How do I make myself visible?

[Rudi]

Hi all,

I have taken over a website and am administering it for a company. I am trying to make the website visible to the general business community in SA. I have posted the site to Google crawlers and done what I can to make the website visible using meta tags etc... but I would like to know if there are any webmaster experts around this forum who can direct me to some more methods to increase the website visibility more. For example: Where can I post news about this Life Skills Company, what other sites are great to intoduce new products on and any other tips to bring traffic to a new"ish" site.

There must be some "old" hands, or experienced administrators how have a thing or two to share with a newbie....

Many tx and cheers!

[IanF]

what other sites are great to intoduce new products on and any other tips to bring traffic to a new"ish" site.

There must be some "old" hands, or experienced administrators how have a thing or two to share with a newbie....

Many tx and cheers!

Rudi
Try google adwords I spend about R200 a month on it and it is working for me. Great features like you prepay,set daily limits turn off when busy etc.

[Dave A]

To answer your more direct question, mygenius.com is worth a look.

In terms of what you are doing and given our little aside earlier, we've got a list of articles here - there's a small mound of treasure there that might help. Roelof aka Chatmaster is a particular expert in the field and I'm sure can help you more than I can.

Another great resource is Ann Williams, also a member here. Look up her profile and visit her website for ideas.

My question, given the little I know about you right now, is how much do you know about the company's business?

Personally, I see much of this as the modern online version of being the old fashioned sales rep. You need to build a network which can refer you potential clients.

Now one of these network resources are search engines, and you win them over in a rather technical way.

But the internet is used by people. And the marketing techniques that work for people work over the internet too, except that if done right, your effort becomes far more leveraged than in the "real" world.

If you're more a website admin than a mine of useful information about the company, either you're going to have to learn more about what they do, or you should consider gearing up your company subject matter experts for some exposure on the web.

This is where company blogs can help, I guess. Then you can socialise your way round the right parts of the net, gently nudging people in the right direction when appropriate.

People do business with people - preferably people they know and like. Hence the rise of business interest in Web 2.0.

Another option, as Ian has raised, is advertising. You'll need a budget, though.

[RKS Computer Solutions]

Rudi,

If I can make one suggestion... The site is well set out and seems in some place to be very organised, but in other spots there is too much info on single pages, which makes browsing a tad disorganised, even if having the "go to top" buttons right there...

Also, quick meta-check on the home page, nothing there, where did you add those meta tags?

Something which might work a load better than the current setup you have of single-built static pages, is maybe to go the way of a CMS (Content Management System) like Joomla or something simular... This would give you greater control over single pages without having to worry about your linking structure failing, and new information can be brought to the attention of your visitors a lot quicker...

If you need any more info, do ask!

[Chatmaster]

Rudi, before I continue. Some criticism about the website that I haven't mentioned before. Why do you have the landing page as the current home page. It is acting like a shop with a closed door that says we are open but you have to knock first. It is bad in many ways, including usability and conversions.

[Rudi]

Thanks for that tip Ian. I am not in control of the budgeting site of the web, so I may need to sell the idea internally before I can do that. But its great to hear that it is working for you and it gives me the confidence to try it out in the future.
TX

[Rudi]

Dave...thats a lot of info in one post! I will systematically look through all your links and dvice during the weekend and see what I can learn. I appreciate the effort to help me with all your advice.

Many thanks!

[Rudi]

Good advice...

RKS,

This is great advice. After you mentioned tis, I could agree with you that the "home" page does contain a bit too much info. Though I was the one to design the website, I was asked to put the info together on this format on the page, so I did not really have to much to say in the matter. It may develop and change as time goes by. I have plans to use collapsable menus soon to eliminate all those bulleted lists of hyperlinks, and over time I will be cleaning up the interface... I accept and agree though with your initial observations.

About those meta tags... they are on the index (landing) page in the heads section. I guess thats the meta tags as they start with meta Maybe you can give me some more advice on these as I know they are useful in crawler searches etc..

I have never used Joomla?! The site is developed in FrontPage and it seems that frontPage is quite capable of maintaining the linking structure. The link bars at the top of each page are automatically changed when I update the navigational layout in FrontPage. I have never had issues with it or with any "broken links". I have heard of Joomla but I will have to read up a bit more about it to develop any confidence in this. I am a fairly old hand in FrontPage and its difficult to break old habits...

Many tx for the advice!

Rudi,

If I can make one suggestion... The site is well set out and seems in some place to be very organised, but in other spots there is too much info on single pages, which makes browsing a tad disorganised, even if having the "go to top" buttons right there...

Also, quick meta-check on the home page, nothing there, where did you add those meta tags?

Something which might work a load better than the current setup you have of single-built static pages, is maybe to go the way of a CMS (Content Management System) like Joomla or something simular... This would give you greater control over single pages without having to worry about your linking structure failing, and new information can be brought to the attention of your visitors a lot quicker...

If you need any more info, do ask!

[Rudi]

Roelof...

I often see websites with this sort of welcome page. I do admit that when I initially designed the page I was intending to put more into of the company on it. However, after meetings with the CEO and other managers, the info was moved to the "Home" page. I guess the Welcome page is a remnant of the decision that was made after I started creating the site. I never considered it to be a form of "closed door". I appreciate the advice though. Its good to get insight from experienced sources. I wil review the purpose of the page in the context of the rest of the site and come to some conclusion to its purpose or existence.

I am grateful for any more support you can offer to add professionalism to the site!
Cheers

[Chatmaster]

What version of Frontpage are you using?

[Rudi]

FrontPage 2003

[Chatmaster]

FrontPage 2003 is good, although it still has issues with dirty and badly structured HTML it is much better than it's predecessors. Rudi I am truly sorry I haven't added more effort to your request yet. But I have had a pretty busy day. I am still working atm, but will give you some proper pointers a little later when I am done with my current crisis.

[Rudi]

Please do not prioritize my requests. This is an open forum and I am already blown away by the pointers and advice I have recieved.

I will certainly appreciate any more tips and ideas, but please Roelof...at a time that is convenient and suitable for you.

Many tx

Rudi

[Chatmaster]

Just a final question for when I start. Do you have ANY budget available for marketing?

[Chatmaster]

Rudi before I start, please understand that I am completely honest with you and rather tell you what you need to hear, it might not be what you want to hear though…

It is very important that you understand that internet marketing consist out of everything, from the site design to the actual marketing methods. You cannot do one without the other! You have ultimately build an online salesman. You didn’t put a brochure or information pamphlet live, you actually designed a salesman that must be able to sell to all the visitors that it meets.

That being said here goes…

First of all lets define your current situation.

You have been tasked to obtain exposure for your company’s website. As a webmaster it means that you have a fair amount of restrictions to deal with. You probably cannot write content for your site or publish articles on the web and therefore you need cooperation from the other role players within the company. You cannot go onto forums and contribute because you are a webmaster and not necessarily knowledgeable in the subject.

A note before I take you through the steps is to ensure that the website address is clearly visible on all company stationary and promotional material.

Step 1

Get some kind of commitment from the role players within your company e.g. marketing department, public relations department, trainers and other people that can assist you in obtaining content and an understanding of the product. This is important even if you are only the webmaster because you have to ensure that your website is designed correctly for the purpose it serves.

Step 2

Do keyword research. Get some help here from people that understand the product or service to contribute. It I important to note that the main objective will be to establish a marketing strategy for your website rather than doing keyword research only for SEO purposes.
Keyword research is done in 3 steps.
· You ask the knowledgeable people in the company to provide you with a list of 10-20 keywords most descriptive of your product.
· You go to Dictionary.com and get alternatives for these keywords.
· You go to Thesaurus to get antonyms and synonyms of these same keywords.
At the end of the day you should have at least a hundred keywords available to you. The sole purpose of these keywords is to determine your target market. Nothing else just that! Now you can start planning your marketing strategy!

Remember! Your site is currently a little spot in the middle of nowhere. Unlike a conventional shop or office it is not next to a busy highway or road. It doesn’t have cars or pedestrians walking past. It has no roads to it and it certainly doesn’t have ANY feet walking past the shop to see the front window and create interest enough to make people have a closer look. (BTW, that is why your home page should go, it is truly very bad for conversions, believe me it must go)

So your main objective will now be to create roads to your site from other sites within the same theme. Just picture how you are going to build these roads and how the traffic will start flowing

As with any road in normal life, the more in roads you have the more traffic it will generate. Just imagine having highways, hundreds of them running past your website! That must give your site traffic.

Step 3

Now place your keywords in order of preference, in other words, the most important ones first and the least important last.

Step 4

Use Google.com and Google.co.za local to find other sites that are ranking for these keywords. Now these sites you will have to list in an excel sheet where you will categorize them into the following categories. These words will be added to the single keyword phrases in your list to find resources where you can create some roads (links) to your site.
· Communities
· Articles
· Social media
· News
· Press releases
· Portals
· Directories
· Classifieds
· Calendars

These categories will have sub sections that you will tick or indicate in some way
· Free listings
· Paid listings
· Reciprocal
· Ranking above 20

First lets make sure you understand the categories
Communities
These are normally forums and can even be blogs groups where there are several contributors to the same blog.
Articles
These are sites where you can publish articles. A site like Articlecity for example
Social Media
These also include blogs, social sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit, Technorati, Squidoo, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Flickr, Furl, MySpace and Yahoo! Answers.
News
These would be sites where you will be allowed to publish news relating to your company. News can be defined as almost anything. Having 5 people attend a training session is ok but having a record of 10 people attending is news. If the CEO bumped his car, it is an accident, but having a new graphics designer appointed is news, I think you get my point
Press releases
Very similar to News but you will have to search it separately when you are trying to find these sites.
Portals
These are huge sites, normally covering all topics related to your business, it also normally have several sections like forums, blogs, news sections blah, blah, blah, it is a big site
Directories
This does not include search engines. It will be sites like Ananzi and Dmoz where a directory o sites related to your industry is located.
Classified ads
Sites that allows you to ad classified ads for free.
Calendars
Sites that allows you to list events, like this site, Bizcommunity etc.

Now you have several marketing avenues to work with.