Marketing your website online
Once your website is live, it is very important to develop a strategy for marketing your website.
Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing (SEM) involves getting your website found by your target market in popular search engines such as Google and Bing. This can be done using the following two methods:
- Natural search results
When searching on Google or Bing, the main search results that show up on the left are called 'natural search results'. These are determined by the search engines using their very advanced algorithms to decide which web pages are the most relevant to the keywords the user is searching with. This area accounts for around 90% of the traffic from search engines and although it is free to be in this area of the search engines, it is also very competitive.
For example, if you wanted to be found when people type in 'red widgets', you are then competing against every single other website that sells 'red widgets' for one of the top 10 positions. In order to get into the top 10, you need to implement search engine optimisation techniques to make your site more relevant than your competitors. This process is free (unless you are paying someone to do the SEO on your behalf) but takes time and you don't get instant results. Some SEO campaigns can take over a month to become effective.
- Pay per click advertising (PPC)
Paid advertisements (called adwords in Google or sponsored links in Bing) are the boxed adverts that appear in the right hand column (and sometimes above the natural search results) in Google and Bing. You bid for ads to be shown on your selected keywords and when someone clicks on an advert you are then charged for the click (usually anywhere between $1 to $10). The benefit of PPC systems is that it allows you to immediately get exposure in search engines rather than waiting for search engine optimisation to work.
Social Media Marketing
Around 2010 Facebook exploded in popularity around the world and the following few years saw businesses awork out ways to effectivly market themseleves via social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Pinterest and more.
Depending on your target market (and their uptake of social media), social media marketing can be a highly effective and major source of leads and sales. Social media platforms such as Facebook offer a range of ways to gain exposure through pay per click advertising, sponsored stories, business pages and more. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus also allow you to install plugins into your website so that people can interact with your site in their social network.
For example, a visitor to your site can 'like' a page and this will then show in the news feed of all their Facebook friends. This then gives you free exposure to like minded people who may be interested in your products and services.
All websites built by Mantis Technologies automatically include social media integration to allow visitors to interact with your site and share your content. We also assist all our clients with the setup and utilisation of social media for their businesses if needed.
You can learn more about all this in our
online marketing blog
Getting Started
Select an item below for information on getting started with your new website: