There are numerous way to drive traffic to your site - we've laid out
the most useful information for you below.
ClientReady staff is available to help you build a search engine marketing
plan, explain everything to you in PLAIN ENGLISH, and to actually do
the submissions for you if you like (fees are involved for these additional
services).
Major Methods of Driving Traffic |
Conventional Search Engines and Search
Engine Optimization
(AllTheWeb, AltaVista, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Google, HotBot, Inktomi,
LookSmart, Lycos, MSN, Netscape, Open Directory, Teoma, Yahoo, etc.)
* Highly recommended |
OVERVIEW:
This is a long term strategy. Search engines are very important
means of driving traffic to your web site. You have to register
your URL with a specific search engine in order for your site
to be found in someone's search results.
You will need to submit your site and in some cases the main
pages in your site to the engines of your choice.
You will need to OPTIMIZE your pages so that the search engines
look favorably upon them and rank you highly.
Optimization is a non-exact science because the search engines
don't tell you what they are looking for, AND they change their
criteria every so often, without notice. Companies that specialize
in this effort often charge thousands of dollars a year to optimize
a handful of pages and keep up with them.
PROS:
You aren't paying for the clicks to your site, as with Pay
for Click method.
CONS:
Takes a lot of time and effort goes into researching the best
TERMS that you want to target and to submitting your pages to
the engines. Slow to see results because it takes anywhere from
a week to several months for the search engines to start listing
your site. |
Pay Per Click Search Engines
* Highly recommended |
OVERVIEW:
This is a quick to implement traffic strategy. Pay per click search
engines enable you to only pay for the volume of traffic that
visits your site. Typically, you pay an amount that you agree
to every time someone clicks a link that sends them to your site.
You open a free account and place some money into it.. say $100.
Then you choose a number of keywords that you want people to find
your site for.. like "clothing for men"... "mens
sweaters".. and "tshirts". You agree to pay say
15 or 20 cents per click.. and each click is driving traffic to
your site. Once your account is depleted, you have to add more
$ to keep coming up as a result, or not.
Don't spend more than 40 cents a click, and 15 cents is much better.
Many novice users blow through all their money by overbidding
for the terms they want. The best strategy is to get a large,
wide selection of terms that are not too expensive and leave the
really expensive terms for those with deep pockets.
These are the two major Pay For Click companies: Overture.com
or Google
Ad words
PROS:
Instant traffic. You can quickly determine if it's cost effective
to spend some $$ in order to drive sales.
CONS:
Can be costly if you are not getting the sales you expected
to justify whatever you're spending. |
Link Swapping
* Highly recommended |
The more links that you have back to
your site the greater the chance a search engine will have in finding
your web site. This can be accomplished by having other people add
links to your website from their site. |
Email Marketing |
Gathering user names and email addresses
from your site and emailing a newsletter to those people is a great
way to market your offerings. HOWEVER, you MUST use a 3rd party
newsletter service for this type of marketing - please
review this info thoroughly if you're interested in Email Marketing. |
Fax Blasting |
There are many businesses that offer
the service of sending your message to a mass fax list. We are not
sure how affective this method of marketing is, however it is another
option that you might want to consider. |
Conventional Search Engines
Costs to Submit Your Site
Engine |
Cost |
Description |
AllTheWeb.com (FAST
Search) http://www.alltheweb.com |
Free |
|
AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com |
Free and Express Inclusion $39/6
months |
|
AOL Search
http://search.aol.com |
Free |
Recommended, because they
supply results to many engines |
Ask Jeeves
http://www.askjeeves.com |
First URL $30, every URL thereafter
$18 ea. |
|
Google http://www.google.com |
Free and Paid Submissions |
Highly recommended
- Google is a VERY important engine to get listed on because
they supply results to many other major search engines |
HotBot http://www.hotbot.com |
Free |
|
Inktomi http://www.inktomi.com |
Per URL basis. First URL $39/yr.,
each URL thereafter $25/yr. |
Recommended, because they
supply results to many engines |
LookSmart
http://www.looksmart.com |
$49 Set-up Fee |
Pay per click fees apply |
Lycos http://www.lycos.com |
Free |
Free submission of one page
of your web site |
MSN Search
http://search.msn.com |
$49 Set-up Fee |
Pay per click fees apply |
Netscape Search
http://search.netscape.com |
Free |
Recommended, because they
supply results to many engines |
Open Directory
http://dmoz.org |
Free |
Recommended, because they
supply results to many engines |
Overture
http://www.overture.com |
Pay Per Click |
Recommended, guaranteed traffic
for those with even minimal monthly ad budgets |
Teoma http://www.teoma.com |
First URL $30, every URL thereafter
$18 ea. |
|
Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com |
Free for non-biz sites, or Express 7 day service
for business subs, $299/yr., recurring |
Highly recommended - Yahoo is a very important engine
to get listed on |
|