Internet Marketing

Online marketing is a crucial component of any web site project, but something that is often overlooked. Your web site, regardless of how well it is built, will only be successful if people actual find it and use it. Online marketing is the set of tools and efforts that can be used to work towards ensuring that people find your web site online.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Positioning
Your site needs to be designed from the start to be easily indexed and ranked properly by the major search engines. This includes:

• Developing the site according to specific industry standards – XHTML, CSS.
• Ensuring that the density of keywords on your pages is as high as possible. This includes utilizing your keywords in as many places as possible – page title, content, ALT tags, headings, etc.
• Including META tags that properly identify and promote your business.
• Properly identifying which portions of your site should and should not be indexed.
• Manually submitting your site to search engines and web directories.
• Generating content on other sites that will refer to you – news articles, reviews, blog entries, favorable mentions, etc.
• Building inbound links – This involves generating content on other sites that will refer to you – news articles, press releases, reviews, blog entries, favorable mentions, etc.

There are no shortage of companies that claim to specialize in SEO. Many of them even offer guarantees that they can get you listed in the top five search results for specific keywords. They charge exorbitant fees and make inflated promises – and they do not produce results. There is no “guarded secret” to having your site listed high in the search engines. Consistency, compliance, and a lot of hard work is what it takes – no different than building a brand offline.

Viral and Social Marketing
This includes building awareness of your site (and site content) through various social networking tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and having others assist in spreading the word for you. These two techniques (moreso social marketing) are fairly new, but hold amazing promise and potential for most organizations.

Paid Listings
You can pay to have your site listed for specific keywords at the major search engines. You can pay to have banner ads for your site displayed on other prominent sites. Depending on your market and what you are trying to achieve, there are a number of different options here.

Building Loyalty/Traction
Once a visitor has come to your web site, you want to focus on bringing them back – on a regular basis. If your web site is focused on sales, then increased visits will generally lead to increased sales. If your site is focused on providing information, then increased visits will typically lead to a decrease in the amount of effort you have to spend supporting a customer via other methods (phone, e-mail, letter mail).

• Regularly Updated, Fresh Content – Keep the content on your site up-to-date and add new content regularly.
• News – Provide users with news items pertaining to your company or to the industry in general. Let them know about major staffing changes, product announcements, new service offerings, major contracts you’ve won, etc.
• RSS Feeds – Allow users to subscribe to the new information on your site. They will be notified as new information is available and then link into your site to read it.

Web Site Statistics and Reporting
It is crucial to monitor your marketing efforts and to determine what effect they are having on the number of visits and conversions on your web site. ViaComp can provide full, detailed, real-time reporting and statistics on your web site activity. These statistics are available to you at any time via a secured web site login. They can also be e-mailed to you at scheduled intervals.

• hits, requests, and page views
• visitors, unique visitors
• bandwidth
• location of visitors – hosts, countries, states/provinces, cities, organizations
• referrers – sites, URLs, search engines, search phrases, keywords
• inbound links
• entry pages and exit pages
• visitor tech details – browser type, operating system, screen resolution
• errors