A 4-Phase Approach for Ongoing Web Site Success

If I could help the business world understand just one thing about Internet Marketing and more specifically web sites, it would be that web sites have to be continuously nurtured in order to continually thrive on the Internet.

Your web site is not a set it and forget it type of thing. Well, I guess it could be, however it probably wouldn’t serve you very well for long -- if at all.

Now regardless of the type of web site you have, once it’s live, to ensure it’s continual value to both you and your target market, I highly recommend that you put it on a steady diet of what I call the “Web Site Success Cycle”.

Here’s how it works. In a nutshell the “Web Site Success Cycle” consists of 4-phases, “Drive”, “Convert”, “Analyze”, and “Tweak”. And essentially they get performed in a continuous loop throughout the entire life of your web site. Let’s take a look at each phase.

Phase 1: Drive

Regardless of how much money or effort you put into your web site, no traffic equals no value… for anybody. I mean how valuable can your web site be if no one sees it? And since the whole point of having a web site in the first place should be in one way, shape, or form to create value for both you and your target market, it’s critical that you leverage whatever marketing strategies and tactics that are at your disposal to drive traffic there.

Phase 2: Convert

So now you have all this traffic coming to your web site… now what? Well you need a conversion strategy that leads those visitors down the path you want them to take -- whatever that path may be.

For example, I recommend your conversion strategy at a minimum addresses first, turning each visitor into a qualified prospect… second, turning each prospect into a paying customer... and then third, turning each customer into a raving fan.

Phase 3: Analyze

As with any other of your marketing materials and campaigns, if your web site’s not pulling its weight so to speak, change it -- Time is money here. How do you know whether or not it’s pulling its weight? Well it all starts with having clear objectives of what you want your web site to do for you; Then establishing metrics that you can regularly analyze to determine if your objectives are being met.

Phase 4: Tweak

Based on your findings in the previous phase, this phase is all about making the changes necessary to meet or exceed your objectives for your web site. Whether those changes are ones to your web site or what you do in any of the other phases, it’s all about improving your bottom line.

You always want to ask yourself here, what else can I do to take my web site to the next level?

So that’s the 4-phases in a nutshell. And in closing I’d like to leave you with this last little tidbit of advice if I may… the better you work the “Web Site Success Cycle”, the better your bottom line!

© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.

Want to use this article in your newsletter, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).

Liked this article? -- Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog 'The Motivational Marketer’s Journal'. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE marketing tips newsletter the 'Marketing Minute', -- a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.

Technorati Tags: Dean Mercado, Online Marketing Muscle, internet marketing, web sites

Choosing a Domain Name Strategy That Gets Results

Part 2: Using a Multiple Domain Name Strategy

In part 1 of this article, I shared a couple of do’s and don’ts to help you choose domain names that get results. In part 2, we’ll dig a bit deeper into the strategy of how to use multiple domain names for your business. Additionally, as promised, I will share with you part of my own domain name strategy to give you a glimpse into how I play the domain name game.

So here goes…

I’m a firm believer in using a multiple domain name strategy for a whole host of reasons but let me just share with you five of my core ones:

1. To create an overall better experience for my target market
2. To create a strong brand for myself and my business
3. To protect my brand and online identity that I’ve worked so hard to create
4. For search engine marketing and optimization purposes
5. To gain a competitive advantage in my marketplace

With that being said, let me share with you what I feel are some possible domain names you should consider owning:

• Your name
• Your business’s name
• Your major product names
• Catch phrases, monikers, or tag lines commonly associated with you, your business, or your industry
• Trademarked words or phrases – so long as you are the owner of the trademark
• Major benefits your business provides
• Major problems your business solves
• Key words or key word phrases that your target market would use when searching for what you do

Now do you need all of these? – Probably not. However for many small businesses and independent professionals, using some combination of a few of these properly could prove very rewarding.

As for my business Online Marketing Muscle, I own and actively use several domain names. As part of my strategy, instead of having my target market try to remember and type a long cumbersome URL of a page buried deep on my web site, I like to use shorter, more memorable, keyword-rich ones – hence my core concept of creating a better experience for my target market from the get-go. Then I simply use the free domain forwarding service provided by my domain registrar to automatically forward visitors to the actual page on my business’s main web site.

Let me explain a bit further:

I use www.DeanMercado.com as a shortcut to the “about me” page of my business’s main web site. This is a way for me as an independent professional to strengthen my personal brand as well as make it easier for people who may know me by name but not by my business’s name to find me easier.

At a minimum, I highly recommend that all independent professionals use a similar approach. It definitely serves as a differentiator between you and someone else who does what you do. So instead of having one of those long, complicated URLs that the company you represent assigns you, use your name dot com and place that on all of your marketing materials.

One word of caution here, if your company has a compliance department, run your plans by them to ensure you’re not breaking any company policy – I wouldn’t want to get you fired over this.

I use www.MotivationalMarketer.com as a shortcut to my blog hosted on my business’s main web site. The “Motivational Marketer” is a moniker I use for myself. Notice also that it gives people a fairly good idea of what type of content to expect on my blog, motivational marketing advice.

I use www.PumpedUpNetworking.com as a shortcut to the sales page of one of my main information products hosted on my business’s main web site. Notice also that besides being the name of my product, it also happens to contain the keyword “Networking” in it.

And I can go on and on and on here however, I hope you’re starting to get the gist of what I’m sharing.

I would also like to point out that if your core focus for your domain name strategy is search engine marketing, then you might want to consider taking things up a notch and by hosting each of your domain names as separate web sites using different web hosting services. You’ll most likely see better results with search engine placement with that approach.

So in closing, we’ve only just scratched the surface here. There’s much more to choosing a domain name than meets the eye – And having an overall domain name strategy that helps you choose which domain names you’ll buy, how you intend to use them, and why, if implemented correctly can lead to big-time results.

© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.

Want to use this article in your e-zine, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).

Liked this article? – Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog ‘The Motivational Marketer’s Journal’. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE marketing tips newsletter, the 'Marketing Minute' – a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.

Technorati Tags: domain names, search engine marketing

Choosing a Domain Name Strategy That Gets Results

Part 1: The Do’s and Don’ts of Picking Domain Names

Just in case you weren’t already aware, the Internet is typically the first place people look when they’re searching for information on what you do. Additionally, the Internet is typically one of the first places people look when they want to find out about you or your business – or as we say in the online world, they Google you.

That being said, you can probably surmise just how important it is to not only have the people you want to find you, find you, but also to have them find the information you want them to find both quickly and easily – And having great domain names is a critical step in making that happen.

Now over the years I’ve coached a number of small businesses as well as independent professionals such as authors, real estate agents, network marketers, and sales representatives of larger corporations, and I’ve seen them choose and/or use all kinds of effective as well as ineffective domain names – most of the time, not really being aware of how important and powerful a properly chosen domain name can be.

So here a couple of do’s and don’ts to help you choose domain names that get results:

Do’s

• Learn what keywords people search for when looking for what you do and look to use those in your domain names.
• At less than $10 a pop per year for most domain names, allow yourself to buy more than 1.
• Choose domain names that are memorable.
• Choose domain names that make it easier to find you online.
• Use specific domain names for specific promotions or ad campaigns.
• Shorter is not always better but in many cases it is – I know I don’t like typing long URLs – do you?
• Buy common misspellings of your domain name.
• If possible, to avoid confusing your target market, spell the domain name exactly how it sounds.
• Even though alternatives are available (e.g. “.net”, “.info”, “.org”, etc.), buy “.com” addresses whenever possible – this is still the commonly assumed domain name extension of the masses.

Don’ts

• Unless you’re a big company with a recognizable brand such as an IBM or EDS, using an acronym for your domain name is probably not a wise choice.
• Stay away from hyphen and underscore characters between words in a multiple word domain name – it just complicates communicating your web site address as well as making it more difficult to find.
• Be careful when substituting numbers for the actual spelled out version of the word (e.g. using the number “4” instead of spelling out the word “four” or “for”). Again, it just complicates communicating your web site address as well as making it more difficult to find.

So in closing, in part 2 of this article, I will share with you part of my domain name strategy to give you a glimpse into how I play the domain name game.

© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.Want to use this article in your e-zine, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links) 

Liked this article? – Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog ‘The Motivational Marketer’s Journal’. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE marketing tips newsletter, the 'Marketing Minute' – a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.

Technorati Tags: domain names, search engine marketing

Secrets of the Internet Marketing Experts Series: 7 Keys to Make Your Website More Search Engine Friendly

"If you make a product good enough, even though you live in the depths of the forest, the public will make a path to your door, says the philosopher. But if you want the public in sufficient numbers, you better construct a highway." - William Randolph Hearst (American Publisher, Editor and Politician, 1863-1951)

How true! - Regardless if we're talking about your offline brick-and-mortar facility or your online facility… your website. You simply need to create that highway leading to your door.

One of the great things about the Internet and having an online presence in the form of a website is that it provides us an excellent means to not only build one highway, but an unlimited number of highways - much of which can be done for little or no cost other than little bit of sweat equity. Is it the be-all end-all? Absolutely not! However, in my opinion it provides one of the best bangs-for-the-buck for small businesses to build those much-needed highways.

The main idea here is to make it real easy for the people you want to find you, to find you. On the Internet, it just so happens that search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search facilitate that process and ultimately make the Internet more usable. Now search engines work off the premise of bringing their users the most relevant content for whatever they are searching for. So while it's great for you to put up a website and provide relevant content, it's just not enough. You have to help the search engines understand just how relevant your content really is. You can begin that process by carefully planning out and implementing the following 7 keys to making your website search engine friendly.

Before we get started though, it's important for you to know what keywords people are typing in to these search engines when searching for what you offer. One great way to do that is to use a Keyword Selector Tool such as the one provided by Yahoo in their 'Resource Center' to pinpoint your keywords of choice - So basically if you're selling widgets and the word 'widgets' is commonly searched for (as confirmed by the keyword selector tool), then 'widgets' might be a good choice for your keyword.

Once you've properly targeted your keywords, which might be different for each page of your website, at a minimum, leverage them in the following manner to create relevancy for your keywords in the eyes of the search engines.

1. Use a keyword-rich domain name for the address of your website. For example I provide marketing coaching and consulting services with a major emphasis on online marketing, therefore I use the keyword phrase 'online marketing' in my domain name - hence my URL is www.OnlineMarketingMuscle.com.

2. Use a keyword-rich 'Title' tag in the HTML code of your website. Suffice it to say that a well thought out title tag will have a major impact on determining your websites relevance to the search engines and should be very carefully crafted.

3. Use a keyword-rich Meta 'description' tag in the HTML code of your website. This Meta tag should be used to provide a more detailed description of what your visitors should expect from stopping by your website.

4. Use carefully selected keywords in the Meta 'keywords' tag in the HTML code of your website. This is simply a tag that tells the search engines what keywords they can expect to see throughout your website.

5. Make sure that you use your keywords throughout the content of your website. In the search engine optimization world, we call this your 'keyword density'. As defined in the popular online encyclopedia called wikipedia, keyword density is the percentage of words on a web page that match a specified set of keywords. Failure to do this throws up a flag that your site may not be about what you say it is - and search engines don't typically like that.

6. Use keyword-rich 'Anchor Text' for internal and external links on your website. Anchor text as defined in wikipedia is the text a user clicks when clicking a link on a web page - So instead of using less meaningful or even meaningless text as the label for your hyperlinks, use keyword-rich ones.

7. Use keyword-rich Heading Tags (sometimes referred to as H tags) throughout the content of your website. Simply put… text within the heading tags are typically seen as more important than other text on the page - and keywords used here will appear to be more relevant to the search engines.


So in closing, please note that my intention here was not to technically educate you or anyone else on how to implement these keys - only to bring your awareness to them. If you do not know how to implement them on your website, may I suggest that you schedule some time with either your webmaster or a search engine marketing consultant to discuss doing so as soon as possible.

Additionally I'd like to leave you with a little bit of a heads-up here. The rules of the search engine marketing game literally change every day - yes I did say every day. This is done to keep the playing field fair for all by making it more difficult for people to craftily slant the odds in their favor. However for the most part the 7 keys that I've shared here seemed to have stood the test of time so far and if implemented properly can only help you.


© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.

Want to use this article in your e-zine, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).

Liked this article? - Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog 'The Motivational Marketer’s Journal'. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE marketing tips newsletter, the 'Marketing Minute' – a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.


Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization