There is no better way to market a website than by getting your products and services mentioned on as many websites and blogs as possible. Not only do the links help you raise your Google pagerank, but also your website link will be seen by more and more people every day.
Getting mentioned on blogs can be the easiest thing in the world if you have the right product but unless you know how to promote your product to bloggers the likelihood you will create a successful blogstorm is pretty slim. Start engaging with bloggers and find out what they like, perhaps meet up with some to get expert guidance on what they write about and why.
Design
Having a nice looking website is the most important step. Beautiful & easy to use websites attract more links and are, in general, more likely to be successful. It doesn’t have to be anything amazing but it does need to be well organised and easy to use and navigate. Google isn’t heavily designed but it’s the easiest site in the world to use.
If you don’t want to invest the money in good design why would anybody trust your site?
Credibility
Closely related to design is credibility and trust. If you have a nice office or offline store then put a picture of you and your staff outside the office on your “about” page. Add press cuttings and links to any online publicity. The more legitimate your website and company appears the more likely it is to attract links and new publicity.
SEO
Getting traffic from search engines is what most website owners expect when they launch an online business. The best way to achieve this is to find a well known SEO company and get them involved in the project before any designers or developers start working. SEO needs to be integrated in every part of the website and every change needs to be signed off by your SEO consultant.
Marketing hooks
Most people who commission a website think about how it’s going to sell products and ignore the marketing hooks that will draw links and help the site market itself. A good SEO company will help you insert the right marketing hooks in the site from the start and make ongoing promotion a lot easier.
For example an e-commerce site could have a product information wiki, buyers guides, video tutorials, suppliers directory and a blog to draw links and traffic.
Hire an offline PR agency
One of the most effective ways to get brand awareness and traffic is to be mentioned by a large newspaper either in print or on their website. The best way to achieve this is to hire a good PR agency.
Do your PR online
Online PR is something that YOU can do. Social media marketing, social media optimisation, blog marketing are all names we’ve used to describe what we have been offering but moving forwards these will all be encompassed under the label of online PR for one simple reason.
Clients understand what it means.
Most companies have worked with a PR agency before, if they haven’t then it’s likely they are either a small business or have a good understanding of PR themselves. Either way it’s much better to use a phrase people understand than to confuse potential clients with jargon about social media.
So what exactly is online PR and what does an online PR offering from somebody like Branded3 look like?
Essentially online PR boils down to 5 strategic points:
Research your market
Finding out which websites are discussing subjects related to your brand, industry and your competitors.
Examples include forums, social networks (Facebook/Myspace), blogs & news sites, microblogs (Twitter)
Establich relationships with competitors
Establishing relationships with the decision makers and content creators of the target websites and understanding what they talk about, who they link to & why.
Content
Creating the sort of content that the influencers at the target websites will enjoy and hopefully write about or link to from their websites. Expansion
Branching out from targeting websites & targeting target audiences directly. Where are the target audience spending time online? Which sites are they visiting and how can we get featured on those sites too?
Monitoring
Monitoring the web for brand names, competitor & keyword mentions on all types of websites. Actioning a quick response strategy to handle positive or negative press or sudden changes in the industry.
Optimised copy or keyword rich press releases
Press releases need to be written by somebody skilled in the art of press release writing. Press releases should not be used to help with search engine optimisation unless that is the primary goal of the campaign.
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
