Make sure you do a little research on your web hosting company. If you’re still looking for a good one try to call their technical support line during a weekday.  See how long it takes them to answer the phone. Also make sure that they have excellent web site statistics that show where your traffic is coming from. This will be more important as your marketing efforts begin. Verify that your hosting company supports cgi scripts because this is crucial when it comes to adding all kinds of capabilities to your web site.  Another great feature to check for is web mail.  Web mail lets you check your mail from any computer on the internet. This is great for when you’re on vacation. In summary some of the features you’ll want to look for in a web hosting company are as follows:

           

24/7/365 technical support

            Secure data centers with multiple internet backbones for reliability

            Unlimited Email Forwarding

            Unlimited Auto responders

            Web Mail

            FTP access

            Web Site statistics

            Access to your own cgi-bin directory

            SSL Encryption

At least 5 GB monthly transfer
At least 300 Mb of disk space

 

Some of my recommended companies include Go Daddy.com and Blue Host

Web Hosting

You’ll have to decide whether you want to do the web site design yourself or hire it out to a professional.  I’m surprised at how many times I talk to people that tell me it will be a long time before they can make some changes to their web sites.  Most of the time, it’s because their niece had originally done their site over a spring break weekend and she’s in the middle of finals right now or some other nonsense.  Your web site is very important to your business and should not be created by somebody who will not be immediately available for updates and changes.  Make sure that your web site designer will be there for the long haul!

I recommend at least learning some of the basics about web site design so that you can make minor changes yourself without the assistance of your webmaster.   If you’re looking for a great web site design package I recommend learning Macromedia’s Dream Weaver.  You can read more about this product at http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/

Dream Weaver is the preferred choice of professional web site designers and is far superior to FrontPage or anything else out there right now.  Not only is it the best but It’s also the easiest to learn. Another really great program that just came out recently and is used by both beginners and experts alike is XsitePro. This software program makes it easy for anyone to create a website and even helps you to optimize them for the search engines. I have had sites I built with XsitePro indexed by Google in just a couple of weeks!

Keep Your Images and Pages Small in Size!

Keeping the size of your images and web pages is very important because if it takes too long to load, people will simply leave.  Remember, a lot of people are still surfing at 56k so plan for that.  Examine all your images and make sure that if the photos are all saved as .jpgs (quality level 7 or so) for maximum space savings.  After you’ve sucked the air out of your images, you can use a tool called PrettyHTML to suck the air out of your HTML files.  You can get this program at this web site: http://mpp.at/pretty/

Pretty HTML has a “Compress” option that takes out all the spaces from an HTML file.  I use Dreamweaver a lot and while it’s a great program, I find that when I cut and paste a lot, the file size goes way up because there are lots of spaces in it.  Using PrettyHTML will take all these spaces out and make a nice small file for viewing on the web.  I’ve seen files go from 350K down to about 23K before! Also, and this is crucial make sure your images have “alt text” code. Search engine spiders can’t read pictures and this alt text code helps then read your site, so be sure to use keywords you are after.

Navigation

Good navigation means using easy to understand menus and never putting the user into a dead end page.  Search engines can send a customer to any page of your site so it’s important to make it easy to get back to your home page from any other page on the site.   You should be able to get to any page on your site from any other page on your site.  Having good page linking also helps with getting your site ranked with the search engines because if a search engine hits one of your pages, it will find ALL the pages in your site.

Build a Site Rich in Content!  

The most important thing to remember about first rate web sites is that they are always rich in content.  For example, if your site sells Widgets, then include as much relevant information as possible about widgets on the site.   Make it easy to navigate around your site, tell about all the benefits of your widgets.  Finally, make it extremely easy for somebody to buy your widgets online with a minimum of effort. We will cover how to automate content to your site later in the book.

The home page of your web site is without question the most important page of the web site.   It should contain enough information so that someone can tell immediately what you do.  Make sure that you have at least a brief paragraph or two that explains your products on this crucial page and not just pretty graphics!   Your first page should be a concise introduction about your company and products.  The details can come in the later pages.  

Another way that web site publishers are making money is by using blogs and automated content in addition to manual content to make monetize their sites with advertisers like Google and Yahoo. We will go over this method in detail in the chapter on blogging.

Tell Your Customers How To Reach You!

Make sure that your web site has some type of Contact Us link that lists your company name, email address, mailing address, phone number, and fax number.  People really like to be able to talk to somebody on the phone when they have questions.  If they can’t reach you on the phone, they will move on to a company they can reach!  I also believe in listing your phone number and email address at the bottom of your home page for easy access especially if you have a product that you sell.

This is a very important topic because a GREAT domain name can make a HUGE difference in your sales.  There are 5 things that are crucial when picking the domain name for your business. 

 #1) Own your domain name!

 I recommend that you don’t even consider building an Internet business unless you OWN your own domain.  It’s just too much work to take the risk of somebody else reaping all the rewards because they are the actual owners of the domain.  I’ve seen stuff like this happen too often.  It even happened to me once and that’s why I don’t get involved with any project unless I own the domain name!  Get your own domain at Go Daddy.com

 #2) Never use a Virtual or FREE domain

 First of all, don’t even consider using a FREE domain or a virtual domain.  Many portal sites such as Yahoo provide free domains.  Free domains do not belong to you and can be taken away at any time.  How would you like to spend years marketing a free domain and then have the company that provided it go out of business!  Also, don’t get conned into getting a virtual domain because they are worthless as well.  A virtual domain will usually have the form of something like http://www.acme.carwax.com

Notice the extra dot in the name.  Virtual domains are really just a trick done on a server that allows companies to create thousands of these pseudo domains very easily without having to register them.  Don’t do it!! 

 You should also have your own IP address and not one shared by others.  Make sure that you ask your hosting company if you will have your very own IP address.  If they tell you that you will not then change hosting companies.  From my experience in the search engine promotion industry, I found that web sites without their own IP address will not do as well on some search engines.  Don’t ever let your hosting company talk you into getting a virtual domain or not having your own IP address under any condition!  There are too many hosting companies that will give you a real domain and your own IP address to throw away free search engine traffic like that.

 Instead go to one of the many domain registration services and buy your own domain name.  It will be the best money you ever spent and will be yours for as long as you like. The company I use is Go Daddy.com

#3) Dot Com still Rules

I’m still a big believer in getting a .com domain instead of any of the newer ones.  Even though it’s harder to find a good .com domain name, its still the one people go to first!  You don’t want to invest all the time and money in a non dot com site and here’s why.  Suppose you really wanted www.carwax.com but it was already taken so you registered www.carwax.net instead.  Here’s what will happen.  After a lot of hard work, you eventually start getting quite a bit of name recognition on the internet.  People start to remember your domain name but some will forget that it was carwax.net and instead end up going to carwax.com!  A good portion of your customers will end up going to carwax.com by mistake at some point and many will start buying from that site instead.  Owners of non .com sites are actually giving a lot of traffic away to their .com counterparts without even realizing it.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t like working for other people when I’m not getting paid! 

#4) Make Your Domain name Catchy if possible

If you can make your domain catchy it will really help people remember it.  Some great examples of catchy names are Yahoo, eBay, and Priceline.  Notice that these names don’t really describe what these companies do but they are catchy so people remember them.  Another great example is http://www.doubleyourdating.com.  It tells exactly what the site is all about AND it’s a catchy name.  It’s really the best of both worlds.

#5) Use Your Keywords in your domain

If at all possible use your keywords in your domain name.  Your keywords are the words that people would type into a search engine to find you.  Many search engines give a higher priority to a site that has keywords in the domain name when those words are searched for.  Some examples of using keywords in your domain name are:   

           www.student-loan-consolidation-blog.com

            www.bestcarwax.com

            www.theinternetmarketingsecrets.com

            www.doubleyourdating.com

            www.promoteyourwebsite.com

 Notice how I put dashes in the first one. That is a trick I have learned that really helps if you are trying to build sites for content and placing contextual ads like those from Google and Yahoo or Chitika. There is a great tool available that will allow you to test a domain name to see what kind of ads it will pull. You can find it at http://www.resultsgenerator.com/adsense/

The most important aspect of your business is your customer and prospect database.  Treat it like gold!  You should be collecting as many names and email addresses as you can because these will be your hottest prospects for future sales.  It is much easier to sell something to somebody that has already been to your site at least once.  You should really have two databases.  One database will be your customers or those that have bought from you already.  The second database will be your prospects or those that haven’t bought anything yet.  You will of course market to these lists differently. 

So how do you start building your databases?  There are many ways to get somebody’s name and email address.  One of the best ways is to give them something of value for FREE.  It must be something that doesn’t really cost you anything but has a high perceived value in the eyes of your visitor.  For example you could give them a FREE report like this one with valuable information in it.   Or you could offer a FREE informative newsletter for your visitors.  This works as long as you demonstrate that the newsletter will contain valuable information for them and isn’t just a blatant sales pitch.

Once you have decided on how you’re going to get your visitors to give you their name and email address, there are many choices for the software you’ll need to collect, manage, and mail to this list.

AWeber Demo

Capture Hidden Profits with Unlimited Autoresponders AWeber's automated unlimited autoresponder follow up increases sales, lowers costs, builds lasting customer relationships, and increases your profits! Find out how with Unlimited Autoresponders.

email marketing

Internet commerce  reached 5 trillion dollars by the end of 2005 with over 1 billion global users, 15% of the world’s population! This is a 70% compounded annual growth rate from the approximately 350 billion that was spent in the year 2000. There is tremendous opportunity out there, especially for those that get their web sites established now!

To compete in today’s Internet marketplace, you need to turn your website into a web presence. A web presence is all about becoming a trusted resource that people will visit over and over again.  Remember, marketing your business, on the web, is basically the same as marketing any real-world business. Most businesses in the real world take years to build. It doesn’t happen overnight. Years of hard work and luck, contribute to the success of all businesses. Marketing is something most of us small business owners have to do ourselves, as we can’t afford to pay someone to market for us. It takes a lot of effort and time to do it correctly. The same especially holds true for web businesses.

If you follow the information in this course and steadily work on marketing your website, you will be successful. All my websites are successful and I have had a hand in helping others create this same success for many other websites. During the creation of this course, I have watched many websites become successful and their webmasters have shared their stories with me.

In the Internet world, it can be things such as getting link partners, creating great content, keeping your site fresh and a valuable resource, keeping in touch with your prospects and customers through email, etc.  Giving your customers free information to induce word of mouth, being courteous, and having good support are other ways of expanding your opportunities for good things to happen to you. The ways of expanding your opportunities is as diverse as the number of different kinds of businesses. You probably will develop some of your own that work great. (Tell me your success stories!)  The more opportunities you create, the more chances you have in creating a buying customer or the formation of strategic alliances with others in your field.  Opportunities that you create are eventually turned into money.  Remember though, Internet marketing is NOT a “get rich” quick scheme. 

Any web site that is at rest tends to stay at rest and any web site in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by another force.

In other words, if you don’t do any marketing for your site, it’s just going to sit there and not make ANY money!  Likewise, once your site is up and moving, it will stay going strong even if you totally neglect it for a while.  In fact, once your site has lots of links, great content and is making money, the only ways to kill this cash cow is if you don’t pay your hosting bill or your server crashes!  The tendency for a web site to resist changes in their state of motion can be described as marketing inertia. (Okay so I made this term up too!).  I like to compare marketing a web site to pushing a train.  At first that sucker just doesn’t want to move no matter how hard you push.  But eventually, that train will start to move and slowly it will pick up speed.  Once it gets going really good, there’s just no way to stop it quickly!  Anyway, what I’m trying to tell you is not to give up on your marketing efforts just because you don’t see big results in the first 30 or 60 days!  We are going to reveal strategies to you that will get you seeing dramatic results within 90 days. This is realistic; don’t believe all the hype about getting you high traffic and rankings in a matter of a few days.

For our free report on Social Bookmarking and Tagging be sure to subscribe to our newsletter at the upper right corner of the sidebar which will also give you updates on our site here at TheMarketersMind.com
internet marketing

Tagging is really the act of bookmarking a site with one of the services and a tag is actually nothing more than a keyword. Let’s say for example that you are into fishing and you find a really great site on fishing, you could “tag” that site with the tag of “fishing” as well as others and then share the page from your chosen bookmarking service with others. This is the way that tagging is used by the general public to share sites with each other.

So now you are probably wondering how you use this to promote your sites and actually make money with it. It’s really quite easy. Let’s say you have a site about golf and you write an article about the perfect golf swing. Well, you can tag the article with the tag, “perfect golf swing” and then link to the URL on your site where the article resides. It is that simple, the tag just needs to be relevant to the subject matter you are linking to. You can’t just use a tag for a high traffic term and then link it to something totally irrelevant, which is a sure way to get banned from the bookmarking services. It is easy enough to get traffic and use them to get indexed in the search engines without trying to game them.

Similar to keywords and search engines, the longer tail tags or longer phrases are easier to dominate than the more broad or general ones. One feature that Technorati has in particular is the ability to “claim” your blog for a particular tag. The cool thing about this is that a lot of people going to Technorati search for blogs about a particular subject so they will input the tag of the subject they are looking for and if your blog is listed for that tag it is displayed! On the Flickr site pictures can be bookmarked in the same way by tagging them a with a descriptive name that relates to the picture. You can start with the longer tail phrases and then continue adding more until you eventually have as many tags as possible that link to your site as well as the tags on your site itself. This takes us to another area of explanation which is the two main ways you can use tags for the purpose of business promotion.

When it comes to the use of social bookmarking and tagging for business promotion you can place tags on your on site which are then crawled and placed in the social bookmarking directories and you can also tag on your own “authority site network” that you have created on one or more of the services which is a method strongly espoused by Sean Wu of  Tag and Ping

In order to utilize the tagging method on your own site you will need to use a blogging platform such as Movable Type, Wordpress, or Blogger. I have to tell you from personal experience I can not recommend using Blogger for business due to their censorship. If you are going to use these methods in order to promote your websites as I am teaching you need your own domain, hosting and either Wordpress or Movable Type which you can install on your own server. Blogs have a built in functionality which allows you to alert the major blog directories of new posts when you make one. This is the process referred to as “pinging”. You can insert tags like we talked about within your posts which will result in an almost immediate indexing of the post by the social bookmarking service or blog directories.

 

tagging Tags social bookmarking