online marketing for beginners, online marketing definition and principles

Your. Website is an important piece of your digital marketing, strategy, it may serve as a gateway to gather information or, the actual destination where a sale takes place it's, an opportunity for a visitor to discover what makes your brand unique to, find the information they're looking for and to guide them in their decision to buy you, may have all sorts of marketing campaigns running ads on Google post, on Facebook, blog, articles, all of it is bringing in new customers that, eventually end up on your website all of, that attention on your website makes it one of the most valuable, pieces of digital real estate you own the, better your marketing the more visibility your website has online. Consumers, of today are fickle and that's because digital interactions, are so commonplace, so, users are spoiled, by companies, that are doing it well they're, used to things just working, and they expect that the information, they want will be available, and accurate when it's not they're disappointed, and credibility, is lost for whatever brand they're interacting, with the. Truth is if your website isn't good you're going to fall further and further behind as the landscape evolves and if your website doesn't work on mobile you're, already behind, chances. Are there's a competitor, with a better online experience, and your customers will seek them out if they're fumbling with yours so, let's talk about how to make sure that your experience is good enough it doesn't, need to be perfect it just has to be successful, an effective. Website is simple well-thought-out. And highly, functional it should, be intuitive, and eliminate, any and all barriers so your visitor can accomplish their goals effortlessly, in our, marketing strategy we're aiming for shared value, it's the same with your website your, business goals and the needs of your target market should overlap and while, we're drawing similarities, to our marketing strategy, I'll also point out that your website, only needs to appeal to your target market so spend your effort designing, it to work for that audience as you, evaluate your current website take some time to ask yourself the following questions. 1, is it, mobile-friendly, the, amount of people using their mobile devices to browse the web is staggering, so design with mobile in mind now, later in this chapter we're going to talk about something called responsive, design and that will help give you some more ideas around, the topic of being mobile-friendly, now. The next question is does it load properly in all modern web browsers, if your site looks one way on Safari for Mac and another way on Chrome for, see you're, not really controlling, the experience, test, it out on all of the modern browsers I recommend, browser staff calm as a way to quickly test your site across platforms, does. It answer all the questions my users have or may have now, a good practice, is to write down things your customers ask for via phone email or, even in your place of business you, can check to see if those answers are easily, found on your website and if they're not then you should put that information online, next. Is the site reflective, of my brand within, the first couple of seconds a user is going to decide how the site feels to them you, need to make sure your brand is carried through luxury. Brands need to feel elegant, whereas discount, sites can focus more on the current sales make, sure your logo, tagline. And the color scheme all reflect, your brand you definitely want things to be consistent, is it. Up-to-date nothing. Is worse than information, that's out of date it, creates concern with users so be sure to keep information current, if you have a blog you should be using it weekly are. All of your services, and products, easy to find because. Online marketing, is so niche you're targeting audience, is likely looking for something specific can, they find it on your website if they, can't find it and they call and you say it's a service or product you do offer then, it needs to be on your site or. All of your policies, easy to find that, is to say if you ship or handle returns can, a user understand, the process clearly will, they know how long shipping takes when. They can expect a callback or a product to arrive you. Want to provide ample feedback, so a user knows where they stand in the process and finally. A lot of the best criteria, for your site is how, does it compare to your competitor, are you proud or jealous, if you're, jealous it's probably, time to seriously, consider whether, or not you need to patch up your website, leverage. Your relationships, with existing customers and colleagues as a way to get feedback on your site ask them what they like what, they don't like and for any ideas, as you, go about creating an effective website I also recommend, hearing, from someone outside your circle check, out peak usertesting.com.

For No charge they'll have a real person spend five minutes on your site and give you honest and unbiased feedback, as I, said earlier your, website is possibly, the most valuable, piece of your digital marketing strategy, take your time and conduct an honest of you Asian. Having. The right domain name is essential, your domain name is how your visitors find your website it appears on your print materials, and it's also shared both online and offline as your, brand recognition increases, a poorly. Chosen domain, name will have a widespread, negative, impact on your online and offline efforts, a good, domain name is relevant, memorable. And usable, so, let's talk about relevant, your, domain name should be relevant, to your business typically. It'll be your business name but in some situations it can be a bit more broad if your, business name is too long you may need to creatively, shorten, it while still remaining on brand the. More relevant your domain name the better even, for SEO so, stick with what makes sense to your target market next. Make it memorable and you'll do that by keeping it short using, simple terms and by selecting the most common suffix now, what I'm talking about suffixes, I'm referring to com net, org. And today.com. Is, still King and most people instinctually, type, com, even, if you listed dotnet, or org, it's. Ideal to always, have com now some countries have specific, suffixes, such as MX, or Co. UK. Use, the one that is most widespread in, your region if you, have a difficult to spell or pronounce business, name you'll end up with a less than memorable, domain name instead. You'll want to try an alternative, domain name that still maintains, the feel of your brand and finally. The domain should be usable, if you're, adding in hyphens, or leveraging, prefixes, other than www. You, might be hampering a visitor's ability, to arrive at your website the, best domain names are short and free of special characters so, after, you select your domain name I recommend. Buying multiple. Variations and suffixes, to prevent others from registering, them also, if you're using a number in your domain it's not a bad idea to buy the version, with the numbers spelled out to, avoid any complications, when sharing a domain name through word-of-mouth if, your domain name is unavailable, it might be worth contacting, a current owner to inquire about the cost of purchasing it if, you can't find their contact information on their website you, can try denta fiying them by running what's called a who is this, will query the registered owner you'll, find the tools to do this at Whois net, or who dot, is it's. Hard to change a domain name once you've got your marketing underway so evaluate, your options and make the best choice for your business. Every. Website has a goal it could be to distribute information capture. An email address or sell a product, there's a reason you're putting an effort into online marketing, your, goal is for your visitor to take some sort of action after they land on your website now. Depending on your audience you'll have between 2 and 6 seconds to convince them to stay once they've arrived what, happens is these visitors will click take, a glance and then bounce from your site if they're not interested, so, ideally, you're driving, this traffic to a specific, landing page having. Specific destinations. Allows you to reinforce, the decision to click provide, an attention-grabbing, visual, or headline and frame, the information, in a way that helps you achieve your goal now, some new visitors will inevitably arrive, on your homepage and that's ok but, it's important, to avoid campaigns, that drive visitors directly, to your homepage it's, the least conversion, friendly page on your website since it tends to be fairly broad the. Key to making your website convert, is to build goal specific, landing pages these, landing pages come in a few varieties but, I'm going to focus on the four most common types teaser. Pages, squeeze, pages, infomercials. And viral, pages these, are all ones you've likely encountered, as you've browsed the web the. First is a teaser page the. Objective, of a teaser page is to give your visitor just enough, information to, get them to click through to the next step of your process teaser. Pages are useful for products that are nearing launch by, creating anticipation, and excitement you. Can convince the visitor to take an action such as providing an email address or even pre-ordering. You. Can also use these pages to tease out any unqualified. Leads if you have a special product for a select audience you, can leverage teaser pages, to ask them questions one, step at a time slowly, revealing, more about your product or offering, depending, on the answers next.

We Have the squeeze page the. Goal of the squeeze page is to capture content, and qualifying. Lead information typically. A visitor exchanges, their contact, information for, something of moderate value say a webinar ebook. Or an exclusive, discount the. Lead information, can be as simple as an email or as complex, as four or five pre qualifying, questions a good. Squeeze page keeps the message above the fold stays on target and has a strong enough value to be effective. Let's move on to the viral landing page the. Goal of this page is to invite your customers, to enlist their friends, you might have a reward, that has earned through a number of shares for example, for each friend who signs up you'll get a $5 credit your. Viral landing page might include a funny video or an infographic, now. Finally, we have the infomercial. Page these, are typically designed in the same style as an infomercial you'd see on TV, the, idea is one page typically, a long page and you'll share all the information about the product what it is how, it works its benefits, testimonials, and a special offer if you buy it today. Infomercial. Pages are effective, at driving sales for certain products and are typically used by affiliate, marketers when running large campaigns, to. Build your landing page select, the right type and then focus on these five things you. Want to define the goal what needs to happen what. Information, from the user do you need to accomplish that goal their email phone, number credit card, outline. What the user needs to do do, they need to fill out a form invite, a friend and so, on, what. Information does the user need to be convinced, what, is of shared value to them and finally. How, will you track the results it's. Important, to make sure your landing page has your logo an, explanation of the offer a very, compelling headline related. Testimonials, and links to reviews along, with a strong call-to-action. After. You build your landing page or if you already have pages on your site executing, these goals it's, important, to continuously, improve them, when. Someone starts by clicking on your link maybe fills out the first page but then never enters their credit card they've abandoned, you, want to fix abandonment, by finding, the pain point and we'll talk more on this later when we get into conversion funnels but here's why this is important if you, fix conversions, you can increase your revenue, without having, to increase your traffic so.

10,000, Visitors at a 1 percent conversion rate would, equal 100, sales and 10,000. Visitors at a 3 percent conversion rate well that's 300 sales so, focus, on keeping your landing pages concise, just, the right amount of information necessary to, get the job done make. Sure you add confidence. To your visitors by linking to your email policy having, a valid SSL certificate, and including, your contact, information directly, on the page there. Are many other ways to improve the conversion on your website obviously not every page can be a landing page but landing pages allow you to build isolated, tests and you can then apply those learnings to the rest of your website. Here's. The reality, people, just don't read on the internet they scan they'll, jump from a headline to an image and then scan a few bullet points this. Means when it comes to the copy on your website less, is more and with, less words to work with it's important that you make each one count will. Call all the text on your website copy, now, I'm not going to be discussing blog articles, that's a whole different beast for now we're going to focus on your web copy, writing. Engaging web copy starts, with knowing your audience your, writing specifically, for them and no one else you, need to deliver your information, in a way that meets their needs and you have to be mindful of the fact that for whatever reason they're, likely in a hurry to find that information, the. Goal is to write great copy not just content it's different so, as you approach your project, start by getting rid of any long introductions, and word heavy descriptions, stick, to clear concise, and punctual, copy use. Clever headings, to your advantage and break up your text with bullet points building, on topic, and relevant content will not only help your users but it'll help you out as you work to rank in the search engines as well one. Thing I see often is pages, that put their headline as about us or contact us for the page you're on now, those are helpful in the title or the breadcrumb, but, save that heading space for something captivating. And attention-grabbing. Especially. On your landing pages as you. Move into the content, deliver, the most important, points of your story first and then, add the supporting details as you go this, way if the user stops reading early they've got a gist of what you're trying to say now. Before, you get started look, at each page of your website and answer these questions, who will, read this copy. Why. Are they reading this. What. Should they feel when they read this page. What. Am I trying to accomplish with this copy and, what. Benefit, and feature do I need them to really understand. Use. These answers to build your first draft save, it and then write it again with half as many words compare.

The Two and only, add back in what you need to reinforce the points that are lacking now. At some point you might decide it's a good idea to hire a professional copywriter I can't, stress the importance of good copy enough this, is a worthwhile investment if, you aren't able to spend the time to, refine your own copywriting, skills when. You look for a copywriter, read through their work copywriters. Often write in specific, niches and while they're happy to adjust their tone and style for your needs it's, often better to find someone who understands, your audience a, copywriter. Should be invited into the project at the beginning this. Way they can gather all the facts understand. The challenges ahead and build, you exactly, what you need you, can utilize a copywriter, to write slogans add ideas, entire, websites, or a focused, landing page copy most. Work on a daily or half daily rate and expect, to pay anywhere from 600. To 800 dollars per day right. With the approach of connecting, your audience to your business convincing, them to take the next step and affirming, their conversion. Over. The past few years we've, seen impressive, growth of tablets, and smartphones all coming, with different screen sizes it, would be an incredible amount of effort to build the design for each screen size and then try to keep up with new devices on top of it that's, where responsive, web design comes, in this, approach allows your site to be adaptive, the page responds, automatically, based on the screen size and even, the orientation, a user is viewing it in it, works because a responsive, website is designed around building, blocks these blocks can break and collapse, under one another stretch, and shrink and even, adjust the font sizes and image sizes based on the available screen real estate what's, great is that the same code is served to all the devices you won't need to build multiple code bases, you'll instead rely on your style sheets to handle the scaling, advanced. Responsive, design can even adjust elements, on the page adding, an additional content, or removing, it based on the view you'll. Have to decide if responsive, design makes sense for your business personally. I'd lean heavily towards making the investment, in this style of web development it's, almost a necessity if you want to compete in today's digital marketplace. It'll. Help future-proof your brand and it'll give you amazing flexibility. As you expand your marketing and improve your customers experience, as they, interact with your site from various devices, now. Responsive, design sounds, relatively simple but it's a fairly complex, endeavor if you've, built your website on a framework or a paid template, you might be able to find an update that includes responsive, elements if you, have a more complex project, including, say ecommerce, websites, it's, probably, best to enlist the help of a professional use. Responsive, design as a tool not a cure-all fix you'll, still need to take usability, into consideration, and that might mean changing, certain interactions, on your website to accommodate, a responsive, experience. Search. Engine optimization is, all about impacting, how visible your website is in a search engines organic, results you'll, be making changes to your site's technical, setup as well as the content, on the page in an effort to improve rank to. Better understand, optimization, let's, start by looking at how search engines work a company. Like Google will have a bot basically. A software, program that crawls the web it, does this by following links and, links from your site to other pages on your site and even links from one site to another the. Crawler arrives at a page reads. The code and stores. The information, that. Stored information is called the index and your initial goal is to get indexed, by Google if your indexed, you'll rank and you might not rank well but, you have the potential for ranking and when, I talk about rank I'm referring, to which position, you appear in for a particular search query so.

When You enter a search term Google. Will do its best to provide the most important, and relevant answers, and then rank them from best to worst the. Better Google is at their job the more likely you are to use them and the more money they make so, it's in Google's best interest to deliver the best content, and because, Google drives a mind-boggling, amount of traffic each day it's, in your best interest to rank well for relevant, terms and rank. Is determined, by importance, and relevance, a, complex. Algorithm, turns, through hundreds, of variables to decide where your page lands many, of those variables, are what you're aiming to optimize these. Variables, might include the topics you're writing about who, is linking to your page how, your website is programmed, and even, if your mobile-friendly, Google. Even evaluates, the quality of the pages that are linking to you if they're, on brand relevant, and popular it's. Going to assume you're more credible, than if off-topic unpopular, pages are linking, to your content, variables. That you can't control, might include where a user is searching from, trending. Topics and any, current events that could skew results, SEO. Done well can provide an impressive, ROI done, poorly and it will negatively impact, your organic search efforts, in this, chapter we'll dig into the fundamentals, of good SEO and how you can improve the chances that your page ranks well. Truthfully. SEO, is an ongoing effort. There isn't one specific. Tactic you can implement at the start to succeed at the race it'll, require many factors, to be evaluated. Tweaked and then refined with, that said there's, still a handful, of variables that are absolutely, essential to your success, I'm going, to focus on these key areas for now to give you a solid foundation for, your continued effort so. First off search, engines are built around their ability to index pages so it's very important, that your site is accessible to crawlers, and that crawlers can get to every page on your site search. Engines love text it's the easiest for them to parse if, your site is built in flash you're, going to have trouble with SEO if you're, using images, in place of text you too will have a problem search. Engines also love, clicking links if you've, got your links tucked into a custom, JavaScript, navigation, your, crawl ability, might be impaired so, as you look at your site make sure you have at least one, regular, text-based, hyperlink, to every page on your site it's. Usually best to build a flat site hierarchy versus, a deep site hierarchy and to help understand, this let's look at a flat hierarchy, there. Are exceptions, to every rule in some, situations there, are simply too many categories, to, show them all at one level in other cases showing, specific, topics too soon will just confuse your audience and users, will understand, your offerings much better if you include some intermediary, category, pages to establish context, focus. On building a site that is easy to navigate for your users with your most important, content linked clearly and prominently. Next. Be sure to look at how your URLs, are named it's a great idea to have natural, language URLs free of any extensions, if you have an e-commerce site, a URL, of clothing site comm slash, men's slash, pants, slash, denim - jeans is going, to be much better than clothing, site com slash, Product ID equals, one to three along. That same concept be, sure your title tags are unique to each individual, page and include a clear topic don't, start your title tags with your domain name simply append that to the end be. Sure each page has a unique Meta Description Google. Often uses the Meta Description as the short text visible in search results don't just list keywords here create, a meaningful sentence or two that will entice the visitor to click Next. Make sure you're taking advantage of heading tags these are the h1, h2 and, h3 tags, you, always, want your heading tags to appear in order on your page and you should only have one heading. 1 tag avoid. Using your heading 1 tag to say things like about us or contact us instead. Focus, on the core topic for that page, check. That every image on your website has a well-defined name and an alt tag description no, need to keyword stuff in your tags just make them natural and relevant, to the user and Google, will reward you, finally. Be sure to use a sitemap both in HTML, and XML, format along with a well-defined, robots.txt.

File, I also. Recommend signing up for Google Webmaster Tools it's a great dashboard that will help you inspect the overall, SEO, health of your site you'll, find the free sign up at google.com/webmasters. Use. The dashboard, to review how many pages have been crawled and indexed see, a list of crawl errors and identify, any HTML, improvements google, recommends for you if you, have a moderately sized site check, out the tool screaming, frog SEO, spider at screaming, frog co. Uk. You, can crawl your site just as a search engine would see, a list of any broken links along with an output of all your heading 1 tags meta, descriptions, and title, tags work, through each page on your site to make sure it's technically sound. Without. Great content, you're lost to Google in order, to understand, what is going on with your website Google, has to have some information to read and it, reads that information, with a slight bias on keywords so earlier, we looked at building a list of our important keywords and now, we need to make sure we have content, written around those terms and by, writing content, for our keywords I'm not talking, about blanketing, the page with these keywords back, in the late 90s, marketers, were focused, on these ideas around keyword, density title. Tags stuffing, and a whole slew of other tricks to try to win over a particular search term search. Engines are now smart enough to understand. The relationship, between words and phrases so, trying to reinforce a keyword unnaturally, isn't, going to help you if anything, it might negatively impact, your effort so. When you build your content keep in mind there is no magic number of words or times to repeat your term instead. Build out the information that brings the most value, to your user if you're, going after a particular search term it's because that term is popular, to your user base and using, it naturally, will be in your benefit if you really need a formula I'd stick with this have. Your keyword or related concept, in your heading tag include. Your keyword once and maybe twice if it's not awkward above, the fold in your content and then, write supporting, copy that includes your related concepts, and terms to, give Google an indication, of what the theme of this page is about, remember. Google is smart if you're trying to game the system chances, are you're just putting yourself behind take. Time to build content that is natural, easy, to read and a value add for users and you'll see Google reward that effort over time. You.

2019-05-12 20:07

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