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Promoting Your Online
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Week 3 of "Promotion
for Writers: Establishing a Web Basic Promotions that Soar Search Engines & Directories-There are eight major search engines to worry about submitting your site to. You could spend hours submitting to the hundreds of other search engines, but that will do you little to no good as very few people actually use those search engines. The Elite Eight are: Yahoo, Alta Vista, HotBot, Northern Light, Excite, Lycos, Google, and WebCrawler. Concentrate on getting your site placed high in these, and you will have reached most of the web. When your keywords, metatags, content-copy, and title bar are ready, you can use either www.bravenet.com OR www.addme.com to submit your site to the search engines for free. Use one of these services first. Down the road if you want to submit to others, you can, but one of these should be your first stop. One benefit of being listed in the Elite Eight search engines is that if you are listed there, your site is then also listed in the meta-search engines. There are two main meta-search engines: MetaCrawler ( http://www.metacrawler.com ) and MetaSearch (http://www.metasearch.com) You will not have to submit to these two. They automatically search the major search engines to select the sites they catalog. (But they are good places to go searching for places to promote down the road!) It is important to realize
when working on promoting your site with search engines that simply
being listed is not enough. If you are number 2,346 on a list of 1,000,000,
that listing is not doing your site any good. Your goal should be to
get your site onto the top page or at least onto the second page down
when you type in your main keywords. For example, my main keywords are:
inspirational romance. If someone is looking for that, I want that person
to find my site as close to the top as possible. The formula the search
engines use to determine placement looks like this: Relevancy + Frequency
+ Location + Links/Traffic = Placement Relevancy is when a keyword used in a search is found on your page. Frequency is how many times that keyword is found on your page (metatags, title bar, copy, alt tags) Location where is the keyword located on your page? At the top or bottom? Top placements will get a higher rank. Links/Traffic If you
are linked to 50 sites in that search engine and someone else is linked
to 200, they will have the priority listing. A short word about directories: For the most part, I do not try to submit to all of the non-major directories. However, you might consider submitting to directories specific to your target audience. For example, I am listed in the JesusLinks Directory and have gotten a few referrals hits from them. One directory I would be sure to list in regardless of the target of your site is the Open Directory ( http://www.dmoz.org/ ). This directory provides its information to other search engines and cataloging stations thus giving you a wider reach. Newsletters/Ezines-One of the challenges webmasters face is to find ways to offer quality information so that people will want to come back again. You can have the best material on the planet, but if it doesn't change, repeat visitors are non-existent. That's one big challenge. The second big challenge is to let potential repeat visitors know when the site has changed so they have a reason to come back. Both of these challenges can be met in many ways. One of the most effective ways is to have a newsletter. When designing a newsletter, your first consideration should be to incorporate things that people would really want to know about. Just throwing a bunch of information in and calling it a newsletter is not enough. A lot of newsletter owners spend their entire newsletter talking about THEM-this goes back to the admonition about thinking first about what your audience wants. What's in it for the VISITOR-not for you. In short, you must find ways to make it interesting and appealing to your target audience. First, come up with several sections to include every month or to rotate as time and space allow. For me, I focus on bringing inspiration and uplifting messages right to the person's inbox. If you look at my newsletter, the first four or five sections are always dedicated solely to helping the reader improve their own life. There's a Bible quote, Insights (which is my take on some aspect of the issue's theme), Words of Wisdom from a non-Bible source, and a life question. All of these are designed not to put my message out, but to help the subscriber with their own life. The last part of my newsletter deals with Announcements about my professional life. These may range from upcoming appearances to new reviews or new articles I've written. This section is also where I announce contests or contest winners. I also include a short section on novels I have in print just as a reminder. If you haven't started a newsletter but think it's a good idea, here are a few caveats and notes to give you a heads up. First, start with a monthly newsletter unless you have a lot of time. It seems easy, but coming up with fresh material weekly or daily can be a real challenge. Also, make sure the content is fresh and appealing to your reader. If you use articles from somewhere else, always ask permission, give credit (tag line and link), and use within the parameters of good sense. Give the readers a way to subscribe. You can ask a programmer to create a short subscribe script that you can paste into your HTML so that when someone subscribes, all they have to do is type their name, email address and hit send, and it will automatically send you word that someone has subscribed. Keep a database (or Excel spreadsheet) of the name and email address of each person subscribed. I recommend printing this off monthly in case a catastrophe happens. Because you can now contact the people who have subscribed again and again, this list is gold-treat it as such! I am now switching over to a true-autoresponder mailing list (we'll discuss autoresponders more fully next week). If you decide to go this route, your autoresponder service should provide you with free forms for visitors to subscribe. Overall Newsletter Setup Options are: 1) Manual list using Hotmail or a similar email program, keeping the emails in a database or spreadsheet program. Time-intensive but free and okay if you're just starting out. 2) Signing up with www.bravenet.com for their newsletter service. Free. Easier to keep your list, free forms to subscribe visitors, but subscribers will get offers for other newsletters from bravenet, which can distract from yours. Also, some potential subscribers may decide not to subscribe if they feel like you're "farming out" their email address. 3) Purchasing an autoresponder. Again, we will talk more about autoresponders next week and which ones I recommend. You can go with a free autoresponder; however, you will not be able to do HTML and ads that aren't under your control will be at the top of your emails. A great way to boost your newsletter list rather quickly is to sign up with Subscription Rocket at http://www.subscriptionrocket.com/cgi-bin/r.cgi?r=4575 This service is free, and basically pools your newsletter with others who are promoting their newsletters. You put a small piece of code on your site, and when visitors trigger the code (by clicking off a page or onto a page), you receive a "credit." For every credit you receive, your newsletter is put on someone else's pop-up box. There are ten newsletters on every pop up. Not only is this a good way to get the word out about your newsletter, but it's a great way to find other newsletters that you can contact to place articles! A NOTE OF CAUTION: I tried out another service much like this one at SubscriptionDrive. However, this service listed newsletters that were disgusting! So stick with Subscription Rocket-it's served me very well! A new service that I just signed up for and am still learning to use is called Ezine Announcer. This program can help you sign your ezine or newsletter up for directories, send ezine announcements, send article announcements, and actually submit articles to targeted ezines in their 509 Rolodex of ezines. I'm really looking forward to using this program… Just as soon as I get this lesson posted! I highly suggest looking into it. I won't lie, building a newsletter list can be a long, slow process, but it is worthwhile. Get creative. On May 22, 2003, I will start my second cyber-serial offering a novel free, 2 chapters at a time to my newsletter subscribers. (If you're interested, you can sign up at newsletter@stacistallings.com ) The free book is a great draw. Also, always invite your subscribers to invite others. The best word is word of mouth…treat your subscribers right and they will return the favor! Linking Strategies-First, why linking is important. As discussed earlier, some search engines rank your site based on how many links you have in their system. Also, the more links you have out there, the more ways a potential visitor can find you and your site. First, you need to set up a database. This database should have the following fields (feel free to add others as necessary): Control-use this field to help organize when you know which records you want to find, but creating single fields would take too much time. An example would be, say you are sending out your link letters, and you send 25 letters the first day, and 25 the second day. You can use this field to denote which day you sent them on. Then when replies come back and you get ready to send follow-up emails, you can blank out all of the items in this column and use it again. Website Name-in your letter (the next section) you should always mention the name of the site you are wanting to link to. Some people have multiple sites, and it's not a good thing when they come back and ask which site you are talking about. Website URL-do this as a hyperlink in your database, and you can simply click from there to the site. In case you're really new at this, it's important to note here that you can copy and paste the website address directly from the address line to the Website Address in your database. Simply highlight the address line, right click, hit copy. Go to your database, right click and hit paste. This saves inordinate amounts of time. Contact Person-I do this as two separate fields, first and last name. This way you have the option of addressing your emails to the person who can actually make a decision on the link, which increases your chances of making the link. Email Address-Fill this in as you find sites to link to-don't figure you'll go back and find the Email later. If you try to do this, you may find when you go back, there is no email address and thus no way to contact that site about a link, and thus a useless site for this strategy. (There may be some sites that offer an email form on the site. For those you can simply put a notation in this column that says On Site, and when you get ready to contact them, you just go to that site and contact them from there.) Type of Site-If you're like me, your product fits into several different categories. By having this field, you can target your messages based on what type of site you are contacting. Now that you have your database set up, how do you find sites to contact about linking? --Search engines. The list of keywords that you came up with for your site earlier can now be used to find sites to link to. --Meta Search engines. Also discussed earlier, these would be used the same as search engines. --The Open Directory. http://www.dmoz.org/ --Webrings. There are two main portals for webrings: www.webring.com , www.ringsurf.com In the webrings search box you can type in your keywords and find sites similar to yours. These rings will list all of their sites, and you can then go through the sites listed to find those you would like to link to you. --Use Alexa's Related Links feature to find other similar sites. (A word of caution on this one, Alexa seems to be worse than the others for people putting in sites that look similar on their face, but are actually "fronts" for sites which contain dramatically different content.) Writing the Link Contact Letter and the Importance of Following Up So you've come up with hundreds of sites you want to contact to set up a link chain. Great. But how do you get this other person to say, "Yes!" Start by having an absolutely fabulous site yourself. If your site is pitiful, when you suggest that the other person go look at your site, you will lose them. Next, you have to consider what to put into your contact letter. Here are a few suggestions I've used with success in the past: · Begin with some generic greeting such as "Hi" or "Hello"; Dear Sir or Madam is not used on the 'net. It sounds too formal, and most of these will go in the trash. To increase your chances of having your letter read, use a first or last name. Hi Staci, would pull better than just Hi. · Compliment the person's site first. This is similar to don't talk about yourself in the opening lines of your site caveat. Focus on them. Now, before you do like I did to begin with and go to each site so you could write a letter specifically to them (tons more time, about the same results), think in general terms about what you liked about the sites you've visited. Maybe they are spiritually sound. Maybe they are well laid out. Maybe it's obvious how much time and effort the webmasters have put in. Whatever you choose, it must be sincere, and it must be truthful. Don't compliment someone on a fabulous lay out when you couldn't find anything on their site. Next explain a little about yourself and your site's mission and purpose. This doesn't have to be long. In fact, I recommend the entire letter be no more than what would fit on one page of a word processor. · Tell them you are interested in linking with their site because it seems that you have similar messages, purposes, etc. Invite them to visit your site to see for themselves. · Offer to post a reciprocal link to their site on yours · Give easy to follow instructions on how to contact you if they are interested and detail the items you need to set up the link to their page (correct: Site Name, URL, site description, and the appropriate person to contact about the link along with their email address) · Compliment them again at the end, and express your hope that the linking venture will be a success for both of you. · Come up with a good subject line. Something that will catch their attention. "Link Request" works, but there are other better lines that will draw people into your letter. You might think about how to connect your subject line with your first compliment of their site. Okay, your letter is written and ready to send. To send it to multiple emails, simply copy and paste the emails from your Linking Database into the BCC field of your compose screen. (Don't do more than 20 or so with a regular program as more than that may stop the mailing because the program sees it as spamming. Hotmail will let you send 50 at one time.) DO NOT use the TO field. This will send out these email addresses to everyone on the list and will end up angering the very people you are trying to partner with. If you have the time and patience, it is better to send the email in the TO field to each separate link prospect. However, this admittedly could use more time than its worth. Make a note of the date that
you send each contact letter out on your database. As replies come in,
manage your list according to those replies. Begin setting up links.
After two weeks, you will want to send a follow up letter to those who have not replied, similar to but not exactly like the initial contact letter. The same components go into this letter along with a mention of the date you contacted them initially. Make a note of when you send this letter out. After two more weeks, you will want to send another follow up letter to those who still have not replied. This one can be relatively short. Simply restate who you are and that you have attempted to contact them twice and that you would appreciate a reply even if the answer is no. After two more weeks, anyone who has not replied, delete them from your list. From my experience, the initial letter will glean about a 10 percent response, the second letter another 25 percent or so, and the third letter another 25 percent. In all a response rate of 60-70 percent is about standard. (You will be surprised how many come back from that initial response as: "Can't find this email address." Remember the importance of keeping the email addresses on your site current? This is why!) Articles-I know that Lisa Crayton just did a course on web articles, so I won't bore you with another long lecture. Let me just point out that there are two benefits to getting articles placed on the web even though you probably will not be paid for them. First, think of a placed article like an extended advertisement. If the reader likes the article, they are very likely to click on the link-tag that you should include at the bottom of every article (sites should do this especially if they don't pay you, and these tag-lines if done right can be picked up through a search engine crawl and point to your site as well). Second, every article placed is a link that increases your chances of getting placed high in search engines. So don't neglect this promotion. It can literally make your site's visitor count soar! (From what I've seen, using Ezine Announcer could dramatically help you with this promotion as well.) For more on how articles can zoom your site up the Alexa rankings, read the lesson from the other course on this topic! Press Releases--As a former journalist, I have a unique perspective on press releases. I know how ecstatic you can get when you have nothing to put in print for a particular day, and suddenly this fabulous story lands on your desk. I also know how many stories cross your desk day-after-day that simply go into File 13 because there is no time or space. The reality to me, from a journalist's perspective is that press releases are a hit or miss business-totally dependent on what day they happen to arrive on your desk and what else is going on at the time. Therefore, although this is one component of my overall marketing plan, I don't focus solely on Press Releases to get the publicity for my website. I don't count on them to bring in tons of visitors. However, there are still two really good reasons for considering press releases in your campaign. First, if you truly have a piece of exceptional news (and you are marketing it in other ways as well), press releases can bring in a few more eyeballs. Second, if your news is there but not ecstatic-buildingly great, press releases can be a good way to get your name mentioned to the people who can eventually get your really big news out. Look at your campaign. Is there something coming up that might be of interest to a wide readership? Send out a press release. Maybe you are announcing a new product or a new site. The key is that it should be NEWS. Press releases are not sales letters. They are not designed to advertise the product. They are meant to get the word out about some news that people might be interested in. You might want to put these press releases on a special page of your site called a Newsroom. You can then give the URL for your Newsroom to reporters so they can go and get more information. You don't, however, want to post this link on your site! If you do, then everyone can go and read your news, and it becomes… well, less newsworthy. If you don't know how to write a press release, visit my site at: http://www.stacistallings.com/OnlineCourse2-1.htm to see how I write mine. ~*~ HOMEWORK Search Engines & Directories--Search for your site on each of the Elite Eight and see if your site is listed. What rank are you listed when you type in your general keywords? When you type your main keywords? If your site is not listed at the top, can you see reasons why? Write down your impression of how your site listing looks. Are there problems with the appearance? What are they using to describe your site? The first few sentences? Your Meta tag? Your Title bar? Brainstorm for ways you could fix the problems that you find so that potential visitors are driven to click on your site. --On each search engine, who is at the top and why? Visit the sites that are at the top under your main keywords. What are they doing that you are not? Look first at their Title bar. How does it differ from yours? Are their keywords listed in their content? To look at their Metatags, go to their site and click View and Source. This will show you their source code and may give you some ideas for keywords to include in your own Metatags. The idea is not to copy them but to see what they are doing and improve on it for your own site. --Once you have done these, then you can look into submitting your site to the search engines. Or you can begin to redesign your site with the goal of getting your site ranked higher than it is at present. (Obviously there is much more to search engine placement and the other promotions that I will talk about than can fit in this course. If you are looking for an in-depth, no-holds-barred presentation of the ins and outs of Internet Marketing, I urge you to check out this course: http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/643004 This investment is where I got my real start in emarketing and will without a doubt be worth more than you can ever imagine!) Newsletters/Ezines--If you were going to set up a newsletter, what could you include? What could you include that would be of benefit to the reader beyond a simple list of your products? --If you are not a writer, here are a few places where people post articles that you can use for free (if you will use their tag): http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/PI/index.jhtml A special note because I know you all ARE writers-these are great places to post articles for OTHER NEWSLETTERS AND E-ZINES to pick up! More articles placed = more taglines placed = more links = better search engine placement = MORE VISITORS! Linking Strategies--Find 50 or 100 sites that you would like to contact (or more if you have time and your wrist isn't sore by the time you get to 100!) --Write your letter and start this process even if it's just contacting ten people. Get started. It's a long and never-ending process, but the more you do it, the easier it will get. Press Releases--Research newsletters and e-zines to submit press releases to at: http://www.topica.com/
You can submit a press release free at www.prweb.com I know this is a lot of information (and there's even more at my course online!), but bookmark this lesson or save this email. Start with one area, work through it. Then take up another area. Put together they can really help your site get noticed! Remember: Feel free to ask any question you would like to! Happy emarketing! Staci Stallings |
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