Stephan Smith’s latest article is titled “The Planning Stages Of Internet Marketing”. [Article Reprint]


Stephan Smith’s latest article is reprinted here.

The Planning Stages Of Internet Marketing

When planning to promote a website, whether it’s your own or not, I have a few recommended requirements that I think you should follow to ensure that your Internet marketing campaign will be successful. But before you start to scrutinize the website, you have to determine how you plan to market it first.

There are many ways to market your website, so its important that you obtain knowledge on all the best ways to get visitors and choose the method that you think will work best for you. For the beginners who may not know, there are two types of traffic (visitors) that you can get. You can get traffic to your website for free or you can pay for the traffic. Though getting free traffic may sound nice, there are some disadvantages you need to consider before deciding to take that route.

One major disadvantage on getting free traffic is that it takes time. Time is the one thing that we as humans don’t have much of, and if you want to get free traffic to your site you are going to have to spend a lot of time. Another disadvantage on getting free traffic is that you have to do a lot more work.

What kind of work? That would depend on how you market your website. If you’re considering video marketing, you’ll have to make hundreds of hours of video content while trying to keep your viewers interested and entertained to receive any substantial traffic. If you plan to market your website via search engine optimization, you will have to write content.

You may need to have to write hundreds on top of hundreds of articles while thinking about key word density and a variety of other factors. If you are feeling a bit confused or overwhelmed, don’t worry. I too was overwhelmed when I first started out. But if you keep at it, you will catch on and it will get easier.

Now that you know just some of the cons of marketing your website for free traffic, there are also huge benefits. One being that the traffic is absolutely, positively free. Plus, depending on what marketing strategy you use, the free traffic you get will snowball (grow at a rapid rate) and the number of visitors you get will increase month in and month out. There are also huge benefits for paying for traffic.

One major benefit is time. Yes, free traffic and paying for traffic are like ying and yang (opposites), for when you pay for your traffic, you typically start getting visitors to your site that same day. Another great advantage to paying for traffic is that you won’t have to create any content what-so-ever. But the one downfall is obliviously cost. Now that you know some of the pros and cons about free and paid traffic, you can choose what method you would like to try.

If you’ve decided to market your website for free traffic, then here are some recommendations that your website should meet. (The recommendations that I am giving is aimed to get you search engine traffic.) You need to make sure that your website is constantly posting fresh new content. Try typing a 450 word-1500 word article on something that is relevant to your website and that your web visitors would value. You should also try to post 2-5 new articles per week and submit those articles to article directories for extra exposure.

By doing this, the search engines will notice the content and raise your search engine rankings for particular keywords. Now if you’ve been posting 4 articles per week for an entire year, you will have around 208 articles floating around the Internet, being picked up by thousands of websites and search engines. Next thing you know you will be getting thousands of free new visitors every day. It’s really that simple. But you mustn’t be lazy. Just keep working. Honestly, I my opinion, that is the best way to get traffic.

Remember, the content you write must be helpful to your web visitors. If your website is about golf, write articles on how to increase the range of your hits, or how to make birdie on any golf course. Just write anything that will be deemed helpful and educational to your visitors. If you succeed in creating great content, your website visitors will keeping returning over and over. Now if you combine that with videos or audios, the possibilities become endless. Provide useful information, make your website a destination rather than a gateway to other websites.

If you plan to pay for your traffic, I have different recommendations. First off, since you’re paying for your traffic, you have to make your website visually appealing and very simple. You’re goal should be to capture your visitors information, such as their names and email addresses. By doing that, you can stay in contact will your visitors. Here’s an example, pretend you paid $100 dollars to send 200 visitors to your site. The goal of your site is to sell a $15 dollar dvd and your conversion rate is 2 percent.

So after sending 200 visitors to your website, you made 4 sales that equals to $60 dollars of income. As you can see in this example, you have lost $40 dollars. But if you change the goal of your website from selling something to capturing your visitor’s information, such as their first name and email address, you have the potential to increase the number of sales you can make. Another benefit that lead capturing has over selling directly is that your conversion rate is typically higher.

So once again, you send 200 visitors to your website and your conversion rate is 20 percent. You now have 40 leads that you can sell to over and over. After a week, you were able to convert 45 percent of your leads into a sale. That means you generated 18 sales that equals to $270 dollars in income. You’ve made $170 dollars in profit from the same amount of traffic, simply by catching your visitors information.

Let’s recap. If you’re planning to market your website to receive free traffic, pack your site with good original content that will be of value to your demographic. If you are planning to promote your website by paying for your traffic, make sure that your website is clean, very easy to navigate and visually appealing.

I highly recommend that you attempt to capture your visitors information if you planning to pay for traffic. It would also be a good idea to capture your visitor’s information if you’re considering marketing your website to receive free traffic. By making sure that your website follows these recommendations, you are off to a great start in your Internet marketing campaign.

The Planning Stages Of Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing Blog

*This article was submitted by Stephan Smith.

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