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 Issue #1 - July 1st, 2002 Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses
Brought to you from idesignbusiness.com http://www.idesignbusiness.com Issue #1 Monday, July 1st, 2002 In this Issue: ARTICLES: FREE RESOURCES: Welcome to the first issue of the Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses. The Internet offers hundreds, even thousands of ways for businesses to promote themselves online, some are better then others. Over the past several years, idesignbusiness has helped many small businesses improve their web presence, and this newsletter is the result of our experience in the field. We welcome reader input and want to know what is on your mind. Let us know about topics that you would like to read about in this newsletter and we will do our best to accommodate everyone. Send topic ideas to newsletters@idesignbusiness.com Neal St. Clair idesignbusiness ARTICLE CAN YOU STILL SUCCESSFULLY MARKET YOUR WEBSITE IN SEARCH ENGINES FOR FREE? The answer is YES, but you need to know where and how to do it. First, a little background on search engines. Like all industry's, search engines have begun consolidating in recent years. The days of hundreds of high traffic free search engines are long gone. After numerous mergers, partnerships, and buy-outs we are left with a handful of extremely popular and powerful search engines. These include Yahoo, MSN, AOL Search, AltaVista, Lycos and a few more. The bad news...all of these search engines employ one of two business models to make money, and in some cases both. They charge for inclusion into their directory or they charge for specific search terms and keywords. The good news...there are still ways to get your site listed in all of these search engines for free, you just have to be creative. One of the best ways to get your site listed in the majority of high-traffic search engines is by getting your site added to DMOZ, http://www.dmoz.com. DMOZ, or the Open Directory Project is the largest human-edited directory of websites on the Internet and powers listings for the majority of high-traffic search engines. Each website submission is reviewed by a real person and cataloged in the most appropriate category. Search engines recognize the value of providing their visitors the most relevant search results and depend on the DMOZ for these accurate rankings. Submitting your website to DMOZ is completely free, but there are several things to consider before you submit. Make sure you choose the appropriate category within DMOZ to submit your site. The more specific the category, the better chance you have of getting listed. Make sure your site is completely functional. DMOZ will not accept sites with broken links or images. Make sure your site is optimized for search engines prior to submission. Once your site is listed, it will appear in search results for AOL Search, Google, Lycos, Netscape, and many more. Without the proper code that search engines use to display listings, your site may never be seen! In addition to submitting your site to DMOZ, you should submit your website individually to as many search engines as you can. Don't be discouraged by submission charges on the major search engines because most of them still offer free submission, they just make it difficult to find. I have provided a list of URL's below of major search engines that still accept free submission. Finally, be weary of submission services that offer submission to "hundreds or thousands of search engines." While there are thousands of search engines on the web, only a few receive any substantial traffic. It is much more valuable to be listed in 5-10 search engines that receive millions of visitors a day versus a thousand search engines that receive only a few visitors each day. Major Search Engines that still accept free submissions: http://www.google.com http://www.altavista.com http://www.lycos.com http://www.dmoz.com http://search.msn.com http://www.hotbot.com ARTICLE WHAT IS THE WEB'S MOST POWERFUL MARKETING TOOL? It has been around longer than affiliate programs, search engines, banners ads and link programs and is still the most powerful means of promoting any website. Hands down, email is the most cost-effective means of communicating with your target market and generating traffic to your website. Email marketing is a powerful tool, but must be done right to be successful. If someone gives you their email address, they are giving you permission to communicate directly with them. A first-time visitor to your website may only have one brief exposure to your business. If a they opt-in to receive email messages from you, then you are in control of what message they receive and how often. It is much easier to convert a website visitor into a paying customer after multiple messages than just one. The key to successful email marketing is providing your visitors interesting and relevant messages. The concept is simple, offer your visitors something they value and in exchange for that information or service they will grant you permission to communicate with them. The trick is developing a persuasive offer that your website visitors will want. Proven opt-in tools include guestbooks, newsletters and access to exclusive areas of your site. There are many options and the most successful ones are specific to your business and website. For more information on developing successful email marketing campaigns, visit: http://www.idesignbusiness.com/web_development.asp FREE RESOURCES: Each issue of the Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses will include helpful free online resources to promote your website. Search engines use META Tags to retrieve and display websites in search results. META Tags are HTML code that create the title, description, and keywords of your website. idesignbusiness has created a user-friendly META Tag Generator to help business owners create META Tags for their website. Want to learn more about META Tags, complete description of each META Tag is included too! http://www.idesignbusiness.com/meta_tag_generator.asp When designing your site, make sure you are using colors that work in all browsers. We found a great resource to find out the HTML code for all the web safe colors. Very easy to use and can safe a lot of design headaches. http://www.se-tel.com/~sarah/colors.html ABOUT idesignbusiness idesignbusiness provides Web marketing and technology solutions for small businesses. We utilize a combination of consulting and technology expertise to create customized and flexible solutions. Please visit http://www.idesignbusiness.com for more information. SUBSCRIPTION NOTICE This newsletter is only sent to opt-in subscribers. If at anytime you would like to be removed from this list, please send an email to newsletters@idesignbusiness.com with REMOVE in the subject line. Spread the word - Please forward to friends and colleagues. Copyright 2002 - idesignbusiness.com http://www.idesignbusiness.com |
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