Website Marketing Basics - Getting Seen

By Eric Menzies

It is absolutely crucial to have a detailed and informed marketing plan for any website connected to a business. Online business is still a brand-new concept that has brand new rules. Some site are connected to real-space businesses, some have no presence except what you see on the net, but all need to have strong and achievable goals motivated by marketing keys. These foundational concepts follow directly from 'old' media ideas, and while they need to be implemented differently, the constructs of attention, interest, desire and action still need to be incorporated into your plan. This article will focus on getting attention.

No matter what the media, nothing happens unless you attract the attention of prospective buyers. This a foundation of the successful marketing of any business. In internet marketing this concept is often evaluated by the traffic that you receive to your web site. However, the factors that determine how much traffic you can generate are only somewhat related to the actual content of your web site. The amount of traffic you can generate to your web site comes down to how skillful you are at the two fundamental ways one gets attention in any media. You can earn it, or you can buy it.

On the internet earning your traffic results in you being found in what are called the 'free' or 'organic' search results on the major search engines such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo. When your prospective customers do a search on terms of interest to them using one of the major search engines they will be presented with a list of web pages found that the search engine believes is the most relevant to them. These are the 'free' or 'organic' results. They will also see ads, but that will be discussed below. Many people are under the assumption that the highest raking results they get on a search engine are the 'best' in some way. In this game it really is winners take all! If you are not on the first page of results the attention you attract is greatly diminished. In fact, if you don't make it to the second page of results, then you often might as well not even be in the listings at all because folks usually won't search past the second page at most. This type of web site marketing is often referred to as 'search engine optimization.' You can hire a search engine marketing firm or learn how to do it yourself. Winning at this game is not rocket science, but it is part science and part art that requires a constant work and attention to maintain your success.

Buying your traffic on the internet is usually done by purchasing some form of advertising from someone who already has high traffic to their web site or email contact list. The most widely used forms of advertising are the banner advertisement and text advertisements. Banner advertisements were all the rage when the internet first became popular. However, their effectiveness diminished greatly to a point where many people began to see them as a waste of money. However, they can be used effectively as long as you have a plan and clearly track your return on investment. More common now are text advertisements which were largely brought into the forefront by Google. You can see Google text advertisements on their search results pages and on millions of individual web sites across the internet. If you want to generate traffic fast, and are willing to pay the money to do so, text advertisement are the most popular method. Google, MSN, and Yahoo are the major players in this market, but Google is still clearly the big dog in this pack.

As you can see your web site marketing strategy must first be focused on getting attention. Attention first requires that someone is exposed to your message. You can earn the exposure, you can buy it, or like many businesses you can do both. Earning the attention is a long term focus and requires skill and consistent commitment of resources. However, it pays off almost indefinitely and likely much cheaper in the long run than buying it. Buying the attention is much faster to get results and allows you to test ideas without committing the resources to earn attention. Any comprehensive web site marketing strategy is likely to include both methods.