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 Issue #19 - April 7th, 2003 Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses
Brought to you by idesignbusiness.com http://www.idesignbusiness.com Issue #19 Monday, April 7th, 2003 In this Issue: ARTICLES: ONLINE POLL: FREE RESOURCE: Welcome back to another issue of the Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Business. This issue features an article from Daria Goetsch who has been working closely with Search Engines since 1998. I hope you enjoy a fresh perspective to marketing your business and website in Search Engines. As always, I want to hear from you! Please direct all newsletter correspondence to newsletters@idesignbusiness.com You can view all past issues of the Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses at the newsletter archive. Click below to visit the archive: Newsletter Archive Neal St. Clair idesignbusiness Advertisement Special Hosting Offer for idesignbusiness Newsletter Subscribers idesignbusiness provides affordable, reliable, and flexible website hosting services. We provide all the features you need at a price designed for a small business budget. Whether you currently have your site hosted somewhere else, or need help getting your first site online we will do all the setup for you. To learn more about our services, click on the link below.
Special offer for newsletter subscribers: Enter the promotional code "helium" and we'll waive your Setup Fee! Click here to learn more about hosting services Online Poll Are search engines your primary source for Website Traffic? ARTICLE Good Content: The Key To Search Engine Ranking Daria Goetsch Search Innovation January 15, 2003 What drives visitors to your website and keeps them there? Good content. Content is Key Good content is key to website promotion success. All the bells and whistles in the world will not hold an audience like compelling information. Ask yourself: Why would a visitor stay at my website? What are they looking for? What do I have that they need? What holds them there once I've got them visiting? You have to tell your story in a way that will keep your visitors interested and coming back for more. Get Those Visitors The first part of the process is getting visitors to your site through search engine promotion and other traditional marketing methods. As you increase your visibility, more visitors will come to see what the commotion is all about. Keep Those Visitors The second part of the process is keeping them there. If you provide quality information that is easy to access, you are giving the visitor what they are looking for. Don't give your visitors a reason to click away. Quality content means happy visitors, and with enough happy visitors, you become an "authority" on your topic. Having a site recognized as an authority means good ranking in the search engines. Know Your Audience So how do you get your visitors to stay on your site, and to return to it? First, you need to understand your audience. Who are you trying to reach? Create your pages with them in mind. Do you want to reach a narrow audience, or will you try to reach all levels of readers? Buzz words may make sense to you in your business, but will they reach your target audience? If you are a high-powered underwater basketweaving consultant, focused only on serious underwater basketweavers, you can keep the discussion on your site fairly technical. If, however, you really want to spread the joy of underwater basketweaving to a wider audience, you may want to keep the tone more general, giving newcomers to underwater basketweaving the information they need to become as enthralled by basketweaving as you are. Get Your Visitors Involved So what kind of content do you need to provide for your visitors? If you have a site selling gardening books, you will have lists of the titles you have for sale, an order form, and contact information. Everybody else selling gardening books will have these pages too. How do you rise above the crowd? How do you stand out as the definitive gardening book website? Write Articles One technique that you can use to good effect is that of writing articles pertaining to your site's topic. After all, who knows more about gardening and gardening books than you? Not only does this give your visitors yet another reason to keep coming back to your site, but it also allows you to reach out beyond your site. There are many other websites out there looking for authoritative information on your topic. Find those sites and submit your articles to them. This creates a "win-win" situation: the other web site gains the benefit of your knowledge, while you are further recognized as an authority in the field. Getting a link from that site back to yours brings more visitors to your site, and increases your site's link popularity. Keeping an archive of articles on your website builds your knowledge base. You can refer visitors to your articles when answering their questions. People searching for information on the topics you have written about will find your articles listed in their search results. Once they arrive at your site, maybe they will buy something from you: if you know so much about planting bulbs, maybe your site is the place I should buy my bulb-planting books. Other Offerings What else can you add to this mix? Think about adding professional gardening book reviews, a gardening book club, FAQ's about gardening, gardening articles, a rating system for books, audience book reviews, and other gardening-related topics. Adding this type of information gives your visitors more reasons to keep coming back to your site. Offer free tools, create a forum. Set up a newsletter for your audience with your topic, adding in a discount for your product for newsletter readers. Give your audience a reason to come back to your website. What Results Can I Expect: Google PageRank A primary example of how this works is Google's PageRank. One of the most important aspects of ranking for Google and other search engines is good content. Google wants their search engine users to find what they are looking for, a successful search experience for their users. The keywords included in your site are important; after all, those are the terms your potential visitors are searching for. Now not only do you have your catalog pages and ordering information, but you also have a more in-depth treatment of the topics you have addressed in your articles, book reviews, and other materials. More keywords in more places means you have a better chance of matching a potential visitor's search. So how can you "rise above" the other online gardening bookstores out there in the search engine listings? Link popularity can be the next important piece that allows you to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. All other things being equal, search engines that pay attention to link popularity will list your site higher in their results if you have more links coming back from other sites which have a focus related to yours. In other words, if your gardening bookstore has a number of backlinks pointing to it from the websites of gardening clubs, nurseries, and so forth, your site will be seen as more authoritative. The more authoritative a website looks to Google through link popularity, the higher that site will rank. After all, if all these other gardening-related sites point to your site, they are demonstrating that you have something important to say. That is another reason why it is important to have your material published on other websites. Conclusion Maintaining good content is a stepping-stone for your visitors to delve in deeper to your website. Taking the time to build your content and provide for your audience will pay off in good search engine ranking and returning visitors. # # # Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation (www.searchinnovation.com), a Search Engine Promotion company serving small businesses. Besides running her own company, Daria is an associate of WebMama.com, an Internet web marketing strategies company. She has specialized in search engine optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O'Reilly & Associates, a technical book publishing company. Copyright © 2003 Search Innovation Marketing. All Rights Reserved. Permission to reprint this article is granted as long as all text above this line is included in its entirety. We would also appreciate your notifying us when you reprint it: please send a note to reprint@searchinnovation.com. Advertisement Do you want 100% fresh and unique business leads every month? Do you want to be part of a compensation plan that can easily make you over $3,000 in monthly income? If you answered YES then I suggest checking out Traffic Oasis. If you sign-up for the free account now I will give you a free sponsor ad in my newsletter to 6700+ subscribers. Check it out now! http://www.trafficoasis.com/index.php?10707 Got questions? Ask us - advertzine@yahoo.com FREE RESOURCE: Each issue of the Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses will include helpful free online resources to promote your website. BdayReminder.com is a free service that sends you email reminders of your friends, family, and business associates birthdays. Never forget another important birthday again! Bdayreminder.com is a free service provided courtesy of idesignbusiness.com www.BdayReminder.com ABOUT idesignbusiness idesignbusiness provides Web marketing and technology solutions for small businesses. We utilize a combination of consulting and technology expertise to create customized and flexible solutions. Please visit http://www.idesignbusiness.com for more information. SUBSCRIPTION NOTICE This newsletter is only sent to opt-in subscribers. 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