Internet marketing beyond SEO?
While
SEO may be responsible for the success of many websites, relying purely on Google
for your Internet marketing efforts isn't a very secure business approach. Given
how quickly things can change in the world of online search (ranking formulas,
penalties, competitors), diversifying your promotional techniques a bit is a
very wise idea.
Discussion forums for "indirect" online marketing
Do you think all those friendly folks on your favorite discussion forum are answering questions out of the goodness of their hearts? Well, maybe sometimes. Often however, you'll find that they are also including a website link in the signature line of their posts for Internet marketing purposes. If you didn't perceive that as marketing, then they did a good job and their posting will now be part of that search-engine-indexable page for years to come.
When participating in online discussion forums, follow these simple rules:
- Make sure that the forum topic is related to your site's subject matter.
- Only answer other people's questions when participating for promotional purposes. Starting a new subject thread is very likely to be perceived as spam.
- Be sure to provide valuable advice (the best input possible) when answering questions so that the forum moderators value your presence on the forum (and don't ban you).
- Only list your URL in the signature line of your posts, and avoid blatantly promoting your site in the body of your messages.
- If possible, make the signature an active link to your website so that it helps build your search engine ranking.
Here is a video about forum marketing (not by me) with some good advice :
You might also consider becoming a moderator of a forum. Although some forum owners don't want moderators to have an economic self-interest, others may see such self interest as motivation for staying on top of the work.
Finally, consider running your own discussion forum for its Internet marketing value, if nothing else. Forums keep people coming back to your site by acting as a virtual newsletter, and they also take advantage of user input to create free search-engine-indexable content. vBulletin.com, while rather expensive, seems to provide one of the most highly SEO compatible formats. Don't take my word for it -- do a few web searches related to your business and click on any results that appear to be from forums. Then scroll to the bottom of those pages to check which forum software is being used.
Internet marketing with newsletters
Having
an email list of 10 targeted customers might not seem like a big deal. Try ten
thousand. Many marketers and bloggers say that "life changes" when
your subscriber base reaches that size. The time to start compiling your list
is now.
Take signups anywhere you can -- on your homepage, at your cash register, wherever. You'll see a signup link for an Internet marketing newsletter on just about every page of site site. Here are some ideas to encourage registration:
- Including a "special offer" on your website, register receipts, or business forms for anyone that provides their email address for anyone that signs up for your newsletter.
- To encourage signups, offer something for free. For example: a free eBook, an email tutorial, a "how to" guide, access to videos, access to a members area, an information packet, a free script, some sort of coupon, a free guide, a "cheat sheet", etc. Many sites offer a "free 5 day mini-course" (or similar) on their homepages. A mini-course is a good way to remind potential customers about the benefits of your service after they've forgotten the dozens of competing sites that they saw during their initial search.
Aweber.com and ConstantContact.com are excellent newsletter management systems for those not interested in the technical hassles of email list management. If you do it yourself, be sure to make unsubscribing easy, so that you avoid spam complaints.
Here are some useful website add-ons for capturing newsletter signups.
And more information about email marketing in general.
