Website Marketing and Promotion

Website marketing is quite often associated with search engine optimization (SEO), and with good reason: search engines, particularly Google, are the number one provider of website traffic. As a result, most website marketers tend to consider search engine optimization as their sole means of website promotion.

However, receiving website referral traffic from search engines is only one part of a successful marketing formula, and in some cases isn't even a significant factor at all! I have built and promoted websites that have primarily or exclusively focused on search engine traffic, websites that focused exclusively on offline traffic, and websites that have focused on traffic from a myriad of sources.

Website Marketing Begins With a Quality Website

I want to make sure that you receive the maximum benefit from your website marketing efforts. As a result, I offer website marketing services exclusively to web design clients. This ensures that you as a website owner receive the full benefit of my knowledge and experience, as well as ensuring cost savings created by having the elements of both design and marketing included from the beginning.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) With a User-Friendly Twist

The conventional definition of SEM is a form of Internet Marketing that is designed to increase search engine visibility. Elements such as SEO, pay-per-click advertising (e.g. the sponsored ads that appear on the top and right of some search results in Google, Yahoo! and MSN), contextual advertising (advertising within the context of a webpage, as opposed to advertising in its own section of a webpage), and paid inclusion in search engines that either allow for or require such are considered to be the major elements.

My own take on search engine marketing is distinctly different. As is the case with SEO, many of the elements that increase search engine visibility are elements that also increase market visibility overall. This creates an overlap between search engine visibility and market visibility that we can take advantage of on your behalf. But where does this overlap occur?

Link Building for Both Search Engines and Users

Link building is the process by which website owners and marketers acquire hyperlinks to their websites, and is referred to by some as "off-page optimization". This is due in large part to Google's public revelation of its PageRankTM in 1998. In laymen's terms, PageRank evaluates web pages based on the quality and quantity of the pages that link to them in turn; pages with a greater quantity and quality in terms of inbound links are more likely to appear higher in search results for a given query. PageRank is one of over 200 factors that influence search engine rankings. If you have PageRank enabled on your Google Toolbar, it's green/white/grey toolbar that indicates a score between 0 and 10 that is designed to serve as a very rough indicator of the quality of the page you're looking at.

Why "Off-Page Optimization" Doesn't Make Sense

As the Wikipedia page on the topic states, "off-page optimization" strategies are SEO strategies designed to take advantage of factors that occur off of the pages of a website. The fallacy is that factors that occur off the pages of a website are beyond the control of those who control the website and its marketing, and therefore impossible to "optimize" as such.

"Off-page optimization" also carries the implication that links to a website are generated primarily or solely for search engine reasons. Links are gathered and/or exchanged without regard to whether or not they are of quality to the end user. Besides being in violation of published guidelines, "off-page optimization" strategies rarely take into account inbound links that may have little or no search engine impact but deliver at least the same levels of quality traffic to a website.

Since "off-page optimization" solely for search engines does not make sense, I do not focus on it as such. There are elements of off-page optimization that I will make use of when I promote your site from time to time, but not in a search engine context.

So What Does Make Sense?

Nothing that I have said above is intended to suggest that getting inbound links to a website is a negative. Link building does make sense if the correct focus is applied to it. That focus is not on search engines first, but end users. A well-built site is much easier to promote and acquire the types of links that send the traffic that you as a website owner need to make your business succeed and grow, and asking the right people will often generate the results you want.

There are a number sources of link referrals that most website owners and marketers ignore, but you as a savvy website owner can take advantage of. These links often serve to both generate direct traffic from users and indirect traffic from search engines as a result of their reputation among said engines:

  • Your suppliers/manufacturers. Many manufacturers and suppliers have a "dealers" or "resellers" section in order to promote their products and encourage customers to visit their stores.
  • Print media, as many print publications also have websites that generate a degree of traffic.
  • Conference/event directories. If you attend conferences or other events, you may be able to get your website listed in the event directory at no charge.

Case Study: Regional Shows

In order to best understand the concept of link building for end users, let's look at a simple example attributable to one of my clients. Regional Shows is a Southern Ontario consumer home show producer. In particular, they produce 3 different home shows at the Bingemans event and conference centre. As part of their service, Bingemans in turn lists Regional Shows events taking place at Bingemans in their events calendar.

The calendar page itself seems to have very little appeal to a search engine marketer. On the surface, it doesn't look like a page that would refer any traffic to a website. The page is an interior page on a website, and therefore would not represent the most likely page on the Bingemans site that would receive significant quality or quality traffic.

The initial appearance of the Bingemans event calendar is very misleading; the links on that one page alone generate over 400 unique, targeted visitors to the Regional Shows website per month. These visitors in turn have attended the home shows and on occasion become exhibitors as well. Over the years, this one page alone has represented thousands of dollars in revenue to Regional Shows, and it came from nothing more than Bingemans extending a courtesy to Regional Shows based on Regional Shows' relationship to Bingemans as a customer.

These 400 website visitors (assuming they like what Regional Shows has to offer) will tell others, quite often by sharing the link throughout various channels, thus creating a ripple effect and growth. Many of these channels are webpages that search engines feel are of quality, which in turn increases referral traffic from search engines as well as referral traffic from the other channels.

Sources of Offline Traffic to Your Website

I have written an article titled Offline Marketing Techniques on some of the ways in which you as a website owner can use sources other than the Internet to boost your website traffic.

Customized Collaborative Website Marketing Plan Development

As you can see from the explanation above, there are a number of different aspects to marketing a website, and an almost infinitesmal amount of sources of website traffic. I have only touched on a few such examples.

As you can see, many of these sources of inbound traffic are sources that you as a website owner would be more likely to acquire than I would. Many of these traffic sources also come as the result of the work I have done in the developmental stage (as a properly-built website tends to be self-promoting to some extent). There are also certain traffic sources, such as directories and other websites that search engines and users prefer, that I would be most likely to acquire.

I will work with you to develop a marketing strategy that will take advantage of as many sources of inbound traffic as is feasible, and will continue to work with you to adjust and further develop the strategy over time. You will not only be able to take advantage of the organic traffic provided by search engines, but organic traffic provided by other sources as well.

For more information, contact me for a free initial consultation or ask me for a custom quote tailored to your specific needs.

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