Catching the Big Fish: How Your Website can convert your Traffic into Money

This is the age of information, of rapidly shrinking yet ‘intellectually’ gaining computing devices, smart people with smartphones and a ready link to the ‘cloud’ of information on the World Wide Web. It’s an academic question these days if your company has a website? If the answer is NO, you probably were unfrozen from your decades old cryogenic sleep recently and are confused and adjusting to the modern world. And if it was YES, and you are a SME or a B2C or B2B trading company, you might be wondering if your little website is supposed to make any difference to your business at all. Websites were, are and will always be a well calculated promotional device. If yours is underperforming, it needs the quick fix. 

A professional website is also a productive website and we are not talking about those e-commerce portals wherein you provide your credit card details to buy a product or a service. The key to effectively promoting a SME, a B2C or B2B service is to propagate information in an eye-grabbing, ‘seductive’ format. In a sea of similarly designed, developed and priced products, how can your website promote your product in a conventional yet ‘different’ manner? How can your B2C or B2B service or offer be shown as a better option than your competition? The bottom line is that a website that presents its selection of products in an imaginative, creative and targeted format is more likely to attract a sustained impetus of an appreciative audience than a website that believes in tossing the information at a visitor in a hurried and jaded fashion and allows him/her to land at a judgement rather than forcing it on the very impressionable visitor. 

Right, the presentation aspect of our drive is taken care of. The next concern is to attract visitors to your website via some focussed SEO (Search Engine Optimization) work. This calls for some expert help from SEO professionals whose job is to feature your website high on popular search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. For example, for B2B Suppliers involved in the export of B2B services and products. A SEO professional can, with the assistance of powerful content from your website; the influential Social networking sites and a few tricks up his sleeve (ensure all are white hat techniques and not the despised Black hat methods) can give your website a very powerful boost. 

You are your website’s best friend. Thus, the onus to promote your website starts with you. Utilise your Social media connections on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to spread the word. Make it a standard procedure to tag your web URL in every piece of official or personal communication alongside the habit of subscribing the website as the information hub for your company whenever asked for it. Little ideas like these go a long way in bringing credibility and interest to your web presence.

Thus, the basic ideas for attracting the right audience and promoting your business online are before you. The greatest conquests begin as mere ideas that find the perfect execution- about time you attempted yours.

The Advent of Online Marketing

It’s a question that every marketer out there is asking, is online marketing a better option than conventional offline marketing? I mean, the prospects reached, the focussed nature of promotion, the immediate response generation, all these are immediately obvious. The money saved rises as a factor in the longer run. Yet, is casting a vast net and hoping for a ‘surprise’ catch better than targeting a predictive segment and reaping a set number? The topic makes for a rich debate.

The conventional marketer is a tested creature- forever immersed in crunching numbers and strategizing newer ideas that will hopefully work. The market is gracious to the risk-takers and the trend makers and yet, brutally dismissive of people who embrace anything that is deemed too radical or extreme. The mediums of marketing are many- the mass media, the roadside hoardings, attractive ads, hand-outs and the human models.  These methods however are exhausted and immensely predictable…and a preferred choice amongst the full segment of the marketers’ fraternity. You may be selling Insurance or toilet paper, a conventional marketer will decide upon the above promotional options to make his voice heard. The problem is, a lot of people are speaking the same language, at the same pitch and the target audience seems used to these tactics. It’s as if the average buyer demands that his senses must also be invested alongside his money. Think about it, two commercials advertising the same product from two different brands- and you are more likely to choose the one that emotionally appealed to you. If you smiled, or cried, so much the better.

The online promotional tactic is more personal. The target is to reach a vast number of people, and selectively appeal to the responsive mass with a pinch of online marketing techniques. A resourceful marketer, over the course of an afternoon, can reach thousands of people situated all across the world and pitch his product via the magic of colourful emails or inquisitive banners and pop-ups. The online chat-rooms of the world are a marketer’s test lab; social media websites bring in the fresh kill and a steady stream of mass emails generate the necessary public opinion. Online promotion is all about finding your niche audience from amongst a thousand test subjects- quite similar to finding a needle in the haystack. However, the size of your target audience and the vast amount of information carried by your medium make this a very cost-effective option when compared to other conventional marketing tools. Also, since the concept of online advertising is a fairly new bird- more people are tolerant and receptive to it. A hoarding standing at a busy intersection calls out to nobody in particular and is likely to lose its novelty in a few days, the same hoarding when cut to size and shows up in your personal online space is assured of your undivided attention. Maybe it’s not love at first sight…but the process can be repeated many times until it draws the necessary response from you.

Maybe a skilled mixture of online and offline marketing is the answer. Online marketing allows a small enterprise to compete with its more illustrious competitors. A good example of this kind of success story is the humble home grown wines from Tuscany, Italy. In a land famous for its wines and even more for the powerful winery that have stood for generations- the smaller growers have managed to earn a share of the market thanks to the quality of their product and the word of it spread through the online space. This example is repeated the world over and shows the universality of online marketing- a B2B or B2C portal by which the last corners of the earth can be reached and a interested customer bought on board. With the advent of smartphones and the enhanced acceptability of the online way of life, maybe a day might soon come when online marketing, the peddling of products over the world wide web- from pens to penicillin- is just a way of life.

Increasing Alexa Rank of your Website

For starters I am pretty sure, all they know is Google rank. Well, honestly speaking it’s not just the Google rank but you got the Alexa rank as well that’s considered to be a big booster for  website owners. Trust me, many investors judge a blog or a website by looking at your Google page rank and your Alexa page rank. You might find many articles or blogs that talk about increasing your ranks on Google. The current trend is all about different innovative strategies for an ecommerce website. Today, I have decided to cut the chase and write something about promoting your Alexa ranks.

The first question that pops up in anyone’s head is, How to increase my alexa rank to attract investors and clients? Before actually jumping into the formula, we need to understand what alexa is and how it works.

Alexa Rank:

Alexa Rank is a relative measurement about the popularity of a web site in the internet world. Alexa Rank can be relative when compared to Google, as it totally depends on the data that it receives from the Alexa Toolbars installed in the browsers of the users.  Alexa Rank is calculated considering the number of visits using the Alexa Toolbar over a period of 3 months. Alexa has contributed big time in the evolution of online social order.Given below are some basic tips to increase Alexa Rank of your website:

1. Installing an Alexa toolbar always helps. Make sure every individual has an Alexa toolbar installed in their systems. This ensures that any search done is captured and helps you rank better.
2. Be sure that you have set your website as the homepage in your browser.
3. Submission of links to social networking sites will help boost your site in its rank.
4. Visitors to your website should be prompted to leave positive testimonials for the Alexa detailed listing page.  For this you need to place an alexa page link on the website asking them to rate it.
5. Write reviews on all the top rated sites by Alexa.
6. Use Alexa redirect whenever you can. This can be done by using a redirect command with the help of the following URL: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=abc.com (replace abc.com with your website).
7. Have an Alexa widget placed on your blog or website. This improves the credibility of your website/blog in front of your readers.
8. Claiming your website is another important factor to improve your ranks. All you need to do is place the alexa ID inside the header and help alexa to assess your website in a better way. Make sure you have updated your site description, country name and your profile while claiming.

These are few basic, but important tips that can help you up your Alexa rank. There are many other sites like B2B and B2C that have followed this and have succeeded in increasing their ranks.

SEO Strategies for Ecommerce Websites

In the recent decade, there has been a tremendous hype of the Internet industry. Internet has grown up to a level where, you can call it a layman’s game. It definitely has been a game changer. With more easy and flexible options available over the net, people have started getting absorbed so much in the virtual world that they hardly have got any time outside it. It’s just like many individuals falling into the quick sand and trust me; it is very difficult to pull yourself out of it. According to me there are two important factors that keep users glued to their systems are ‘Social Media Sites’ and ‘E-commerce sites’ (Of course, there is lot of other factors as well).

‘Social Media Sites’ has definitely been a revolution and as mentioned in my previous blog “Evolutionof Online Social Order” Social media is now treated to be a very important tool to impress the customers. With the advancement in technology, we saw the emergence of e-commerce platforms. With lot of e-commerce sites popping up every day, Google decided to give importance or ranks only to those e-commerce websites that were relevant to the users. This imposed a challenge for all the e-commerce websites to maintain a user friendly website (navigation wise).  

Frankly speaking, it does not really take much to maintain and get an e-commerce website rank well on Google. All we need to do is follow some simple and very important steps whenever we are building an e-commerce website, it can be a B2C portal or a B2B portal. I am going to list down some very basic but, important steps or call it rules that you need to follow for an e-commerce website:

Know your user: Try and analyze what your customer would look for or more likely to search for. I mean to say look for those keywords or phrases that describes your website and also matches the high volume searches that are relevant to your site.

Content: I am sure, everybody agrees to this. Your site should have unique content that describes your product. Avoid duplication of content and the products. Make sure all your pages have the ‘Meta Tags’ intact and it has to be unique. Also, consider having H1 tags on the pages.

URL Structure: Usually it is seen that people do not pay attention to the way the URL is structured. Make sure you have your keywords mentioned in the URL. It’s easy for the crawlers to understand that particular page. The most common mistakes found in e-commerce websites is that people miss implementing the canonical tags to the necessary pages. In an E-commerce site it is a very common thing where you have duplicate URL’s that get generated automatically. We need to make sure that they have canonical tags in those URL’s .

Social Media: It is very important to have all the social media widgets as this can be word of mouth advertising. It is very import to encourage people to leave their comments, product reviews or even share them on their personal social media pages (facebook, twitter, G+). Blog is another important tool which can be used to talk and promote your product.

RSS Feeds: Generating and submitting your RSS feeds regularly helps customers keep themselves updated about new offers and products.

Optimize images:  Make sure the images of the products have been optimized by having the alt txt. This helps the crawlers in reading the image as well.

Off page optimization: Try and build links by doing some off page submissions to get links from them.

I am sure there are many other tips and tricks that will help you design a perfect user friendly E-commerce website. But the ones mentioned above are basic and very important rules for E-commerce website.

The Evolution of the Online Social Order

What is an average internet browser looking for online? I’am sure, if God walked into the reality of an online marketer, this would be the query he would be peppered with. Such is the varied online habits of the mostly 15-35 year old demographic that targeted marketing appears mostly a messy confusion than an exact science. People’s taste varies with every new development of the ‘social’ kind and allegiance changes as quickly as it is created.  

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn are the new social media hubs- online gatherings where people flock to in large numbers with varied intentions- being social, being personal, all business or simply to play animated games. While an earlier generation would have ventured outside to meet friends, scanned the newspaper stands for their daily fix of information and World news, played snooker and hung out at smoky taverns or flirted through the means of scented letters and eye-grabbing attire, the latest fad is to do all this online. Everything that is available in the real-world as a service, product or facility is now available online through the magic of e-commerce. The latest avatars of this innovation are the deals sites, the B2B and B2C sites, role-play portals as well as dedicated gaming websites. In a recent poll conducted by a popular Men’s magazine, more than 60% of the people who polled would rather spend an idle Saturday online rather than hanging about in the real world. As Bob Dylan sang, ‘Times they are a changing’.

In terms of businesses however, this is a welcome development. Marketing is all about targeting your audience with messages that appeal to them- the bigger the subjected audience, the better it is in terms of promotional effect and costs saved. Previously, an average marketer would find it hard to capture his chunk of interested, like minded audience, however thanks to the present trend of online social groups, dedicated websites pertaining to specific causes, email marketing and the ease at which opinions can be mass circulated over the internet, people with similar interests often flock together and actively advertise their presence. Online marketing has emerged as a major promotional tool and is often a more preferred scenario for companies who can afford to advertise big with a limited budget. Can you imagine a future when conventional business promotion is a thing of the past? If not, it’s about time you watched ‘Minority Report’ again.

The internet is big and it’s here to stay. The masses who have embraced it represent different demographics, tastes, cultures, preferences and stereotypes. As much as we live and play on god’s green earth, an adventurous part of us wants to disengage, lounge on an easy-chair, login and explore the contours of our digital, online lives.

The Emergence of Online Marketing

Online Marketing- these words conjure up an image of something impractical for a vast majority of ‘traditional’ businessmen while it’s the byword for quick, cost-effective and massive self-promotion for the new age visionaries, basking in the influential effects of Facebook and twitter. With the advent of technology and the internet, more and more businesses want to piggyback their products, services, concepts; you name it, on the infinite possibilities and the lucrative x-factor afforded by the big WWW. Why should you stay back?

The most common accusation against online marketing these days is that ‘everyone is doing it’. Hello, when did we miss the ‘it’s unique and must try’ stage? Online marketing allows you to connect with your customers on multiple points- customize your promotional package to appeal based on location, include snippets that appeal at a personal level, the point being that with online marketing you can reach a focussed, niche audience that conventional marketing- hoardings, television and newspaper ads, cold-calling etc. cannot achieve. It’s more effective to individualise your campaign, to make it seem personal and targeted than merely ‘putting it out there’ while expecting your intended audience to respond positively and reach back to you. 

This is the age of web2.0 and social media. Blogging and socially connective sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn serve the dual purpose of generating an appreciative market as well as connecting you to a limitless segment of people on the 2^nd, 3^rd…nth degree based on the people you are pitching to and their network of friends and family. The cost factor is a surprising plus point too.  A traditional marketing campaign could run into some serious money based on the promoter’s expectations and even then, the marketing effect could be very limited and quickly forgotten- however, with online marketing, a single qualified marketer could run a very successful campaign and reach a greater demographic in quicker time. Imagine, you are a start-up claiming to produce the world’s best golf clubs and you are located in India- your target audience meanwhile is primarily from the United States. With conventional marketing, the road to self-promotion looks long and expensive. However, an online marketing campaign, well-conceived and directed could ensure that your golf clubs could end up in the very capable hands of Tiger Woods in record time.  One of the important means to promote your business would be to come up with more interactive business blogs.

Traditional marketing remains a disjointed affair. You pitch your ideas to an assembled audience and wait for a response- often, your target audience forgets about you when bombarded by more options from your competition. Concept retention by the targeted market can be achieved by planned email campaigns. Creativity has and always will appeal to people- thus, with the handy online tools that give your audience a sense of control rather than a feeling of being subjected without their choice; they can be regularly reminded of your products and services catalogue. 

The trend of online marketing is here to stay and growing at an exponential rate. Businesses now have the options of E-commerce, Business to Consumer (B2C) and Business toBusiness marketing (B2B) websites to promote their wares and build strong and lasting followings. A competent company without its own website is frowned at while whole shopping malls have been customised to fit into e-commerce portals. The emergence of smartphones and ready availability of internet ‘on-the-go’ has resulted in more and more people spending a massive chunk of their day online. Where there shall be smoke-there shall be fire. Where the hordes of people shall congregate, you with your products and services must be there. Online marketing is all about speaking to your customers in the popular language that they understand best.

How to Promote your own business through Blogging

Success of any business depends upon the team of people working for it and of course lots of quality Leads & continuous Sales. Business owners and heads run behind sales and marketing team to bring loads of quality leads those can be converted to sales and thus brings the revenue to the business. And for the consistent growth in business, sales and marketing people keep on looking for probable channels of bringing quality leads. Along with core or field marketing, internet or online marketing is one of the major source of attracting leads to the business, for which business need to have a good website. Only having a good website will not help the business and it is essential to optimize the website for all the major search engines as well as market the business online through various available mediums.

Online marketing always been the most cost effective medium to market the business. And businesses generally hire a team of online marketers in-house or hire an agency to handle their digital marketing work, who  use to work a lot for the promotion and marketing of the business through different activities like Search Engine Optimization (for organic rankings on major search engines like Google), Search Engine Marketing (paid advertising through Pay-per Click), Email Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Social Media Optimization & Marketing and many more. But they do each and every activity only as their regular work and without getting involved into it at the core. It is their job to deliver the results as per the business requirement.

Here arise the need of business owners or heads to step in and get involve in some of the activities as they have the core knowledge of their business and that information should be spread across the web and reach to the targeted audience through some mean. They can write anything useful about the business and its services or products using different platforms like website itself, Web Blog, press releases, articles, eBooks, white papers, case studies, etc.  But apart from Web Blog all other platforms have their own limitations in terms of regular updates, content, submission, promotion, etc. The Blog is an important platform through which one can express everything at the same place and attract relevant readers or visitors. The Blog can be the official blog of the website or the personal blog of any individual person that they can configure on free blog websites like Blogger.com or WordPress.com and it should be updated on regular basis with the useful and relevant content. Visitors looking for good information about your business, products or services will definitely come again and again.

Apart from writing about their own business, services & products, business owners can also write about the other companies, partners, manufacturers, suppliers, or business service providers with whom they have done some deals. The Blog is very helpful in providing useful information to the targeted audience and interested readers will follow the Blog for more information. Business Owners or head are the best person to describe about the business in detail and their writings will have the highest authority of the content for its readers. For them it’s like a make or break kind on condition, they can attract good number of people through their good content and on the other hand they can also damage the image of their business as well as themselves by writing something bad. Hence they have to very careful and cautious about the content going in to their Blogs.