Target Marketing & Web Site Promotion: Keywords & Search Engines
Cost effective internet marketing and promotion -- where your target audience can conveniently find that web site that you're paying for. How?
TARGET MARKETING: Part of the Write2it web development process includes creating web content that is valued by a particular target market. Your valuable web content is delivered to its intended audience by...
SEARCH ENGINES: Snap, Alta Vista, Netscape or any search engine service uses a computerized "word" search to find the web pages that they have reviewed and approved for their index. Keywords help your target audience locate the right web documents more efficiently. Your web page may earn a high search engine ranking. Large Internet or Intranet web sites usually include some type of text search device to make their web page content more accessible.
Getting Found on the Web
Search engine services are designed with convenience and effectiveness in mind, giving your information customer a way to find the information that they value on the web. This is why the web sites of search engine services are so heavily utilized; outside of a recommended web location (URL), there is no other truly effective way for anybody to discover your web content. That said:
Many web sites are developed in a process that miminizes or ignores one of the World Wide Web's biggest and most popular assets: Search Engines.
Target Marketing is effective. When your information customers finds your site using a search engine keyword search that they initiated, and then actually finds the information that answers whatever it is they were looking for, (see NEEDS ANALYSIS), you can take smug satisfaction in a well executed internet transaction.
An effective web development process must consider the search engine services as allies in the creation and distribution of any kind of valuable web site content that's intended to reach a specific target market. Email or an off the web advertising campaign are another way to spend web development money on hopes of getting web site visitors.
For discussion purposes -- as defined by Write2it's internet rules -- web marketing is viable indexing, or enabling somebody to readily access the information that they want from your web site. In a broader sense, this should include anything from finding your Aunt's phone number in Valencia, Spain, to buying that dream house in Nova Scotia. Search engine services were initially developed to provide this service.
Some search engines services use a "Phone Directory" style of categorizing the web pages approved for their index. One problem is that the major search engine services have each developed a different standard (their own) for information organization. The Dewey Decimal System it ain't, but you can use these indexes to your advantage by proactive participation and web page submission.
Target marketing essentially gets your message across to a specific target audience that you are intent on reaching. Keywords allow for a more effective computerized word or text search that locates and points out your web site to a "targeted" information customer. Keywords help define what each web page of the web site is about, and should be related to and refined by the rest of the contents contained in the web page.
Key words should be used in the title, keyword meta tags, heading(s), and file names of each web page document. Also, the key words must be relevant to the actual contents of their page, thereby making it relevant to the person doing that key word search. Another reason to make sure that your documents are focused (see information organization.)
One of the best ways to develop a web site involves researching similar or related web sites that turn up under search engine text searches. This will give you some idea of what key words and index categories will be the most helpful in developing your web page content. It's also very helpful to see who you will be competing against for a high web site placement on the search engine listings, and how they are target marketing your intended audience.
This type of search engine and index researching is very time consuming, and you must know what to look for. Certain patterns will develop around the more successful web sites. Because the benefits of this kind of search engine research process are not readily evident until your web publication "fails" to reach your intended target market of information customers, many web developers simply minimize or ignore it in favor of a quick buck through cut-and-paste design and slap-dash efforts.
Wep pages must be submitted to each of the major search engine services. This can be done by going to their submission page and entering your web page information manually, our using a batch submission service or software program that will "ship out" all your web page content to the various search engine services.
The search engine services then evaluate your web pages to determine whether or not to include them in their index of information. Quality web content helps. The acceptance or rejection process will include review by a paid or voluntary staff member (human) and/or a computer (robot). What they look for and accept, and how long this process takes them, seems subject to change on a regular basis. Some search engines will stop accepting new web pages under any conditions, no explainations offered, and then just as suddenly start accepting and indexing again.
A well designed and focused web site that thoroughly takes into account the key words and indexes of various search engines that it's submitted to should get a respectable ranking or placement under those engines, although it may take awhile. Well developed web content is one key. Submitting your web page to "their" correct category ("your" target market) is absolutely essential. Incorrectly submitted web pages are easily disregarded by the search engine services. This brings to question the value of batch web page submission software and services in an truly effective web page submission process.. You're never getting your web site listed on a particular index if your content is inappropriate.
A web site that's developed with a focus on high quality content -- and thoroughly takes into account the keywords and indexes of various search engines -- should get a respectable ranking or placement on the list that a search engine generates under a word or text search. Just remember, it's preferable to get a number one placement on the list, as opposed to a number two hundred and one. High search engine placement should be a goal, as it raise the visibility of your web publication and attracts more information customers. This is another very effective form of target marketing, although it may take a while.
As a for instance, with key words like "free," "sex," and "joke" capturing the imagination of the web surfing public, what self-professed creative writer and marketing whore wouldn't play these key "words" to his advantage by offering limericks -- free sex jokes -- to his adoring public? Stoop to conquer? Absolutely! Does every web document on that site provide the reader with a link to this site? Yes.
The above paragraph demonstrates my promotion of Write2it at my other related site, Gary's Garage, where I show examples of my writing -- limericks -- that don't fit in anywhere here on this site (and hopefully avoid turning this into another overextended and confusing web site.) The Gary's Garage site advertizes, links to and feeds this web site. In my case, it's just one more way of being found out while keeping both sites focused: business services -- here at Write2it versus limericks as art -- there at Gary's Garage.
Relationship links are a good way of cross-selling related services. Specifically, somebody looking for a "Gary's Garage" type of web design, or maybe some creative writing services, conveniently arrives at this business web site by clicking on a hyperlink.
EMAIL & SPAM:
Email -- not spam -- to opt-in subscribers can also contain links to specific web site information. My only question is: "Who wants more email?" followed by: "Who has time?" Unless, of course, it's a new limerick. An Email campaign must conform to certain practices and be directed at your information customer. Otherwise, it turns into an illegal spam operation.
BEYOND HYPE:
Speaking of hype, you could be shelling out large coin as a Superbowl sponsor. Is that a football game? Usually not. Cool advertising, though. Your web site can also be marketed in magazines, newspapers, a direct mail campaign, or on television, radio, billboards and bus benches. Again, who is your audience?
Can the web make you money? Good question. How many e-businesses are turning a profit? Which of these wellsprings of potential are actually more than dubious experiments in hype? I mean, really...how much money much did Amazon.com lose (again) last year? Even the evil Richmond empire "gives away" their internet browser. Let's repeat that: "lose (again)" and "gives away." So much for business models. Maybe it's better to bolster your fortune(s) with an IPO...
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Last Updated 6/22/00
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