When it comes to marketing, the web is the most powerful tool ever invented. It is the great leveler of the business world. That is, it allows a one-person company to compete equally to, and sometimes better than, a large multinational corporation.
Of course, that assumes that the small company has been diligent in designing the internet business from the start. Notice I said internet business and not website. The website is only a part of the overall business.
It is the intent of this article to give you the concepts, tools and guidance to help build a strong internet business.
First, lets take a look at the elements needed to make up a successful internet business. This may be a bit elementary for some, but it is important to state them again here for clarity. Im going to list them in reverse order so that you can see how each element depends on the one that comes before it. Lets start with the main goal:
Sales (Conversions) We are all in business to make a profit, and we get that by making sales.
Call to action In order to make sales, we need to ask for the order. This is important. If we dont ask, people will not buy and there is no sale.
Targeted Traffic To make a call to action, we need someone to take the action. Notice that this is targeted traffic not just traffic. We want to have people who are truly interested in our products and services, not just a bunch of lookers who come and go.
Links In order to get traffic, we have to have some way for people to get from where they are to where we want them to be: our site. This is done by links on other sites pointing back to our site.
Relevant Content Once the prospect gets to our site, they must find what they are looking for and it must be related to the subject they want to see.
Unique Selling Proposition This is what makes you different from the competition. It takes a lot of thought and careful consideration, so dont cut it short. This might also come under the heading of Product / Service Differentiation. Find something special that others in your niche have not considered, even if it is old hat to you.
Keywords This is the last and most important item. Everything listed above depends on this one. Get it wrong and you are guaranteed to fail.
Later, we will go over this list again from bottom to top. But for now, lets look at internet marketing itself. There are literally thousands of articles given to the subject of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM). However, both are overstated, especially SEM. First of all, we are not marketing to the search engines. We are marketing to people. Even if we are a B2B company, we are still marketing to people. Companies are just groups of people after all.
Secondly, we are optimizing for people too. SEO is only a tool that helps us get in front of people when they are looking for what we have to offer. And that is the whole crux of internet marketing: being in the right place at the right time with the right solution.
Lets take a look at some traditional marketing principles.Before we begin an internet marketing plan we need to ask ourselves a few questions:
1. What is our product or service?
2. How does it benefit our customers?
3. How are we selling it? (Direct, Agents / Representatives, etc)
4. What is our sales cycle?
5. What makes us different? (Why should the customer buy from us?)
6. How do we measure our success?
That is about it. These are very simple questions, but they sometimes have difficult answers. You need to be clear on them before you can design an internet marketing plan, so write them into your plan from the start. This is something only you can do. Others may be able to help, but you know your business best. Take the time to be honest and thorough.
Now lets get back to our list from above. As I said before, we will now start at the bottom and work our way back up. We start with keywords. And I am going to spend a bit of time on keywords because they are that important.
Keywords
When people have some problem they want to solve, they are turning to the internet like they used to turn to the phone book (Remember those?). When they want something, they type a few words into the search bar of Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask or some other search engine. Those words are the search phrase, or keyword phrase.
Once they hit enter, the search engine (SE) goes into its database and finds the documents most relative to that phrase. Its methods are not important here, but it will choose to show those it considers most relevant. If you want to be number one on that all important first page, you must have the most relevant content. And that is the first rule of keywords Relevance.
There are four criteria that every keyword phrase must have:
1. Relevance It must be relevant to your content and product or service
2. Traffic It must have sufficient traffic to make it worth building web pages around
3. Low Competition The lower the number of competing documents the better
4. Profitability It must be able to generate revenue
Notice item 2, traffic. Note that this isnt the number of searches. That is different. Just because someone did a search doesnt mean that they clicked on anything. Also, they may do one search and click on several links. Traffic is the estimated number of clicks each item in the results page receives. This depends on the position. The number one spot gets about 42% of clicks, number 2 gets about 12% and it goes down with each position lower on the page. So it is very important to be number one for your keyword phrase.
Also take note of number 3, Competition. The search engines dont see websites. They see documents. Each page on your website is a document. Do you see the opportunity here? Design a page on your website specifically targeted to one keyword phrase and you stand a much better chance of ranking high for that phrase. Carefully choose the phrase and you have just increased your odds of being number one by a hundredfold.
You start with a theme keyword. This can be the name of a product or service, a subject of interest to you and your clients, or almost anything you feel is a benefit to your potential clients. These theme or seed words are only used to find other more relevant keywords. They are usually so common or vague that they are useless for doing business.
At any rate, you go to a keyword tool like Wordtracker, Yahoo! or Google keyword tools or some other. There are many, take your pick. You will get back a list of keyword phrases that are relevant to your theme. The list should also have a graph or number indicating the number of searches for that keyword.
The Number 1 Keyword Mistake
Now, please avoid mistake number 1 of keyword research. Dont just look at searches and choose that keyword phrase. That is the surest road to destruction. Before you decide on a keyword, type it into the SE and look at the results. In the upper right side of the results page (usually) will be the number of documents containing that phrase. Lower is better. That is item 3 on our criteria list above – Competition. You want as little competition as possible.
You can find item 2 by simply multiplying the number of documents by these numbers:
Position 1: 42%
Position 2: 12%
Position 3: 8%
Position 4: 6%
Position 5: 5%
Position 6: 2%
The remainder by 1%. Dont bother with anything except the first page. That is where we want to be.
Now you have the approximate level of traffic for the keyword. Bear in mind that these are not exact. The actual traffic might vary widely from what you expect. That is because the keyword may match several different kinds of search. But at least this is a good guideline for design purposes.
Now you have items 1, 2 and 3. What about number 4, Profitability? That is also not too difficult to estimate. Go to Google and look up how much people are willing to pay for that keyword phrase. The more they are willing to pay, the more profitable the keyword. Just multiply the traffic (no. 2) by the bid amount and compare that amount to your profit margin. Multiplying that all out will give you the amount of extra income you can expect on a per day basis. Since your website will sell for you 24/7, you can multiply by 365 to see your annual revenue. Simple, Yes?
Well, maybe not. So what is the downside? Developing a good keyword list can be a time consuming process. It can sometimes take weeks and even months to develop a highly targeted and profitable keyword list. If you dont have the time and/or resources to devote to the effort, you may be better off hiring a professional marketing firm to do the work for you. You can get a full report with all the necessary information for only a few hundred dollars, depending on how many keywords you want and so on.
If you decide to go this route, look for the following items in your report. For each suggested keyword phrase:
1. Number of Searches
2. Amount of Traffic
3. Amount of Competition
4. Amount of Expected Revenue per Day
5. Amount of Expected Revenue Annually
6. A List of Top Ten Competitors
For each of the Top Ten Competitors in number 6 above, you will want to see:
1. Number of Back Links
2. Years in Service
3. Page Rank
4. Total Number of Back Links by Page Rank
5. List of Top Ranking, Relevant Keywords
6. List of Sites Linking to the Competitor and the Page Rank of the Linking page
Since this article is a bit long, we will break here and continue in Part 2. We will pick up there with the Number 2 Biggest Keyword Mistake. This is a mistake common to both business people and developers alike. Be sure to check it out.
I hope that this article has been of value to you, and I thank you for taking the time to read it. I am much honored that you would do so. If you have comments or suggestions, I would also like to hear them. You may contact me via my website, by phone or email. You will find the contact information on the website.
