I have a website selling giftware & aromatherapy I was wondering how I could drive customers to it. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Hi,

Craigslist is just one arrow in your quiver of search marketing arrows.

SEO or search engine marketing (SEM) is critical for the success of your web site. Without it, you will get no traffic. No traffic = no customers = no money.

If you own a Web site, the Web site building software should have included SEO. Otherwise, using the software is a waste of time. SEO includes Internet marketing and while articles posting, etc. is important, the most important thing is to select the right keywords that people use to find your Web site. You need to do keyword analysis to find the best keywords for your Web site.

Then, you need to sprinkle those keywords onto your Web pages so that the search engines will find them as their spiders crawl your Web site as well as putting them in your Title, Keywords, headings and description.

Why? Think about how the major search engines work. They key on what word or phrases the users enter. How do you find keywords that users want? Use Google itself at this URL:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Just enter your keyword and it will tell you what the demand is for that keyword and how much it would cost to advertise it on Google via Google AdWords.

Supply and demand is important for keywords. You want to find the keywords with a huge demand, but very little supply.

Another good keyword analyzer is Wordtracker.com. This will cost you money, but it's the best on the Web.

This is a very good book for building traffic: Search Engine Optimzation - An Hour A Day by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin.

With this book you do not need any costly SEO services.

There are Web site builders that do most of this SEO for you. Most free web site builders do not include SEO. That's why most of them are a waste of time. Creating a Web site is easy, but it is only 10% of the job. The other 90% is SEO and it is critically important.

Do you know about Alexa rank? Alexa is an Amazon company that ranks Web sites. It takes the most active Web site which total about 65 million and compares your web site to all of them. Here is how to get to the Alexa Point Test:.http://traffic-test.sitesell.com/waltera1.html
If you have a rank under 500,000 you are doing good, it you are under 100,000 you are fantastic. Google is under 10.

The Web sites that score high on Alexa have lots of content. Content is king on the Internet. What is content? Its information, information that visitors find interesting and relevant to your keywords. The more pages you have on your Web site, the better. If you have only 5 or 6 pages, the search engines will ignore you. Once you get to about 30 pages, the search engines will begin to take notice. At that time you should begin to link to other Web sites. The search engines love links, but you must avoid link farms.

Trying to game the search engines is a thankless task. They have computer science PHds developing their search engine spiders. Do you think you can compete with them? Not likely.

Sneaky techniques are called "black hat" optimization. Won't work. The SEs are changing constantly. You cannot find out what they do or how they do it. When someone finds a crack, they seal it up.

Linking is important. SEs love links.

Work hard to create more useful sites. Get great software for building web sites. One that does SEO for you.

The best way to get more traffic is to have lots of pages, 100s of them, thousands are better, with relevant content (information). SEs love quality content.

If you have the right Site Build it software, the software submits to search engines automatically.

How did you build your Web site? I hope it wasn't one of those free web builder sites.

You see, there are lots of Web sites that will build a Web site for you. That's where they end. Building a Web site as you probably know is only solving 5% of the puzzle. The other 95% is search engine optimization and internet marketing. Most Web Site Build It software will only do the first 5%, then they nickel and dime you to death with add-ons that purport to do SEO and internet marketing. Unfortunately most of them are scams.

So what is one to do if there is no help from your Web site building software. Do you know about NVU? This is a free web site builder that emuilates Microsofts Front Page and did I mention that it's FREE. Go here to download: http://www.nvu.com/index.php

Get better software for Site Building. One that has some keyword analysis. Getting search engines to spider your Web site depends on your keyword selection.

Listen! The SEs find Web site by searching for keywords. If a Web site has the right keywords or phrases, the SEs will find it and send you to the front of the class.

But how do you know which keywords are the best. Ahhh! That's the question and I will give you a web site that does keyword analysis and it's free.

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is an excellent preliminary brainstorming tool. Let's say that you have ten ideas for a theme or Site Concept. This tool gives you a superb "high level snapshot" of how profitable each of your Site Concept possibilities might be. Here's the URL: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal - remember, it's free

Here's a book you might find helpful: Increase Your Web Traffic In A Weekend by Jerry Lee Ford, Jr and William R Stanek.

Kindest Personal Regards,

Walt Brown
Site Build It Certified Webmaster
http://results.sitesell.com/waltera1.html
[e-mail]

P.S. Start a blog to promote your Web site. Word press is a good one.

Answer 2

Hi! Kristy,
You’re going to love this new site I found for social and business networking at http://directmatches.com/clpdirectster It’s free to join and advertise in this business directory. You can even win cash and prizes for the best profile.

You’re invited to post a free profile on my site. Many serious entrepreneurs will view your contact and business information.

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Please let me know what you think of the site and business concept.

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Answer 3

Small Business Marketing Strategy: Target the up-and-coming search engines

While Google still rules the roost when it comes to Internet search engines, and Yahoo is firmly entrenched in second spot, a number of new start-ups are hoping to give them a run for their money. And a good small business marketing strategy would be to check them out and see how you can make them work for your site!

Some of the new up-and-comers include:

Powerset : ( www.powerset.com ) A "natural language" search engine

Hakia : ( www.hakia.com ) A "meaning-based" search engine

Wikia : ( www.wikia.com ) A "community-based" search engine

ChaCha : ( www.chacha.com ) A "social networking-based" search engine

Snap : ( www.snap.com ) A search engine that offers visual previews

It's a smart small business marketing strategy to continue optimizing for the Google, Yahoo, and MSN search engines as they are by far and away the most popular -- but niche search engines could provide new opportunities to reach your market. Be sure to check them out!

Answer 4

Advertise with google

You will get an add that comes up on the right hand side of the screen when someone searches for a key word nominated by you

Answer 5

Make an interesting video and post it on YouTube and MetaCafe.

I created the video in the link below to do 2 things. First, drive people to the site to learn about internet safety and secondly to teach them how they can make easy money with a new type of advertising (which helps me too, but nothing wrong with that).

Good luck,

Answer 6

These are things that you can do

1) SEO - Get Rankings on Organic results.

2) PPC - Adwords, Yahoo Search, MSN (run Sponsored ADs on Google Search, Yahoo Search, Live.com etc)

3) Display Advertising - Run display banners(Images) on other sites.

Regards
http://www.praveenkodur.com/blog/

Answer 7

Craigslist.com along with any and all free advertising sites, free links, free banner exchange.

We offer a free banner and link exchange just provide us with your banner html or link html and we will list you on the links page al we ask as you do the same for us.

www.ThePleasurePlayground.com

Answer 8

Check out Google Adwords. Its an online advertising portal. Very easy to set up. Your sites can be up as fast as 15 minutes. click http://www.geocities.com/lcming/adsense