Website Design & Search Engines

For those of you wanting to learn more about how search engines work; here is a good starting point…

I found this link on Google. It’s titled: “How does Google decide what result goes at the top of the list?”

Search engine ranking is a very complex and constantly changing science. The link above will shed a little light into how the whole thing works.

According to comScore, in June 2006, the monthly share of online searches were distributed as follows:

Google Sites: 44.7%
Yahoo! Sites: 28.5%

Those two engines account for 73.2% of all search traffic.

When considering where you are going to spend resources implementing a search marketing campaign, keep the numbers above in mind.

There is another 26.8% out there that are searching across hundreds of smaller engines, but chasing those visitors, in most cases, is not worth the time and effort. The amount of time you put into setting up campaigns on the smaller engines vs. the value you generate from those efforts usually don’t add up in a positive way.

Stick with promoting your site on the big two (Google and Yahoo!) and you’ll be maximizing your time and resources and generating the best traffic to your site.

E-mail marketing is a very cost effective way to promote your business. Whether it is highlighting a new service you offer, reminding subscribers about existing services, or promoting an upcoming event - delivering a timely newsletter into the inbox’s of your customers and prospects is cost effective and just flat out smart marketing.

Your existing customer base is most likely the bread and butter of your business. Marketing to these folks is the best way you are going to grow your business.

When was the last time you designed, printed, addressed and sent out a postcard, letter or newsletter to your customer base? If you have in the last six months - way to go!

If your answer to that question is “I don’t remember the last time…” or “well over a year ago” - my question to you is…WHY?

To get to my point quicker I’ll assume that your answer to WHY is - “because it’s a lot of work to design, create, print, address, and mail out a letter. I just don’t have the time.”

If that’s you - then seriously consider setting up an e-mail marketing program.

More than ever before you need to reach out and contact your existing customers multiple times a year. E-mail marketing provides a quick and affordable way to do just that.

Learn more here.

Mary Gillen has a nice blog titled “Learn One Thing”.

I thought the following post contained a great idea for anyone with a “Thank You” page on their website. It makes perfect sense…this person just requested info from you or bought one of your products/services. Why not throw another offer at them and see if they’ll bite again?

Link to Post

Excerpt from post:

The “thank you” page.

You all know it…the screen that appears after a Web site visitor fills out a form to subscribe to your newsletter, request information, etc.

There’s lots o’ space under the “Yep, we got your request and it will be processed shortly” message on your “thank you” page.

Make the space work harder. Fill it with:

links to other sections of your site that may not be visited often

“you want fries with that?” offers

links to other email newsletters, part of a “co-reg” network from publishers who will do the same for you on their sites

In other words, does your website produce results? One of the first questions I ask new clients: “What are the goals of your website?” The usual reply is, “Uh…I’ve never really thought about that!”

Well, start thinking about it folks. Here are some possible answers to the question “What are the goals of your website?”