Marketing My Business Online

[Antec]

Hi All,

I recently started my own company namely Keda IT Solutions (www.kedaitsolutions.co.za). My problem lies here, i am not a marketing expert and need to get exposure/numbers to my website.

What are effective means of doing this? i have already used the twitter and facebook routes but no success so far.

My next alternative is to print flyers and hand them out all over.

Any suggestions or ideas?

O and if you wish to contact me drop me a pm or head on over to my website and fill in the form on the Contact Us page.

All help will be much appreciated!

[Dave A]

At Keda IT Solutions we go out of our way to make you, the client, feel special and valued. We realise that in this modern techno age that we live in, no successful business can afford not to have some sort of online presence. The most effective way to achieve this is by means of a website. Your company's website will give you the online presence and exposure that you need.

Seems a bit ironic in view of the question.

[Antec]

lol it is true what is mentioned on the website, but the problem is getting that exposure to the website...Marketing is something i need to skill myself in still. I can only do SEO and things like that.

Put it to you this way, i have a few ideas on how to market the site, i would like advice on what has been found to work in south africa as effective marketing tools + strategies.

[AndriesH]

Hi Antec,

Your page source seems to have keywords in it, exception that the description filed is wasted on blurb.

Your use of "IT Solutions" is also wasted - what you actually do is create web pages and supply hardware & software. "IT Solutions" is wishy washy and vague.

The acid test for me though is that, although I can google "Keda IT Solutions" ( so google knows you ), I was unable in 5 tries to find a set of google terms that would get you even onto the first 100 rankings. Even "+design +website +hardware +software +"cape town"" didn't work.

In short you are so invisible you may have found a new stealth technology!!

If you are firmly below the horizon, your clients won't find you.

Hope you don't mind me being frank! Good luck!

[Antec]

Hi,

Yes the SEO on the site is not good, BUT that will be addressed very soon.

Thanks for the response though.

[Dave A]

One difficulty I see that needs to be overcome is that on-site SEO on its own probably isn't going to make much of a difference in this case. The website builder/company website etc. space is one of the most competitve out there when it comes to organic search.

Yes, you need to do it anyway - it's part of the foundation of establishing a meaningful online presence, but it's probably going to take a lot more besides to get the results you want.

There's quite a few threads on TFSA talking about other mechanisms for online promotion. To get you started, some of the very best have been started by Chatmaster.

[robinsonwang]

hi

Hired a person that expert in marketing, and ask them to teach you,

how/where to find one expert on marketing?

[ava_camen]

flyers work if your marketing to the people around your community but if this business is something that can be transacted online all over the world, you would want to hire an internet marketer to spread the word for you.

[garrethm]

primeads online advertising

hi you can make money ad advertise at the same time on www.primeads.co.za

[JanvandeMerwe]

Had a look at your site; SEO is one thing that needs to be addressed urgently, but one other thing. Open your site, and look at it for 3 seconds. Then put it away, and say to yourself, what does the site want me to do?

Sites these days need to be interactive; once you get the customer in the store, you need them to find something of interest and the waltz on over to the till. Same for a site; you need to think about what you want your visitors to do, and then make it possible for them to do that.

Reply in this thread if you need more help here.

Pardon the ramble.
-Jan

[Antec]

Thanks for the tips!

We are currently busy with our websites SEO, reviewing the content etc etc

Hopefully after that we will get much higher rankings.

Don't you think advertising space on a web design companies website makes it look cheap? perhaps that's just my naive opinion lol.

[JanvandeMerwe]

Thanks for the tips!

We are currently busy with our websites SEO, reviewing the content etc etc

Hopefully after that we will get much higher rankings.

Don't you think advertising space on a web design companies website makes it look cheap? perhaps that's just my naive opinion lol.

I could agree more. What you should be doing is going out and getting A LOT of links that are the company name and company website. After you have about 20-30 domains where you have that, then you can start going after keywords you want to rank for. Keyword links without a "branded" place on the web would bring about an unnatural link profile, and hurt the site's rankings in the long run (or just make the chance for you to rank take a lot longer).

Pardon the ramble,
-Jan

[OnlineMarketing]

Hi Guys
Agreed with the early link profile Jan, the big g doesn't like to see keyword optimised anchor text early on in a site's life, we generally reccommend a 2-3 month slow intro to our clients then start to ramp it up after 3 months but even then we suggest a wide range of anchors for the link building, 5-10 at the 3-5 month stage then 1-3 after that. Link building is the big issue in any sort of competitive market with search engines. The big G has over 200 factors that its algorithm is judging your website by(we have gone through all the patent filings as they are all in the public domain) but link building assuming your on page SEO is at least a 5 out of 10 will have the greatest impact.

One difficulty I see that needs to be overcome is that on-site SEO on its own probably isn't going to make much of a difference in this case. The website builder/company website etc. space is one of the most competitve out there when it comes to organic search.

Yes, you need to do it anyway - it's part of the foundation of establishing a meaningful online presence, but it's probably going to take a lot more besides to get the results you want.

There's quite a few threads on TFSA talking about other mechanisms for online promotion. To get you started, some of the very best have been started by Chatmaster.

Agreed Dave, the term Website design will be pretty competitive but there are plenty of longer tail keywords that have useful traffic particularly adding geo modifiers and IMHO the average website designer's SEO stinks so i am sure you could cut through the rankings like a knife through butter if you took a 6 month view. In the meantime why don't you gets some sample sites created or offer a cheap deal to get some testimonials, particularly video testimonials which you can put on your site and use as a landing page for adwords or facebook ppc.

[ava_camen]

You can hire a marketing assistant to do this job for you, and imho, handing out flyers are not as effective as it was before unless your target market are only the people in your neighborhood... go with forum posting and adding good contents to your website to generate good leads

[Upstairs]

I am an old school salesman, and find the best way to connect with customers is to go and see them or get on a phone and start making calls. I do find that when I connect with a customer, one of the first things they ask for is my website details. I'm no internet marketing boffin, but I do think that the more hits you get the higher you'll go in the rankings. Some of the other members who knows more can comment on that statement.

I don't think that to put up a website or ad in a publication and hope for the best will do the trick. Contrary to belief sales is actually very hard work and time consuming. Unless you have a passion for sales, get someone else to do your marketing.