Internet marketing begins with good web design
There are two ways you can try and build something that flies.
One way is to start putting things together without much thought, strap a huge rocket onto the brick you end up with, and watch it overshoot the runway as it burns up huge amounts of fuel in vain. The other way is to plan well, design better and build your airplane so that it actually takes off by efficiently converting a little energy into a lot of lift.
The same principle goes when it comes to building a website for your next business venture. It is easy to fall into the trap of coming up with a website that looks pretty but is not designed to be easy to market on the Internet. All you are left with is a good-looking brick that needs an expensive Internet marketing rocket to maybe get off the ground, let alone stay airborne.
If your website is to soar like a kite, there are a few things you are going to have to keep in mind in the web design stage, so you build an efficient website right from the very beginning.
Optimize your website for the keywords your clients would use
If you want your clients to find your website when they search, you need to have the right keywords repeated enough within the text of your web pages. Find a web designer who knows how to properly research what search terms people would use to find your business, and use these keywords in your website’s copy. A good SEO copywriter should be able to weave in your keywords often enough into the text, and at the same time make your web copy compelling, interesting to read and efficient at selling your business.
Choose the right domain name for your website
What are you going to call your website? If you have a big and popular brand, it makes perfect sense to use your brand name as your domain name. On the other hand, if you are just starting out, you would do well to include your main keywords in your domain name, since this will give your website a considerable search ranking boost for those keywords. So, maybe you should put your vanity aside and opt for something like www.seattlepetminder.com instead of say www.robertwarrington.com. - at least until you’re famous!
Similarly, you should use relevant keywords that people will search for in the individual URLs (web addresses) of your web pages. For example, go for mybookstore.com/healthy-recipe-books/ as the address for a sub page of your website over the obscure and meaningless mybookstore.com/category21c/. As a little experiment, take a look the next time you search on Google and notice how many of the top-ranking websites in your search results have one or more of your search terms in their URL.
Use search-engine-friendly website design techniques
Google and the other search engines can be very picky when it comes to which parts of your website they actually index. Flash, for example, is great if used carefully to enhance your website’s graphics, but search engines cannot see any text you have inside the Flash parts of your website and will not index it.
Your headlines and body copy should be in normal HTML text format, with the appropriate header tags that the search engines recognize and value. Moreover, your headlines and the title of your web pages should use your keywords as often as possible. Then there are keyword tags, sitemaps, good linking… The list goes on. There is much more than meets the eye to designing a good search-engine-friendly website and this is where relying on a good web designer to guide you as to what you should and shouldn’t do really pays off.
Plan to provide your visitors with fresh and relevant content
Thinking of your website as a static brochure is missing the point entirely. The old marketing adage that it is cheaper to keep a client than to attract a new one holds true for website visitors too. Plan and design your website so that you can easily update it with new and interesting content that will encourage your potential clients to return again and again. (Starting a blog or using a content management system are two ways of achieving this).
Besides, as you gradually add relevant content to your website over weeks, months and years, you build up a very valuable collection of information related to your business. The search engines simply love this and also love to see that your website is regularly updated, and they will most likely reward you for your effort with better and better rankings as time goes by.
Encourage your visitors to sign up for e-mail updates
Everyone hates getting e-mail spam. Not only is sending it illegal, but it can potentially ruin your business’s reputation too. On the other hand, you should actively build an opt-in mailing list of people who are interested in what you have to offer and want to be informed when there is something new and interesting on your website.
Make sure your e-mail sign-up form is prominently displayed, and consider giving your visitors an extra incentive to join – maybe a free e-book or access to a regular newsletter with insider information. Do not abuse your mailing list, but use it wisely to provide valuable information (and, yes, a measured dose of self-promotion) to your existing and potential clients. Once again, it is much easier to get people to return than to attract new visitors from scratch.
Internet marketing is an ongoing process that should begin before your website even exists. If you take the time and invest the effort to build good Internet marketing principles into your website from the beginning, it will be so much easier to make it take off and to keep it flying high among the clouds of cyberspace in the long term too.
