When you finally decided to start your own business, and you
built your website for the purpose of developing your business,
your goal was clear. You wanted to make lots of money and to be
in business for a very long time.
Who can blame you? The thought of going to a job everyday for
the rest of my life kills me too.
THE BASIC CHALLENGES OF INTERNET MARKETING
Links, links and more links.
Whether we are talking search engine results, ezines, articles,
classified advertising, or other types of advertising, the link
is the method used to bring your targeted customer on the
Internet to your website. They click the link and visit your
website to learn more.
Placing the link is often the simple part of the equation. The
eyes seeing your link and the mouse clicking your link is the
real challenge in this Internet promotion game.
See, it is possible through FFA link sites and the such to get
your link posted on hundreds or thousands of pages on the
Internet. But, just because your link appears on these pages
does not mean that anyone will actually see your link.
The same applies to search engines. Your site might be listed
in Google, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, ExactSeek or dozens of other
search engines. But just because your site is listed in their
database, does not mean that the searcher will use the right
keyword combination or click through the results deep enough
to actually see your links.
The first challenge is to get your link seen. The second
challenge is to get your link clicked.
You know as well as I do that not every link provides the
proper enticement to get you to click the link. Why should
you believe that everyone else is different from you? You
shouldn’t. The challenge for you is to properly entice your
potential visitors to click your link and visit your website.
SECOND CHALLENGE, FIRST — The Lure
Getting people to click your link is as simple as writing good
copy.
Depending on the placement location of your actual ad copy, you
may have only ten words, seventy words, or one thousand words
to seduce people to visit your website.
Let me make one point very clear. Even if you have one thousand
words to make your plea, the first ten words are always the most
important words you will write.
Press releases should always have the information top-loaded —
you must place your most important information in the first
couple of paragraphs.
With straight advertising copy, you should expend a great deal
of time and thought to your first ten words. Those ten words
are the ones that will draw people into your actual copy. Unless
you can lure people into reading your copy, the value of the
copy itself serves no useful purpose.
Just as it was with this article, you were drawn into the actual
copy by the first ten words of the article, aka. the title of
the article.
Note that I have used the words *entice*, *seduce* and *lure*
in this article. These words are essential to writing good
copy. You must be able to touch on the desires of the reader,
to peak their interest, and then you must leave them wanting
more. In order to get more of what they want, the reader must
visit your website. Master this paragraph, and you will master
the art of writing good copy.
FIRST CHALLENGE, SECOND — Geting Seen
Let me say this again. FFA submissions are worthless. Don’t
waste your time. One of the most common deceptions on the web
is the promise to have your site submitted to thousands of
search engines. Most of these so-called search engines are
actually FFA sites! Yahoo! only lists 262 search engines. At
one time, I had read on About.com that there were fewer than
500 search engines. Beware the fox in sheep’s clothing.
Many people utilize Search Engine Optimization for use with the
real search engines. But, keep in mind, the search companies
are always changing and tweaking the algorythms used to produce
their results. You might use SEO now and get a top 10 ranking,
but there is no assurance that your top listing will stand the
long-term. I have often impressed upon people to do the basics
well, and the results will fall into place just fine.
Sponsor ads on websites do very well when the site caters
specifically to people in your target market.
Ezine publishing and advertising has always been touted as
the best way of drawing traffic and sales to your website.
There is a lot of truth in this statement.
IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT EZINE PUBLISHING AND ADVERTISING
As a publisher, the road is a long and hard one. It takes a
lot of time, effort and hard work, in addition to a certain
amount of effective advertising to build the ezine list. Of
course, when it is done well, the rewards of ezine publishing
can be phenomenal in the long-term.
As an advertiser, you can employ the publisher who has already
done the hard work, to help you to promote your business.
For the creative marketer, writing free-reprint articles and
getting them into the hands of ezine publishers can be an
exceptional method of developing more long-term traffic and
sales for their website. Publishers and webmasters are always
looking for good, informative content to share with their
readers. Some of these ezines are archived on the Internet
giving rise to the long-term effectiveness of the articles
that have been published.
For the creative marketer who is using free-reprint articles
to promote their business, the resource box which appears at
the end of every article, is the ad copy and link that will
take the reader directly to the writer’s site. The article
itself often serves as the greatest lure to bring the reader
to the writer’s website. The article creates the desire to
learn more about the writer, and the resource box tells the
reader what to expect when they get there.
The neat thing about free-reprint articles is that between
archived ezines and websites who publish your articles, it
becomes fairly easy to get your copy and links on hundreds
or thousands of websites, and those links will likely remain
there for years to come.
IN CONCLUSION…
If you are paying for link placement, you need to track your
click through’s (CTR’s) from those links. If the links are not
generating traffic for you, examine the reasons why. Maybe the
reason is your copy and maybe it is the link location. Make
the changes necessary to permit the link to pay for itself or
get rid of it.
If you are writing articles for reprint, track those links also
and look at their total success rate over the long-haul. Figure
out which articles provided you the best results, and make a
determination as to why. Once you know why a particular article
or ad is successful, then you can make good decisions about how
to get the best results from your future efforts.
Copyright Bill Platt – All Rights Reserved. Reprints allowed with article and resource box unedited. If you post this article on a website, you must set the links up as hyperlinks.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Bill Platt is the owner of http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com
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