahoo! Directory that have relevant categories. Contributing articles to online publications and engaging the blog community are also excellent ways to attract links. But ultimately, the very best way to attract links is to produce content that is unique, useful and worth linking to—which leads us to…
5. Keep your content fresh
Once you’ve attracted visitors to your web site, keep them coming back by adding new content on a regular basis. As mentioned above, a blog is an excellent tool for adding keyword-rich content that search engines interact well with. Blog software can be used to archive press releases, newsletters, frequently asked questions and customer testimonials, as well as a communications tool for product announcements, special news and commentary about your industry.
Bonus tip
Make sure you install web analytics software on your web site to track the results of your marketing efforts. While this seems less like a bonus tip and more like an obvious marketing step, many businesses fail to properly monitor, refine and measure their online marketing results. Properly measuring site traffic, time on the site and conversions can make the difference between a profitable site and a failure.
There are very few “silver bullet” tactics for web site promotion, but using a combination of the above tactics will increase awareness of your site, attract new visitors and keep them coming back for more.
—Lee Odden, president and founder, TopRank Online Marketing
| Post Comment | categories:: Guest Columns, How-to's
December 12th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
[…] After going through the routine hoops with Yahoo, the article has published on the YPN blog today, “Signal to Noise“. The article covers the basics as well as a few new, low cost tactics including: […]
December 12th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
[…] More tip from Signal to Noise […]
December 13th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
[…] When I got out of the last session at the WOMMA Summit today (a great use of time I might add), I fired up my RSS reader (a My Yahoo! Widget no less) and saw that Lee Odden, all around nice guy and SEO pundit, was pointing to a post about getting your website noticed he did for the Yahoo! Publisher Network blog. […]
December 15th, 2006 at 6:03 am
Lee, Very helpful article. I’d like to suggest using awards for your promoting your Website.
Winning an award can generate valuable links from the award site, give you new to put into a press release to generate media and blog attention and more links, and add credibility to your site.
There are many internationally recognized award programs available for Web site owners, such as the Web Marketing Association’s WebAwards, that can add value to a web site marketing program.
Bill Rice
President
Web Marketing Assoocation
http://www.webaward.org
December 15th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
That’s a good suggestion Bill!
I should also mention in the category of “Announcing” your site, a very good service for that is Eric Ward’s http://www.URLwire.com service, which has been promoting sites since 1994.
December 15th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
[…] The folks at the Yahoo Publisher Network blog gave the carkeys to Lee Odden earlier this week, and Lee delivered a good roundup of five low-cost marketing tips for small biz owners … and one bonus tip, too! […]
December 18th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
[…] After going through the routine hoops with Yahoo, the article has published on the YPN blog today, “Signal to Noise“. The article covers the basics as well as a few new, low cost tactics including: […]
December 21st, 2006 at 4:08 am
[…] After going through the routine hoops with Yahoo, the article has published on the YPN blog today, “Signal to Noise“. The article covers the basics as well as a few new, low cost tactics including: […]
December 21st, 2006 at 10:27 am
[…] Incidentally, our sister blog over at Yahoo! Publisher Network is running a series on low-cost traffic drivers for web publishers that you may also find useful. In the first installment you’ll find a number of common sense tips for getting potential customers to your site using synergistic advertising tactics. We’ll keep you abreast of new installments in the series. […]
December 22nd, 2006 at 11:31 am
[…] Our staff has grown from 7 in December 2005 to 13 with more additions planned in 2007. Plus we’re moving into a new office on Lake Minnetonka next week. The media has been very good to us with coverage in many business publications including The Economist and we’ve been able to contribute web marketing content to Yahoo as well as many, many posts to our good friends at WebProNews. […]
December 22nd, 2006 at 11:54 am
[…] Our staff has grown from 7 in December 2005 to 13 with more additions planned in 2007. Plus we’re moving into a new office on Lake Minnetonka next week. The media has been very good to us with coverage in many business publications including The Economist and we’ve been able to contribute web marketing content to Yahoo as well as many, many posts to our good friends at WebProNews. […]
January 5th, 2007 at 11:41 am
[…] To Build Higher Traffic More traffic, especially more of the right traffic, can often lead to more qualified clicks. On the blog, we’re currently in the middle of a series on guerilla marketing techniques to help you build your traffic. We posted the first of these articles in December. Be on the lookout for a lot more to come in 2007. […]
January 18th, 2007 at 11:34 am
[…] Editor’s Note: In the second post of our series on traffic-driving tactics, Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, discusses “linkbait,” one of the newest social media tactics that savvy websters are using to get users and customers to take note. […]
January 18th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
[…] Yahoo! Publisher Network » Blog Archive » Signal to Noise Filed under: seo | […]
January 30th, 2007 at 9:16 am
[…] Editor’s Note: Lawrence Coburn is the founder of RateItAll.com and author of Sexy Widget, a blog devoted to the emerging widgetsphere. When I heard Lawrence—call him “Lawrence of Widgetabia”—speak at WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon Vegas 2006 last November, I asked him to pen a piece on using widgets to help draw traffic for the third part of our ongoing series. (See the first two installments here and here.) […]
February 22nd, 2007 at 2:56 pm
[…] Editor’s Note: When I heard Louise Rijk speak at last fall’s Webmaster World, Vegas conference on a panel with Lawrence Coburn, Rand Fishkin and Lee Odden I was immediately struck by the depth of her knowledge in guerrilla marketing and asked her to pen a piece on the subject of her talk, “Word-of-Mouth Marketing,” or WOMM. In the fourth chapter in our ongoing series on driving traffic, Louise introduces you to the concept of WOMM and shows you how to find the right “influencers” who can make a difference to your brand. […]
March 7th, 2007 at 10:19 am
[…] Word of Mouth Marketing, I 25 Things to Think About Widgets Leveraging Linkbait Signal to Noise […]
April 3rd, 2007 at 12:32 am
good idea of increasing website traffic
April 18th, 2007 at 8:14 am
[…] Signal to Noise Leveraging Linkbait 25 Things to Think About Widgets Secrets of WoMM, I Secrets of WoMM, II […]
November 7th, 2007 at 1:27 am
[…] : ‘Leveraging Linkbait’ } Editor’s Note: In the second post of our series on traffic-driving tactics, Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, discusses “linkbait,” one of the newest social media tactics […]
November 7th, 2007 at 3:03 am
[…] : ‘Leveraging Linkbait’ } Editor’s Note: In the second post of our series on traffic-driving tactics, Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, discusses “linkbait,” one of the newest social media tactics […]